Page 32 of A Boy Called Lovesong

Were we being watched by someone other than the kid?

Were we not alone?

Did we really need to get out of there?

“I think we need to get out of here,” I uttered to myself as I turned the key one last time and Joan Collins roared to life.

I leaned out the window and said to the boy, “Do you want to come with us? I think you should come with us.”

A flash of lightning lit up the sky.

The boy simply giggled again. “Thanks mister, but I told you, I got a job to do. Now git going while you can. You don’t wanna stick around here… otherwise, you might be stickin’ around forever.”

Something told me the boy didn’t need to leave those crossroads.

Something told me Chet and I did.

I put my foot on the accelerator and turned south, heading along the road that led to the bell tower protruding high over the cotton fields.

As we trailed away from the crossroads, I tried to look through the cloud we left in our wake for the boy I’d left behind.

But I’ll be damned if I could see him through the dust.

CHAPTER 8

When the cottonfields finally parted, a tiny town from a lost chapter in history appeared before us.

There were no more than a handful of buildings on either side of the dirt road that ran through the middle of town.

On one side was a general store, and next door to it stood the church with its bell tower pointing straight to heaven.

On the other side was a shack of a juke joint, a dilapidated plantation manor that looked like it had been reclaimed by Mother Nature herself, and beyond that an auto repair shop that looked in desperate need of repair itself, its roof rusted and half caved in and its sign—Earl’s Auto—swinging off one hook.

At the far end of this tiny main street, I could see a tangle of trees draped in moss, a juncture where the cotton fields that surrounded the town met the lazy labyrinth of a bayou that disappeared deep into an almost unnatural stillness.

Needless to say, I steered Joan Collins straight forEarl’s Auto.

Only the accelerator suddenly lost power.

The transmission groaned and our momentum became so sluggish it was as though we’d driven into a pool of quicksand.

I heard a strange whir under the hood.

I smelled smoke.

And like an exhausted athlete stumbling across a finish line, the Dynasty shuddered to a halt in the middle of the street, fifty feet from the auto shop.

The sound of the engine’s death rattle was enough to lure several townsfolk from the buildings surrounding me.

From the general store emerged a large woman in her late forties, wearing a plain dress with the sleeves bunched up around her elbows like she’d been doing some heavy lifting inside.

From the church came a pastor, a tall and ominous figure dressed in black trousers, a black shirt buttoned up to the collar, and a black, wide-brimmed hat that shaded his face.

Across the street, a bulldozer of a man in his mid to late twenties appeared from the juke joint. He was chewing on a toothpick and wearing a white tank top, a dish cloth slung over one shoulder.

Next door, a woman in her sixties emerged from the old manor. She walked with a limp, one hand needing a walking stick to lean on while her other hand rested on her hip. “Well, what in Sam Hill do you think you’re doing”—she called out to me—“letting that wreck of a machine fall apart like that in the middle of our street? And here we were about to win the Tidy Town of the Year award. Now look what you gone and done.”

Quickly I got out of the car, calling back a stuttering apology. “I… I’m sorry. It’s been on its last legs since I bought it.”

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