If what lay in front of the house was a mess, what lay behind it was nightmarish. The two "sheds" were corrugated metal buildings the size of tobacco warehouses. To get to them, you had to follow a rutted trail that meandered between mountains of castaway things: record players, broken statuary, garden hose, chairs, lawn mowers, doors, fireplace mantels, pots and pans, old bricks, roof shingles, irons, radiators, and washbasins to name a few. "Have mercy," Dad said, mostly to himself, as we walked through the valley between the looming hills. The rain spilled and spattered over all these items, in some places running down from the metallic mountaintops in gurgling little streams. And then we came to a big twisted and tangled heap of things that made me stop in my tracks because I knew I had found a truly mystical place.

Before me were hundreds of bicycle frames, locked together with vines of rust, their tires gone, their backs broken.

They say that somewhere in Africa the elephants have a secret grave where they go to lie down, unburden their wrinkled gray bodies, and soar away, light spirits at the end. I believed at that moment in time that I had found the grave of the bicycles, where the carca.s.ses flake away year after year under rain and baking sun, long after the spirits of their wandering lives have gone. In some places on that huge pile the bicycles had melted away until they resembled nothing more than red and copper leaves waiting to be burned on an autumn afternoon. In some places shattered headlights poked up, sightless but defiant, in a dead way. Warped handlebars still held rubber grips, and from some of the grips dangled strips of colored vinyl like faded flames. I had a vision of all these bikes, vibrant in their new paint, with new tires and new pedals and chains that snuggled up to their sprockets in beds of clean new grease. It made me sad, in a way I couldn't understand, because I saw how there is an end to all things, no matter how much we want to hold on to them.

"Howdy, there!" somebody said. "Thought I heard the alarms go off."

My dad and I looked at a man who pushed a large handcart before him through the muck. He wore overalls and muddy boots, and he had a big belly and a liver-spotted head with a tuft of white at its peak. Mr. Sculley had a wrinkled face and a bulbous nose with small broken veins showing purple at its tip, and he wore round-lensed gla.s.ses over gray eyes. He was grinning a square grin, his teeth dark brown, and on his grizzled chin was a mole that had sprouted three white hairs. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm Tom Mackenson," my dad said, and offered his hand. "Jay's son."

"Oh, yeah! Sorry I didn't recognize you right off!" Mr. Sculley wore dirty canvas gloves, and he took one of them off to shake my father's hand. "This Jay's grandson?"

"Yep. Cory's his name."

"Seen you around, I believe," Mr. Sculley said to me. "I remember when your daddy was your age. Me and your grandpa go back a piece."

"Mr. Sculley, I believe you picked up a bike this afternoon," Dad told him. "In front of a house on Deerman Street?"

"Sure did. Wasn't much to it, though. All busted up."

"Well, it was Cory's bike. I think I can get it fixed, if we can have it back."

"Oops," Mr. Sculley said. His square grin faltered. "Tom, I don't think I can do that."

"Why not? It is here, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's here. Was here, I mean." Mr. Sculley motioned toward one of the sheds. "I took it in there just a few minutes ago."

"So we can get it and take it back, can't we?"

Mr. Sculley sucked on his lower lip, looked at me, and then back to Dad. "I don't believe so, Tom." He pushed the handcart aside, next to the mound of dead bikes, and he said, "Come on and have a look." We followed him. He walked with a limp, as if his hip worked on a hinge instead of a ball-and-socket.

"See, here's the story," he said. "Been meanin' to get rid of those old bikes for over a year. Tryin' to clean the place up, ya see. Got to make room for more stuff comin' in. So I said to Belle-that's my wife-I said, 'Belle, when I pick up one more bike I'm gonna do it. Just one more.'" He led us into an open doorway, into the building's cool interior. Light bulbs hanging on cords threw shadows between more mounds of junk. Here and there larger things rose up from the gloom like Martian machines and presented a glimpse of mysterious curves and edges. Something squeaked and skittered; whether mice or bats, I don't know. The place sure looked like a cavern, where Injun Joe would feel right at home.

