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  “What?” I scoffed. “No, there’s not. Zombies, vampires and anything Bela Lugosi played in the movies is so much crap.”

  “I assure you—zombies are real.” Flower wore a serious expression. “Not the brain-eating, body parts falling off kind, but real, honest to God, zombies exist. It’s a Voodoo curse, and I believe what I saw in the Sheriff’s eyes is an indicator of zombification.”

  Trying to control his shaking, Jimmy stuttered, “Lik…Like in the movie The White Zombie. Lugosi played a voodoo witch doctor who put this girl under his spell and controlled her.”

  “There are no Voodoo witch doctors. They are called Bokor practitioners of black-magic,” Flower started, “but you’re not wrong. It would seem the good sheriff is not in control of his own actions.” She put a hand to her head, and I wondered if healers ever got headaches. “Clearly, the warning in Arland’s vision was about Sheriff Briggs. He has either been influenced by black magic or worse—he has been possessed. Either way, it raises a bigger question.”

  Roger finished her thought by adding, “Who is controlling him?”

  “I don’t know, it is a mystery to me, and I have no idea what the rest of Arland’s vision means either.” She looked up at me and asked, “Exactly what else was said in your zombie vision?”

  “Oh, I don’t exactly remember all the words, but I’ll never forget how Roger wanted me to join him in chanting.”

  “And, then you woke up?”

  I hesitated. “Yeah…it was one of the creepiest parts of the vision, possessed Roger wanted me to join him in his chant.”

  “I’m afraid there is no time to waste. It’s time we visited Eudora.” Flower’s tone was matter-of-fact, without a hint of explanation.

  Rose asked, “Who is Eudora? You’ve never mentioned her.”

  “Eudora isn’t a person.” Without more explanation, Flower headed back to the clinic. “I’ll check on my patients, then I’ll be ready.” She stopped, pausing in thought. “Arland, you better get some other clothes. Those swim trunks would stick out like a sore thumb where we’re going.”

  “This is all I have except for a pair of cutoffs and one of Jimmy’s shirts.”

  Flower pointed across the room. “See the woman standing by the gray-headed man with a ponytail?”

  “Yeah, I see her,” I replied. She was more grandmotherish than hippieish. She wore a muumuu dress and had her hair fixed in a Gibson-Girl bun like my mother always wore. I took a second look, and horror struck me. Was this what my mother would look like when she got ancient? I shuddered.

  Ignoring my trembling, Flower added, “Give her your size and she’ll get you something else to wear. Tell her we’re going to Eudora, she’ll understand.”

  Jimmy, Roger, and Rose said they would wait for me at the Mustang. I tried to act as casual as possible when I tapped the granny on the shoulder. “Excuse me, but Flower said you would get me some other clothes. She told me to tell you, we’re going to Eudora.”

  When she heard the name Eudora, she looked up with a startled expression. Then she looked me in the face. Her expression changed from fearful to urgent, and she headed toward the door. “Yes, I see why. Young man, what size do you need?”

  “I wear a men’s small shirt and 25/27 pants.”

  Her mouth moved sideways in thought. “So, a boy’s size 16 then?”

  I rolled my eyes. Why couldn’t I ask for clothes like other guys, in inches instead of juvenile sizing numbers? “Yes. That will do.” I forced a smile.

  “Come with me.” She turned away from the group she had been talking with. The man with the gray ponytail reached out and touched her arm.

  “Tabitha, did I hear right?” he asked. “Flower is taking this fellow to Eudora?”

  She took my arm and turned me to face him. “Yes, Paul, you heard correctly.” He scrutinized me from toe-to-crown and stopped at my face. “Oh yes, I see. What he’s wearing will never do. Find him something appropriate.”

  As far as I was concerned, I looked fine. I liked my swim trunks and had spent almost the entire summer in them. If they didn’t like what I wore, it was too bad. Then again, I had no idea what to expect. What if it was a fancy dress-up thing? Me wearing skin by the yard, I would be a spectacle. Chuckling at the thought of deciding which bowtie would look best with my Frankie Avalon square-cut swimsuit, I decided to tag along behind her. Making her way past rows of trailers and huts to a small cinderblock building on the edge of the inhabited area, she opened the door and stepped inside. I hesitated.

