The Morning After Read Free Page B

sweaty hand, Prescott feared he might pitch himself over the cliff. But all along the way down he spied a smattering of blood. Maybe Billy hadn’t lied, after all. Just because the boy was known for telling whoppers didn’t mean he hadn’t actually struck the whitetail in a vital organ.
    Prescott eased his bulk through a thicket of saplings to a small patch of dead grass, a shadowy clearing in this dark ravine. Ringed by scraggly woods, the clearing saw very little sunlight.
    Billy Dean was standing to one side of a snag that bore the charred bark of a tree hit by lightning. In front of the dead tree and Billy Dean was a thick mound. At first, Prescott thought it was the lifeless buck, but as he got closer he could see that he was wrong. Dead wrong. Billy Dean was scratching the side of his face nervously while staring down at a pile of dirt and rocks that was about seven or eight feet long and over two feet wide. Billy’s dad’s old dog was whining and pacing around the edge of the neat, unnatural heap.
    “What is it? What you got there?” Prescott asked and noticed that the red dog held his nose up, into the wind.
    “It’s a grave.”
    “What you say?”
    “A grave, man, look. And it’s big enough for a human.”
    “No way…” As Prescott, breathing hard, walked closer, he saw that Billy Dean was right.
    The dog whimpered, his fur shivering.
    Prescott didn’t like the looks of it. A grave out here in the woods near Blood Mountain. No, he didn’t like it at all. “What d’ ya think we should do?”
    “Dunno.”
    “Dig it up?”
    “Maybe.” Billy Dean nudged a pile of soft dirt with the barrel of his gun, something his daddy would skin him alive for if he ever caught him.
    The hound was still acting weird. Jumpy. Whining and staring across the clearing. “Oh, shit.”
    “What?”
    Billy Dean leaned down. “There’s somethin’ here. A ring…hell, yes, it’s a weddin’ band.” He reached down and picked up a gold band with several stones. Billy wiped it on his pants and a diamond, a big sucker, winked in the poor light. Smaller red gems glittered around the diamond as the nervous old dog whined. “Jesus. Look at the size of it. Must be worth somethin’.” Squinting, he studied the inside of the band. “It’s got something etched into it. Listen to this: To Barbara. Love forever. Then there’s a date.”
    “Whose is it?”
    “Someone named Barbara.”
    “Duh! I know that.” Sometimes Billy Dean could be so damned dense. He might be able to run like a gazelle, but Prescott figured he weren’t no smarter than one of his daddy’s half-breed dogs. “But Barbara who? And why’s it here?”
    “Who cares? Too bad, though. The inscription prob’ly means it’s not worth as much.”
    “So what? You ain’t thinkin’ of stealin’ it.” But Prescott knew better. Billy Dean had a larcenous bent to him—not that he was bad, just poor and sick to the back teeth of never havin’ anything. The dog let out a low growl. Lowered his head. Prescott saw the reddish hackles rise.
    “I’m not stealin’ nothin’. I just found it. Tha’s all.” Billy pocketed the ring, then before Prescott could say anything else, let out a whoop. “Looka there. Now don’t tell me this ain’t my lucky day. There’s the buck! Shit-o-day! Look at him. It’s a damned four-point!”
    Sure as shootin’, the deer had dropped and breathed his last damned breath just on the other side of a pair of knotty oaks. Billy Dean had poked it to make sure it was really dead, and satisfied, was already unsheathing his knife, but Prescott didn’t help. He felt a chill as cold as the devil’s piss. It skittered down his spine from the base of his skull clean to his tailbone and it had nothin’ to do with the wind whippin’ and screamin’ down the holler.
    No, it was somethin’ more.
    A feeling, the kind that warned him of danger.
    Just like ol’ Red, the hound.
    Prescott glanced over his shoulder, his eyes squinting