Chapter Twenty

 

After showering, we returned to camp wrapped in bath towels. Bright moonlight guided our path through the trees and bounced moonbeams off Amber's flaxen hair. By flickering lantern light, we cooked tomato sauce on the propane stove and served it over pasta. With clean bodies and satisfied appetites, we grabbed a blanket and went for a walk in the woods. Amber stopped on a rise overlooking the camp and spread the blanket in a soft bed of fallen pine straw.

“It's beautiful here,” she said.

“I thought you'd like it.”

She snuggled against me and said, “There's nothing quite like the forest at night. So much sound, yet soothing. Rain on a tin roof.” She touched my bruised cheek again. “Tomorrow I want you to tell me everything.”

Later we returned to camp. Much later, feeling Amber's warm body beside me in the sleeping bag, I drifted away into an incandescent dream—a dream of New Orleans.

***

Royal Street. One of those humid summer days when you feel you need to shower and change clothes before early afternoon. The only way to beat the heat is find the nearest air-conditioned bar and quaff a few ice-cold Dixies. It was such a day and I had chosen the latter solution to the problem.

A polished mahogany counter extended the length of one wall, letting customers peer through a picture window at tourists and locals cruising the narrow street outside. Beside me at the counter sat an obnoxious tourist. Very much in his cups, he was railing about faggots and lesbians in town for a gay rights convention. Pulling no punches, he made everyone within earshot very uncomfortable. I grasped the frosty mug in my hand and stared out the window at Royal Street.

A white horse without a rider passed the window. Two young men, both dressed in white right down to their socks led the horse by its halter. What followed was a long procession of white cars, people dressed in white, a Dixieland band with white uniforms and miles of mesmerized tourists following along the sidewalk. Everyone was laughing and enjoying their selves immensely.

“What the hell's going on out there?” the tourist asked.

“Queen Victoria's Birthday,” the bartender said. “They're parading to start the celebration.”

For five minutes, the procession continued with many of the marchers stopping in the bar for cool drinks, mostly brandy milk punches. The ongoing spectacle calmed the drunken man and he struck up a friendly conversation with two white-clad young women that had stopped in for a cooling drink. When he left with them to follow the procession, someone took his place at the bar. No one bothered telling him of the two women’s probable sexual orientation.

“Isn't the Queen's birthday in May?” a new arrival asked.

“Who gives a shit? The Queen is dead,” the bartender said.

***

Sunlight glaring through the open flap of the tent awakened me the next morning with the words 'the Queen is dead' echoing in my brain. Amber had been already up and dressed for a morning jog when I crawled out on my hands and knees. After a brief visit to the wash-house, I put on my own outfit and chased her muscular legs up a narrow trail, into the hills behind the campground. With my own muscles strengthened by several days of mountain hiking, I surprised even myself by keeping up with her for the first two miles.

She continued up the trail but I had to stop. Out of breath, I hiked slowly back to camp. When Amber returned her complexion flushed from exertion and her pink shorts and singlet damp with perspiration, she looked as happy as if she had just won the Florida lottery.

We had melon and fruit juice for breakfast. Finally, I recounted to Amber everything that had occurred to me since arriving in Turkey Gap. She howled with laughter when I told her about my encounter with the angry razorback and how it had resulted in a skinny dip with Mary Ann. It was something I did not expect.

We rested on the hard concrete picnic table, holding hands, with Bill's leather journal nearby. With freckled cleavage peeking from the top of her frilly blouse and tanned legs revealing just a hint of creamy white beneath the cuff of green hiking shorts, Amber appeared radiantly healthy. As if her touch might somehow help her divine an unwritten message, she stroked the journal's rippled leather.

Up the hill, a screen door slammed and Mary Ann hurried down the path. With a sullen expression framing her face she stopped at the table, keeping her armload of books clutched tightly to her chest. Seeing the confusion in her big green eyes, I abruptly released Amber's hand. Something I had no idea why I did.

“Mary Ann, this is Amber Armstrong. She's a policeman and is here to help us find Bill.”

Again, Amber laughed uproariously. She stood from the concrete plank and hugged Mary Ann. “Tom's told me all about you,” she said.

“He never told me about you,” Mary Ann said, arms at her side.

When Amber rested her hands on Mary Ann's shoulders and stared into her eyes something noticeable transpired between the two.

“You're every bit as pretty as Tom said. I think I can help you find Bill. Do you mind if I try?”

“You a real policeman?” Mary Ann asked. When Amber nodded, she smiled and said, “Guess it won't hurt nothing.”

Up the hill, the screen door slammed again. Boots shuffled against the gravel as John Stewart plodded in our direction on his morning journey to the bottle stand.

“I have to go,” Mary Ann said. “Grandpa'll skin my head if I miss the bus.”

