Lugging the dynamite box out from under the house and loading it on Hely’s old red kiddie wagon had been easier than they’d imagined; they hadn’t seen a soul. The night was hazy and sweltering, with rumbles of thunder in the still distance. Cushions had been removed from porch furniture, sprinklers turned off and cats called indoors.
Down the sidewalk they rattled. It was only two blocks up High Street on open sidewalks to the train depot, and the farther east they got—closer to the freight yards, and the river—the fewer lights they saw. Tall weeds jingled in neglected yards, which were posted with signs which read FOR SALE and NO TRESPASSING.
Only two passenger trains a day stopped at the Alexandria station. At 7:14 in the morning, the City of New Orleans stopped in Alexandria on her way home from Chicago; at 8:47 in the evening, she stopped again on her way back, and the rest of the time, the station was more or less deserted. The rickety little ticket office, with its steeply pitched roof and its peeling paint, was dark, though the ticket master would arrive in an hour to open it up. Behind, a series of unused gravel roads connected the switching yards with the freight yards, and the freight yards with the gin, and the lumber mill, and the river.
Together, Hely and Harriet stopped to ease the wagon off the sidewalk and down onto the gravel. Dogs were barking—big dogs, but far away. To the south of the depot were the lights of the lumberyard and, further back, the friendly streetlamps of their own neighborhood. Turning their backs upon these last glimmers of civilization, they headed off resolutely in the opposite direction—into outer darkness, and the broad, flat, uninhabited wastes stretching off to the north, past the dead freight yards with their open boxcars and empty cotton wagons, and towards a narrow gravel path vanishing into black pine woods.
Hely and Harriet had played along this isolated road—which led to the abandoned cotton warehouse—but not often. The woods were still and frightening; even in broad daylight the gloomy footpath—choked to a thread—was always dark beneath the dense, vine-strangled canopy of ailanthus, stunted sweetgum, and pine. The air was damp and unwholesome, whining with mosquitos, and the silence broken only occasionally: by the startling crash of a rabbit through the thicket, or the harsh caws of unseen birds. Several years ago, it had sheltered a team of convicts escaped from a chain gang. Never before had they seen a living soul in that wasteland—except, once, a tiny black boy in red underpants who, bent at the knee, had chunked a rock underhand at them and then tottered back, shrieking, into the underbrush. It was a lonely spot, and neither Harriet nor Hely enjoyed playing there, though neither admitted it.
The wagon tires crackled loud on the gravel. Clouds of gnats—undeterred by the fumes of the insect repellent they’d sprayed themselves with, head to foot—floated around them in the dank, airless clearing. In the shadow and dusk, they could only just see what was in front of them. Hely had brought a flashlight, but now they were here, it didn’t seem like such a good idea to shine lights all over the place.
As they went along, the path grew narrower and more choked with brush, pressing in close on either side like a pair of walls, and they had to roll along very slowly, stopping every now and then to push branches and twigs out of their faces in the dense, blue twilight. “Phew!” said Hely, up front, and as they rolled forward the buzz of the flies grew louder and Harriet was struck in the face by a moist, rotten odor.
“Gross!” she heard Hely cry.
“What?” It was getting so dark that she couldn’t see much more than the wide white bands on the back of Hely’s rugby shirt. Then gravel crunched as Hely lifted the front of the wagon and pushed it sharply to the left.
“What
“A possum.”
A dark lump—whirring with flies—lay bunched and shapeless on the footpath. Despite the twigs and branches scratching at her face, Harriet turned her head away as they edged past it.
They pushed ahead until the metallic drone of the flies had faded and the stink was well behind them, then stopped for a moment to rest. Harriet switched on the flashlight and lifted a corner of the beach towel between her thumb and forefinger. In the beam, the cobra’s small eyes glittered at her spitefully when he opened his mouth to hiss at her, and the open slit of his mouth was horribly like a smile.
“How’s he doing?” said Hely, gruffly, hands on his knees.
“Fine,” said Harriet—and jumped back (so that the circle of light swung up crazily in the treetops) as the snake struck against the screen.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” said Harriet. She switched off the flashlight. “He must not mind being in the box too much.” Her voice seemed very loud in the silence. “I guess he must have lived in it his whole life. They can’t exactly let him out to crawl around, can they?”
