The Third Hill North of Town Read online

  She left her keys in the ignition, he remembered. What if he decides to just take off without me, too?

  Julianna’s voice lilted down the hall after him, as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Where do we go from here, boys?” she sang. “Where do we go from here?”

  Bebe Stockton opened her eyes and stared blankly at the ceiling of her bedroom. Her head felt as if somebody had filled it with wet clay, and for a moment she couldn’t even recall where she was. The glass swan in her hands was slick with her perspiration, and her heart seemed to be beating at only half its normal speed.

  Oh, my, she thought, remembering at last. The ucky juice.

  Her arms and legs were numb, her mouth was dry, and she felt stupid and slow. She turned her head to view the clock on the bedside table. She was astonished to find she’d been asleep for nearly five hours; it was now 5:07 p.m. She needed to use the restroom, but she didn’t want to get up. She would have to make the long journey down to the bathroom on the main floor; the upstairs toilet wasn’t flushing properly. She stayed still as long as possible, fondling the smooth blue head of her swan until the pressure in her bladder became impossible to disregard.

  At 5:13 she rolled onto her side with a groan, and only then did she notice there was a woman singing downstairs.

  At first this didn’t alarm Bebe. She was so foggy, and the woman’s voice was pleasant and soothing. She recognized the song immediately, of course; her uncle—a World War I soldier who had lost a leg during the second battle of the Marne—had taught it to her in 1918, right after being discharged from the army. Bebe felt as if she were hearing it in a dream, except the dream-woman on the first floor didn’t seem to know many of the words.

  “Dahdahdah to Kaiser Bill and make him dahdahdah . . .”

  “Slip a pill to Kaiser Bill and make him shed a tear,” Bebe corrected, sotto voce, as she tried to sit up.

  She couldn’t imagine who might be in her house. She and Chuck no longer had relatives who lived in town, and most of her female neighbors were younger women who wouldn’t know that song. But surely it was somebody who belonged there; nobody would be so brazen as to just come into a strange house and start singing a cheerful ditty if she were up to no good.

  “And when we see the enemy, we’ll shoot him in the rear . . .”

  The voice wafted up the stairs and floated into Bebe’s bedroom like pipe smoke. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, smiling, and decided the singer must be her cousin Ruth, here on a surprise visit from Minnesota. It would be just like dear old Ruth to show up out of the blue! It sounded as if she was in the kitchen, where she was no doubt making herself a pot of coffee and helping herself to the corn muffins Bebe had made earlier that day. Bebe didn’t mind a bit, of course; Ruth hadn’t visited in years, and Bebe couldn’t wait to see her again.

  She rose unsteadily to her feet—impaired coordination, she knew, was a side effect of too much ucky juice—and as she set her swan back on the dresser a twinge in her groin reminded her she’d have to make a detour to the downstairs restroom prior to greeting Ruth. Ruth was a champion hugger, and Bebe was afraid her bladder might pop like a balloon if Ruth were to get hold of her before she had the chance to urinate. Giggling at this indelicate image, Bebe lurched toward the bedroom doorway, humming along with the woman in the kitchen.

  “Oh, joy! Oh, boy! Where do we go from here?”

  Jon Tate kicked the huge, unyielding door on the right side of the barn and cursed at the padlock that was preventing him from seeing into that part of the building. The left side of the divided barn was wide open, but even though it was crowded with farm equipment and junk—a green and yellow John Deere tractor, a riding lawn mower, the remnants of an old chicken coop, empty plastic containers, cans of nails and screws—there was no gasoline in sight. He kicked the door again, and bit back a scream of impotent rage.

  Jon had already given up on Julianna, and was questioning his own sanity for even considering waiting around for Elijah. He didn’t want to ditch the kid, but the truth was that it seemed to be Elijah the cops were after, and if Julianna truly had killed that trooper, it was likely no one else knew Jon had been in the Edsel at the time. Things had happened so fast, after all, and Jon was sure the cop hadn’t had time to get a good look at him, let alone call in a description on the radio.

