SEASON OF THE WITCH

Chapter 11

Note: Madelia is, to me anyway, pronounced 'Mah-day-lya'.


"I seriously need a nap."

Maddie glanced at Murdock, who had plopped down onto a bale of hay and was leaning back against the wall, his long legs stretched out, arms dangling. "I forgot that even late September can get damned hot in these parts."

She was more concerned about the upcoming events of the day. The hotel was finally ready for what would be an onslaught of guests and tourists, but the work that had gone into it had worn everyone out and tempers were short amongst the remaining workers inside. That had been why she had persuaded the weary-looking pilot to go outside with her. It was six in the morning, and the 'volunteer' crew had worked tirelessly through the night, getting everything ready, but now many of them had staggered off to find a shower, a bed, and air conditioning – the temperature was already going up.

Murdock had pitched right in, never complaining even as he'd been conscripted into hauling around bales of hay, giant pumpkins and gourds that looked like alien sex toys, after which he been pressed into mopping floors. At around four in the morning, with just four hours until the hotel doors would be thrown open, he had been asked to help out in the kitchen, chopping pile upon pile of apples that would be used for pies. He hadn't complained about that, either. In fact, he had seemed to enjoy the work. It was all something to do.

It wasn't unusual for it to be hot in Morgansville at the end of September. It was as if summer was only reluctantly surrendering to autumn, and was putting in one hard, final punch to make sure no one forgot about her. By the second week of October, temperatures would be dropping and the Northers would be blowing in, one on top of the other. Then the vicious, mean-spirited cold of winter would come in after Thanksgiving – little or no snow, of course, but cold so bone-rattling and exhausting that it made one wish for summer again. Maddie had always been amused by Yankees who laughed at Texans who got rattled by cold snaps, but then declared five days of temperatures over eighty degrees a 'heat wave'.

"I really appreciate your helping out last night," she said. "We do it this way every year, and after the festival is over, we swear we'll do it better next time 'round…but we never do."

"Another tradition, I guess." He slouched back on the bale and closed his eyes. She looked at him, and wasn't surprised to see he had fallen asleep.

"James?"

"Hm…?"

"You'll be going to the festival, right?"

"Wouldn't…miss…pumpkins…"

"Good." She smiled, shaking her head, and settled back against the wall, watching the sun come up. She jumped when she heard his cell phone start ringing – playing the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. She snatched it up, flipped it open and stared at the caller ID – Lieutenant Peck's face grinned up at her, and she rolled her eyes. "Hello?"

A pause. "Who is this?"

"Maddie."

"Are you…hey, you're…with Murdock?"

"He is asleep, yes," she nodded, glancing at the soundly sleeping pilot.

"Wow…he moves faster than I thought."

"We're on the front porch!" she snapped.

"Really? I have trouble picturing even Murdock doin' somethin' like that in pub-…"

"We were up all night working, you idiot! What do you want?" she snapped, irritated. "And what are you doing up at this hour, too?"

She heard Peck snicker. "Oh, is that what they call it now? 'Working'? Hm. Anyway. We are on the road, actually. Gotta keep movin', but I'm glad I got Murdock that drop phone – though I admit I'm surprised he still has it. Smart guy, but he tends to kind of…forget where he puts 'em. He has a mental block about phones. Hates 'em." Peck's joviality faded, and he sounded serious. "How's he doing?"

"He's fine," she said, lowering her voice. Murdock was still asleep, and she didn't want to wake him. "Out cold."

"Good. I mean…you know…he's been needing some rest, after…you know…everything. Though I suspect he's being kept kinda busy…what…hey, leggo!"

Maddie heard two male voices in the background, and recognized Colonel Smith. There were several muffled noises, followed by Peck grouching, and then Colonel Smith's voice came on the line. "Captain Morgan? You're sure Murdock is okay?" He sounded excessively worried, which was both touching and annoying.

"He's fine, Colonel, I promise. These past few weeks have been really good for him, I think. He's working on a house next door to the hotel, and living there, and I can't tell that he's stressed or anything. Seems well-rested and quite happy."

"Working on a house?" Smith sounded confused. "Well…he never ceases to surprise me. What's he doing?"