"Watch your step here," Mr. Sculley cautioned us as we went through another doorway. Then he stopped beside a big rectangular machine with gears and levers on it and he said, "This here crusher just ate your bike about fifteen minutes ago. It was the first one in." He prodded a barrel full of twisted and crumpled metal pieces. Other barrels were waiting to be filled. "See, I can sell this as sc.r.a.p metal. I was waitin' for one more bike to start breakin' 'em up, and yours was the one." He looked at me, the overhead bulb shining on his rain-wet dome, and his eyes were not unkind. "Sorry, Cory. If I'd known anybody was gonna come claim it, I'd have held on to it, but it was dead."

"Dead?" my father asked.

"Sure. Everythin' dies. It wears out and can't be fixed for love nor money. That's how the bike was. That's how they all are by the time somebody brings 'em here, or somebody calls me to come pick 'em up. You know your bike was dead long before I put it in that crusher, don't you, Cory?"

"Yes sir," I said. "I do."

"It didn't suffer none," Mr. Sculley told me, and I nodded.

It seemed to me that Mr. Sculley understood the very nucleus of existence, that he had kept his young eyes and young heart even though his body had grown old. He saw straight through to the cosmic order of things, and he knew that life is not held only in flesh and bone, but also in those objects-a good, faithful pair of shoes; a reliable car; a pen that always works; a bike that has taken you many a mile-into which we put our trust and which give us back the security and joy of memories.

Here the ancient hearts of stone may chortle and say, "That's ridiculous!" But let me ask a question of them: don't you ever wish-even for just a fleeting moment-that you could have your first bike again? You remember what it looked like. You remember. Did you name it Trigger, or b.u.t.termilk, or Flicka, or Lightning? Who took that bike away, and where did it go? Don't you ever, ever wonder?

"Like to show you somethin', Cory," Mr. Sculley said, and he touched my shoulder. "This way."

My dad and I both followed him, away from the bike-crushing machine into another chamber. A window with dirty gla.s.s let in a little greenish light to add to the overhead bulb's glare. In this room was Mr. Sculley's desk and a filing cabinet. He opened a closet and reached up onto a high shelf. "I don't show this to just anybody," he told us, "but I figure you fellas might like to see it." He rummaged around, moving boxes, and then he said, "Found it," and his hand emerged from dark into light again.

He was holding a chunk of wood, its bark bleached and dried mollusks still gripping its surface. What looked like a slim ivory dagger, about five inches long, had been driven into the wood. Mr. Sculley held it up to the light, his eyes sparkling behind his gla.s.ses. "See it? What do you make of it?"

"No idea," Dad said. I shook my head, too.

"Look close." He held the wood chunk with its embedded ivory dagger in front of my face. I could see pits and scars on the ivory's surface, and its edges were serrated like a fishing knife.

"It's a tooth," Mr. Sculley said. "Or a fang, most likely."

"A fang?" Dad frowned, his gaze jumping back and forth between Mr. Sculley and the wood chunk. "Must've been a mighty big snake!"

"No snake, Tom. I cut this piece out of a log I found washed up along the river when I was huntin' bottles three summers ago. See the sh.e.l.ls? It must be from an old tree, probably laid on the bottom for quite a while. I figure that last flood we had pulled it up from the mud." He gingerly ran a gloved finger along the serrated edge. "I do believe I've got the only evidence there is."

"You don't mean..." Dad began, but I already knew.

"Yep. This here's a fang from the mouth of Old Moses." He held it in front of me once more, but I drew back.

"Maybe his eyesight ain't so good anymore," Mr. Sculley mused. "Maybe he went after that log thinkin' it was a big turtle. Maybe he was just mean that day, and he snapped at everythin' his snout b.u.mped up against." His finger tapped the fang's broken rim. "Hate to think what this thing could do to a human bein'. Wouldn't be pretty, would it?"

