Prologue
August 24, 1998
The vultures were waiting that evening—dozens of them riding the thermals high above his head, elegant and still as leaves on water, reflecting a ragged, wheeling crown around the dark form in the pond. Others had settled in the spindly cottonwoods that ringed the shore—so many that the branches sagged under their weight and the ground beneath the trees was painted white with their droppings. They were used to him now. As he emerged through the dry grass with the pack slung over his shoulder, they barely glanced his way but remained focused on their business, hissing and jostling one another for position, close enough that he could see the dust on their wings and the skin of their naked heads, as red and wrinkled as burned flesh.
The birds had been gathering for days. Unable to reach their prize and unwilling to leave it, they eyed him coolly, patiently, during his daily visits. But today was different. They sensed it. As he unzipped his pack and sat to pull on the waders, the vultures ruffled their heavy wings, and when he clambered back to his feet, fumbling to adjust the shoulder straps, a few let out hoarse, expectant croaks.
He picked up the bolt cutters and edged down the bank. In the hoof-pocked mud, dozens of coyote tracks, narrower and more delicate than a dog’s, traced a complicated braid along the shoreline. Like the birds, they’d been drawn to the water by the smell of death, which the breeze carried across the sprawling ranchland.
The gorge rose in his throat. Gripping the bolt cutters, he pushed through the reeds into the murky, waist-high water.
The corpse bobbed on its back in the center of the pond, the heavy chain around the torso inadequate to counter the buoyancy of decay. The buttoned shirt strained against the bloat, and the elastic of the socks cut deeply into the swollen, purple flesh. Small fish and turtles had been diligent in their work. He tried not to look at the face.
“It’s not Adam anymore,” he whispered to himself as he worked the bolt cutters.
Once freed of the chain, the body floated easily across the surface of the pond. The water churned with silt as he struggled up the bank, cursing and grunting, the blackflies rising like smoke from the thick, sucking mud. After falling several times, he managed to tow his burden into the grass.
For a while, he sat, exhausted, not looking at what lay motionless beside him, keeping his eyes fixed on the sun as it sank towards the distant bluffs. He had planned this for days, but now he felt a strange reluctance. It had been peaceful, somehow, the ritual of his daily visits.
Unhooking the waders’ straps, he dug into his pocket to find the thing he had brought with him. He unrolled it and laid it carefully on his knee. It had gotten damp in his climb up the bank. He sat for several minutes, smoothing the velvety fur until it was dry.
Finally, from another pocket he produced a length of pale chiffon ribbon, shimmering and pink in the waning light. His handsshook, but he managed to roll up the small, furred object, tie it with the ribbon, and tuck it into the dead boy’s hand.
He looked up. The sun had vanished behind the bluffs, and the light was fading fast. With a sigh, he clambered to his feet and walked quickly away through the waving grass. The hiss and squabble of the birds began almost at once behind him, but he kept his eyes fixed on the path ahead. A few minutes later, as he stepped onto the road, he heard a distant coyote begin to wail.
Chapter 1
September 29, 2018
Pressing his forehead against the cool glass wall, Willis Newland squinted into the gloom of the enclosure. Delilah was playing hide-and-seek again. No matter. He would look till he found her. He needed her comfort tonight. And he could be as patient as she.
Willis wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing in front of the herpetarium. Hours, at least. It was after nine o’clock—he knew that without looking. There had been no clocks in his cell, so he’d gotten used to telling time by the feel of the air. Every moment had its own distinct texture, smell, weight. Especially after dark.
“Yo, pervert,” Homer used to call from the top bunk. “What time is it?”
And Willis, lying in the gloom on the thin, hard mattress, always knew, which made Homer chuckle. “You the smartest dumbass I ever met.”
Homer hadn’t slept well on the inside. And Willis hadn’t either, for the first year or two, though eventually he got used to the close quarters and clamor and relentless sameness of the days. It was funny, though, how prison followed you home. Lately, he was lucky if he got a couple hours a night. The ranch seemed too quiet forsleeping, now—or if not quiet, the wrong kind of noisy, at least. Coyotes and crickets instead of shouts and clanging metal.
So much had changed. So muchcouldchange. With no one to tell him what to eat or when to sleep, no one to turn off his lights and lock him inside—the options were endless and disorienting. Like one of those choose-your-own-adventure books Momma had brought him while he was away.
Plus, everything was too big, somehow. The sky seemed vast enough to crush him into the dirt. And he got dizzy thinking of all that land, stretching in every direction outside his door. Nowadays, he stayed in the cabin with the curtains drawn to shut out the thousands of acres of tumbled rock and buffalo grass and mesquite—and most of all, the old stock pond, down at the southern tip of the ranch.
The pond. It was miles away over rough terrain. But Willis could feel it there, like a dark, liquid eye, watching him.
As a kid—back before the trouble—he used to like the pond. He remembered going there with his brothers to catch frogs and grass snakes. And when he got older, he’d go by himself to hide in the tall grass and peer down the hill at the boys from town who came there to swim. He didn’t want to hurt them. He just liked to watch their white bodies flashing in the sunlight as they roughhoused and splashed. Then, one time, they saw him.
“Freak! Pervert!” they screamed.
He went home that day with black eyes and two cracked ribs.
“What happened?” Momma asked over and over.
“I fell off the four-wheeler,” he said. But he could tell by the creases between her eyebrows that she knew he was lying.
“Willis, you have to be careful. Don’t you remember, after last time—that time at church—how people talked?” Momma always referred to it this way. She didn’t like to say the Carrowayboy’s name—didn’t like to remind Willis, or herself, of what had happened.
Momma’s fears proved justified. News of his encounter with the boys at the pond spread like a grassfire. When his father heard, the beating he gave Willis hurt worse than anything the boys had done.