Three days after the cave, dusk found Hugh in the heart of the Melungeon quarter, standing in a clearing surrounded by hickory and the slow, sinking gold of late summer. He looked every bit the man who’d crawled out of a mountain: his shirt dried to parchment with cave mud, collar torn off in the escape, a hunk of bandage showing just above his left boot. He had not slept more than an hour at a time, and even now, blinking at the last of the sun, he felt the days as a weight behind his eyes rather than on a clock.
Elva was already there, cross-legged on the upturned base of a felled log. At her feet sat a leather satchel, tight-packed and triple-tied, and beside her, hunched and wary, was Toby. The boy had cleaned up but not changed, still in the same patched canvas pants, same blue flannel, his left knuckle raw and shiny with new skin.
Elva traced her finger along the top seam of the satchel, the motion slow and deliberate, like she was petting a dangerous animal.
Toby shifted, chin up, and said, “Thought you might’ve gone and died out there, Preacher.”
“Wouldn’t put it past me,” Hugh said, and eased himself down on a slab of rock opposite them.
No one laughed. The air in the clearing was thick with the hum of beetles and something unspoken, the kind of tension that made you aware of your own heartbeat.
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