Chapter Eight: In the Night

"We're not seizing Fort Knox, I don't see why you need all these precautions."

Nami scowled and attempted again to squish her bag closed. Girl was ready to take on everything but aliens, but that's ok, because she doesn't hold with nonsense like that. Or ghosts. Despite her apparent humiliation at the hands of Robin-Nicolette.

Luffy was stretching outside of her sight, moving his elastic limbs with a strange rhythm. In, out, up and down. His balance was perfect, his calm following to suit. Zoro was sharpening one of his knives idly, watching Nami struggle with her bag. I was sure I caught him smiling a little, out of the corner of my eye, but nothing's for sure. Usopp watched Luffy, enraptured by the latter's concentration.

What an odd sight we must have made. I tapped on my cigarette, leaning up against a tree in my jeans and under-armor, for when we played matches in the cold. It was also thick, and I was less likely to get ticks and the sort through it.

"Sanji," Luffy's inquisitive voice cut through the calm, "Is this a bayou?"

"No, that's in Louisiana. Different. Up here, it's a just a swamp."

"Or a holla."

"Hollow." I corrected him.

"It's holla, that's the way everyone else says it. Even Zoro." Luffy told me. "Just like the old lady in the house next door says 'War of Northern Aggression' instead of Civil War. Her grandfather was in it, he told her lots of stories -- and she told 'em to me. Wasn't that nice?"

I quirked an eyebrow at him. "Really?"

Luffy nodded solemnly. "I should have Robin write them down."

"Wagons ho!" Zoro said, brushing past us and following Nami's swatch of red hair into the thick swamp air. I brought up the rear yet again, listening to Luffy recount half the Battle of Manassas. We reached the road in good time, leaving one option: follow it.

We stood, four abreast, Usopp standing behind, again scared, looking down the winding road.

"Well . . . " Nami was pausing, so much for not being afraid of wee little ghosties. Luffy rolled his eyes.

"Got to do everything myself." And he set one sandaled foot in front of the other and disappeared before the rest of us even moved a muscle. We fell into a single file, though the road could have easily accommodated two lanes of traffic, single file seemed right in the depressive atmosphere.

In fact, this excursion was funded by Zoro and myself ( don't ask ) and was to last four days, in reality, we would probably last two on account of Luffy's enourmous appetite. Zoro was humming from his spot directly behind Luffy, before breaking out in a great, deep and cracked baritone.

"Up from "Third Base" to Huntington, they'd sing another victory song. Two! Three! Four!"

Nami kicked him. "If you're waiting for someone to sing along, you're pathetic."

"I'm just trying to lighten the mood."

"By sounding like you're drunk?"

Zoro considered this with an irked expression. "Actually, it's the only song you should all know."

"What's it from?" Luffy asked. Zoro stopped dead in his tracks.

"You . . . you don't know Tessie?"

"Tessie?"

"You know . . . Boston, you are the only, only, only. Don't blame us if we ever doubt you, you know we couldn't live without you. Red Sox, you are the only, only, only?"

Luffy shook his head. He'd ask me later why Zoro stomped off ahead, belting out that song at the top of his lungs and I said it was because he'd inadvertantly insulted Zoro's team? His team? The Boston Red Sox. So why is he so . . . ? I shrugged and answered it was a Yankee thing, they even had this huge rivalry that seemed to offend them if you called them a Yank. Why? Two teams that rivaled were the Red Sox and the Yankees. And the Red Sox lost, a lot, especially to the Yankees. Figures that Zoro would pick the losing team.

"Nah, I think he likes the challenge." Luffy continued on his merry way.

Zoro has lightened the mood. With him singing drinking songs and the like right in front of us, other chatting began. Even Usopp lightening up and was pausing to snap pictures with cheap a disposable camera. Even Nami was humming offhandedly. It seemed the oppressive density of the air had vanished.

Leaving us to look at the fork in the road.

"Well, which way?"

"I don't know."

"It says on this one that this leads to the main house, and this other parts -- "

"Get that thing away from my map."

"Well, I can't quite reach all the way."

"Get it away."

"Fine, it's going away. Little pissy, aren't we?"

"I wouldn't be pissy if someone decided to set the begonias on fire at two in the morning."

"Accident."

Nami tore the map away from Zoro. "I say we head to the house, more likely than not, there will be open spaces there because they were less fertile than the farm land, and they are on higher ground. The plants in this area would have left more bare."

"But," I too reached over her shoulder. "Farm land was also heavily worked for profit, it's also possible that this could have left it barren."

"Are you gonna argue with me too, pretty boy?"

I took a step backwards. "No, I'm just saying -- "

"We're going to the house." Luffy said, already heading down the path. "It's safer. I know."

Usopp nodded, his dark eyes darting around. "He's right."

We three gave the other two a collective glare, as if their gut feelings couldn't overrule our logic. But since this also meant that Nami won, she rolled up the map and Zoro and I reshouldered our bags. Good lord, what was in these things?

It took the remainder of the day to trek through the thinning roadway. There was promise in the ground, though. Domestic flowers peeped at us through the weeds and I spied an apple tree or two.

o-o-o

I checked my watch. "Somebody better take this down, four fifty two, seven twelve oh six, Cole Manor."

