on us and we’d have to explain all this.
The eel spasmed and jerked and fell into the leaf litter inches from my feet. I jumped onto the log, Rudy and Gloria cried out, ran halfway to the Fort, Jenny shuffled backward but she was slow. The eel flicked itself, landed on her bare foot. She shrieked as if stung, the spell of the body broken, and kicked out.
I lunged for her, pulled her close to me, wrapped my arms around her shoulders. The eel landed far from the water, then as if sensing its distance, increased its convulsion.
We all looked to Rudy but he was up on a tree stump, squealing worse than Jenny.
The eel flicked toward us and Jenny and Gloria screamed afresh.
‘Kill it!’ they yelled.
Do something, Johnny boy, get your head together and goddamn do something.
I grabbed a stick, hooked it beneath the eel’s body and flicked it in a long, squirming arch into Big Lake.
A breath. A beat. A splash.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Rudy said, finally climbing down from his perch.
I looked at him, big brave Rudy Buchanan, shaking like a sissy with a spider on his hand. Rudy would take down a bully in a single punch but he was quaking in his shorts at a fish? I tried not to laugh.
‘It’s just an eel. What are you so afraid of?’
He glared at me. ‘It came out of a dead body.’
‘Johnny, come on,’ Jenny said. ‘We should be getting home.’
We shouldn’t. We didn’t have a curfew and Momma wouldn’t be wringing her hands for us. But when I looked around at my friends, my sister, I saw them all shaken. In truth, I was shaken too but one of us had to keep it together or we’d all be screaming on tree stumps.
I’d gotten rid of the eel but the body, the girl, she lay where we’d dragged her and all humour drained from my mind. It changed the day. Turned the blazing sun cold. Jenny’s face showed raw confusion at what we’d found, what it meant. I saw the same in Rudy’s eyes, in Gloria’s. Hooked lips and frowns.
I usually had the answers but today, I was as lost as them.
The four of us left the Fort in shuffling silence. We emerged from the trees and the sticky evening heat pressed against us. I suddenly missed the cool, sheltered air of the Roost but couldn’t face going back down there. Not now, maybe not ever.
‘We have to tell the sheriff,’ Gloria said. ‘They have to find out who she is and who did that to her.’
‘Cops won’t do anything,’ Rudy said. ‘There’s all sorts going on in this town they don’t know about. Shit, if they did, Samuels would have a heart attack.’
Gloria scowled at him. ‘I think a murder is a little more important than your dad’s chop shop.’
Rudy sneered and mimicked her voice. Gloria punched him in the arm.
‘What will they do to her?’ Jenny asked, looking back toward the trees, toward the valley and our lake.
‘Take her away,’ Rudy said. ‘Put her in a morgue. Find her parents, I suppose.’
‘I’m going to tell the sheriff,’ Gloria said.
‘We’ll get in trouble,’ I said, a knot forming in my chest. ‘We moved her.’
‘Yeah, we will,’ Rudy said, his finger bouncing in the air. ‘He’s right. We moved her. They’ll think we did it.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Gloria’s scowl deepened.
‘All the detective books and cop shows say you don’t touch the body, Gloria, and you definitely don’t move it,’ I said. ‘Maybe we should wait until Samuels finds her himself?’
Rudy pointed at me, his arm straight out. ‘I like Johnny’s plan.’
‘It’s a stupid plan,’ Gloria said. ‘I don’t care what you say, I’m going to tell Samuels.’
Rudy grabbed the back of his neck with both hands, his elbows stuck out like sails. ‘Just wait, yeah? Just a day. Maybe do one of those anonymous tip-offs and leave us out of it.’
His voice turned small. ‘They’ll think I had something to do with it. They’ll lock me up, Gloria. I’m a Buchanan. I got bad blood, remember, and everyone in town knows it.’
Jenny put her arm through Rudy’s, held his hand and pushed her cheek against his shoulder.
‘You’re not bad,’ she said. ‘We’ll all tell Samuels the truth. You didn’t touch her and if they think otherwise, they’ll have to go through us to get to you. Right, guys?’
‘Right,’ Gloria said and took Rudy’s other hand.
I completed the circle, put my arms over Jenny and Gloria’s shoulders, pulled the four of us into a group hug.
‘We’re like a flock of birds, aren’t we?’ I said. ‘We stick together and we protect each other from eagles and eels, hey?’
I prodded Rudy’s stomach and he told me to shut up.
‘A flock. I like that.’ Jenny patted my back. ‘We’ve got a Roost after all.’
Rudy finally smiled. ‘You and your birds, Johnny,’ he said, just as quiet, then shook his head. ‘If only we were, huh? We could all fly the hell out of here.’
‘We will, one day. All four of us,’ Gloria said, then checked her watch. ‘I’ve got to go. Daddy’s taking me to the fairground in Bowmont tonight. Mom is at one of her Clarkesville society dinners and thank God she didn’t make me go to that. I’ll win you each a teddy bear.’
Gloria broke the circle and Rudy went with her, to see her home like he always did. Then he turned, walked backward a few steps.
‘We’re a flock, yeah?’ he shouted, the wince, the curl, the confusion still on his face, though he tried to put a mask over it. He smiled, flapped his arms like wings. ‘Ca-caw, ca-caw, Johnny. See you guys tomorrow.’
They waded through Briggs’ wheatfield toward town, waist-high in gold, as if their torsos were floating free. We walked everywhere. Jenny and me didn’t have bikes. No money for scrap metal that does a job your legs can do just fine, Momma always said. Rudy was fixing up a broken, rusted-up Schwinn but getting nowhere, and Gloria had a pink Raleigh she refused to ride because we couldn’t ride with her.
I let myself smile as I watched my friends. My flock.
Jenny fidgeted by my side. The calm she’d had with Rudy and Gloria had gone with them. She glanced at me, then away, then down at her feet.
I couldn’t move. Behind, the Fort and the body. Away to the left, my house, empty and sweltering. Right, Rudy, Gloria and the cops. Ahead, nothing but fields and sky. The sun burned rich orange and bled into the clouds. A swarm of starlings, black
