“Of course, of course. You know you guys are always family to me.” His eyes flitted away then, staring at some distant point on the wall.
“This isn’t purely a social visit, though.” Gideon set aside the letter and flier on a pile of records stacked beside the couch, and Leonid looked sharply at him. “There is something I wanted to ask you about.”
“Oh?” Leonid’s eyebrow arched so high, it looked like it might spring off his forehead.
Gideon took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to explain it exactly, but we’ve all felt it.” He looked to Luka and me, and we both nodded our confirmation. “There’s just something … strange in the air. Something playing with our senses.”
“No, I know exactly what you’re talking about.” Leonid nodded feverishly and scratched at his protruding collarbone. “Something around here plays with the senses.”
Gideon leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “Do you know what it is?”
“I don’t know what it is, but I know that it is. It exists.” He swung his long arm back, pointing at the swamp through the cracked windows at the back of his apartment. “Do you know what the swamp is called?”
“Um, Mystic Swamp?” Luka guessed lamely, causing us all to give him an odd look.
“No.” Leonid shook his head. “It’s called the Nukoabok Swamp. Nukoabok means ‘mad river,’ according to the Choctaw Nation.”
“Wait. Wait.” Luka held up his hands. “Are you saying that’s like an old Indian burial ground?”
Leonid snorted—a rather mucus-y sound that traveled through his long nose. “No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve been watching too many scary movies.”
“Well, what exactly are you saying?” Gideon asked.
“The Choctaw Nation were the first people to live here, centuries ago.” He stood up and began pacing as he spoke. “But when they lived here, all that time ago, it was a river flowing fast and strong. Even then, though, they felt it. They sensed it the way any person senses it. I bet the animals feel it too.”
“What’s ‘it’?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Leonid gestured wildly. “Whatever it is that you’re feeling, that I feel.” He pointed at that swamp again. “It comes from there. I guarantee it.”
“Then why do you live so close to it?” Gideon asked. “Wouldn’t you at least want to live on the other side of town?”
“The rent’s cheap here, for one thing,” Leonid explained. “And for another, the water’s harmless. I mean, yeah, I believe it has a power of its own, but so do we.” He motioned to us. “We all have some kind of power that everyone else would claim is supernatural. But that doesn’t make us bad or dangerous, right?”
When none of us replied, he asked again, more insistently this time, “Right?”
“Right, of course not,” Gideon said, his tone soothing to help quiet Leonid’s agitation. He looked to Luka and me, and we both smiled. “We’re not dangerous.”
“Right.” He nodded, as if to convince himself. “It’s growing, I think.” He scratched his head, his long fingers tangling with his stringy hair, and looked back at the swamp. “It’s getting bigger. I mean, I know it’s gotten bigger since the Choctaw Nation moved on.”
“Bigger?” I echoed.
“It used to be a river, but the silt slowed it down, and now it’s a nearly stagnant tributary.” Leonid stared out the window at it. “The water used to move through, but now it just sits.” Then he turned back to us with a too-wide smile plastered on his face. “But it’s just like you said. Just because it’s powerful and supernatural don’t mean it’s dangerous.”
But he gulped when he said it, like he wasn’t quite sure he believed it himself.
17. mad river
The midway opened at ten, but our part of the carnival—the sideshow with the acts and the oddities museum—didn’t start until four, when more of the crowds began arriving. We’d gotten back from visiting Leonid a little before three, so Gideon called a meeting at the top of the hour.
With the cheerful music wafting over from the rides, we gathered in the middle of the campsite. A few lawn chairs had been set in a circle, and my mom sat front and center next to Betty Bates. I felt wired, like an electrical current was running through my legs, and I didn’t think I could sit if I wanted to. So I stood off to the back, next to where Roxie, Hutch, and Luka sat on top of a picnic table.
Just before the meeting was set to begin, Tim Phoenix hobbled out of his trailer. A beige Ace bandage was wrapped tightly around his knee, and Luka leaped off the table and rushed over to help him.
“What happened?” Luka asked him in a frantic whisper as he hooked an arm around Tim’s waist.
“I just fell during practice.” Tim tried to shrug it off as Luka helped him to a seat. “It’s nothing.”