Free Thirty Miles South Of Dry County by Kealan Patrick Burke Page A

straightened and turned to look at The Bicycle Man. Face wet with the sweat of fear, vomit dribblin’ from his moustache and chin, he tried to square his shoulders, to look as if he were prepared for what were comin’. But he weren’t. We all knew it.
    “No,” I murmured, or maybe only thought I did, even though I didn’t even know what I were protestin’, only that it were bad.
    The Bicycle Man nodded like a conductor will before a performance. Just one time. But apparently that were all that were necessary, because Kirkland, weepin’ openly now, eyes red and swollen, unbuttoned his coat and from the waistband of his trousers, plucked the gun he’d had tucked there. The silver weapon hardly gleamed in the sick light.
    “Oh Jesus,” I whispered and felt Iris squeeze my hand. It was a warning: Quiet . We have no power here .
    Kirkland hefted the gun and looked from The Bicycle Man to the crowd.
    His desperate, sorrowful eyes finally settled on me. “This,” he sobbed. “This is your future if it decides it’s done with you. You’d better be ready.”
    I wanted to ask what he meant but I were afraid to say anythin’ more, and then his eyes moved away from me back to the monster at the center of this horrible scene.
    “I gave it everything,” Kirkland told him. “For nothing. Eventually someone will kill this place if it doesn’t kill itself first.”
    Then he brought the gun up under his chin, whispered a prayer and drew back the hammer.
    There was a long ungodly silence.
    The Bicycle Man mounted his bike, and, with that shark-like grin, tinged his bell one last time. Over its faint, terrible echo, I heard the vines creak and sigh.
    Kirkland pulled the trigger.
    * * *
    By the time we got over the horror and shock of what had happened, The Bicycle Man and Moses was gone. Nobody had seen them go, but the memory of the music still hung in the air like the threat of a storm. Weak-kneed, I knew I would never make it home, though that were a foolish thought because I knew I would never see my home again. Iris walked me to Kirkland’s house, a relatively sturdy two-story buildin’ atop a hill with a boulder outside that reminded me of the one at the town’s entrance. This one were engraved with the names of all the priests who had worked the parish and called the house their home. And accordin’ to Iris, each one of them were dead, either by their own hand or someone else’s.
    “This is yours now,” she explained. “This is where you’ll stay.” And, as if she’d read my mind, she added, “This is your home.”
    Some part of me wanted to object as she led me up that long flight of steps, maybe the last little piece of me that still wanted all of this to be a dream. But I knew it weren’t. Whatever The Bicycle Man had done to me with his look and the music, it had made me a believer in a brand new destiny.
    My friends was dead. They had been for a year. I’d been lost, lookin’ for a place that would have me, that would save me, a place an old addled man could bring his grief and secrets and ghosts and find a use for them instead of tryin’ to escape them. And I’d found it.
    In Milestone. And me the mayor. A town I had feared were now the town I would run.
    A blank canvas for my pain.
    The appointment had been made on the anniversary of the town, not by me and not by any of its people, but by a myth that were all too real—a thing legend had said came up out of a mine when the workers had tapped a vein and a wall had come down. The engine of this place.
    There was questions of course, but Iris would see to them in time if I didn’t learn them by myself, and Milestone would see to the rest. I were too tired to ask them then, and I had nothing but time.
    But first, I had to sleep. And when I did, there were no dreams, only a peace of the kind I hadn’t had in years.
    * * *
    There’s that look again, the one that tells me you think I’m three shades of crazy. And again I don’t blame you at all.