"Repairs, mainly. The historical experts will do the major restorations, but he's doing a very good job so far with repairing and upgrading. The roof is almost totally repaired and once that's done he'll be tackling the electric wiring and the plumbing…though I admit, getting started just a few months shy of winter isn't the best timing, but I know he'll get quite a lot accomplished before December." She closed her eyes, realizing that circumstances might prevent him from still being in Morgansville at all come December.

Murdock sat up suddenly, yelping "No! I won't do it! Let me go!" He looked around, wild-eyed, until he seemed to realize where he was. He saw Maddie sitting there with his phone to her ear, her eyes wide as she stared at him, and his brow furrowed in confusion.

"He's awake now," she said, and covered the phone with her hand. "It's Colonel Smith. Do you want to talk to him?"

"Oh…yes, of course…" He took the phone from Maddie, yawning and stretching. "Hey, Boss. Yeah…doin' fine…no, I'm…well, of course I am. No, I'm not overworked or stressed…Haven't seen Billy at all, in fact…nope. Seriously – I'm okay. Well, if y'all want to, but lay low…I think so…I doubt you could afford it…okay, I'll ask her." He looked at Maddie, his expression serious. "Would you mind harboring three more wanted criminals at Swale House?"

"Oh, dear God."


Maddie gripped her coffee cup and smiled nervously at her mother, who was gaping at Murdock. "You're…wanted by the military police?"

"Er…well, not technically. I mean, I…well…" He rubbed his face, struggling to find some way to explain himself. He glared at Maddie, who had moments before introduced him to Anne Morgan and then informed the poor woman that he wasn't actually a bonafide handyman, and could at any time receive a visit from large men carrying guns. "I wasn't actually convicted of anything. On an official basis, I should actually be…"

"That's not important," Maddie stopped him. "He's innocent, Mama. And so are his friends."

"The…the A-Team?" Anne shook her head. "And they're coming here?" She looked around her beautiful, immaculate kitchen and seemed to picture it burning to the ground, along with her beautiful, immaculate hotel.

"Well…yes." Murdock nodded. "They're…uh…kinda needing a quiet place to stay, where the MP's won't be looking for them, and…and…they don't know that Maddie knows them…I really hope you won't be making any phone calls, 'cause I really don't want to go back to Germany…or any other place like that again…"

"They're coming here, while the festival is going on, and while we have guests here from all over God's creation, and they'll all be living at Swale House." Anne didn't look happy about this situation. Murdock didn't blame her. He wished Face was here now, so he could do all the smooth talking and charming. He knew he lacked charm of any kind, and he was no smooth talker. Swallowing nervously, he leaned toward her.

"I promise you, Mrs Morgan – we're very safe. I mean…we're…we're…right peaceable men. That is, we're in the military…or…we were. They threw us out, and took our stripes, but…we're still soldiers, and you know that the United States military has done more to promote world peace than the friggin' United Nations…or even Ben & Jerry's ice cream donatin' one percent of their income toward it. We won't cause you any trouble, I swear. I'll even put 'em to work at Swale House, so they can earn their keep." Murdock took a sip of his coffee, imagining Face's reaction when he would be informed that he would have to deal with drywall and spackle.

Anne frowned at him, but he saw he had hit a nerve – her husband had been a soldier, after all, and all six of her sons were soldiers, and so was her only daughter. She looked at Maddie, who was still gripping her coffee cup, a bit shaky from lack of sleep and overwork, but sitting up straight just the same, as she had been taught from birth.

"Madelia Frances, you've done it again…started out with kittens, now its wanted men. What's next? King Kong?"

"Madelia Frances?" Murdock's eyes lit up with amusement.

"What?" Maddie looked offended. "I was named after my grandmothers, okay? Madeleine Morgan…nee Davenport… and Mama's mother, Georgia Frances Scarborough. They combined the names and got…Madelia. Madegeorgia just sounded stupid."

"I thought we were being very unique when we put the names together. Who'd'a thought there was a town in Minnesota named Madelia?" Anne laughed.

"It's still very unique," Murdock said with a very male little smirk. "Sounds better'n Maddie, I think. I think that from now on, I'll call her Madelia."

"Hello, sitting here!" Maddie waved at her mother and Murdock, and Anne snickered again.

She stood up, taking Murdock's coffee cup and refilling it. She returned it to him, leaned against the counter, and sighed. "The things I do for my children…and my country."

