Splintered: The Labyrinth, Book 3, page 8
“You didn’t have to do this,” LeHorn said.
“Wasn’t any trouble at all.”
“How much do we owe you?” LeHorn reached for his wallet out of habit, realizing too late that it wasn’t there in his back pocket where he usually kept it. Only then did it occur to him that he had left the wallet back home—his original home, before things had gone awry, and before he’d fled into the Labyrinth. All this time, he’d been traveling without it. It was sitting on a nightstand in that other world, part of an old life for an old him, neither of which existed anymore.
Earl waved dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. The good Lord wants us to help those in need, and I reckon y’all were in need, judging by the state of your clothes.”
Sarah smiled. “It’s strange…hearing you talk about religion and charity.”
“The other me wasn’t a believer?” Earl asked.
“That’s putting it lightly,” Sarah replied.
“Well…” Earl hesitated. “I’m not much of a believer either, like I said last night. And if I’m being honest, I didn’t want y’all dirtying up my truck, either. No offense, but you were both pretty ripe.”
This earned a round of laughter from everyone. LeHorn and Sarah dug through the bags, eagerly pulling out the garments, and thanking Earl again for his charity.
“Leave your dirties on the floor in the rooms when you change,” Rose told them. “I’m going to do a load of laundry today.”
“Laundry?” Teddy’s face fell. “We’ve got a whole day together and you’re going to spend it doing chores?”
She clicked her tongue at him. “The machine washes them, dear. All I have to do is load them in. And if you’re worried about spending time together, then you can help me fold them when the dryer is done. I’ll not send you back out to save the world in dirty underwear.”
Teddy grinned. “I reckon that’s a plan, then. I was thinking maybe I’d fix the roof on the shed, too, if I get the time. Maybe mow the yard.”
Rose kissed his cheek. “You’ll do no such thing. You can help fold the laundry. It’ll be nice and warm, and after that, we can take a nap.”
His grin grew broader. “Now that’s a plan.”
LeHorn and Sarah quickly changed their clothes, and then said their goodbyes to Teddy and Rose. The latter handed them each a twenty-dollar bill, despite their protestations.
“I won’t hear of it,” she said. “Y’all don’t look like you’re carrying money, and you’ll need it at Old Home Week. There’s games and raffle prizes, and they bring these food trucks in. Line them all up and each one sells something different. Funnel cakes. Hot dogs. Tacos. Pizza. You’ll want money for that.”
Curious if the money on this level was different from the money in his reality, LeHorn looked at the bills closely. He was almost disappointed that they appeared the same.
They thanked her again, and then headed out to Earl’s truck. Wincing slightly, he climbed in behind the steering wheel. Sarah slid over to the middle, and LeHorn sat down next to the passenger side door. Earl turned the key in the ignition and the truck sputtered to life, backfiring.
“Reckon I should take it in for a tune-up,” he said.
The radio came on automatically, in the middle of Waylon Jennings’s ‘The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don’t Want To Get Over You)’.
“Wow,” LeHorn said. “I haven’t heard this song in years.”
“You a country music fan?”
LeHorn shrugged. “Some. The classic stuff, at least. Songs like this.”
“I heard that,” Earl agreed, pulling out of the driveway and onto the gravel lane. “This new stuff they call country music? It ain’t. How about you, Sarah?”
“Do the Dixie Chicks count?”
Earl nodded. “One of the last great country music groups, far as I’m concerned. They got a little too political for me, but there ain’t no denying their talent.”
“Then I guess I’m a country music fan, too. At least a little bit.”
Smiling, Earl drove to the end of the lane and then turned left onto the main road. As they passed the church again, LeHorn couldn’t help but stare at Henry’s unmarked grave.
He shivered inside his new clothes, while Waylon sang about not forgetting someone.
The rest of the ride to Renick was uneventful and mostly pleasant. Earl chattered the entire way, pointing out landmarks and seeming to have a story for every house, farm, and field they drove past. Sarah showed a genuine interest in their surroundings and the people who lived here, particularly their connection to Teddy. The road grew narrower as it wended its way down the mountainside. LeHorn was thankful that they were descending rather than ascending, as the other lane had nothing but a guardrail between the shoulder and a precipitous, heart-stopping drop. Every time he glanced in that direction, his butt clenched, and his breath caught in his throat.