  All of which meant, of course, the dumbest thing in the world for Jon to do would be to keep associating with the younger boy. If the cops found them together, Jon would be in just as much trouble as Elijah.

  The plastic bag with his belongings was dangling from his wrist, swinging in the breeze like a pendulum. It bumped against his leg and he stared down at it blindly. A corner of one of the books he’d brought along was digging into his calf muscle, and a wave of self-pity threatened to overwhelm him. The book reminded him of his home, and tears sprang to his eyes. Right at that moment he would have given anything, anything at all, just to sit in his armchair again, reading to his heart’s content. He thought of his parents and brothers, and his apartment, and his refrigerator full of beer, and his job at Toby’s, and his friends, and his bed. His life in Tipton had been so simple, and he had loved it.

  “Well, you can just forget about it now, jackass,” he said aloud, furious at his own stupidity. “It’s all gone.”

  Breathing hard, he bent to inspect the lock. It looked brand new, as did the metal plates it was attached to, and the door itself was solid oak. Nonetheless, he was sure he could get it open in about two seconds with a hammer or a pry bar, but when he’d searched the premises a minute ago nothing remotely like that had turned up. All the tools were probably behind the locked door, he assumed—no doubt right next to a stupid fucking gas can.

  The sun on his back was hot, but his clothes were still sopping from rain and sweat. It suddenly occurred to him that besides the books and money, the plastic bag also held dry underwear and socks. There was no time to change, of course, but after another fruitless struggle with the lock, he decided he might as well get more comfortable while he was figuring out what to do.

  He darted into the shadows by the tractor, out of sight of the farmhouse, and stripped naked, tossing aside his wet underclothes and wringing out his T-shirt and shorts as quickly as he could. The water he squeezed through his fingers was enough to create a small river in the dirt at his feet. As he dressed again, he wished once more he’d thought to bring a complete set of clothes with him that morning when he’d fled his apartment. The fresh underwear and socks were a distinct improvement from the old set, however, and as he returned to the sunlight and pulled his damp shirt back over his head, his mood had lifted slightly.

  It lifted even more an instant later. A few feet to the side of the barn entrance was a well, and next to the pump was a rock the size of a coconut.

  “That should do the trick,” he said aloud. “Let’s see what’s hiding behind that big goddamn door.”

  Julianna opened a catchall drawer by the stove and spotted a box of wooden matches. Without seeming to notice what her hands were doing, she opened it and fished out a single matchstick.

  “He saw a dead man next to him,” she sang, “and whispered dahdahda . . .”

  She paused abruptly and cocked her head, listening. She could have sworn she heard another woman’s voice, singing along with her from another part of the house, but now there was only silence.

  A movement out the window caught her eye, and she looked across the yard, just in time to see Steve step from the barn into the sunshine. He’d taken off his shirt, but was now tugging it back on as he walked, and Julianna blushed to see him like that. He was a lovely young man, with a slender waist and broad shoulders, and Julianna wondered yet again what he was running from. She caught herself gawking at him until he was fully clothed again, and shook her head in embarrassment, grateful he hadn’t been looking toward the farmhouse at that moment.

  “Oh, I’d have just DIED if he’d seen me watching him!” she mutter
ed, blushing deep red. “He’d have thought I was nothing but a silly little girl!”

  The bloody rag around his left thigh reminded her what she was supposed to be doing. She tucked the wooden match behind an ear for safekeeping, then resumed her search for alcohol and bandages. She wondered what was taking her friend Ben so long and almost called out his name before deciding to give him another minute to get back from the outhouse.

  “I don’t know where that boy’s head is these days,” she complained, sighing.

  Elijah panted with relief as he urinated in Bebe Stockton’s downstairs toilet. The bathroom had been the fourth door he’d tried in the hallway; the first two were closets and the third opened on a staircase that led down to the cellar.

