Dana picked up on extra stirrer I’d brought and used it to swirl her coffee. “Okay, so where did you see him?”
“At the Bend. Moccasin Bend,” I specified, remembering she wasn’t local. “It’s this spot a few miles from here; it used to be a sacred Native American burial site, hundreds of years ago.”
She frowned. “And why would he go there? Was he some cohort of the natives?”
“Probably. They knew about him, anyway, before the incoming settlers did. There are legends about him from before there were any white people here. They knew about him, and cohabited with him, long before Chickamauga was set apart as a park. At the very least, I think he would’ve been more familiar with them than he was with us. I think that after he abandoned the battlefield, he went looking for them. And the only spot nearby he could remember was the Bend.”
She grunted, a slight cough of agreement or approval. “All right. What’s there at the Bend these days?”
“It’s a mental institution for the criminally insane.”
Dana let fly a cackle that shocked me with its abruptness. “That’s brilliant,” she gushed. “That is fucking divine.”
“No kidding. I didn’t believe it when I heard it at first, but I have been assured that it’s true; and I’ve been out there myself. The place has a funny feel to it, if you know what I mean. Like something’s restless there. I can’t think of a better way to put it.”
“You don’t have to put it better; I get it. But more importantly, you saw Green Eyes out there? And you’re sure it was him?”
“Sure enough,” I said, hoping that my semicertainty made the grade. “I can’t imagine who or what else it would have been. At the time I didn’t know yet that the battlefield had been left to its own devices, but the more I learned about the ghosts the more likely it seemed. Then, once we caught the EVP, the dead confirmed it for us—at least the part about him being gone. And then, when I heard him talking—”
“Wait, he talked to you? What is this thing?”
I flipped my hands up in a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t know. Not human, but not a ghost, either—not in any traditional sense. He’s something solid, but mutable, or that’s how he seems. I wonder if…”
“What?”
It sounded too stupid to say out loud, but again I tried to give Dana the benefit of the doubt. If I was going to say it to anybody, she was probably least likely to laugh in my face. “I wonder if he isn’t the ghost of something else. Though really,” I added, “I have no idea what.”
She digested this without cracking a smile, though I watched her close and braced myself for one. “Okay. Maybe. Just because I’ve never heard of it, that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. He really seemed that different to you?”
I nodded with vigor. “Whatever he is, whatever he was—he’s never been human. Regardless, he seems to hold some measure of affection for us humans.”
“How’s that?”
“When he was talking, he said something about how the dead were his children. That’s why I called him a guardian—it’s like he feels a sense of responsibility for what happens out there.”
“You may be right, but that brings us right back around to the original question: Why did he leave in the first place? The last descendant of a general died? That’s crazy. Assuming for the sake of discussion that it’s true, how would Green Eyes even know about it?” Dana threw back the remaining contents of her cup, and laid her hand down over the top of it to head off any offers of refills.
Neither of us had an answer for that one, but we were distracted by the trotting tap of paws. Cowboy sidled down the narrow hall, with Karl close behind.
“Good afternoon, beautiful.” He tipped his hat at me, and I nodded in return. “Two beautifuls,” he amended his greeting, ducking the rim of his hat at Dana too. He recognized her quickly, as I might have known he would. He grasped the situation, but his manners wouldn’t let him leave the obvious unmentioned. “Oh, dear. I hope I’m not interrupting anything. Ma’am, I heard the news about your husband, and I want you to know I’m awfully sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks,” she squeaked, leaving a bumpy silence in the word’s wake.
“This is Karl,” I introduced him. “And Karl, it looks like you know who Dana is.”
“Yes ma’am I do,” he said. “And again, I’m sorry to meet you under such sad circumstances, but otherwise, it would be a pleasure.”
“Likewise, I’m sure.”
“I don’t mean to intrude,” he assured us, and I knew he didn’t, but I felt awkward on Dana’s behalf, “but did I hear the pair of you talking about Old Green Eyes? Because I think it’s just wonderful if the two of you are working together on that.”
