Boys of Blur (9 page)

Charlie jerked back his hand, slipped, and sat down. But the big cat’s eyes had already lost their focus. The animal’s head hit the ground while its ribs heaved in quick, shallow bursts.

“Charlie!” Cotton hissed. “Get out of there! C’mon!”

Charlie shifted onto his knees. He could feel the heat coming off the cat’s body, and smell the sour odor of blood
mixed with the scent of decaying meat on the animal’s breath.

Charlie gently placed his hand on the cat’s belly and felt the sputtering breaths. He ran his hand up the cat’s thick ribs and found the broken beat of the animal’s heart. And that’s where his hand was when the drumming of life finally stopped.

“It’s dead,” Charlie said. He glanced back at his cousin. Cotton was crouching on the far side of the canal with one hand over his mouth.

“What do we do now?” Cotton asked.

Together the boys managed to lift the panther off of the white chalk stone and shuffle across the mound and into the swamp. Cotton led the way, guiding the cat and Charlie over logs and around trees, toward the row of small collapsing shacks that he’d pointed out to Charlie at their first meeting.

Charlie had his arms hooked beneath the cat’s front legs, its large head lolling against his stomach, tracing swirls of red onto his shirt. When they reached the most intact of the shacks, Cotton turned his back to the cockeyed door, and the two pallbearers pushed inside.

In the light that filtered between the boards of the tiny half-collapsing space, Charlie could see rows and rows of buckets and jars and jagged halved soda cans lining the walls, all of them full of bones—full of the dead collected from the white stone and entombed by his cousin.

Together the boys lowered the panther to the ground.

“Biggest thing to ever die on the stone,” Cotton said. “Do you think it could be this cat’s blood on the church? I heard the cops say it wasn’t human blood. Or maybe the Stanks killed the other one, too.”

“Stanks?” Charlie asked. “I just saw one.”

“Me too,” Cotton said. “But there were footprints all around my bike when I went back. Three bare feet and one shoe. I’ve heard stories about Stanks in the deep swamps, Charlie, and there’s never just one. Crazy Carl who sleeps in the street says there’s a whole haunted tribe back in there. I always thought that was just campfire spook, but not anymore. Of course, the stories aren’t all true. Even Crazy Carl says the Stanks stay out of the cane. And that’s obviously wrong.”

“A haunted tribe?” Charlie shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

“Whatever they are,” Cotton said, “I don’t think they much care what you believe.”

Cotton raised his hands over the panther’s body like a minister, but he didn’t seem quite sure what to say. Charlie knew it involved dust and ashes, but he couldn’t remember the order.

“Into the valley of the shadow of death,” Cotton finally said, “rode the six hundred.”

“What?” Charlie asked.

“It’s from a poem,” said Cotton. “And six hundred
people live in Taper.” He shivered and stepped over the panther toward the door. “I need the light to show you this.”

Charlie followed Cotton out of the shack and over to a fallen tree covered with moss, where he tugged a packet of papers out of his waistband and began unfolding it.

“Map,” Cotton said. He dug a broken pencil out of his pocket and circled a spot for Charlie. “You are here,” he said.

Charlie stared at the paper. Black ink lines on white. The edges and creases of the paper were yellowed with age. The swamp was represented by zigzags. The cane wasn’t marked at all, but there were more than a few canals, all labeled. But the real point of the map was the mounds. They had been traced in slow curves through the swamp, ending in solid circles or squares, running straight through what could only be cane and even dead-ending against a curved line labeled
Lake O
. The church was on the map, right on a mound circle. The town of Taper was nowhere to be seen.

A row of holes dotted one unfolded seam.

“You tore this out of a book,” Charlie said.

Cotton shrugged. “No one had checked it out in thirty years.”

“Except you?”

“Including me. I just borrowed it some. Doesn’t matter. Point is all these mound lines were painted onto the
side of the church. Some others, too, that aren’t on here. But right where we’re standing—where that white death stone is—well, on the church wall it’s marked with a circle. It’s not on this map.”

“Okay …,” Charlie said.

