“I want to show you somethin.” The tone in his voice told me it wasn’t a request.
“What?”
“Somethin you need to see.”
“What is it?”
He walked past me and onto the trail back to the tree house. “You comin?”
I hurried after him, nearly tripping on a jut of granite in the trail.
“Where’ve you been the last few days, anyway?”
“Watchin you set fires.”
I didn’t answer.
“Somebody hadta keep it from spreadin.”
“They were little fires.” Regretted it as soon as the words passed my lips.
He stopped and half turned to me. “You done now?”
I nodded slowly, unconvinced. He went back to the trail and continued on.
At the tree house he scurried apelike up the trunk. I followed slowly to the first limb, remembering the secret handgrabs and footholds, then pulled myself up to the platform. Buzzy had hands on hips, looking out to the mountains that surrounded town.
“See all these.” He swept his arm from left to right across the expanse of hills. “I got my own names for em.” He motioned to the rightmost mountain. “This first mountain here, grown-ups call Stanley; but I call it Hawk Wing cause I found a baby hawk there that couldn’t fly. Took it home to raise it, then brought him back. He still lives up there.
“Next to it is Skull Mountain. I call it that cause me an Cleo found the skull of a cougar or maybe even a sabre-tooth tiger or some other prehistoric thing. Got it hangin on my bedroom wall. Next to it is Buck Head on accounta I got my first deer there. Big-ass twelve-point buck.” His hands bragged the rack width. “Me an Cleo was up the stand an the buck was off on a hill bout a hundert yards away. Cle’s an expert shot an coulda dropped the buck in a heartbeat, but he let me take it with his rifle cause he’s got a scope on it. He’s like that, you know, always wants me to be the best at stuff. So I get the buck in the crosshairs an blam—sucker goes down.
“The one next to that is Round Rock. Nothing cool happened there but on the other side it’s got these perfectly round rocks size a tractor tires. Over here are Big Tiny an Little Tiny. I call em that on accounta theys the smallest. Next to it is Luck, which has a bunch of old mines cut out of it. I call it Old Cheesey like that cheese with them holes in it. The next two I call Winkin an Blinkin. No real reason; I jus like the bedtime story my momma used to tell me.” He stood shoulder width wide, surveying the range with satisfaction, as if he’d spent the morning molding them all from clay.
“That last one there, the one with the knob on top, that’s called Knob Mountain.” It was at the end of the eastern line of hills that encircled the town, in opposition to the flat-topped rubble of the excavated mountains. Its majestic reach and perfect shape made the scarred landscape of those dead peaks even more jarring.
“What’s its real name?”
“Knob Mountain.”
I nodded. “Good name for it.”
“It’s where the Tellin Cave is,” he added.
“What’s that?”
“Best cave in the county. Goes on for miles, they say; even gotta river underneath. I’ve never gone down that far, but Cleo did. Him an Jimmy Pike got all the way down to the river.”
“Let’s go, then,” I said, anxious to explore a potentially dangerous cave.
“Naw, I been there lots a times.”
“Come on, man. Let’s do something cool.”
He sat down in the rocker and lit a cigarette, regarding the ring of hills the way a curator appraises his finest art.
“Look, I want to explore something,” I said. “I’m gonna go myself.”
“You can’t go yourself.”
“Why not, too dangerous?”
“Against the rules.”
“Whose rules?”
“The Tellin Cave rules, you dumbass. It’s why they call it the Tellin Cave in the first place.”
“Why’s that?”
“Cause everyone who goes in has to tell a secret bout themselves.”
I laughed for the first time in months. “What? Who says?”
He frowned. “It ain’t nothin to joke bout. You don’t tell the Tellin Cave a secret, it’ll kill you.”
“How can a cave kill you?”
Now it was his turn to laugh. He looked at me like I really was dumb. “Cave can kill you lots a ways. Leighton Buzzard was the first. My grandaddy was with him when it happened. They was up the cave with some friends. This was a long time ago, before my granma an all. They were tellin stories around a fire, an Bicky Wilson, she says to everybody, ‘The spirit a the cave wants to know our secrets, we all gots to give it one.’ So they went round the fire each givin a secret, an when they get to Leighton he says he ain’t gonna tell no secret an that starts a big ruction an he leaves in a huff. Next week he drowns up Glaston Lake. That’s how the whole thing started.”
I shook my head. “Could’ve been a coincidence.”
“Well, later that year, they was back up the cave, an another one, Rebah Deal, says she ain’t tellin nuthin. Then when they went explorin, she gets lost an they never find her. Was like the cave jus swallowed her right up. They say at night, on the anniversary, you can hear her ghost callin from the belly a the cave. I been up twice then but I ain’t heard it.”
“When’s the anniversary?”
“Four weeks. July twenty-third. Once Rebah disappeared the legend a the Tellin Cave stuck. You may not believe, but it’s a parcel a bad luck to be hangin over your head. I wouldn’t test it.”
I was determined to see the Telling Cave. “I’m going anyway. If the cave kills me, it’ll be your fault and I’ll come back to haunt you.”
“It ain’t nothin to joke about, I’m tellin you. I’ll take you up there but not if you’re gonna laugh at the power. The cave might get mad an kill me too, jus outta spite.”
“I won’t joke, I promise,” I said, tightening my lips around a grin.
He went into the tree house, came out with a flashlight and knapsack, and was halfway down the tree before I could blink. I managed to slide down behind him without incident.
Suddenly an object whooshed by our heads and stuck into the oak with a loud thwack. We both whirled to the sound. A twelve-inch metal arrow quivered in the bark.
“What the fuck you faggots doin up here? This is our place.”
A large, thick-gutted, zit-stippled teenager with greasy black hair and bad teeth climbed up the rise toward us. Dangling at his right side was a crossbow pistol, drawstring loosed from the shot at our heads. Behind him was a much smaller boy, about the same age, maybe sixteen, but half his mass. The thin boy had enormous buckteeth, thick eyebrows, and bushy brown hair. It all made him seem like he had been raised by impoverished beavers.
“I said, what the fuck you pussies doin in our place?”
“Your place?” Buzzy said calmly. I could tell he was seething inside, but good sense told him to hold his temper in the face of an older, armed teenager. “I thought your place was up Six Holler.”
“It’s all our place, fuckwad,” said beaver boy.
“Well, I’m jus showin Kevin here the mountains, him bein from outta town.”