Burke, ambling forward, drapes an arm around Randy's shoulder. His bulk engulfs even Randy's pale plumpness. "You should have a drink, old buddy"
"Later."
Burke winks at Roy. "I'm ready, Cap'n Roy" Roy frowns.
"Wish I was in the land of cotton," Burke sings.
Then they are all walking again, forward through the high grass along the bed of the old road, with the creek beside them and the wind in the old trees. The walk stretches through the rest of the morning and into early afternoon. At times Poke's Road nearly disappears, so overgrown has it become. They walk forward in a hot October, with Roy leading in his white tee shirt, and Burke close by him, displaying his broad bare shoulders, like a challenge.
They reach a sharp curve and then, beyond, a twin row of oak trees flanking a broad lane. Sections of fence have tumbled along the ditch. At one point, the remains of a footbridge have partly collapsed into the running water of the creek. Some of the sentinel oaks are dying; Roy points them out. Last night's storm has tossed one grandfather to its side across the road. A raw gash rips the earth beneath the upraised roots. Man thick branches are splintered in the air, oozing orange. The ground has a startled look.
"Must have been some wind," Randy says.
"It was some wind all right," Roy answers.
Burke stares into the plate of earth and roots, the shadow of which falls across his slightly dull expression. He scratches his hairy navel with a finger, then ambles ahead swinging his arms. Roy waits for Nathan to step away from the fallen tree.
Burke, near the road, feints an attack on Randy, then grabs him from behind, gets him in a headlock and grinds his arm on Randy's head, Burke gritting his teeth, sunlight cascading over his brown shoulders. He pulls Randy this way and that by the head. Randy, enraged, shoves Burke violently away and Burke staggers forward, laughing mildly.
Randy says, "You always try to hurt somebody"
Burke laughs into his fist.
Handing Burke his pack, Roy steps between them. Randy is still breathing heavily, glaring at Burke. Roy says, "You all right?"
"Shit, yes, he's all right, I ain't done nothing to him." Burke rips the pack from Roy's hand and straps it over his shoulders. Adjusting the weight, settling it over his arms.
"I'm fine," Randy says. "He just likes to be too rough all the time."
Burke has stepped ahead again. Roy, for the first time, follows.
Ahead, as if posed, Burke in a pool of sunlight studies the two halves of an iron gate, a stone wall.
Beyond the gate is a lane, now thick with weeds and undergrowth; Nathan recognizes a stand of blackberry bushes and a tangle of wild roses, out of bloom. At the end of the tangled lane, glimpsed beneath lowering branches, hangs a shadow, a broad sagging porch and slatted window shutters.
Roy flanks the vision now, and looks Nathan in the eye. "This is what I wanted to show you. I never brought anybody here before."
"This is a plantation house," Burke says. "My dad told me about this place. He saw it one time when he was hunting."
Roy chews the end of broom straw.
Randy says, "I didn't know there was ever any plantation out here."
"Some of the Kennicutts owned it," Roy says. "Their graves are out yonder in the trees. They cleared out the woods around here a way long time ago. They were kin to the people who had the place where our farm is, but that place burned down and the land got sold."
"And they all just left this place." Randy is gazing upward, at the vague outline of a roof beyond high treetops.
"It never did pass for much. That's what my dad said."
The first sight of the ruin, when they pass the oaks that obscure the mansion's breadth, take Nathan aback. He has never seen a house as large as this, and it rivals, for bulk, the federal courthouse in Gibsonville and the elementary school in Potter's Lake. Wooden columns support wide plank porches that surround both floors of the house. The wood has weathered uniformly gray, windows shuttered or broken, doors mutely closed. Dormer windows peer out from the attic. A tree has fallen across one of the side porches, shards of roof timber littering the overgrown yard beneath. The signs of damage are old; this did not happen last night.
They pick a path along the side of the house, beneath the shuttered windows and sagging porches. The stillness of the house lends an eerie sense of waiting to the walk, not as if the house is truly empty but as if its inhabitants are all hiding, or watching. Nathan remembers Roy mentioning a haunted house in the Kennicutt Woods and realizes, with a sense of wonder, that this must be the place.
They cross what had been the front lawn, leading down to a place where the creek widens over smooth rocks. By now the afternoon is waning.
"We should spend the night here," Roy says. "In the house?" Randy gazes at the huge bulk, perplexed.
"No. We can camp down by the creek."
"Good. I know I don't want to sleep in that house."
