Chapter 3

The first thing Heath noticed as they rode into Strawberry was how many more buildings had simply fallen apart since the last time he was here with Suzanne, many years ago. The little house where he had once lived with his mother was nothing but rubble now, when it had been at least partially standing the last time he was here. The old saloon's walls were still standing, but the roof was caved in, and across the street, the jail still had some bars upright but that was it. A few other places had a wall or two still up or a door still there. He wasn't sure about the hotel - it might have been standing somewhere up ahead, but all the rubble blocked his view.

Heath pulled to a stop where the only street entered the town, and his sons pulled up beside him. "It's not much, is it?" Little Heath asked.

"Not anymore," Heath said. He pointed out the rubble that used to be his home. "That's where we lived after the war. It wasn't much, but it was a roof over our heads." He wondered for a moment if Hannah's old place was still up. It was at the other end of town.

"Where was the tent where you were born?" Little Heath asked.

Heath turned around a bit and pointed behind them. "Back that way. The town was mostly tents then. They're long, long gone."

"Can we get down and go see your house?" Nicky asked.

Heath decided it wouldn't hurt, and his sons climbed down as he did. Little Heath took the horses' leads and tethered them to the corner of a nearby building that was still standing, if minus a roof. Then he joined his father and brother.

Heath stooped and began to pick at the remains of his old home. It really was all rubble now, piles of wood and broken window glass. He found a squashed chair under the collapsed corner near what was the front door. Even the chair did not look familiar anymore.

"It wasn't very big, was it?" Nicky asked.

"No," Heath said. "It wasn't."

"You were really poor, weren't you?" Little Heath asked.

"Yes, we were," Heath said.

"Why didn't Grandfather Barkley help you out?"

"He didn't know I existed," Heath said. "He was just someone my mother became very close to for a little while, but then he went back to his life without ever knowing I was born."

"Your mother didn't tell him?"

"No. I don't know why not. Maybe she was afraid he'd take me away from her. But none of that is very important anymore. What's important is that there was a lot of love in this house, even if there wasn't a lot of much of anything else." Heath stood up. "That's what's important. That's what I want you boys to remember. The big house and the horses and all the land matter, but not as much as the love matters. Miss Thomson was full of love. Aunt Rachel and Hannah, too. And so are the Barkleys. They welcomed me when I came along and they gave me a lot of love, too. That's what matters."

Heath untethered all the horses and led the way down the street, looking for some building that was stable enough for him to take his sons into. He found was the hotel – which made him very uneasy, because of all the bad memories about the people who ran it, Aunt Martha and Uncle Matt, but it was the only one that looked stable enough to call "standing." Heath gave a sigh, tethering the horses to a rail that was still standing. Then he motioned his sons back up toward the hotel, and they went in.

The desk was still standing and so was the stairway, although some of the steps themselves had caved in. The roof was mostly crashed in, but there was some cover. A broken down sofa remained, and there were oil lamps on the desk and on the floor under the window, which was broken. Heath walked around behind the desk, looking for maybe a registry or something else that might prove interesting, but all he found were an old bottle of oil and an old box of matches.

"Hmm," he said. "Well, I'm afraid there isn't a lot here anymore – just some oil and a box of matches back here that'll maybe light a lamp or two. This was the hotel the Simmonses ran. There might be something down in the basement, but I don't want to trust any steps around this town, so don't you boys go down there."

Little Heath looked up to the second floor of the hotel. "Did your aunt and uncle live here, too?"

"Yeah," Heath said, following his son's gaze. He pointed. "That room in the back up there was where they lived. Used to be a little restaurant through that door behind the desk, but it closed before I left here. Pretty much everything closed before I left here."

"You said your aunt and uncle weren't honest people. How could they run a business like this if they weren't honest?"

Heath chuckled a bit. "They nudged the bills a little bit, claimed it was for taxes and such, and they got away with it. As the town began to close down, they nudged the out of towners even more. Then they got really dangerous. I thought they might have killed my Aunt Rachel."

"Wow," Nicky gasped quietly. "They're not here anymore, are they?"

"No, no, Nicky, like I said, they're dead now and there's nobody here."

Little Heath pointed to the old fireplace in the far corner. "It's getting on toward lunchtime, and we have some sandwiches. Do you think we can make some coffee in that fireplace?"

Heath shook his head. "The chimney's caved in. We'll just drink water with our food, save the coffee for later when we camp out for the night."

XXXXXXXX

They ate sitting on the hotel floor, talking some more about the town and what it was like when Heath grew up. After they were finished eating lunch, they walked around town some more. Heath pointed out buildings and told stories about things that he remembered were connected to them – the jail once held Terrence Cole, one of the biggest outlaws in California; the saloon was once so lively that they were allowed to serve liquor out in the street sometimes; a ladies' shop actually opened up at one time and his Aunt Rachel worked there for a while.