"Can I see that?" Dad asked, and Mr. Sculley let him hold it. Mr. Sculley went to the window and peered out as Dad examined what he held, and after another moment Dad said, "I swear, I believe you're right! It is a tooth!"

"Said it was," Mr. Sculley reminded him. "I don't lie."

"You need to show this to somebody! Sheriff Amory or Mayor Swope! Heck, the governor needs to see it!"

"Swope's already seen it," Mr. Sculley said. "He's the one advised me to put it in my closet and keep the door shut."

"Why? Somethin' like this is front-page news!"

"Not accordin' to Mayor Swope." He turned away from the window, and I saw that his eyes had darkened. "At first Swope thought it was a fake. He had Doc Parrish look at it, and Doc Parrish called Doc Lezander. Both of them agreed it's a fang from some kind of reptile. Then we all had a sit-down talk in the mayor's office, with the doors closed. Swope said he'd decided to put a lid on the whole thing. Said it might be a fang or it might be a fraud, but it wasn't worth gettin' folks upset over." He took the pierced wood chunk back from my father's hands. "I said, 'Luther Swope, don't you think people would want to see real evidence that there's a monster in the Tec.u.mseh River?' And he looked at me with that d.a.m.n pipe in his mouth and he says, 'People already know it. Evidence would just scare 'em. Anyway,' Swope says, 'if there's a monster in the river, it's our monster, and we don't want to share it with n.o.body.' And that's how it ended up." Mr. Sculley offered it to me. "Want to touch it, Cory? Just so you can say you did?"

I did, with a tentative index finger. The fang was cool, as I imagined the muddy bottom of the river must be.

Mr. Sculley put the piece of wood and the fang back up on the closet shelf, and he closed the door. The rain was coming down hard again outside, banging on the metal roof. "All this water pourin' down," Mr. Sculley said, "must make Old Moses mighty happy."

"I still think you ought to show somebody else," Dad told him. "Like somebody from the newspaper in Birmingham."

"I would, Tom, but maybe Swope's got a point. Maybe Old Moses is our monster. Maybe if we let everybody else know about him, they'd come try to take him away from us. Catch him up in a net, put him in a big gla.s.s tank somewhere like an overgrown mudcat." Mr. Sculley frowned and shook his head. "Nah, I wouldn't want that to happen. Neither would the Lady, I reckon. She's been feedin' him on Good Friday for as long as I can remember. This was the first year he didn't like his food."

"Didn't like his food?" Dad asked. "Meanin' what?"

"Didn't you see the parade this year?" Mr. Sculley waited for Dad to say no, and then he went on. "This was the first year Old Moses didn't give the bridge a smack with his tail, same to say Thanks for the grub.' It's a quick thing, it pa.s.ses fast, but you get to know the sound of it when you've heard it so many years. This year it didn't happen."

I recalled how troubled the Lady looked when she left the gargoyle bridge that day, and how the whole procession had been so somber on the march back to Bruton. That must have been because the Lady hadn't heard Old Moses smack the bridge with his tail. But what did such a lack of table manners mean?

"Hard to say what it means," Mr. Sculley said as if reading my mind. "The Lady didn't like it, that's for sure."

It was starting to get dark outside. Dad said we'd better be getting home, and he thanked Mr. Sculley for taking the time to show us where the bike had gone. "Wasn't your fault," Dad said as Mr. Sculley limped in front of us to show us the way out. "You were just doin' your job."

"Yep. Waitin' for one more bike, I was. Like I said, that bike couldn't have been fixed anyhow."

I could've told my dad that. In fact, I did tell him, but one sorry thing about being a kid is that grown-ups listen to you with half an ear.