  Her head leaned out of the doorway, she asked, “Do you need everything?”

  Everything? I looked down at my swimsuit and my eyebrows raised. “Yes. I suppose I do.”

  It only took her a moment to pop back out of the doorway with a stack of clothes. Bellbottom jeans, neatly folded, and a faded T-shirt with a print of Bruce-Lee stamped on it. On top was a pair of tire-tread sandals sitting on white socks and whitey-tighty, Fruit of the Loom, undies. I guessed I wouldn’t get a bowtie to go with this ensemble.

  “You wear a size 8 shoe? Most boy’s your size do.”

  “Uh…no. I need a size 9 if you’ve got it.”

  She took the sandals off the top, handed me the stack, and stepped back inside the cinderblock structure. Almost instantly she bounded out of the doorway and stood beside me, size 9 sandals in hand.

  “Thank you,” If I knew what I was about to step into, I would have sounded more grateful. “My friends had a chance to eat earlier, but I didn’t. Do you think it would be okay if I got something from the kitchen?”

  “Clothes are my job, not the kitchen. Kelly Carter would be mad if I messed up his perfectly clean playpen.”

  I gave her my best puppy dog eyes. “Please.”

  “Oh…okay. Why not? I bet he’s about ready to serve breakfast, anyway.”

  Holding my stack in front of me, I trailed behind, as we made our way back to the Roundhouse. To my surprise, the people had not dispersed as I thought they would, but were standing in line in front of a table with a large pan of eggs; another one containing stacks of sausage patties; and the last one had a mountain of biscuits in it.

  Miss Tabitha went straight to the head of the line and butted in. “Emergency here. This fellow is our guest, and he needs to get a bite before he heads off to….” She stopped before she said the word Eudora. “He has commune business to attend to.”

  A man’s voice called out, “Yeah, right. If this kid has commune business, then I’m Abe Lincoln.” Hearty laughter from the crowd followed his comment.

  She spun around and glared at him. “Azariah, do you doubt my word?”

  “No, Miss Tabitha, I meant no disrespect.” The man’s tone was more serious. “If you say it, then it is so.”

  On a tray, she piled a heaping scoop of eggs on top of a biscuit and three sausage patties. She shoved the tray on top of my stack and ordered me to sit.

  I felt awkward being treated so special when everyone else was waiting in line. Flower swooshed by my table and said, “Good, you’re getting something in your stomach. It’s a three-hour drive to Eudora and we won’t be stopping. It’s after 8:00 AM now. I’ll give you fifteen minutes and I expect you to be ready.” She scanned the room. “Where did Rose, Jimmy, and Roger go? Did they leave?”

  “No, they are waiting for us at Jimmy’s Mustang.”

  Oh, was her only reply before she barreled out toward the arched signboard where Jimmy had left the car. A man in a chef’s hat brought me a cup of coffee and watched me gulp down the breakfast.

  “I’m Kelly Carter, the cook here at Happy Hollow. You’re new aren’t you?”

  I stuck out my right hand in his direction and shoved sausage in my mouth with the other. “Arland,” I informed him. Suddenly, it dawned on me, these hippies were vegetarians and they were all munching on eggs and sausage.

  “What’s the deal here? Is sausage considered a fruit or a vegetable on a vegetarian diet?”

  “I make this sausag
e with a vegetable.”

  “Yeah, right,” I couldn’t resist the sarcasm.

  “No kidding.” His serious expression completely displaced my wit.

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “It’s tofu flavored and textured to taste like sausage.”

  I held it up and examined it, smelled it, and took another bite. The patty sure looked like the real thing. “What the hell is tofu?”

  “Processed soybeans.” He shrugged. “When I worked for a restaurant, I made a turkey bacon too, but these guys wouldn’t eat any real meat. So, I created my vegan sausages.”

  “Really?” I took another bite. “Best beans I’ve ever eaten.” I swallowed the rest in a gulp before shoveling spoon after spoon of eggs into my mouth. I swallowed in time to say, “And the eggs? I guess you’re going to tell me it’s made of corn or something.”