They came around a final, terrifying S-shaped turn—just as Earl was finishing a story about a cave to their right that had been sealed up back in the late-Nineteen Eighties after some kids got trapped inside and cost the taxpayers money with their rescue—and came to a sudden stop. Before them lay the Greenbrier River, shallow but wide. A long concrete bridge spanned the expanse. A sign next to it informed LeHorn this was the Keene Memorial Bridge. The town of Renick lay on the other side, stretched all across the hills and slopes of the river valley. A line of cars crawled slowly across the bridge, and Earl inched the truck forward, joining the slow-moving procession.
A middle-aged man wearing a bright orange safety vest, and sideburns thick enough to hide in waved them on, then nodded and smiled at them. Earl rolled the window down and returned the gesture.
“Howdy, Eddie!”
The man spat a stream of brown tobacco juice. “Howdy, Earl. Y’all heading to Old Home Days?”
“You know it! How’s the parking?”
“Town’s pretty full, and the Ponderosa is roped off, but there’s plenty down along the river.” Ellis bent over and peered past Earl. “Howdy.”
“Hello,” Sarah replied.
LeHorn waved. “Hi there.”
“Don’t reckon we’ve met?”
“Oh!” Earl jumped as if startled. “Eddie Walker, this here is Sarah and Nelson. They’re kin of Teddy’s.”
“Kin of Teddy Garnett’s? Don’t recall meeting you folks at the funeral? Sorry if I forgot?”
“W-we’re distant,” Sarah stammered. “More like friends of the family than actual relatives. But Teddy’s like… I mean Teddy was like…a grandfather to me.”
“We’re from up north,” LeHorn added.
“Thought so, from your accents. Knew y’all weren’t from around here.”
“They come in to visit Rose, and I offered to show them around,” Earl said, and then glanced out the windshield, where there was now a car’s length between them and the next vehicle.
A horn blared behind them, and someone shouted in a friendly tone, “Hey Earl and Eddie! Y’all want to have that conversation somewhere other than the middle of the danged bridge? Some of us are trying to get through!”
Ellis looked up and waved in apology. “Sorry, Phil and Missus Phil!”
Earl waved in the rearview. “Reckon we’d better get going.”
“Yeah. I’ll talk to y’all later.”
Earl pulled the truck forward, and breathed a loud, slow sigh. “Not sure why I felt the need to lie about y’all.”
“You didn’t, really,” Sarah assured him. “It’s true that Teddy is like family to us.”
“And we told him the truth about where we are from,” LeHorn added, “but even still, you did no wrong, Mr. Harper. I had the same urge as you did. I doubt that man meant any harm, but even still…we have to remember that Sarah and I are anomalies. We aren’t meant to be here, on this level. We have to be cautious.”
Frowning, Earl turned left, following a dirt road that curved around the bridge. “That butterfly thing?”
“The butterfly effect? The theory that any action might damage the future? No. I suppose that might apply if I was on my original level, or Sarah were on hers, but we didn’t travel through time. Merely space. Or dimensions, more accurately. But things we do here could still impact this reality. We’ll have to be careful.”
Earl parked alongside a long line of cars, trucks, and motorcycles, and then turned off the ignition. The river sparkled just a few yards away, and the sound of music drifted toward them.
“Well, let’s go party. I doubt anything bad can happen here.”
He led them up a gravel path away from the river and into the town proper. They passed a few homes. Each house had lawn chairs outside, and the owners grilled food and greeted passersby. LeHorn marveled at the overall hospitable atmosphere. One of the residents, a burly man in a faded Pepsi T-shirt, offered him a hot dog as they walked by. Smiling, LeHorn accepted. They made some quick small talk and then continued on their way.
“That’s the mayor’s house,” Earl said, pointing at a dwelling much larger than the others. “He’s new. Come to Renick…oh, I guess fifteen or sixteen years now.”
