Ms. Glassman laughed. “My, you two are morbid, aren’t you?”
Brooke laughed, which was perfect, because a laugh was exactly what the situation needed and I could never make it look natural. We needed her to keep talking about this—she was presenting Dillon as some kind of quiet paradise, where nothing ever went wrong, but that couldn’t be true if there was a Withered here. We still didn’t know what Attina could do, or how or why, but even a Withered who didn’t kill—like Yashodh or Elijah—still caused problems. Elijah was an outright good person, and actively tried to help people and avoid problems, but he still couldn’t survive without a constant stream of death. Even if other people caused it, the Withered needed death. They fed on us like parasites, and yet Dillon seemed completely healthy.
We’d come to Dillon because the memories Brooke had gained from Nobody located a Withered here decades ago, but what if it had left? The highway had bypassed the town, just like it had a thousand other little towns across the country, and the population had dwindled. There was no way the tiny population of Dillon could support a drive-in theater today. So the people had left, and the Withered had left with them. Dillon wasn’t a viable food source anymore.
“These rolls are wonderful,” said Brooke. “Did they just come out of the oven?”
“Thank you, dear,” said Ms. Glassman. “That’s so sweet. I mixed the batch this morning and let them rise while I was at church. Then I just threw them in the oven when I got home, easy peasy.”
“But you didn’t know we were coming,” I said. “You didn’t invite us until you were already an hour into church.”
Ms. Glassman smiled. “I’ve been making a fresh batch of my grandmother’s rolls first thing before church every week since she passed. Why do you think I had the ham all ready to go, or the bacon-pecan pie? I trust the Good Lord to put someone deserving in my path, and when he does, I have a lunch all ready for them.”
“Does that happen a lot?” asked Brooke.
“Honey,” said Ms. Glassman, “if you make a pie and ask people if they want to eat it with you, you’re never going to eat alone.”
Was Dillon really this nice? This quiet and peaceful, with nothing under the surface, no evil secrets, no hidden killers?
If it was, then I was the worst person here. Derek and his buddies were awful, but they’d backed down—even three to one, the mere glimpse of a knife had scared them off. They were harmless. I, on the other hand, wasn’t even mad anymore and I still wanted to cut Derek into pieces, nice and slow, until he was in so much pain he couldn’t even scream.
Robberies were one thing, but I needed to know about the real statistics. “How often do people die here?” I asked.
“Don’t,” Brooke hissed.
“That’s a … shocking question,” said Ms. Glassman.
“The last town we visited had a string of cancer deaths that they eventually attributed to nuclear testing,” I said, making up a story as I talked. “They were downwind of a bomb site back in the fifties, and the radiation was still poisoning the water. Every place we’ve visited has had a story to tell, and I think when I get back to college I’d like to write a paper about it.” I looked at Ms. Glassman closely, trying to ascertain if she was hiding any information from us. “So what does Dillon have? Suicides, unexplained illnesses, an abnormally high number of … I don’t know, painting accidents?”
Ms. Glassman raised her hands in a helpless shrug, staring at the table as she tried to remember. “I have no idea. Aside from Clete’s foot, and a boy that fell under a thresher that same year … we don’t have anything. If they didn’t take the ambulance to the elementary school every spring, we’d forget we even had one.”
I looked at Brooke, and she looked back at me.
“Will you be staying long?” asked Ms. Glassman.
“No,” said Brooke. “I think we’re leaving later today.”
10
“G, H, I,” said Brooke, cupping her hand as she held it out over the side of the truck, catching the air as it rushed past. “Highway.”
“You told me you can’t just spell things you see,” I said.
“There was a sign,” said Brooke, pointing over my shoulder. “You gotta turn around, you’re missing half the letters.”
“Technically I don’t have any letters.”
“‘Highway’ has an A in it,” she said, “so you could have started there. Besides, I’m stuck on J now, so you’ve got a chance to catch up.”
Ninety-nine dollars and sixty-one cents. We’d bought another pack of beef jerky before we left Dillon, to keep Boy Dog fed on the road. In a truck bed like this we probably could have fed him actual dog food, but you never know what’s going to pick you up.
“We need a Jeep dealership,” said Brooke. “Or a … jelly-bean factory.”
“A jelly-bean factory?”