"As you will," continued Bane.  "I'm always taken by the lush fauna and exotic undergrowth of these parts.  Mother indulged me little, but protected me a lot.  I was rarely allowed outside during my brief repast in the hills.  Father would try to put me to work.  Tried his derndist, you might say.  She laughed at him, actually.  I did too.  Mother would have these sewings and house parties.  What scant annuities they got from my Aunt were squandered on dresses and small reunions.  Can you conjure the image of a three-room shanty with its cedar closet full of pink taffeta?  I can.  She would gather with these women on the porch, during hot summer days; they would reminisce and sip parlor drinks while my father toiled a hundred yards away in the field.  Excavating stones and cutting away at the earth.  She would taunt him for her private audience, amusing her guests while he sweated in the sun.  Never hearing or knowing.  Visiting ladies from the valley would talk of literature and the fine arts.  George Sand.  Lord Byron.  Baudelaire and Goethe.  From the local relations, she sought acceptance.  And petty esteem.  Yet at one such gathering, I pilfered a cookie from a woman's plate, and lightning quick, the old bird swatted my greedy hand with a branch.  I'll never forget it."

          "That sounds like Mizz Sisilse awright," Newburn eyed J.Pea across the stove.  "You know how she is J.  Before the ark, she'uz always a-carryin that willer switch.  Strips one fresh ever mornin."

          J.Pea was nodding too.  Colonel Nash Birdnell Renfrew watched him do it.

          "So you say.  Ah well.  This was long years ago and I doubt she would remember little Gabin Bane.  So much changed with my father's passing.  After the accident, my childhood became a banquet.  A saturnalia, to the extreme, Auntie Tam brought joy and sustenance to a lonely, pathetic little man.  She considered only the most prodigal and debase extravagance to be of virtue.  Craven pleasures, I must confess.  With Auntie you were either her precious bauble, her willing pupil, or you were tossed out with the scraps.  The help would run and fetch a second doctor, a new upstairs maid, whatever.  A neverending lark."  A liquid shift occurred in his thin quivering tenor.  "Regretfully, gentlemen, the rain has eased and I must sally forth."

          He was right.  The rain had let up.  Looking, J.Pea could see the wolfen snoots no longer, they'd withdrawn from the backseat window.  He wanted earnestly to ask the stranger about his hounds.

          "But--whatever happen to yer mama?" he asked instead.

          "Yeeah--what about her, Mr. Bane?" chimed Willy, rapt at the counter.

          "Alas, alak, she too fell from favor in time..." Bane wiped his greasy digits on a clean white handkerchief and primped it back into his breast pocket, chickbeads a-darting.  The Panama came off his knee.  "And what would my chit be sir?  Tally the damage and I'm the traveler once again."

          "A dollar nine-penny," answered Willy.

          Neatly, Mr. Bane rose from the straw seat; sidestepping the girl child with perfect care, he paid his bill and left, lingering only for J.Pea's warble:

          "Please to meetcha, Mr. Bane."

          "Take er slew."

          "See yer..."

          "A golden opportunity, gentlemen.  A little human warmth and understanding.  Feels like coming home.  Beannact."

          Thumbing a gumball into the pock-jowl, Bane stepped out into an errant streak of sun.  His wingtips paddled through the muck; he kept smiling, in no hurry at all.  Deliberately, he ignited the Strand Excelsior and slid along those mud ruts.

          "Not many of them Banes lef..." mumbles the constable.

          Turning to the glass, J.Pea watched headlamps and quicksilver slide away.  The dogs had slipped down on the seat apparently, without trace.  No ears or tails.

          "Other whispers...about the grave, somethin....some ole jape about his pappy's grave," Newburn droned.  "Cain't git a handle on it."

          J.Pea lost sight of the car once it was beyond the Church, yet it nagged him.  Hadn't Bane headed along, not turning around?  Wouldn't he go home?  Roanoke or wherever home was?  J.Pea couldn't tell from here, but somehow he knew Mr. Bane and friends were turning left.  Just beyond the rock schoolhouse.

          The phone rang.  Lucrice's mother was calling in search of her husband.  Willy Bird took the call, cranking the ringer like there was water in the line.  Newburn got up, hoisted the girl and stomped out the door.  Gold speckles of light filtered through cloud and leaf; the coat over his arm, father and child steered for Miss Rebekah's place.  Newburn forgot the umbrella.

          No matter.  The weather held, long enough.

          It seemed J.Pea wasn't much company after that.  Neither was Willy Bird for that matter.  They settled accounts and halfway up Pearlwick Road he spied the afternoon storm, in the north sky over Choat's Peak, waiting to roll in.  In his mind he saw his mother, all set to wash her hair in rainwater and fussing at that cloud.  The International climbed the twisting road.  For a brief figment, he rode a tailwind over the truck with a fisherhawk's eye.  But he pulled himself back, having found long ago that such dalliances didn't mix with driving.

          C. G. Pennebrook waved from his front porch, riving fresh shingles with a drawknife.  That old shack threw off shingles in light drizzle, like a wet bluetick.  He caught a whiff of their smokehouse, just beyond the Pennebrook place, and J.Pea began a sing.

                                  Ooh, they's strangers in my passway,

                                  Clowdermilk moon don't shine tonight,

                                     Don't shine dat tooth in my hand...

          His voice canted, a dirge old and young as J.Pea Shea himself.  He looped through Coffin's Maw, already the holler losing any sunbreaks when he came upon Mr. Lych.

          Mr. Lych sat on a log in his union suit.  Up the road, the butane truck's door was sprung open, overalls flapping on the side-mirror.

          "Some wrong, Mr. Lych?" asked J.Pea as he fell from the pickup.  The tall grim man looked ashen beneath his mulish beard.  Long fingers hung limp over filthy white knees.  Over and over, he'd nod his noggin and drop his face into those spidery fingers.

          "Willerwiller-willerwillerwiller--"

          "Sir?"

          "Willerwiller--"

          "Kin I help ye Mr. Lych?"

          The billygoat shook his head feverishly.  J.Pea squatted beside the log and Lych lifted his teary red orbs, squinting back at the boy:

          "Come from Mizz Sisilse's place..."

          "Yessir...?"

          "Somethin got after ole Mizzy."

          "Got after her...?"

          "Somethin hongry."

          J.Pea stood, slack-jawed, his bones felt weak.  It was too far to get daddy.  He made promises to Mr. Lych then went on up to the midwife's house.  He saw the dinner scraps.  Cold and wet, he finally lodged Mr. Lych, temporarily, with the Shea clan till his own could come fetch him.  Telling Jake the tale was enough to justify rounding up a few Coffin Holler boys and that night a comic bearhunt ensued.  But it was foolishness.  All told they never found much other than her skull and dregs, out behind the hayrick.

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