“And he’s still considered new to the community?” Sarah asked.
Earl shrugged. “If you weren’t born here, then you’re new. But he’s done a lot of good for the town. His company was the ones what put windmills all across the state, so he’s got money to spare. Retired here, and he spends the money on the community.”
The mayor’s home, like the other houses, had a group of revelers in the yard. A man with white hair sticking out from beneath a black cowboy hat raised his hand in greeting as they walked by. His other hand clutched a brown bottle of beer.
“Howdy, Earl!”
“Howdy, Mr. Mayor. Showing my friends around.”
The mayor tipped his hat to them. “Y’all enjoy yourselves. Stop back by later for a beer.”
“Much obliged,” Earl replied.
LeHorn nodded. “We’ll do just that. Nice to meet you.”
They approached an intersection of three roads. One led back to the bridge. The second led up another winding hill, and had a green road sign indicating the towns of Frankford and Lewisburg lay in that direction. The third led deeper into town. Just past this intersection was a broad, square, one-story building with a wooden sign above the double front doors that read PONDEROSA. A porch ran the entire length of the structure’s frontage, and held a soda machine and several bench seats. The doors stood open and country music drifted from inside. People streamed in and out, and the porch was also crowded.
“Teddy built this, right?” Sarah asked.
“Not by himself,” Earl replied with a hint of pride. “He had some help from me and Carl and some of the other old timers.”
“What is it?” LeHorn asked.
“A community center. See, around here, we just don’t have a lot. Families are poor, mostly. We wanted to make a place where folks—particularly the young people—could hang out. We do covered dish socials here, and bingo, and Etta Vincent hosts a book club every Wednesday night. There’s bible studies and card games, and we’ve got puzzles and such. A pinball machine and a couple of those big video game cabinets. Few years ago the power went out for about a week, on account of a blizzard, so folks that didn’t have generators, wood stoves, or fireplaces were allowed to hole up inside here and stay warm.”
“You guys built it with your own money?”
Earl’s expression turned puzzled. “Well, sure. We were all retired. Needed a summer project. This was it.”
“That’s pretty special,” LeHorn replied.
Earl shrugged. “Let’s go on in. I reckon Carl and the rest of my friends will be in there. I’ll introduce you around.”
They followed him up the porch steps, and LeHorn couldn’t help but smile. It occurred to him that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a day like this. For so many years, he’d been trapped in that loop, exiting the Labyrinth into the hollow again and again and again. Amun had freed him from that eventually, but even after, his more recent life had consisted of nothing but peril and dread—going from battle to battle with no time to think or breathe or enjoy the little things that made life worth living. This entire day had been little things. A home-cooked breakfast. A shower. And now this. A friendly community, laughing and talking and sharing in fellowship. LeHorn hadn’t realized until now just how much he’d missed. He leaned close to Sarah and gestured at the crowd.
“This. This is what He Who Shall Not Be Named and the rest of the Thirteen want to obliterate. This is what they hate. We should enjoy it while we can. Embrace it to the fullest. To not do so seems to go against everything we’re fighting for. So, let’s have some fun.”
Sarah took his hand and squeezed it. “I can do that. But I should warn you, if there’s square dancing or country line dancing involved, I’m going to be more than a little out of my league.”
“If there’s any kind of dancing involved,” LeHorn replied, “then I’m in big trouble.”
6
C lyde Justice was resisting the urge to pour a crockpot full of steaming hot baked beans over Sid Anderson’s head when Earl Harper walked into the Ponderosa with two strangers in tow. Sid played guitar in Clyde’s band, and the two of them—along with their bass player Paul Hornby, and their drummer, Jeff Potter—had been working their way down several long tables heaped high with various covered dishes of food, all of which had been supplied by the locals. There was fried chicken, baked chicken, and barbecued chicken, cornbread, eight different kinds of beans, ramps and other types of wild onions and leeks, sautéed mushrooms, Swedish and Italian meatballs, a dozen different casseroles, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, sausages, platters of veggies, cheeses and cold cuts, a bunch of different breads and rolls, buttermilk biscuits, and a wide assortment of desserts—everything from homemade huckleberry pie to cookies bought at the Dollar General. Maude had made an apple pie, and it sat on the seat between the two of them on the ride over. The smell had made Clyde’s stomach grumble. He hadn’t gone back to sleep after that weird dream had woken him up, choosing instead to practice the new song that Charlie Daniels had delivered to him. He was tired and hungry, and there was still an hour or two before he and the boys would start playing. All he’d wanted was some of those baked beans. But then Sid had coughed overtop the crockpot, and Clyde’s low-grade annoyance turned to anger and resentment. Violence brewed up inside of him. He imagined how great it would be, burning Sid’s scalp and face with the crockpot’s scalding contents.