"Heard about the car in the lake," Mr. Sculley said as we neared the doorway. His voice echoed in the cavernous room, and I sensed my father tightening up. "Bad way for a man to die, without a Christian burial," Mr. Sculley continued. "Sheriff Amory got any clues?"

"None that I know of." My father's voice was a little shaky. I was sure that he saw that sinking car and the body handcuffed to the wheel every time he lay down in bed and closed his eyes.

"Got my own ideas about who it was, and who killed him," Mr. Sculley offered. We reached the way out, but the rain was still falling hard onto the mountains of old dead things and the last of the sunlight had turned green. Mr. Sculley looked at my father and leaned against the door frame. "It was somebody who'd crossed the Blaylock clan. Must've been a fella who wasn't from around here, 'cause everybody else in their right mind knows Wade, Bodean, and Donny Blaylock are meaner'n h.o.r.n.y rattlers. They got stills hidden all up in the woods around here. And that daddy of theirs, Biggun, could teach the devil some tricks. Yessir, the Blaylocks are the cause of that fella bein' down at the bottom of the lake, and you can count on it."

"I figure the sheriff thought of that already."

"Probably did. Only trouble is, n.o.body knows where the Blaylocks hide out. They show up now and again, on some errand of meanness, but trackin' 'em to their snakehole is another thing entirely." Mr. Sculley looked out the door. "Rain's easin' up some. Reckon you don't mind gettin' wet."

We trudged through the mud toward my dad's truck. I looked again at the mound of bikes as we pa.s.sed, and I saw something I hadn't noticed before: honeysuckle vines were growing in the midst of the tangled metal, and the little sweet white cups were sprouting amid the rust.

My father's attention was snagged by something else that lay over beyond the bikes, something we had not seen on the way in. He stopped, staring at it, and I stopped, too, and Mr. Sculley, limping ahead, sensed our stopping and turned around.

"I wondered where they brought it," Dad said.

"Yeah, gonna haul it off one of these days. Gotta make room for more stuff, y'know."

You couldn't tell much about it, really. It was just a rusted ma.s.s of crumpled metal, but some of the metal still held the original black paint. The windshield was gone, the roof smashed flat. Part of the hood remained, though, and on it was a ripple of painted flames.

This one had suffered.

Dad turned away from it, and I followed him to the pickup. Real close, I might add.

"Come back anytime!" Mr. Sculley told us. The hound dogs bayed and Mrs. Sculley came out on the porch, this time without her rifle, and Dad and I drove home along the haunted road.

VI Old Moses Comes to Call

MOM HAD PICKED UP THE PHONE WHEN IT RANG, PAST TEN o'clock at night about a week after our visit to Mr. Sculley's place.

"Tom!" she said, and her voice carried a frantic edge. "J.T. says the dam's burst at Lake Holman! They're callin' everybody together at the courthouse!"

"Oh, Lord!" Dad sprang up from the sofa, where he'd been watching the news on television, and he slid his feet into his shoes. "It'll be a flood for sure! Cory!" he called. "Get your clothes on!"

I knew from his tone that I'd better move quick. I put aside the story I was trying to write about a black dragster with a ghost at the wheel and I fairly jumped into my jeans. When your parents get scared, your heart starts pounding ninety miles a minute. I had heard Dad use the word flood. The last one had been when I was five, and it hadn't done a whole lot of damage except stir up the swamp snakes. I knew, though, from my reading about Zephyr that in 1938 the river had flooded the streets to the depth of four feet, and in 1930 the spring flood had risen almost to the rooftops of some of the houses in Bruton. So my town had a history of being waterlogged, and with all the rain we and the rest of the South had been getting since the beginning of April, there was no telling what might happen this year.

The Tec.u.mseh River fed out of Lake Holman, which lay about forty miles north of us. So, being as it is that all rivers flow to the sea, we were in for it.