  “Wow. You barely chewed,” he remarked and laughed. “The eggs aren’t real eggs either.”

  I looked them over. Fluffy, yellow, and they tasted like eggs. “I’ll be damned,” was all I came up with.

  “Would you like some more?”

  “No time. I gotta catch up with everyone. We’re going to a place called Eudora.”

  His laughter froze. “You… and who else is going to Eudora?”

  “Flower is going with us.”

  His eyes brightened. “I’ve heard rumors about Eudora. It’s a magic place. I hear there’s a real, honest to god, phoenix there.”

  Skeptically, I said, “No kidding.” Then I did a double-take of his face. “You’re serious.”

  “You’re lucky.” He pulled a cloth from his apron pocket and started wiping down the table, stacking the dishes as he went. “I was never so lucky, but you better hurry. You shouldn’t keep Flower waiting.”

  “Magic?” I rolled my eyes. “Okay, whatever you say.”

  I wiped my face with the back of my hand, grabbed my stack of clothes, and was off to find Jimmy, Roger, Rose, and Flower. Before I reached the door, I stopped. The little beast called curiosity had nipped at my heels and I couldn’t help myself. I called from over my shoulder before facing him. “If it’s so great, why don’t you come along and see this phoenix for yourself?”

  He was gathering up my messy dishes and putting them on a tray. “I can’t. I mean, we can’t go there. It’s forbidden. Only the elders ever go there and even then it’s seldom.” He stood, straightening himself to his full height, and with hands on his hips, he said, “I don’t know exactly why. Seems silly to me, but there must be a reason we’re not allowed to go there. You’re so lucky. From what I’ve been told, Eudora is like no other place on Earth.”

  “Dude, if you ask me, turning soybeans into eggs and sausage is magic—freaky magic.” I had always felt like I was a freak, and learning about my gift only cemented the idea. Here, at the commune, it seemed I ran into freaks everywhere I turned. By the rule of simple logic, I should have felt right at home, and maybe I did in a freaky kind of way. One thing was for sure, after my conversation with Kelly Carter, I realized, Eudora freaked out the freaks.

  I resumed my haste and trotted out to where I expected Jimmy’s Mustang should be. Instead, there was a brightly painted VW love van waiting for me there with Flower at the wheel and the sliding door wide open. She took one look at me and huffed, “You’re not dressed yet?”

  I shook my head as a reply.

  “Hurry, change before you get in. You can stand behind the van and use the bumper to sit on.”

  I stepped behind the van where the exhaust was rumbling out of the small engine. I quickly decided, with all my friends just on the other side of the van’s windows, it was way too public. I slipped the T-shirt on and pulled the jeans up over my swim trunks; stuffed the undies in my pocket and strapped the sandals onto my tanned feet; collected my flip-flops and jumped in the van. I hauled the love beads Stoney had given me out from under my shirt, letting them dangle across Bruce’s face. It made his kung fu stare less intense.

  With a slam of the door, Jimmy grumbled. “Loveless, you’re the slowest guy on the planet.”

  There wasn’t any use explaining. If I’d skipped breakfast, maybe I could have been there a few minutes earlier, but all considered, I had readied myself as fast as possible. Sitting there in the van, I started feeling guilty about stuffing my face when everyone else had gone without. What was I fretting about? They ate supper the night before and I hadn’t. I deserved breakfast after fighting the fire all night. Everyone, except for Flower, looked completely exhausted—especially Jimmy.

  Flower drove us away from Happy Hollow the way we had arrived. When we passed the playa pond where the wreck had happened, I couldn’t help but notice the flowers and the tiny cross placed between the water and the road. I quietly asked, “Can we stop for a minute?”

  Flower looked at us in the rearview mirror. She started to say something but stopped short, made a grimacing smile, and pulled over to the side of the road. “Don’t be long,” she replied.

  We trekked across the road and over to where the memorial flowers were placed. White daisies and mums were side-by-side with a bundle of white roses. Nestled between the foil-covered flowerpots were candles decorated with the image of the Blessed Mother printed on the side. A white cross on a dowel rod towered over the display.

