36

I dreamed of a sky filled with nets and moons, and each moon was a pale version of the future, hanging on unseen strings. I was lying in Ghost Creek, looking up, baptized by the future and the past, lost to the present.

Lightning cracked the cloudless sky, and when it did, I saw all the strings, crisscrossed along their competing trajectories, like a dense net, and it lay over top of the world, transparent yet still heavy. Each moon could be me or Rufus or Harriet, but then I looked again and saw there were some moons that had become fully realized and shone bright enough to shred the ropes of the surrounding nets.

And then I woke, throwing my covers off, believing momentarily I was submerged in Ghost Creek. Goose, who was in the bed with me, snuggled his warm nose into my naked underarm and whined. I stroked his head with my hand and wished for a simpler mystery, but there was no such thing.

*   *   *

The tatters of the dream stayed with me as I made coffee, scrambled eggs, and fed Goose. By the time I made it to Ronnie’s, the sun was almost up and the dream had been replaced by Claire’s knowing eyes. How had she intuited that the article was off? It was something to meet another person with an intuition that matched your own. Sort of like looking into a mirror and seeing someone else who shared your features but wore them differently, with a kind of grace you believed you lacked.

Ronnie was still asleep, so I let myself in and sat down next to him on the couch. He was lying with one leg propped up on the back of the couch and the other on the floor. A thin sheet lay across his body. He was snoring.

I asked myself what I was doing. What was the plan?

The simple answer was that I was going to talk to Edward Walsh about Weston Reynold’s death. The more complicated one was that, somehow, I wanted to see the falls again, the gorge, and the possibility of making the leap across. I wanted to stand where Rufus and Harriet had stood, to see if there was some entry point into the mystery of Rufus’s unfinished story.

Was taking Ronnie even necessary? I wasn’t sure. I had the sudden urge to just get up and leave, to go it alone this time. To live or die, sink or swim, fall or climb on my own merits. No Mary, no Rufus, no Ronnie.

Still, I hesitated. Ronnie had helped bail me out of so many binds in the past. Was there truly some benefit to doing it alone, or was I simply trying to play a game with myself, trying to manipulate my own consciousness into believing I’d found redemption at long last?

I wasn’t sure. What I was sure of was this: I was stepping into enemy territory. The chances were good I wouldn’t come out unscathed. But, most importantly, I didn’t believe I could live with myself if something happened to Ronnie again.

I stood up, and Ronnie stirred. “Earl?”

I walked away, toward the door.

“Hey,” he called. “I had a dream.”

I stopped at the door.

“You were falling.”

I stepped outside. “Go back to sleep.”

“Hey, aren’t we supposed to head out to—”

I shut the door and moved swiftly to my truck. I was already across the creek when Ronnie came out, wearing a pair of stained white briefs and nothing else. I was glad I’d let him be. It felt like the right decision.

This was my mystery to unravel.

*   *   *

But Ronnie didn’t see it like that. Thank God for Ronnie Thrash. He chopped mysteries down by force of will. He exploded them from the inside out with the raw fury of his personality. He didn’t solve them, he banished them in a way I’d never be able to.

I noticed his truck just before turning onto the long mountain road leading up to the school. I pulled over and waited on him to do the same.

“You can’t bring that piece of shit up the mountain,” I said. “They’ll hear you coming.”

“Well, move over then.”

“I need to do this one alone,” I said.

“Ain’t nothing a man needs to do alone ’cept shit and play with his pecker, and hell, the last one is optional.”

See? Fucking banished. Poof.

He climbed in beside me and slapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s roll.”

He’d thrown on an old Incredible Hulk T-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants along with some flip-flops. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He grinned, stuck it in his mouth, and blew the smoke sideways, his mouth a constricted snarl.

“You better go move your truck,” I said. “If you leave it there, everybody and their mother will know what we’re doing.”

“Sure, Earl. Can I just say, it’s good to have you back.”

“Back?”

“Yeah, working again. I was worried about you for a while. Just sitting in the yard, staring into space. I thought you’d given up.”

“I think maybe I did.”

“What changed?”

I shook my head. “I guess I need to find Rufus.”

He blew a line of smoke out the window. “That old bastard can take care of himself and you know it. What really changed?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer him, but just before he got out of my truck to go move his, I saw an image from the dream. It was the sky with all the moons, except this time I focused on just one of them, and it was my moon, not the one I was destined for, but the one that was me, deeply and truly me.