I made sure Rebel would be all right in his dog run behind the house, and then my mom, dad, and I jammed into the pickup truck and headed for the courthouse, an old gothic structure that stood at the terminus of Merchants Street. Most everybody's lights were on; the message network was in full operation. It was just drizzling right now, but the water was up to the pickup's wheel rims because of the overloaded drainpipes and some people's bas.e.m.e.nts had already flooded. My friend Johnny Wilson and his folks had had to go live with relatives in Union Town for that very reason.

Cars and pickup trucks were filling up the courthouse's parking lot. Off in the distance, lightning streaked across the heavens and the low clouds lit up. People were being herded into the courthouse's main meeting room, a large chamber with a mural painted on the ceiling that showed angels flying around carrying bales of cotton; it was a holdover from when cotton crop auctions used to be held here, twenty years ago, before the cotton gin and warehouse were moved to floodproof Union Town. We found seats on one of the splintery bleachers, which was fortunate because the way other folks were coming in, there soon wasn't going to be room enough to breathe. Somebody had the good sense to turn on the fans, but the hot air emanating from people's mouths seemed inexhaustible. Mrs. Kattie Yarbrough, one of the biggest chatterboxes in town, squeezed in next to Mom and started jabbering excitedly while her husband, who was also a milkman at Green Meadows, trapped my father. I saw Ben come in with Mr. and Mrs. Sears, but they sat down across the room from us. The Demon, whose hair looked as if it had just been combed with grease, entered trailing her monstrous mother and spindly pop. They found places near us, and I shuddered when the Demon caught my repulsed gaze and grinned at me. Reverend Lovoy came in with his family, Sheriff Amory and his wife and daughters entered, the Branlins came in, and so did Mr. Parlowe, Mr. Dollar, Davy Ray and his folks, Miss Blue Gla.s.s and Miss Green Gla.s.s, and plenty more people I didn't know so well. The place got jammed.

"Quiet, everybody! Quiet!" Mr. Wynn Gillie, the a.s.sistant mayor, had stepped up to the podium where the cotton auctioneer used to stand, and behind him at a table sat Mayor Luther Swope and Fire Chief Jack Marchette, who was also the head of Civil Defense. "Quiet!" Mr. Gillie hollered, the veins standing out on his stringy neck. The talking died down, and Mayor Swope stood up to speak. He was tall and slim, about fifty years old, and he had a long-jawed, somber face and gray hair combed back from a widow's peak. He was always puffing on a briar pipe, like a locomotive burning coal up a long, steep haul, and he wore perfectly creased trousers and shirts with his initials on the breast pocket. He had the air of a successful businessman, which he was: he owned both the Stagg Shop for Men and the Zephyr Ice House, which had been in his family for years. His wife, Lana Jean, was sitting with Dr. Curtis Parrish and the doctor's wife, Brightie.

"Guess everybody's heard the bad news by now," Mayor Swope began. He had a mayorly appearance, but he spoke as if his mouth was full of oatmeal mush. "We ain't got a whole lot of time, folks. Chief Marchette tells me the river's already at flood stage. When that water from Lake Holman gets here, we're gonna have us a real problem. Could be the worst flood we've ever had. Which means Bruton'll get swamped first, it bein' closest to the river. Vandy, where are you?" The mayor looked around, and Mr. Vandercamp Senior raised his rickety hand. "Mr. Vandercamp is openin' up the hardware store," Mayor Swope told us. "He's got shovels and sandbags we can use to start buildin' our own dam between Bruton and the river, maybe we can hold the worst of the flood back. Which means everybody's gonna have to work: men, women, and children, too. I've called Robbins Air Force Base, and they're sendin' some men to help us. Folks are comin' over from Union Town, too. So everybody who can work oughta get over to Bruton and be ready to move some dirt."

"Hold on just one d.a.m.n minute, Luther!"

