Breakheart Hill Read Free Page B

just come back from a trip to Venezuela.” Then I went on to describe how the boy’s right thigh had been hideously swollen, the skin stretched tight over a large boil that had taken on a sickly yellow color.
    “It looked dangerously infected, and I knew it had to be cleaned out,” I continued. “So I gave him a local anesthetic, then made a cut over the head of the boil and pried it apart.”
    Luke nodded, waiting for my point.
    “The inside of the boil was red, of course, very inflamed, but right in the middle of it there was a small fleck of pale green, and when I touched it with the tip of my scalpel, it flipped away from the blade.”
    Luke suddenly looked more engaged.
    “So I took a pair of tweezers and pulled it out.” I looked at Luke wonderingly. “It was a worm.”
    “A worm?” Luke asked.
    “Yes,” I said. “I looked it up in a book I have. It turns out that this particular worm is a common parasite in South America.”
    It had wriggled savagely between the metal tongs, and as I’d watched its green body twisting maliciously, it had taken on a terrible sense of menace, as if, in this small worm, I had glimpsed some malevolence at the core of life.
    “And I just said to myself, ‘There it is, there is evil.’ ”
    Luke thought a moment, then dismissed any such windy notion. “No, that was just a worm, doing what worms do,” he said. He let his eyes drift up toward the mountain. I knew that I had not succeeded in drawing him back from that summer day so long ago. “I shouldnever have let her go into those woods by herself,” he said.
    “She wanted to,” I told him. “You had to let her.”
    “Something was bothering her. I could tell that.”
    “She was high-strung.”
    “No, I mean she had something on her mind. I guess that’s why I didn’t want to leave her there. The way she looked, I mean. Troubled.”
    I drew in a deep breath, but said nothing. It was the same description Luke had offered many times before, each time relating every detail in the same unvaried order, like a detective incessantly returning to the scene of the crime, as if by one more pass he might find the key to what happened there.
    “I guess that’s why I wanted to wait for her. But she said no. So I asked her if she wanted me to come back for her a little later. She said no to that, too.”
    I nodded silently.
    “She was sure about that, Ben. She said, ‘No, you go on home, Luke. You don’t have to come back for me.’ ”
    But he’d gone back anyway, though several hours later, and only after calling Miss Troy to find out if Kelli had returned home. And so it was Luke who’d found her lying in the vines, Luke who’d bent down to check for any sign of life, Luke whose faded jeans had soaked up a small portion of her blood.
    He watched me intently. “The look on her face, Ben. When I found her, I mean.” He shook his head. “It was like her soul had been scooped right out of her.”
    I glanced away from him, but not toward the mountain. “There was a fire over at Lutton last night,” I told him, once again changing the subject. “An old, abandoned church. I thought I might drive over and take a look.”
    Luke smiled quietly. “That’s the sort of thing yourfather used to do, isn’t it? Go to where something had burned down or been blown away by a tornado.”
    “You want to come along?”
    Luke loosened the knot of his tie. “No,” he said. “I better stop by the nursery on the way home. I have some seedlings to put in. Probably be working there till late into the night.” He got to his feet, moaning slightly as he rose. “My back’s been bothering me a little.” He offered a thin smile. “Old age creeping up.”
    I nodded, then watched as he headed down the short walkway to his car. Once he’d reached it, he turned back toward me, gave a short wave, then got in and drove away.
    And so that evening I went to Lutton by myself, driving slowly up the winding mountain road, then over its