"So you'll keep quiet about it?" Maddie asked. "They can stay at Swale?"

"I've never known you to travel in bad company, Madelia," Anne shook her head. "If these men are the type of people you claim they are, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt…for now. Captain Murdock, was it?" She regarded Murdock with cool grey eyes that reminded him of past CO's that had initially thought he was off his rocker and then concluded that he was indeed off his rocker but an all-around decent guy anyway and the best pilot to have ever breathed to boot.

"Yes, ma'am," Murdock nodded. He took a sip of the delicious, scalding coffee. "Airborne Rangers."

"Hm. Murdock, right?" She studied him carefully. "What was your grandfather's name?"

He looked startled. "Alexander."

"Hm." Anne put her coffee cup in the sink. "I knew his youngest brother. Half-brother, actually…John Murdock?"

"Yeah…he was about ten years younger than my grandpa…he died several years ago. I didn't know him very well, but he was a funny guy. Had a great sense of humor."

"I knew him…somewhat." Anne nodded. "You look like him. Or…I should say, you carry yourself like him – same posture, same confidence. He was a very…interesting man."

Murdock and Maddie looked at each other, then at Anne, who had turned away to wash her coffee cup. She cleared up the counter, dried her hands, and turned back to face them. "Madelia, your cousin Caerlina will be here before lunch. I assume you'll be attempting to poison her before the day's over?"

Maddie frowned. "W-when will she be here?"

"About three o'clock I think. Captain Murdock, you look exhausted. Go back to Swale and get some sleep. Madelia, we need to go into town and get the booth set up, and I've got the displays at the school gym to check…plus your grandmother and I are in charge of the dunking booth this year, and I'm sure the Ledbetters are all over at her house, driving her crazy. Who will we get to be…dunked?"

"Not me. I can't swim." Murdock got up and drained the last of his coffee. He gave the ladies a brief bow and left, letting the screen door bang behind him. Maddie looked out the window and saw him trotting across the field toward Swale House. Anne cleared her throat.

"Well. There's an interesting man, to say the least."

Maddie nodded, chewing on her lower lip. "What do you…um…think?"

"Well, it's not for me to do the thinking…what do you think of him?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Maddie followed her mother out into the hall, where several morning-shift workers were doing last-minute spot checks for any sign of dust or disorder.

Anne rolled her eyes. "Oh, please, Madelia. Don't play that game. You and I both know why he's here, and what's going on. He's a good-looking, intelligent and very masculine man…and after what happened with Ellis, I can see why you'd be interested…but a wanted man? I mean, yes, I believe the story that he and his friends were set up. Like I said before, you're an excellent judge of character, but still…"

"Oh, so you think this is…that I'm…oh, a rebound? It's been almost five years since Ellis, and I can assure you, there have been a couple of guys since then…"

"Um, sweetheart, I'm your mother. You have your own life, and I can't tell you what to do with it – I just give you advice and guidance, but if you tell me that you and those men were…" She shuddered. "I'm sorry, but I am a mother. The very thought of that will just kill me."

Maddie rolled her eyes, exasperated. "Of course we weren't. I don't do that. And Ellis said I was…" The sting of what her ex-fiance had said to her came right back to her. It still amazed her, frankly, that she had shown up for the wedding at all, considering all the second thoughts she had had. For Ellis to be the one to not show up had been doubly humiliating. Ever since then, she had been more apt to follow her instincts rather than listen to a man's apologies and excuses. Reasons are not excuses – that was her motto since Ellis Grey.

What her instincts were saying about James Murdock, however, left her in a constant state of euphoria blended with panic, with just a dash of hormonal lunacy and since having seen him bare-chested, downright dizzy to the point of giggling every few minutes, like some idiot fifteen-year old. Her instincts had reacted much the same way the first time she'd met him, back at Camp Hooyah in Iraq, and when he'd prevented her from being assaulted two years later. Ellis certainly hadn't made her feel that way, and she had come within a few inches of marrying the jackass.