Those emotions faded to the background again as he studied the newcomers. One of them was a pretty young blonde woman in what looked to be her early thirties. The other was an older fellow, probably in his late forties or early fifties, with a thick, bushy beard and a straw hat which made him kind of look like Amish, like that nice family who lived up past Punkin Center, almost on the edge of the national forest. Those folks had moved here from Ohio about ten years before, and they fit in well with the community. Some of their ways were a little strange, and they certainly weren’t Presbyterian or Southern Baptist, but nobody was perfect. Clyde had spotted the Amish family earlier, when he and Maude were clambering out of his truck. Their horse had trotted by, pulling their wagon—father, mother, and their three kids. Clyde couldn’t remember any of their names. He thought maybe the father’s name was Eli? Regardless, he was certain the man with Earl wasn’t one of them. Maybe he was their kin?
Both of the strangers seemed nervous and jumpy as Earl introduced them around. Clyde overheard that their names were Sarah and Nelson, and that they were apparently friends of Rose Garnett, and her husband Teddy, now deceased. Clyde had liked Teddy Garnett. It was kind of hard not to like the man. His passing had been a blow for the community, and he was missed by many. Clyde hadn’t known Teddy as well as the men he was closest to, folks like Earl Harper and Carl Seaton, but he liked to think he’d known him well enough. He’d never heard the older man mention anyone named Sarah or Nelson before.
“Clyde?” Sid reached out and touched his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Huh?” Clyde blinked, turning to him. “Oh, yeah. Sorry. I’m just tired, is all. Been up since four this morning.”
Sid sighed. “Yeah, my prostate had me up early, too. Sucks getting old, don’t it?”
“I wasn’t up because I had to piss. I was up practicing this new song I told you about.”
“The one you said come to you in a dream?”
Clyde nodded. He hadn’t shared the details of the dream—how it had been Charlie Daniels who had taught him the song, and how he’d memorized those strange lyrics, particularly the chorus—Ob. Meeble. Ishtari. Kandara. Kat. Purturabo. Did he believe that it had been the real Charlie Daniels? He did. Clyde had experienced strange things in life before. Sometimes Maude would think of someone for no reason at all—friends or a family member she hadn’t heard from in some time—and then that person would call later in the day. Once, in Korea during the war, he’d seen strange lights in the sky that moved far too fast to be an aircraft. And then there was the time he’d been out deer hunting back in the Nineties, and thought he’d seen a Bigfoot. He still couldn’t be sure what it was to this day, but it certainly hadn’t been a bear, and it stank like nothing else he’d ever encountered. The ghost of Charlie Daniels visiting him in a dream and teaching him a special song called ‘The Lord of the Dance’ wasn’t any stranger than some of the stories from the Bible. He believed it had happened. But he also knew better than to share that belief with his bandmates.
“Well,” Sid said, “I reckon you’d better teach it to the rest of us before we go on stage.”
“I’d like to,” Clyde growled, “but we’ve got to wait for Hobie’s late ass, now don’t we?”
“It ain’t his fault he’s late. You know how his arthritis gets.”
Clyde frowned. He knew all too well how their banjo player used his arthritis as an excuse for everything. His attention turned back to Earl and the newcomers. They were drawing closer now, just down at the start of the buffet tables. Clyde’s expression turned into a grimace. He didn’t like the look of these new folks. Maybe that was unreasonable, but he couldn’t help it. Their presence filled him with loathing, even if he didn’t know why.