  “Oh, thankGodthankGodthankGod,” he murmured to himself, feeling lucky that he hadn’t actually exploded like he thought he might.

  The bathroom was spotless and welcoming, with Winnie-the-Pooh wallpaper and a claw-foot tub. A window next to the tub was open, and a hot breeze blew through the curtains, drying the sweat on his back as he studied an elegant, matching pair of red glass swans perched on top of the toilet tank. The door behind him was shut, but unlocked; humidity had swollen the wooden jamb and made the door impossible to latch.

  A soap dish on the sink caught his eye. It was in the shape of a scallop shell, and his throat closed the instant he recognized it. His mother, Mary, had one just like it in the bathroom of their house, and all at once he was so homesick he couldn’t stand it. Tears blurred his vision as he realized what his absence must be doing to his parents; they were no doubt worried sick. He desperately wanted to call and tell them what was going on, yet he knew he didn’t dare. He was sure the instant they heard his voice they’d order him to go to the police and give himself up, and he knew there was no way he could do that.

  Elijah knew what happened to black kids who got mixed up in stuff like this. Almost every night on the news he saw boys and girls his age and younger getting clubbed down on the street just for taking part in peaceful demonstrations; what were the cops likely to do to a black teenager they thought had killed one of their own?

  He brushed angrily at his eyes with the back of a wrist. I’ll call them when I’m far away from here, and out of danger, he told himself. I’ll call when I can talk to them without bawling like a goddamn baby.

  He forced his mind back to the present. Julianna was still singing in the kitchen, but Elijah could barely hear her over the noise of his pee hitting the toilet water. For a moment it sounded as if two women were singing in the house, but a second later he decided he’d only imagined this.

  There was a medicine cabinet over the sink and a small closet by a clothes hamper in the corner. He eyed both of these with anticipation. Either location was a likely spot for antiseptic and bandages, and once he found the medical supplies all he had to do was get Julianna out of the house before Steve decided to leave them both behind. He was sure the older boy had already located gasoline, and was at that very moment back at the Edsel, attempting to get it restarted. If he’d just wait a little longer, though, all three of them could still get away from the dairy farm and back on the highway together, safe and sound.

  Elijah finished his business at last with a satisfied grunt, but just as he flushed the toilet and began zipping up his pants, the door behind him flew open and crashed into the wall.

  Bebe had nearly fallen three times on the staircase before she reached the bottom. She was most definitely feeling the aftereffects of her ucky juice binge, but during her descent she had kept a death grip on the handrail and somehow managed to stay on her feet.

  Now safely off the steps, she did her best to tiptoe down the hall toward the bathroom, wanting to use the facilities before sneaking up on her cousin in the kitchen.

  Poor old Ruth will jump through the ceiling when I walk in on her! Bebe thought, grinning. I just have to make sure she doesn’t hear me!

  She made it to the bathroom door without being detected, and put her hand on the knob. She gave a push, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  Oh, gosh darn this doggone humidity! She bit her lip and pushed harder, but the bottom of the door held tightly to the jamb, as if nailed to it. Bebe put a toe on the corner that was causing the problem, intending to just give it a quiet shove with her foot. Unfortunately, this proved to be too much of a challenge for her drug-weakened equilibrium. She slipped in the hallway and fell forward, and the entire weight of her stocky little body slammed into the door, popping it open and wrenching the knob from her hands.

  Jon raised the stone over his head and brought it down on the padlock with all the force he could muster.

  BANG!

  The blow gouged into the red paint of the barn door, but the lock held firm.

  “Oh, come on, you son of a bitch,” Jon breathed in exasperation. He raised the rock again and aimed with more care.

  BANG!

  This time the lock broke apart with gratifying ease, but any elation Jon might have felt was obliterated two seconds later by the screams of a woman inside the farmhouse. Even from across the yard her shrieks hurt his ears; they were shrill and incredibly loud, like the feedback of a microphone pumped through an amplifier.