They wound their way up to the place where Hannah's house was just outside of town. "Negroes were not allowed to live in the town itself," Heath explained, "and again, I don't know why Negroes are treated that way, but they still are." He was saddened but not surprised to see that the house had completely fallen down over the years. He thought about how Hannah had cared for it when she lived here. "I used to come over here all the time when I was a boy," he explained. "Hannah would feed me cookies and milk, and she let me have my first cup of coffee. We never did tell my mama."

They wandered and talked the day away. Heath even felt his voice giving out as they found their way back to the hotel. The sun wasn't setting just yet, but Heath checked his watch and knew that it would be going down in an hour or so. He told his boys it was time to use the necessary out in back of the hotel before they rode out and camped out for the night again.

Little Heath used it first, and then it was Nicky's turn. "Come straight back here," Heath said. "Don't go roaming around." He knew his younger son had a tendency to go exploring if you didn't tell him not to.

"Okay," Nicky said and went out the back way, as he had seen his father and brother do.

"Papa," Little Heath asked after Nicky had left, "do you think Nicky is really understanding everything we've talked about?"

"No," Heath said. "I know you understand what happened, why I didn't have the same mother as your Uncle Nick and Aunt Audra, but Nicky doesn't, not yet."

"I can try to talk to him when we get home, if you want."

Heath smiled, but shook his head. "That's a father's job, Heath. And we need to give Nicky a couple years yet before we try to explain things to him. For now, it's enough he understands my mother was a different person, and that this is the town I grew up in."

"I'm glad you brought us here," Little Heath said. "It's been interesting, to see that you grew up different than we're growing up. But I'm awful glad you found your way to the Barkleys."

"Not near as glad as I am. They've been wonderful to me, almost since the day I got here."

"Almost?"

"Well, that's a story for another day. But you know your Uncle Nick. We butted heads at first, but not for long. I was a really angry buck when I came, but I didn't stay angry for very long, and your grandmother had most to do with that. She is a remarkable woman, Heath. I do love her like she was my own mother."

"I guess she is your own mother by now."

"She was my own mother almost right away. It was like she wanted me to be in her family just because I was her husband's son and she loved her husband that much. I'd do anything for her, and I felt that way almost from the start."

Little Heath smiled. "I know I have a lot to learn about families, but I think I've already learned that when you love your family, you've got a leg up."

Heath was beginning to be a little uncomfortable. Nicky should have been back by now. He gave him a little longer, but then he said, "I'd better go tell your brother to shake a leg. Wait here, all right?"

"All right," Little Heath said.

Heath went out the back door – and immediately stopped cold. The door to the outhouse was wide open, and Nicky was nowhere in sight. "Nicky?!" he yelled. "Nicky, where are you?!"

There was no answer.

Heath ducked down the alley a bit, calling his younger son, but he got no answer and saw no one. With an exasperated sigh, he went back into the back door of the hotel.

"That brother of yours has gone and disappeared, when I told him to come right back here," he said to Little Heath.

"Do you want me to look for him?" Little Heath asked.

"No, you stay here, and I mean, stay here. I'm gonna go find him. You get the saddlebags loaded back onto the horses and with any luck, I'll find Nicky and be back here in a few minutes."

"All right," Little Heath said.

Heath went out the front door, fuming and ready to wail Nicky good for disobeying him, but a quick look up and down the street told him Nicky was not out there either. Anger began to give way to worry. There was so much around this ghost town for a little boy to be hurt by – and it didn't have anything to do with ghosts.

XXXXX

Little Heath packed up the saddlebags and took them out to the horses tethered outside, as his father had asked him to do. As he did that, he could hear his father calling for Nicky but he didn't see him, and he didn't see Nicky either. He was beginning to be mad at Nicky himself – the kid never did do what he was told very well. And how in the world did he get lost between the hotel and the necessary that was right outside the back door?

Little Heath didn't notice exactly when he stopped hearing his father's voice, but suddenly it occurred to him that everything, everywhere, was silent. There were no voices. There was no wind. There was no sound at all.

And that was incredibly eerie.

He wondered what he should be doing. Nicky was gone – what if his father was gone too? Little Heath got a grip on himself and went back into the hotel, where his father had told him to wait. Inside, he sat down on the bottom step of the stairs, and he listened. He still didn't hear anything at all, not his brother, not his father, not even a rat scurrying around.

But he stayed where he was.

XXXXXXX

Heath had finally tried the building that had the most stable interior – the saloon. He saw that all the tables and chairs were gone and so was half the bar, but the other half was still intact.

"Nicky?" he called. "Are you in here?"

Nicky didn't answer him.

Just to be sure, Heath went behind the bar to see if Nicky was back there, but he wasn't. Heath stood for a moment, wondering what to do, trying not to be terrified that the boy had found some abandoned mine shaft or something, but he was afraid. Darkness was coming on. Nicky would only get more lost in the dark.

"Dammit, Nicky, why didn't you come back in like I told you?" Heath said to himself and began to walk back around the bar.

And then the floor caved in.