His voice was only a whisper, and only Tow-Truck Eddie heard it. He stared into the Bone Man’s eyes for a long time, his face thoughtful. Hope soared in the Bone Man’s chest. Then the big man shook his head.
“No,” he said.
“Wh…what?”
“I said no. That isn’t possible. Mr. Griswold goes to my church. He’s a righteous man. He believes in God.” His eyes searched the broken landscape of the Bone Man’s face. “I’ve never seen you at church, Mr. Morse. Tell me…what is it that you believe in?”
“Please…”
“Satan is the Father of Lies.” Tow-Truck Eddie’s eyes were as pale as ice, and looking into them the Bone Man saw that in thinking that salvation lay in the big man’s hands he had been terribly wrong. Eddie’s face almost looked sad as he said, “Vic’s right, it must be you did all those things.”
“But I—”
“You’re the devil, Mr. Morse, you are the Beast,” he whispered. “God have mercy on you.”
Tow-Truck Eddie hit him. He let go with his right hand, drew it back just eight inches, and punched the Bone Man in the face, turning into the punch with all the massive power of muscle and speed and torque.
The blow exploded in the Bone Man’s brain and everything went white as a big bell broke in his mind. His limbs turned to jelly and Eddie let him fall. The Bone Man collapsed onto the gravel by the side of the truck. He flopped there, dazed, unable to speak. His nose was broken, and so was his jaw. The punch had herniated three disks in his neck and upper back, and his throat was filling with blood.
Tow-Truck Eddie turned to Vic and the others. Vic was the closest one and their eyes met and held.
Vic licked his lips in much the same way as the Bone Man had. “Eddie…what did he say?”
Their eyes held for a long time. Finally Tow-Truck Eddie’s softened and he gave Vic a sad smile. “Only lies, Vic. All he had to say were the devil’s own lies.”
There was a strange flush of relief in Vic’s eyes and he took a second to set his features before he turned to the others. He looked at Jimmy Crow.
“Jimmy,” he said, pitching his voice to sound grave, “I hate to tell you this, man, but…he’s the one killed your Billy. He just told me.”
Eddie flicked a glance at Vic and almost said something, but then closed his mouth and stepped away. The eyes of every other man fell on the Bone Man. Eyes that had been confused a minute ago now hardened with purpose. They stared at the bleeding man for nearly fifteen seconds in silence, and then there was the cold rasp as Gus Bernhardt slid the hickory baton from its metal ring.
As Tow-Truck Eddie stepped out of their way, they suddenly rushed past him. After that, it was just a matter of doing the killing.
(5)
No one ever took either blame or credit for the murder of Oren Morse. His body was found tied to a scarecrow post at the crossroads of A-32 and Dark Hollow Road with a piece of paper stuffed in his shirt pocket that had the names of the sixteen people who had been killed that autumn. It was the end of the Black Harvest of 1976, and nearly everyone accepted the fiction that the Bone Man had been the killer. After all, who was he? A migrant farm worker who had told more than one person that he had been dodging the law since he’d dodged the draft in 1970. That made him a criminal already, and few of the farmers saw it as a far leap from being un-American enough to flee from his responsibilities to the war effort to being a killer. Logical progression of thought didn’t seem to enter into it.
The body of Ubel Griswold, a farmer and landowner who had settled in Pine Deep eight years before, was never found and was generally believed to have been the last victim of the Reaper, the lurid nickname given to the mass-murderer by one of the local papers.
Henry Guthrie—who owned the farm on whose outermost corner the grisly scarecrow was placed, and who had employed Morse as a migrant field worker—took the body down. He was one of the few who did not believe that Oren Morse was the Reaper. Guthrie kept it to himself, though. He had lost a cousin during the massacre, but he didn’t believe for a moment that Morse had done the killings.
He and his brother, George, took the body to the old Presbyterian cemetery out by the canal bridge and buried it. The church had burned down forty years ago and no new Presbyterians had moved in to care for the graveyard. No one would know or care if there was a new grave there. The Guthrie brothers didn’t tell anyone about it, though; nor would the two children who stood by the brothers during the unbeneficed service. Guthrie’s ten-year-old daughter, Val, and her best friend, Malcolm Crow. Malcolm’s brother, Billy, had been one of the first townies killed, and though the boy would never know it, his father, Jimmy Crow, had helped stomp Morse to death. Malcolm, of everyone in town, knew for sure that the Reaper hadn’t been the bluesman, but his voice had been silenced forever. Weeks later, Morse—or “the Bone Man” as the kids had called him because he was so skinny—had saved Malcolm’s life in an incident that had revealed to just those two who the real killer had been.
The kids had loved the Bone Man. They’d worked alongside him in the fields, had learned about the blues from him, and had begged Guthrie to let them go with him to the lonely funeral, promising to keep the secret always.
There had been a lot of evenings during that long summer and longer autumn when the Bone Man had sat on the porch steps and played acoustic blues to keep back the night and the night terrors. The young man had told tall tales of the road, and of unlikely meetings with legendary bluesmen such as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Guthrie hadn’t known or cared if the stories were true, but the music he played was beautiful and sad and somehow it helped everyone get through the worst season they’d ever had. The Black Harvest, which had started out with a vicious crop blight that had turned half the crops into bug-infested garbage, and then with the series of brutal murders. Somehow the blues and the magic of that guitar were a charm against evil. Now the man was dead and God only knew where his guitar was.
Guthrie bought a stone in another town and set it on the grave, and he read a prayer over the young man’s grave, and then he left and never returned. Years later Malcolm Crow would try to find that grave, but he never could remember just where it was.
The blight ended but the sky turned dark and bruised and they had months of heavy rains.
The next year’s harvest was normal and the corn was tall and green and the blight was lifted. In time the Reaper faded from everyday conversation; though when the stories were told about it over the following years, the name of “Bone Man” came to replace that of “Reaper,” and all of the evil was ascribed to him.
Down in Dark Hollow, the devil’s bones lay in the earth like seeds of hate, waiting for another year’s harvest.
Part I
Down at the Crossroads
I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees Asked the Lord above, have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please.
Robert Johnson, “Crossroads Blues”
Out there at the crossroads, molding the Devil’s bullets.
Tom Waits and William Burroughs, “Crossroads”
Demons they are on my trail I’m standing at the crossroads of the hell I look to the left I look to the right There’re hands that grab me on every side.
Tracy Chapman, “Crossroads”
Chapter 1
Modern Day
(1)
Malcolm Crow pretended to be asleep because that was the only way he could get to see Val naked. He kept his breathing regular and his eyes shut until she got out of bed and headed into the bathroom. Then he opened his eyes just a fraction, until