  “Jesus Christ!” he gasped, nearly dropping the rock on his foot.

  Jon knew instinctively that such a sound was not coming from Julianna, which meant that the owner of the house was home after all. Julianna may have been crazy, but after witnessing the unflinching way she had dealt with the trigger-happy trooper, he believed her incapable of the outright hysteria he could hear in the screamer’s voice. He snatched up the plastic bag from the ground and clutched it to his chest, wondering if the woman had seen him break the padlock, and if that was the reason she sounded so upset. It didn’t seem likely, but she hadn’t started screaming until he broke the lock so he supposed it was a strong possibility. Elijah and Julianna might have done something to set her off, too, he supposed, but either way she was seriously out of control.

  Which meant bad news for all of them, no matter who was at fault.

  He glanced over at the barn door with the ruined padlock still hanging from the latch, but his quest for gas now seemed pointless. He stared at the house and then over at the woods, and he began to swear in a steady stream as the woman’s unnerving screams blotted out every other noise on the hilltop.

  “Fuck it,” he said, making up his mind at last. He bolted for the woods, jackrabbit quick, with panic nipping at his heels like a ravenous basset hound.

  WAP!

  The bathroom door collided with the wall and Bebe Stockton tumbled into the room and sprawled on her knees on the floor, catching a startled Elijah with his hands still on the open zipper of his jeans as he spun to face her. The woman and the boy gaped at each other with equal horror, struggling to digest the unpleasant fact of each other’s presence in this cozy farmhouse bathroom.

  BANG!

  The sound of Jon’s first attempt to break the lock on the barn door across the yard made both of them jump, as if someone had just detonated an M-80 right outside the window.

  Bebe thought she had fallen into the clutches of Lucifer Himself, and that her time on the earth was limited to the next few seconds if she couldn’t get away from him. She couldn’t see the fright and bewilderment on Elijah’s handsome young face; what she saw instead was a tall, half-naked black man, standing over her and fingering his zipper. She was convinced he was a homicidal rapist, intent on having his way with her and then slitting her throat.

  BANG!

  The second outdoor explosion caused both of them to jump again. Bebe was at her wit’s end, though, so this time she misread the boy’s innocent spasm as a prelude to an attack on her person. She could take no more, and her mouth opened to its widest dimensions, like a small, toothy portal into hell.

  “OHSWEETJESUSOHLORDOHJESUSJESUS,” she screamed. “PLEASE DON’T HURT ME OHDEARGODOHJESUSOH MYSWEETLORDJESUS, NONOOHNO, PLEASEPLEASE-PLEASEPLEASE I WON’T TE
LL ANYONE, JUST DON’T HURT ME, OHGODOHGODOHGOD . . .”

  Buffeted backward by this volcanic aural assault, Elijah lost his footing and fell on top of the toilet, crying out in pain as he bruised a rib on the corner of the tank. The grandmotherly looking woman on the floor in front of him was plump but not large; he simply could not fathom how someone so short was able to make such a cataclysmic sound.

  “Please, lady,” he whispered. He was too shocked and scared to speak any louder, so he put up his hands in a placating manner. “Please, please calm down!”

  Bebe couldn’t hear him over her own screeching, and his soothing gestures—which she interpreted as an attempt to deceive her—only made her more desperate to escape than ever. Still wailing at the top of her lungs, she struggled to her feet and tripped into the hall, sure at any second she would feel the grip of the black man’s strange, white-palmed hands on her neck. She had forgotten all about the other woman in the kitchen; her only thought was to get away from the madman in her house.

  Julianna heard the bathroom door crash into the wall, but she thought it was just poor old Ben Taylor being clumsy and knocking something over in the hallway as he returned from his visit to the outhouse. She wished he’d be more careful; Polly Miller would be upset if he made a mess in her nice clean home.

  A loud bang out the window drew her attention to Jon and the barn once again, and she almost cried out as she realized what he was attempting to do.