  Rose took off a strand of love beads and wrapped it around the cross. “There you go, Dave. I don’t have any flowers to leave you.” Dark mascara tears started running down her cheeks. “I guess you didn’t make it after all.”

  An odd, tangible sadness flooded over us as we stood before Dave’s makeshift memorial. Even for me, and I didn’t know the guy.

  “You shouldn’t have wasted your time. You can’t change fate.” The gravelly voice of Mr. Dark resounded through my mind. “When you have a vision like you did at the truck stop, you can’t change the prophecy. It’s lunacy to try—you struggle against fate.”

  I ignored him and bowed my head in reverence to Dave, the truck driver, Rose’s friend.

  “Nothing you did mattered for this man. How do you expect to help all of mankind? Go back home and stop listening to this nonsense.”

  I heard Rose cry. I glanced over to check on her. To Mr. Dark, I silently replied, “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I’ll do what I want and you stay the hell out of my business.”

  A police car pulled over onto the road’s shoulder and parked not seven feet from us. A young deputy who I had not seen before got out. When he saw Flower, his face lit up. He traipsed across the street and leaned on the driver’s door, peering inside. We hurried back to Flower’s love van, not knowing what to expect.

  “Hi there, Miss Flower,” said the fuzz.

  “Hi Walter, How is your mother doing? I heard she had to go to a nursing home.”

  “She’s better since your visit,” he replied.

  We stood watching and waiting for the officer to arrest her—or something.

  Flower noticed our apprehension and called over to us. “This is Walter Scoggins. We know each other from days past.”

  Days past? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Why couldn’t Flower talk like a normal person?

  Walter said, “Miss Flower was my nurse when I was hospitalized for cancer.” His grin grew wider. “I was only eight-years-old. I hardly knew what cancer was, but Flower made my stay at the hospital an adventure. We played games, and she gave me my medicine. I’ll never forget the day when the Doctor came in and said my tumors had shrunk and some had disappeared.”

  Flower’s smile beamed radiantly. “You got well,”—she patted his hand—“didn’t you?” It sounded like the kind of thing a grandmother would say when she was making a point.

  Walter glanced over at us. “To this day, I’m convinced Miss Flower was the reason my cancer went into remission.”

  “Don’t be silly, Walter. Those doctors knew exactly what to do to help you, and besides, you were a great patient.” She reached up and almost touched hi
s nose, stopping only an inch away.

  We smiled and knowingly looked at each other. Walter might be in the dark about what happened to him, but we had no doubts.

  His smile faded. “Miss Flower, please stay away from Sheriff Briggs. He is not acting his usual self these days. He has some kind of vendetta out for all the hippies—I mean residents of the commune, and for you in particular.” The deputy spat brown spit toward the road. “He changed after his accident back in March.” He shook his head. “Even his voice sounds different, and I swear, he could convince a toad frog he was a rabbit.”

  “What do you mean?” Roger asked.

  “He’s convinced the other department heads to let him have full discretionary control of their law enforcement personnel.” He spat again, before smiling, flecks of brown in his teeth. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Without a doubt, he is the most powerful individual in the county and it won’t be long till he has the entire state under his thumb. Anyone who calls and complains…well, he just talks to them for a while and they’re suddenly Sheriff Briggs’ fans. It’s like the man can do no wrong.”

  “But he doesn’t have you fooled, does he, Walter?”

  “No, ma’am not me and not some of the others neither. Henry Phillips…Miss Flower, you remember him? He was in the cancer unit with me. Well, he was also one of the deputies and had a lot to say about what Sheriff Briggs is doing. Then the strangest thing. The sheriff came in and said Officer Phillips had been accepted for transfer to the CIA. Who gets transferred from being an officer here in little Cherokee County straight to working in Washington DC for the CIA? I tell you who—nobody.”

  “Didn’t he write to you?” Rose asked. “He is your friend, after all.”

  “No, Ma’am. He hasn’t been heard from, and I fear the worst.” Unmistakable concern showed in his eyes. “There’s nothing any of us can do. We’re all afraid we’ll end up working for the CIA, in the same place Henry is.”

  Roger leaned over to Jimmy and said, “He means six feet underground.”