"What did Ellis say?" Anne asked. For the thousandth time. She had been trying to get Maddie to talk about Ellis for almost five years now, to no avail. Part of her wanted to know, but part of her was extremely glad she didn't. He had clearly done something to cut away at her daughter's self-confidence, and she was glad none of her brothers had found out about it, or Ellis would not currently be a successful attorney in Dallas, but would have instead undergone a certain 'initiation' involving a poisonous snake, a barrel and the Simpson River Dam.

"Never mind. But I'm not on any kind of rebound. And I'm not…Murdock and I are not…we're not…"

"You might want to get one of those truck beepers, for when you reverse yourself like that," Anne muttered shaking her head. "Either way, honey, it's pretty clear to me."

"What is?" Maddie asked, exasperated. "What?"

Anne started laughing. She was proud of her daughter – proud of all she had accomplished before even turning thirty. Proud of what she had overcome, and what she pushed herself to be. Her ambition and hard work had paid off, all the way to the Bolshoi. Injury had ended that dream, though, and so Madelia had pushed herself into a different direction entirely, and had also done extremely well. The only thing the poor girl still had yet to accomplish was to actually find a man who was halfway worthy of her. "Let me put it this way, sweetie – Captain Murdock looks at you the way a fat man looks at fried food."

Maddie flushed. "No he doesn't! And…and besides…besides, I…I'm busy here at the hotel all the time, and he's busy at Swale House…and he's kind of…uh…a mess himself, so…uh…shouldn't we be leaving now?"


Murdock spent the rest of the morning asleep on his cot on the back porch, screened off from mosquitoes and enjoying the breeze from the lake. By noon, he was awake and famished, so he got up, pulled on some jeans and a denim shirt and ate a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, then clattered outside to look around for something interesting to do. The bedroom upstairs had a fireplace, and he had spent part of one afternoon reading a book on how to clean out a chimney flue and remove dead animals if required (thank God it hadn't required that, though), and so now, he had a cleared out chimney and a pile of wood in the back yard that could be used as cord. So he grabbed an axe and went out to contemplate the stack of wood and think about Fargo. "He was a funny-lookin' little guy," he told the wood chipper next to the tool shed, but it issued no response.

He set up a block, lined up a piece of wood, and took a swing at it. The wood split nicely enough, and he stepped back, pleased. Soon, he was chopping away, whistling happily. After he had most of the wood cut, the heat was starting to get to him, so he took the shirt off, tossing it over a broken chair, and went back to work, singing an old spiritual he had learned from the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack.

"Hi!"

James Murdock, in spite of what a lot of people thought, was not by nature a nervous man. He had actually once been described by a girlfriend in high school as having 'nerves of wood'. He had been hard for her to deal with, in fact, because he didn't get overly excited about anything. At least, not until he took that girl to see a vampire movie at the Alamo theatre in Austin. Up on the screen, the much-put-upon heroine had been lying on her bed, having stupidly left the French doors open (with vampires in the area!), the mists rolling in off the moors, the curtains blowing in the breeze…and the bat flew in and then Dracula was bending over the girl's body. At that very moment, his girlfriend had kissed Murdock on the neck. He had let out a whoop of pure terror, spread popcorn over six rows of the theatre, spilled his Coke all over an unpleasant little man from Goldthwaite and was told by the theatre manager to never come back again.

Murdock had lost his virginity that same night. So all in all, it hadn't been a bad experience (his girlfriend had even expressed the same view), except for him having developed a lasting fear of vampires. But still…he didn't like being surprised. So when the woman standing there chirped at him, he let go of the axe and watched in horror as it flew through the trees and landed in the lake, about ten yards out from the dock. He turned to glare at her, momentarily wishing the axe had flown in a different direction, if only to teach her a lesson. Or kill her.

She was the definition of 'drop dead gorgeous', anyway. Tall, svelte, slinky and wearing a black pantsuit, her blonde hair twisted up into a knot. She was wearing Gucci sunglasses, which she slowly removed to look at him. She smiled, flawless blue eyes sparkling with amusement. Her skin was perfect, her lips full and pouty, and thus she immediately annoyed him.

"I'm sorry – didn't mean to scare you. I'm Caerlina Morgan."

He looked down and saw that he was half-naked. Disadvantage me, he thought, and snatched up his shirt. He pulled it on and buttoned it up. One of her sleek eyebrows lifted. She pushed the shades up on top of her head, studying him more carefully, until he started feeling itchy.

