Page 40 of The Witching Hours

He just nodded.

We had a couple of old Coleman lanterns we used for campouts. I guessed they were coming along in case somebody wanted to see where it happened. Coleman lanterns put out a whole lot more light than flashlights.

Before he opened the screen door, he gave me a look that was hard to interpret. Something between disappointment and weariness. I liked making him laugh. I liked making him proud. Disappointment was something that didn’t feel good and I liked to avoid it when I could.

I got in the back seat and hugged myself all the way to R.W.’s. The only time I’d ever been to R.W.’s was that day when I went to ask about his birthday. I’d had to ask Billy Ben how to get there. R.W. always came over to my house when he wanted to play. I didn’t have to tell Nan and Daddy the way though. They already knew it.

We left our neighborhood and went across the old state highway that nobody used anymore to another neighborhood that wasn’t as nice as ours. You knew it wasn’t as nice because they didn’t take care of grass and plants and stuff. There was more room between houses and none of them looked anything alike. We stopped on the gravel road in front of their house.

Nan got me by the hand, and we followed Daddy up to the front door.

He knocked.

In a minute, one of R.W.’s sisters opened up. She was the same one who’d come to the door that day I’d been there. I figured it must be her job or something.

“Evening, young lady,” my daddy said in his serious voice. “I’m here to talk to your mother.”

R.W.’s sister didn’t say a word and she didn’t invite us in. She just left the wood door standing open so that we could see and hear through the screen.

In a minute, a woman came and held the screen door open.

R.W.’s family, at least the ones represented, looked just like him. Lots of red hair and freckles. I knew R.W. didn’t have adaddy, but I didn’t know what happened to him. I just knew that he had two big sisters, a mama, and a grandmama.

They invited us to sit down at a big old round dining table in the kitchen. There was a yellow lightbulb hanging down from a cord that gave off kind of an ugly light and not a lot of it. The woman I figured was R.W.’s mama asked if we wanted coffee.

“No,” my daddy said. “Got some bad news to share. Will you sit with us?”

R.W.’s mama pushed her hair back from her face with her wrist. She had a look that said bad news was the only kind that came to visit. She told R.W.’s sisters to go to their rooms and occupy themselves. Then she sat.

There was an older woman I imagined must be R.W.’s grandmama sitting in a rocking chair in the living room. We could see her from where we were and we could hear the rocker rolling back and forth on the wood floor. She was close enough to hear what was being said in the kitchen. I guess she liked it just fine where she was and didn’t want to come any closer.

“R.W.’s not home, is he?” Daddy asked.

R.W.’s mama looked a little bit worried. “No. What’s this about?”

“We brought Brenda Lee with us to tell you what she knows.”

Me? They wanted me to tell R.W.’s mama what happened?

My head jerked to my daddy all of its own accord. I shouldn’t be the one to say it out loud. I was just a little girl. Then I reminded myself that I was the little girl who set the wheels in motion. That was my first big lesson in accountability.

“I, uh, share a desk with R.W. at school. He said something about wanting a birthday party. So, a couple of weeks ago I came over to find out if he wanted me to get some cupcakesand do a party and stuff. I knew today was his birthday. I told him I’d bring some cupcakes. He said he likes all kinds. I said we’d get some friends and go to this place where we meet sometimes in the woods after trick or treating.” I could feel Nan’s eyes accusing me of lying about the cupcakes. So, I kept looking at the table in front of me. “I was trying to do a nice thing,” I said lamely.

“Where’s my boy?” His mama demanded in a real hard voice. She was already tired of the story.

“Just listen,” Nan told her. To me, she said, “Go a little faster.”

“We rode our bikes to Crawdad Creek,” I said.

Nan put in. “She’s talking about the old Mac Namee place.”

“Everybody left except for five of us counting R.W. Ronny wanted us to do this thing called light as a feather, stiff as a board on R.W. We did and it worked. He started floating in the air. He floated right up through the ceiling and disappeared.”

I left out the part about the screaming and crying. I mean, I was young, but I was smart enough to know there was no point in humiliating a disappeared kid or making his mama feel worse than she needed to on account of his being gone and all.

She squinted at me. “Disappeared, did he?” She sounded like she didn’t believe a bit of it.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said quietly.