Cotton looked at him. “And there were other circles just like them. More death stones, probably. I didn’t count them. But at least two way, way back in the swamp. And even one”—he tapped the emptiness on the map, labeled as the lake—“out here.”

“In the water?”

“Maybe water,” Cotton said. “Maybe not. This map is older than the dike. It’s not just water on the other side. Some of the wildest swamp is over there—places so thick only a snake could get through.”

Cotton tapped the map. “I’m telling you, coz, the death stones matter. Don’t know why, but they do. Stanks know they do or they wouldn’t have slapped them on the church in blood.”

“But why paint the map on a church?” Charlie asked.

“Thugs and punks always tag things,” Cotton said. “Maybe the Stanks were marking turf … or marking what they want to be their turf. Could be the mounds and everything used to be theirs and they want it back.”

“Stanks …,” Charlie said, testing the name.

“They are called Gren.”

Charlie and Cotton both jumped. Lio stood only fifteen
feet away from them. His helmet was on and his sword was in his belt. He scratched slowly at the tight, curly scruff on his neck. In the daylight, Charlie could see patches of white in his beard, clustered along his jaw.

“And what they want,” Lio said. “
Tout bagay
. Which is to say: everything. You. Me. The wind. But first, all that the mounds touch. The Gren are slaves to a Belly the mounds feed, and that Belly can never be filled. It sleeps. It wakes. It is devouring.”

“What do you mean?” Charlie asked. “What Belly?”

“Hold on,” Cotton said. “First tell us why you stole Coach. You’ve been pretty freaky yourself.”

“William Wisdom was my father, and he would have been defiled. I have honored him even as you have honored my fallen lion—removing him from a place that was wrong and giving him to peace. I thank you. His mate thanks you.”

“Panther, actually,” Cotton said. “And you’re welcome. But why should we trust a crazy grave robber in a helmet?”

“Why should I trust you?” Lio asked. “Boy liar and book thief.”

Cotton shrugged. “Do or don’t, I don’t care.”

“Nor I,” Lio said. He smiled.

“Fine,” Cotton said. “We’ll be leaving.”

“I trust you,” Charlie said. “Mack saw you once. You saved his brother from a snakebite.”

Lio took one step forward and stared at Charlie with wide, unblinking eyes. Charlie wanted to look away, but he knew he shouldn’t. Finally, the man spoke.

“And I give trust to you. You are my brother, born of trouble.”

Cotton shook his head. “Charlie—”

“What happened to the panther?” Charlie asked.

Lio sighed, then clenched his right fist and touched it to his chest. His face was solemn. “Gren happened. As Wisdom grew ill, Gren grew strong. When Wisdom died, Gren sought his body for the Mother’s evil. Under old moons, Gren fled from my cats like prey. Under this moon, he stood strong. My great one, my lion, is mouri—is dead.”

Charlie shifted his weight on the soft ground. The panther, the mounds, the foul shadow, the dead coach, the strange man in front of him, all of them were sliding around in his head like pieces in a puzzle that wouldn’t quite click together. There was a picture here, and he could almost see it. He wouldn’t stop looking until he did. Cotton was restless beside him, scanning the trees.

“Where’s the other panther?” Cotton asked.

Lio pointed up. Ten feet above them, the big, sleek cat was crouching on a branch—ears forward, eyes locked down on the boys, black-tipped tail swaying slowly beneath the branch.

Charlie didn’t move. He stared into the wide living
eyes, beautiful and certain like his mother’s. They had clearly already made sense of him, and he was no enemy.

“That shadow, the smell, the Gren, what is it really?” Charlie asked.

“He is the mouth, the jaw, the fangs—Gren is he who chews and swallows. He is made of man,” Lio said. “But when the mounds wake and the stars pull, he is much more than man. And much less.”

Thick air moved. The paper map lifted and slid along the log. Cotton jumped forward and grabbed it.

Lio’s nostrils widened and he pulled in the moving air. Then he hissed between his teeth.

“Desann.”

