Stoneskin's Revenge Read Online Free Page B

“Grew up there, but my folks’re from western Carolina.”
    “You Cherokee?”
    Calvin nodded. “Good guess.”
    The man shrugged. “Common sense. Ain’t no official Creeks no more, or Yuchi—which is what we had ’round here—and you don’t look Seminole, if you don’t mind me sayin’.”
    “No problem,” Calvin assured him, wondering how Seminole, in fact, looked. He’d never seen one.
    “Just passin’ through?”
    Yep, that was the standard next question; Calvin knew that from experience too. Usually folks were simply curious—Southerners were like that: they didn’t much care what you did long as they knew you were doing it. It was sneakiness they couldn’t abide—and this far south, there wasn’t much bigotry toward Indians. Trouble was, folks tended to confuse Calvin’s brand of unobtrusiveness with sneakiness.
    “Uh, yeah,” Calvin acknowledged finally. “Rode down to Cumberland with some friends to do a little…research. Never been here before and decided it was pretty neat country, so I figured I’d hang around a spell and get a feel for the territory, maybe do some thinkin’.”
    “Good place for that ,” the man chuckled. “Lord knows ain’t nothin’ else happens ’round here—’cept hurricanes, and ain’t quite season for ’em yet. Had a big blow last night, though—guess you know that—if you ’uz down at Cumberland.”
    “Yeah,” Calvin replied, glancing out the expanses of plate glass that fronted the store to where the parking lot was awash with drifts of Spanish moss and broken twigs, all aglitter in the sun. “I missed the worst of it,” Calvin continued, “but some friends of mine were caught right in the middle.”
    “They come through okay?”
    “Well as can be expected.” And with that Calvin turned away, suddenly having no desire to continue the conversation, since he knew for a fact that the storm had not been remotely natural.
    In the ensuing silence, he abruptly became aware of the ceiling fan.
    Something about it made him think of flying. Perhaps it was the low-pitched wop-wop-wop that reminded him of vast wings flapping. Perhaps it was the breezes fanning his cheeks that made him imagine the winds of the high air wafting him along. It was a dream, he thought lazily, one all men shared, no matter what their ethnos: to go where one would, not limited to the land; to rise up or glide down at will; to proceed straight to one’s goal; to ride on the back of the wind and see things others could not…
    “You okay?”
    The query startled him from his reverie. He blinked, spun around, puzzled as the colors in the room seemed to shift. “Yeah,” he managed, blinking once more. “I’m fine.” He hesitated at the door with his hand on the crossbar.
    “There a pay phone around here?”
    The clerk started, took nearly as long to reply as Calvin had earlier taken to respond to him. “’Round the corner. Cost you fitty cent.”
    “Thanks,” Calvin called, and stepped outside.
    He halted at the edge of the concrete curb to wipe his face and shift the items in the plastic bag to his backpack. He wished he’d thought to buy a pair of cheap shades, for the world had gone hard and hot with the glare bouncing off pavement, off metal and plastic, off the white sands of the parking lot behind. He almost went back in, then changed his mind. No sense revving up the conversation again.
    He was just turning the corner in quest of the promised phone when the crunch of bicycle tires reached him, almost simultaneously with a whoop of victorious exultation.
    Trying not to look as if he’d been startled (which he had, a little) Calvin turned slowly around—and saw two lads, maybe thirteen or fourteen, who had evidently been racing on their ten-speeds. Both were around five-foot four or five; both wore cutoffs, sneakers, and T-shirts; and the blonder one was starting to fill out some. The slighter, dark-haired kid noticed him first, and Calvin saw the boy’s