All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(38)

“Thanks for telling me.”

“And now, my boy, why don’t you tell me a thing or two? About your dive into the trashy sea, perhaps. Did you, by any chance, find a rich man’s treasure?”

I thought of the denim jacket that had once belonged to River and the brass key hidden in its lining. “No,” I lied.

“Alas, that is the fate of the young and the old: we are slaves to fortune’s whim and caprice.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “If you say so. What about you? Sheriff got you convinced to leave, huh?”

“He didn’t have to try very hard. I was going to leave anyway. This town isn’t meant for me, that’s God’s own truth. No decent place to sleep, and the dreams I’ve had,” he shivered, “I’d rather not have any more, if you understand. I’ll not mention, if you’ll allow, our mutual friend, who is another reason I’ll be glad to put my back to this town.”

“Dreams? What kind of dreams?”

“Just dreams,” he waved one hand grandly, “dreams that you get from sleeping on a bench in early autumn, I suppose. Not that a place like this has much of an autumn. Manitowoc didn’t either. The leaves kindled just like a match and then poof, they all went out just as fast. Snow, snow, snow, eight months of it.” He leaned back, studying me. “And tell me, what is a fine young man like you doing at this disreputable establishment if you have no intention of leaving town?”

“Talking to you, I suppose.”

“Talking to—talking to me! Well, isn’t that a choice thing? What do you want to talk about?”

I wanted to hear about his dreams, but I was going to wait a moment. “You’ve been here a couple of days?”

His silvery hair bobbed as he nodded.

“Did you see a blond guy? A little older than me, wearing a denim jacket. He got in last night.”

For a moment, Frankie considered this. “Not the way you tell it, no.”

“Ok.”

“He some relation of yours? Brother?”

“No.”

Doubt flashed in Frankie’s eyes, but he nodded. “I saw that boy, the one you described. You’re talking about River Lang, and yes, I know who River Lang is, and fortunately I’ve had the good sense and God’s own luck not to know him any better than that. But he didn’t come into town yesterday. He came in on my bus, three days ago.”





I stared at Frankie in shock. “You know River? What did you say—River Lang?”

Again, Frankie’s silver hair made waves as he nodded.

“How?”

Frankie, tucking himself deeper into the billowy gray coat, said, “He’s been around a few years, I understand. Riding, I mean. I like California in the winter, but my heart’s in Manitowoc, so I got to do this twice a year. This year, I stopped over in Denver. Made it on the train, if you can believe it, and God wasn’t that a nice change. I saw him there, just for a moment, but I saw him. Only time, until I saw him on my bus, but you can’t forget River Lang. It was a late train, I can’t remember how late, but it was dark and everybody decent had gone home. You ever been to Union Station in Denver?”

“I’ve never been anywhere but here and Oklahoma.”

“An Okie!” He waved a finger in my direction. “I should have known. I should have sensed that spirit of resilience, that wide-ranging open spirit.”

“Union Station?”

“It’s a beautiful building. You should go, when you decide you’ve had enough of this town and enough of—” His eyes cut to my shirt, where the oval of blood was drying into a dark stain on the blue fabric. “Enough of this life. They’ve got these white iron arches that run above the tracks, and outside, well, outside it’s world-class. Old stone and big carnival-bulb lettering on the sign and an iron awning painted green. Or was it grey?”

“You saw him there? River?”

“I did, young man. Most certainly. Just last week. I was late Manitowoc this year because I’d met a nice lady and, well, that’s not quite a story for innocent ears. In any case, I remember standing under that big iron awning—it was green, I’m sure it was green—and I was shivering and I didn’t have Old Grey,” he plucked at his enormous trench coat, “because I picked her up my last day in Denver. Got her from a shelter. On that particular night, I was, to be completely honest, in a bit of a grump. I was cold, and I was tired, and I didn’t have a nickel to my name, and here’s some more honesty: I wanted something to drink, if I can say that without falling too far in your eyes. And at the other end of the awning, at the edge of the light from the old-fashioned carnival bulbs, stood a young man flipping a coin.”

“He was flipping a coin?”

“A penny,” Frankie said, shaking his head. “That copper color, I could see that from where I was. He was talking to a girl, a pretty young thing. A blonde, you know, with legs halfway to Pike’s Peak, and God that I were a mountaineer. They were talking, and that’s the first time I saw him. When I described him, later, some of the other boys who ride the western circuit knew him right away. He always rides out west, they said. Never any farther east than Colorado. Anyway, he was making her laugh, and I wouldn’t have paid it any more attention except I was in such a foul humor and all that giggling was getting on my nerves. In any case, my fine friend, it turns out the pretty young thing had a boyfriend, who was a big, hulking, nasty thing. A little like you, in the big and hulking way, but you don’t strike me as nasty.”