"James Murdock."

"I was looking for Maddie – is she around here?"

"Nope. Gone to town with Anne." He looked out at the lake, doubting that a search and rescue mission could be called for a drowned axe.

"Oh. What a pity." She held out her hand to him, and he shook it. She hadn't done a day's work in her life, he realized, feeling her soft palm. "She's my cousin. Her father and mine were brothers."

"Right. Well…got work to do…so…" He nodded toward the house, trying to signal that he wanted to her scram.

"Of course. Again, I apologize for startling you." She looked him up and down, then dragged her eyes back to his. "Are you working here at Swale House?"

"Mm." He wondered briefly about genetics, and shrugged. "I reckon you're here for the festival?"

"Oh, yes. I come every year – I was in Paris, but I managed to drag myself away. I never miss the Morgan County Fair and Fall Festival!" She sounded like she was exclaiming over having just seen the hottest film at Cannes, and sounded just as sincere.

"Paris, Texas or Paris, Kentucky?" he asked her, putting no inflection in his voice whatsoever, to see how she'd react.

She laughed, not disappointing him at a bit. "Paris, France."

"Oh. Yeah. Great city. Or would be, if it weren't for the French. Listen, I got work to do. See ya 'round. Vous êtes véritable verni à être vivant."

Caerlina didn't seem terribly offended by what he said, though she did seem a bit surprised to hear him speak French. She just shrugged and walked back toward the hotel, having been wise enough to wear flat shoes. Murdock went around to the tool shed to look for another axe. He had seen Caerlina Morgan's face on magazine covers, and not just fashion magazines, either. She was on the cover Us Weekly just a few weeks ago, after having broken up the marriage of some famous actor. To most people, she was just Caerlina (in the Madonna, Cher, Roseanne tradition), and she was regularly seen strutting the catwalks of Paris, Milan and New York, looking pissed. It always baffled Murdock, why fashion models looked so ticked off all the time. They were making lots of money to wear clothes that were worth more than the national gross income of several small countries (though frankly most of the outfits were hideous or hilarious), and yet they always looked like somebody just told them their dear old uncle Bob had just died and left the family fortune to the cat. He glanced back at Caerlina's retreating figure and shook his head. She was T-R-O-U-B-L-E.


Maddie spent the latter part of the morning in town, helping her mother set up the Morgan Hotel booth on Main Street, where the Morgan County Fair and Fall Festival was being held. The event took over the entire town, of course, with the rides and livestock judging taking place on the high school campus grounds, but local businesses pulled out all the stops to get attention from the tourists as they meandered through town. Automobile traffic was strictly banned in town during the festival, giving visitors every chance to see what the town had to offer while walking through on their way to the carnival and other festivities.

She was pleased to see that many of the tourists were stopping at the booth now, looking over the hotel brochures and definitely looking interested. Next door to their booth was the Cedar Creek Winery booth, which included wine samples and little pieces of cheese and those weird little crackers that tasted like chalk. Maddie slipped over to greet her friend – and distant cousin - Marni, whose father ran the vineyard.

"I hear your cousin Caerlina is gonna be in town. Gonna poison her again?"

Maddie rolled her eyes. The notorious 'poisoning' hadn't been deliberate – or at least not consciously so. Maddie had not actually meant to put the peanut butter chips in the cake mix. Still, deep down, she had kind of enjoyed watching her svelte, perfectly coiffed, elegant and famous cousin swell up to the point of resembling the Pillsbury Doughboy. It had only taken a quick trip to the Morgansville Clinic for a shot to clear up matters, but Caerlina had certainly made a production of the whole thing and had left the festival early, in a huff (and still slightly…plump).

"Marni, I'm warning you, I will bonk you in the head with a wine bottle…" She tossed back a sample of Cedar Creek's international prize-winning red wine and ate a piece of cheese. "I did not poison her."

"I've never seen anybody have an allergic reaction so fast. I mean, I'm a little allergic to strawberries, but it takes six or seven of them to make me turn a little pinkish. But Caerlina…wow…it was like somebody was inflating her with a bicycle pump."

Maddie almost coughed up the cheese in her attempt to keep from laughing. She glanced over and saw her mother signaling for her, but waved her off and was not surprised to see Anne shrug and get corralled into conversation with the Baptist preacher's wife. "Hey, how's the parade float coming along?"