“We’re comparing notes,” I admitted, and then I proceeded to ramble, because I was uncomfortable. “We were talking about how strange it is that Green Eyes seems to have left the battlefield. He’s been there for so long, it’s weird that he would up and leave—right around the time he seems to be needed most, when there’s some raving lunatic hanging around with a gun.”He pondered this for a minute, and I had to give him credit for not laughing at us for discussing such things so seriously. Then he fiddled some more with his hat’s brim and said slowly, “Well now, that does seem peculiar. But then again, maybe his time there was up, and that’s all. It may not be any more complicated than that.”
Dana frowned, creating two perfect vertical creases between her eyebrows. “As if he was on some kind of time limit? Like he’d signed a contract, and it expired?”
Cowboy dropped his rear onto the ground and grumbled a little sigh, expecting that Karl might be a moment.
“Something like that. I don’t know. You hear funny things about it, I’m just saying.”
“Funny things?” I prompted him to continue, though Dana cast me a look that spelled mild irritation.
Karl played with his hat, pulling it off and into his lap. “Well—and pardon me for eavesdropping, ladies, but on my way back to the restroom I couldn’t help catching just the tail end of what you were saying—I think maybe you’re asking the wrong question when you start with why he’s gone. You should start instead with why he was there in the first place.”
Dana’s irritation melted some. “That’s fair.”
“Look.” Karl seemed in a hurry to move the subject on. “There are a thousand stories about what Green Eyes has been doing out there at the battlefield all this time—but most of the stories I heard when I was growing up, they talked about him like he was there fulfilling an obligation. I mean, he used to be a friend of the native people—”
“The same native people who were run out of this area on the Trail of Tears, right?” Dana interjected. “If he was a friend of theirs, why would he look out for the place after they were gone?”
“But he stayed, tied to the land if not the people. I don’t know why, and I’m not pretending that I do—but after the Trail of Tears, and after Boynton and Van Derveer pushed the park through Congress, he stayed. And I think he must’ve had a good reason to.”
Something about his apologetics set off a red flag in my subconscious, but I couldn’t figure out what it was until Dana sorted it out for me.
“Wait—who?”
“Who what?”
She fluttered her hand in his direction, trying to draw the sentences back out of him again. “What you said just now. One of those names, it’s familiar. The ‘B’ one.”
“Boynton? That’s the name of one of the fellows who set up the park, that’s all.”
I rejoined the conversation with an abruptness that surprised even me. “I’ve heard it someplace else lately, too. But I can’t remember.”
Cowboy whined, and Karl scratched at his hatless head. “Oh, you mean that murder case, I bet.”
“A murder case?” Two related ideas were struggling to come together, but I couldn’t force them. I could feel them, though—like two mice underneath a rug, blindly running in circles and bound to collide with one another eventually.
“That boy. That Ryan boy. Boynton was his last name, too. Not surprising. Everyone’s related here.”
“No,” I said. “Not surprising.” But significant, maybe. “What happened to him? Do you know?”
Karl waved his hat, indicating the newspaper rack, I guess. “Oh, I’m not sure. He went missing a few weeks ago. Big-time football player at the McCallie school over there at the other end of town. They found his truck out in Rossville with blood all in it. Everyone figured he was dead, but it’s only lately that the papers have come out and said so, calling it ‘murder’ instead of ‘missing.’ It’s too bad, but I think we’ve all known for a while that he’s not coming back.”
His choice of words gave a jolt to the mice under my mental rug, and they charged towards one another.
The last was dead, and I gave my word.
The sentence came back to haunt me; it popped up before I could even place its origin. Before I dared connect the dots, I reached out and stopped Karl’s gesturing hat with one hand.
“You probably won’t know this, but did Ryan have any family?”
He looked at me with a confused yet willing tangle of eyebrows lifting high. “Well, I do know that, but only because the paper mentioned it. His parents died years ago in a car crash; he was at McCallie on a worthy student scholarship.”
I let go of Karl’s hat, and he replaced it on his head. “Ladies, if you’ll excuse me, I was headed to the restroom.”
We both nodded our permission, and he aimed the power wheelchair at the men’s room. Despite his lack of verbal instruction, the dog parked himself outside the door and assumed his best “good dog” stance of loyal attentiveness.