Which, naturally, loomed before us, a burnt out shell. The vines had claimed the lower half, their tendrils choking the window and doorways. The upper half of the ruin yawned into the sky, fragments of trusses jutting out awkwardly. It was apparent that the second floor was missing entirely.

"WOW." Luffy. Was. Thrilled.

You would have thought someone had just handed him his lottery winnings or had told him that he now owned all the meat in the world. He also seemed to be getting a little short of breath.

"Oh my god, guys! Look at it! I mean, it's great! We can poke around, maybe the treasure's in there and, uh, and, oh, I . . . uh." His frame swayed. "I don't feel good."

Nami slung his arm over her shoulder. "That's ok Louis, it's enough for one day. We'll make camp, get you something to eat, maybe some painkill -- "

"I don't want them." He snapped. "Stop giving me them. I don't want them."

"You need them." She responded in a reproachful tone. "Louis, pain isn't good for you."

"I said shut up! Stupid failure, can't even make it around the rink without falling!"

"Stop it."

"Stop it? I should get the hell back, not be in the middle of some fucking forest."

"Luffy?" Zoro's hands clamped over the boy's thin shoulders. "What're you doing."

He was fainting.

o-o-o

Eavesdropping is not a polite thing. But, you know, you can do it as long as you don't get caught. At all. And if you hide in the bushes. With a stick half way up some place unmentionable, but that's not what I'm supposed to be talking about.

"Silly, pushing yourself too hard."

By the way, Zoro, Mr. Macho, acting "cute" over a girl is slightly disturbing when she is not full of metal and ink. Or a roofie.

"Stop that."

"M'kay. You going to give him a hit soon?"

"You heard him, he doesn't want it."

"I'll do it."

"Don't. Look, he's two different people. Now he's eight again, getting the childhood he missed, right? Even if it kills him . . . no regrets, he's happy."

"Two people?"

"Then their's Straw. Nationals, Worlds, all simple matters. He wasn't, he wasn't nice."

"And you?"

"Me?"

"Who couldn't make it around the rink?"

"Oh, my parents sent me in, I wanted out. I turned eighteen, fought the system and took their injured ace with me."

" . . . I'm sorry, but that phrase . . . "

"What about it?"

"Nothing."

"Bastard."

"Only you."

I left them to banter so I could lapse into sleep in my tent ( my tent on the grounds that Zoro never showed up ).

The night was heavy, that night, and darker than any other I'd ever seen. Some time in the wee hours of the morning, I woke, feeling edgy and afraid. I reached out for my cigarettes and lit one, marveling at my inexplicable shaking hands. I clenched them into fists until the were still, taking deeps drags until there was enough nicotine in my veins to soothe the shivering. I exhaled the smoke, and a stick snapped out side.

Nothing, I told myself, a naturally occuring phenomenon, a stick snapping. And then another. Uncanny, I took a hard pull, almost swallowing the cigarette, but complete naturally. Then a third. I fumbled for another cigarette. Calm down. Calm down.

The soft swish of footsteps reached my ears. I choked on the smoke and struggled to keep silent as it burned up through my throat and into my eyes. The figure advanced on my tent. The zipper of the doorway was pulled open ever so slowly.

"Yo, you got the paper 'cause I gotta take a leak -- you look like shit." Zoro blinked sleepily. "Look like you've seen a ghost or something."

I was now quivering with rage. "You moron!"

"Eh?"

I wasn't bothering with couture, I sprang onto Zoro and held him down by the neck. "You idiot!"

"Mrt! Yearg, scared you, didn't I?"

"I -- oh . . . shit . . . "

"What is it?"

Zoro sat up knocking me down. "What the . . .?"

The house above us flickered, as if a faulty television picture. Tiny lights darted through the mouth of the upper half, as if teasing us. We heard footsteps behind us. Zoro took off running.

"Real brave you are!" I screamed as I caught up. "Real brave leaving me -- "

"Shut up! They're up there!"

"What?"

"The fire -- Nami, Luffy! You know!"

I lengthened my stride and passed Zoro. I came to screeching halt at the fire where Nami was still curled up in slumber, waiting for her pillow to come back. Zoro jogged over to where Usopp and Luffy were lodged.

He dragged the darker boy into the light. "Where is he!"

"It's not my fault!" Usopp shook as he tried to challenge Zoro. "He got up, all weird. I told him not to follow, but he didn't listen! He said he could hear the horses and smell the food, he was going."

"Where, where not why you skinny little -- "

"The house, don't hurt me."

"What, what?" Nami was waking.

"He left, that way, I couldn't stop him. They won't let me. There's nothing I can do. They can't hurt you, but they can hurt me!" Usopp snapped defiantly. "You can get him back tomorrow. When it's light."

"Well what's the difference?" Zoro said, drawing a knife. "So I have to use a flashlight, big deal."

"It's safer." Usopp turned back to his tent. "We can get him tomorrow."

Note: OK, most people I know do know the jist of 'Tessie', which is basically a Red Sox anthem sort of thing by the Dropkick Murphys ( also from Boston ). It got relatively popular after the Sox won the Series.