"Granny's on it, and the rest of the Butler clan, which means the fistfight will be starting soon, I'm sure. Her hearing is getting worse, by the way – when I told her this year's float needed repairs, she thought I said the Senator's goat fell down the stairs." Marni shook her head. "But at least Granny's good at decoratin' that damned thing. God, I hate that float. Grapes everywhere…cheese melting in the sun…vines twisting in my hair, like some kinda horror movie, and this year…this year, I have to dress up like a Roman goddess! With most of the crew drunk on dewberry wine, so I'm sure that'll end well. Remember when Manuel got into the wine, right before he got behind the wheel? He came within maybe an inch of driving the float into the foyer of the First Baptist Church."

"Don't mention dewberry wine to me!" Maddie gasped. "One glass of your granny's stuff can put anybody under the table – I was out cold on one glass, and that's why I refuse to ever touch alcohol again!" She glanced down at the empty sample cup in her hand and threw it in the trashcan. "Remember those Marines? It took us three days to find them. And Manuel's escapade did get us full coverage on the ten o'clock news that night. And American's Funniest Home Videos. We missed the trifecta when the police didn't have to pursue. We could have been on World's Wildest Police Chases, too."

"And those Marines were all naked…mm…" Marni giggled. "Oh, look…there's the mayor."

"Let's hope we never have to see him naked. Hi, Mr Casebrooke." Maddie smiled politely. He was an outsider – a native of Dallas and Morgansville's former city manager. He was easily the dullest man she had ever met, but he was as honest as the day was long, and thus he was well-liked enough to have been elected to the job. He had introduced the notion of a town meeting to be held every month at the VFW hall, and actually listened to people. She couldn't say she liked Harry Casebrooke, but she didn't dislike him. He was a registered Independent, so she didn't even really know where he stood on the major issues. Since he worked hard to keep property taxes low, let parents have a say in how the schools were run, and his speeches never lasted more than ten minutes, he was pretty likely to get re-elected.

"Miss Morgan, Miss Butler. Everything going well?" He was short, balding, and unremarkable in every way. The perfect mayor, actually. No hint of scandal, though he was single (divorced) and believed to be quite straight. Just so…bland that no one could think of him doing anything out of the sphere of the completely dull.

"Yes, very well, Mr Casebrooke. Hey…would you be interested in sitting in the dunking booth?" Maddie asked.


Murdock walked to town, having no interest in driving the enormous King Ranch Ford pickup Maddie had forced on him shortly after he'd moved into Swale House. He liked walking – liked breathing in the scents of early fall and watching grasshoppers jump away from his feet. Dogs barked at him from yards, a jackrabbit froze when he realized he'd been seen and stood there on all four legs, only its nose twitching in fright before it finally couldn't take it any more and took off for the cedars. Murdock grinned when he saw a roadrunner take off, a lizard dangling helplessly from its beak. "Paz hasta usted, paisano," he called to the bird, but it was long gone.

He had a habit of taking a walk at dusk, to see what could be seen out in the cedar breaks, past the hotel and along the short, winding road to town. Deer didn't get terrified by just one man alone, after all, and would often just stand there, ears flicking around and taking in his scent – tonight, a cologne Face had given him for Christmas one year – before walking quietly back into the shadows. Passing a field, he saw an armadillo digging a hole, dirt flying behind it. He heard coyotes singing in the distance. Facing town, he could just the lights of Morgansville – a town Maddie said 'never takes a nap' – and the first night of the festival just getting under way. Getting closer to town, he could hear a band playing oom-pa-pa music common to fairs. From his right, he caught the scent of the lake – duckweed and rotting wood and fish, and he could hear water lapping against the man-made sand beach and the waterbreak. Further up was Simpson Dam, and he could hear the water splashing over it.

In the past ten years, Murdock hadn't had as much peace in his life. It had been war and violence and injuries and shrapnel and shouting. Choppers and the scream of bombs and the nerve-wracking thunk of rockets. Guns and rescuing stranded soldiers. Roadside bombs, fire fights, thrown rocks, raids, scorching sand, no water for miles around, crazy men with big guns and jihad in their hearts, coming for his throat. Capture, imprisonment, torture, escape, flight…moving, barely taking a breath sometimes, living by his instincts and lightning-fast reflexes. Nightmares and screaming and being tied down and straight-jacketed, confined in small rooms and scolded like a naughty child instead of a grown man with a mind of his own. Drugged and berated and shocked and then having jerks in white coats wonder why he was crazy.