“She's so pretty,” Amber said as Mary Ann hurried away.

Mary Ann boarded the yellow school bus waiting on the highway and waved to us through an open window. With a clank of shifting gears it eased back onto the highway and slowly disappeared in the distance.

“Morning,” John Stewart said, saluting as he walked past. “Sleep well?”

“Like a top,” Amber said.

The old man did not stop for conversation. Amber waited until he reached the bottle stand before returning to the bench and squeezing me in a comforting embrace.

“You seem so sure your brother is dead,” she finally said. “Pardon my skepticism but an image you thought you saw in a crystal ball hardly seems like much evidence to me.”

“Zekiel's no New Age psycho-maven,” I said, grinning. “Something else compels me to believe it's true. I also had a dream.”

“Like the one you had in Brannerville?”

“No. Most of my dreams are repeats of events in my life. Sort of like a broken record. This one was different.”

“How so?” Amber asked.

I recounted the dream for her. “Something was pursuing me through the forest, beneath the light of a full moon. There were hunting dogs baying in the distance. Nothing like that has ever happened to me. I believe I was dreaming of Bill.”

“Tom, that's so unbelievable,” Amber said.

Still, she took my hand and clutched it tightly as if she had suddenly felt the cold chill of a midnight breeze caress the back of her neck.

“Whomever or whatever was chasing me drew very near. I sensed something just behind me and felt an evil presence. My fatigue was almost unbearable as I clawed through vines and briars, my arms and chest lacerated and bleeding.”

“But why do you think the dream was about Bill?” Amber asked, interrupting me.

“Because when I reached a dirt road and fell on my face in a muddy puddle, I saw the back of my hand in the moonlight.”

“And?”

“There was a birthmark there—heart-shaped, the size of a half dollar. It was Bill's birthmark.”

“Dreams don't necessarily reflect reality,” Amber said.

“That's what the shrinks at Pineville kept telling me. I am not so sure Zekiel would agree with them. He thinks Bill sent me the diamond as a talisman—something to chase away my demons. He also gave me this for you.”

I dropped the pearl into her palm.

“What's this?”

“Juju,” I said, grinning. “Keep it in here and wear it around your neck.”

I handed her the pouch, explaining how diamond and pearl combine to give their owners' power. Amber seemed unconvinced but dropped the pearl into the pouch and tied its thong around her neck anyway. Shaking her head ever so slightly, she began drumming pink-glossed fingernails against the concrete table top.

“Maybe Bill sent you the diamond for another reason.”

“What other reason?”

“From the way you describe him, he doesn't sound like a person that coveted wealth. Maybe he found something else. Something so extraordinary he didn't know who else to trust with the information.”

Amber's speculation raised more questions than I cared to consider, at least for the moment. On the highway, an eighteen-wheeler passed and John Stewart waved at the driver when he blasted the horn. I got up from the table, still deep in thought, and began putting away breakfast dishes.

“I'd like to talk to the old man,” Amber said. “Maybe I'll see something in that crystal ball of his.”

“There's something else about the dream I didn't tell you,” I said.

“What?”

“Part of what happened in the dream is from my past—something that happened in Vietnam.”

“Tell me.”

“I can't.”

“Is it that bad?”

When I nodded, Amber stepped behind me, extended her hand beneath my arm, and touched my cheek. My bruised face drew her attention from my dream. The swelling had diminished but a thin crescent of blackness still rimmed the base of my right eye.

“I think we should have another talk with the Sheriff. I want to hear what he has to say about the attack.”

“He didn't help much the first time we talked.”

“Then we should see him again. Maybe he'll feel more comfortable talking with a fellow law man.”

“Yeah and he may be working for the other side. He is the only person that could have tipped off my attackers. No one else except Mary Ann and her grandfather even know who I am.”

Amber pondered this thought a moment. “I have new information since we talked Sunday. A Senate subcommittee is investigating BST but it has nothing to do with your brother. A favoritism scheme that goes back a decade or more implicates seven senators. It doesn't leave much motive for Townsend to have harmed Bill.”

“What about Bear?”

“I want to talk to him,” she said. “Maybe he has his own agenda.”

She didn't sound convinced. Already my time in Turkey Gap seemed somehow ill conceived. Nothing I had learned disputed the facts as reported by Sheriff Bonner, on Bill's disappearance. They only raised more questions, each one more complex than the last. Every lead so far had dead-ended.

“Too bad there's nothing in here,” she said, fingering Bill's journal. “Especially after what you and Mary Ann went through to find it.”

“I've read every word at least twice.”

Amber tossed the journal on the concrete picnic table and started for the Jeep.

“Let's ride over to Dill City,” she said. “I think it's time we visited Sheriff Bonner and have another look around.”