The panther dropped out of the tree, landed lightly on the log in front of Charlie, and then leapt toward Lio. Her tail brushed Charlie’s arm as she went.

“I am not strong here,” Lio said. “I will tell you more where the land is free.”

“Let me guess,” Cotton said. “Over the dike?”

Lio nodded and moved quickly toward the shack that had become a bone house. At the doorway he dropped to his knees, and his panther sat beside him. While the boys watched, Lio began humming slowly, and then he raised his head and sang. The words were unknown to Charlie’s mind, but not to his bones. A shiver swept across his skin and sadness tightened his throat. Lio’s voice matched the trees and the breeze, it matched the cat beside him and
the old sword in his belt, his song was the sunlight sliding between high branches and the shadow he cast when it found him.

When he stopped, the panther beside him raised her head and yowled, long and slow. Then Lio touched his head, both shoulders, and his chest. He stood.

“We go,” he said. “And quickly. The Gren is not far.”

Lio didn’t run, but his strides were long and quick. Behind him, Charlie and Cotton walked, then jogged, then walked again, struggling to match his pace toward the lake and its tall dike.

In front of them, the panther loped along easily, her shoulders swaying, her tail swinging. At least until Lio hissed a command and she darted ahead, or doubled back and ran behind, or slipped into the cane on one side or the other.

“Could have cut closer to the church,” Cotton said. “Faster.”

Lio ignored him. The panther shot ahead and then paused, waiting.

“Where did you get the sword and helmet?” Charlie asked.

“I am Lio. I did not
get
them. They were given.”

“Okay,” Charlie said. “So who gave them to you?”

No answer.

“What did you mean the Gren is made of man?” Charlie asked.

“Flesh of man,” Lio said. “Soul of all that muck rots and mounds gather.”

“Smell of skunk,” Cotton said.

“Can you kill him?” Charlie asked.

“I have killed the Gren many times,” said Lio. “When he is weak and young. But when he is ancient and strong, he fells me.”

“I don’t know what kind of roots you’ve been chewin’,” Cotton said, “but you should stop. You’re not even making half sense.”

“I am only the Lio of now. Not the Lio of then. There have been many.”

Cotton laughed. “And lots of Stanks, too?”

Lio looked back over his shoulder and stopped. “The Gren is many, but all of one soul and one Mother. Many devils, but one hunger, one hate. One Gren.”

The air had continued to cool and the breeze had become a wind. As the cane walls swayed and rattled around them, Lio dropped into a crouch and scooped up two handfuls of soft, silty black muck.

“All places have
lespir
.” He pressed the two handfuls together and let the dark earth trickle slowly between his fingers. “
Soul. Spirit
. The words are well but not perfect
truth. You see the darkness of this earth? It is rich, men say.”

He focused on Charlie, deep eyes almost hidden in the shadow beneath his helmet. “Rich with death. With life made silent, pooled, sleeping, and waiting to rush into any vessel—green cane, the iron tree, two boys. A dead man made
diab
—a devil. So many lives, where the many waters brought them, laid them down, and made them black earth. Every creature now breathing beneath the sun could fly from flesh and sleep in these earth beds, and the muck would grow no darker.”

He brushed off his hands and stood. “Trees feed on slaves and kings. Cane rises up from forests and flocks and peoples. Where so much death is, life waits, and there is much power.”

Lio inhaled slowly and leaned his head back, eyes closed, feeling the wind. The panther had disappeared while he was talking.

Charlie shivered. He wanted to laugh and pretend like none of this could be real. Dead men? Life from the muck? But he had smelled that awful taint, and the sick memory of it was even in his bones. He looked at his cousin. Cotton’s eyebrows were as high as he could make them, and he’d sucked his chin in toward his neck.

“You’re fighting Stanks over the muck?” Cotton asked. His lip twitched up at the corner.

Lio raised his hands above his head, growing taller as
he did. “Long ago, when men believed such things, when they searched for powers to awaken and serve, they found this place. Beneath the stars, they built their mounds. Priests woke and named the rich death in the muck. They died and walked again. They laid down love and took up hate. They became Gren.”