All of that had changed, though. There was no one yelling at him here. He was not ignored, or patched up and thrown back into a war zone. He wasn't trodden underfoot, or scolded. For some reason, he was being treated as though he could think and be and do for himself, with no one requiring that he make any decisions on their schedule. The only things he missed were Hannibal and Face and B.A. – and flying - and soon, his friends would be here, too. Maybe they would enjoy the peace as much as he did. He hoped they would. Prayed they would.

He hadn't had any trouble sleeping lately, either, even in the screened-in room on the back porch. He still liked to leave the TV on, muting the sound when he was about to fall asleep, because the darkness still spooked him a little. Still, he hadn't a full-blown nightmare in weeks, and even the little nightmares didn't leave him shaking. Even better, he had his freedom. He could go for a walk at three in the morning if he liked – though he doubted Maddie would appreciate that much – or eat a pint of Blue Bell or climb up on the roof for some nude sunbathing, or whatever he liked. Usually, though, he worked. He liked the work, and felt good every time he got something else finished. He liked that the physical labor improved his health and strengthened his muscles and let him think. He liked the sense of accomplishment it gave him.

Like the roof, for instance. He turned back and could see the huge white pile of Swale House at the bottom of the hill, the lake sparkling in the moonlight beside it, and the glittering line of the creek dividing the pasture between it and the Morgan. He grinned, laughing to himself. The roof wouldn't leak any more. In a few days, he'd be putting the team to work on replacing rotted floorboards and fixing stained ceilings. Then Maddie would be telling him whatever else would need to be done, and he'd tackle that with as much enthusiasm and eagerness. He hoped it would be the kitchen, because that room was a disaster and he was already thinking of what all he could do in there.

He slowed, thinking about her, and doing his best to not think about her in any way except as a friend who seemed to believe in him. Why she had decided he was the man to do this kind of job was still baffling, though even he had to admit that he wasn't doing too badly. Besides which, living at Swale House meant he was just across the pasture from her and – this made him feel like a total heel, but he wasn't dead for God's sake – he had a good view of her bedroom window at Rose Cottage. Not that he had seen anything, but if she didn't want him to try to see anything, why did she turn on her light at night? He used that logic whenever he found himself sitting there on the porch, staring at her window, knowing she was in there, getting ready for bed. Hell, it wasn't as though he had bought binoculars, or a telescope. Yet.

When the weather got chilly, he slept in the house, upstairs in the room he had set up. He hadn't heard the eating ghosts yet, but he had to admit that in the mornings, he saw silvery lines on the rocks in the back yard. Maddie would say had been inside, eating while he slept. But he hadn't noticed any food missing. He still had his jar of mustang jelly and his Jiffy peanut butter, and a loaf of bread. The china, knives and forks were as yet unused – he only used paper plates and plastic cutlery.

He knew the nighttime noises from outside were caused by a possum that lived under the back porch, making a bit of a racket every night as it patrolled, but those sounds were not as familiar any more, but he was just getting used to them. After all, it had been years since his childhood at Oatmeal, where the cedar breaks were far thicker and where a mountain lion could even be heard screaming out there from time to time. It was an adjustment – or a readjustment, really, to be hearing sounds he hadn't heard in almost twenty years, and smelling scents that had been all but forgotten. The wind in the grass and in the cedars was like music, though, and better than any he had ever heard before. All he needed was his grandfather reading Louis L'Amour novels to him and he'd be eight years old again, his imagination running wild with the cowboys and Indians his grandfather read to him about. He stopped and looked up at the sky, a swirling soup of wispy clouds obscuring so many of the stars.

He was about forty-five miles north of home, as the crow flew, but when he looked up at the sky and started walking more quickly toward Morgansville and the noise and stink of a county fair and festival, he knew that God was in His heaven and all was right with the world.

For better or for worse, and however long it might last, he was home. He listened to the night sounds again, wondering what might happen next, and was extremely eager to find out.