The man who'd spoken stood up. You couldn't miss him. I think a book about a white whale was named after him. Mr. d.i.c.k Moultry had a florid, puffed face and wore his hair in a crew cut that resembled a brown pincushion. He had on a tent-sized T-shirt and blue jeans that might've fit my dad, Chief Marchette, and Mayor Swope all at the same time. He lifted a blubbery arm and aimed his finger at the mayor. "What you're tellin' us to do, it seems to me, is to forget about our own homes! Yessir! Forget about our own homes and go to work to save a bunch of n.i.g.g.e.rs!"

This comment was a crack in the common clay. Some hollered that Mr. Moultry was wrong, and some hollered he was right.

"d.i.c.k," Mayor Swope said as he pushed his pipe into his mouth, "you know that if the river's going to flood, it always starts in Bruton. That's the lowland. If we can hold it back there, we can-"

"So where are the Bruton people?" Mr. Moultry asked, and his big square head ratcheted to right and left. "I don't see no dark faces in here! Where are they? How come they ain't in here beggin' us for help?"

"Because they never ask for help." The mayor spouted a plume of blue smoke; the locomotive's engine was starting to stoke. "I guarantee you they're out on the riverbank right now, tryin' to build a dam, but they wouldn't ask for help if the water came up to their roofs. The Lady wouldn't stand for it. But they do need our help, d.i.c.k. Just like last time."

"If they had any sense, they'd move out of there!" Mr. Moultry insisted. "h.e.l.l, I'm sick and tired of that d.a.m.n Lady, too! Who does she think she is, a d.a.m.n queen?"

"Sit down, d.i.c.k," Chief Marchette told him. The fire chief was a big-boned man with a chiseled face and piercing blue eyes. "There's no time to argue this thing."

"The h.e.l.l you say!" Mr. Moultry had decided to be stubborn. His face was getting as red as a fireplug. "Let the Lady come over here to white man's land and ask us for help!" That brought a storm of a.s.senting and dissenting shouts. Mr. Moultry's wife, Feather, stood up beside him and hollered, "h.e.l.l, yes!" She had platinum-blond hair and was more anvil than feather. Mr. Moultry bellowed over the noise, "I ain't breakin' my a.s.s for no n.i.g.g.e.rs!"

"But, d.i.c.k," Mayor Swope said in a bewildered way, "they're our n.i.g.g.e.rs."

The shouting and hollering went on, some people saying it was the Christian thing to keep Bruton from being flooded and others saying they hoped the flood was a jimdandy so it would wash Bruton away once and for all. My folks kept quiet, as most of the others did; this was a war of the loudmouths.

Suddenly a quiet began to spread. It began from the back of the chamber, where people were cl.u.s.tered around the doorway. Somebody laughed, but the laugh was choked off almost at once. A few people mumbled and muttered. And then a man made his way into the chamber and you'd have thought the Red Sea was parting as folks shrank back to give him room.

The man was smiling. He had a boyish face and light brown hair cresting a high forehead.

"What's all this yelling about?" he asked. He had a Southern accent, but you could tell he was an educated man. "Any problem here, Mayor Swope?"

"Uh... no, Vernon. No problem. Is there, d.i.c.k?"

Mr. Moultry looked like he was about to spit and scowl. His wife's face was red as a Christmas beet under her platinum locks. I heard the Branlins giggle, but somebody hushed them up.

"I hope there's no problem," Vernon said, still smiling. "You know how Daddy hates problems."

"Sit down," Mayor Swope told the Moultrys, and they did. Their a.s.ses almost busted the bleacher.

"I sense some... disunity here," Vernon said. I felt a giggle about to break from my throat, but my father grasped my wrist and squeezed so hard it went away. Other people shifted uneasily in their seats, especially some of the older widow women. "Mayor Swope, can I come up to the podium?"

"G.o.d save us," my father whispered, and Mom shivered with a silent laugh beating at her ribs.

"Uh... I... suppose so, Vernon. Sure. Come on up." Mayor Swope stepped back, pipe smoke swirling around his head.