Burning Ground Read online

  D. A. Galloway

  Burning Ground

  First published by Continuous MILE 2021

  Copyright © 2021 by D. A. Galloway

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  D. A. Galloway asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  D. A. Galloway has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

  Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

  Cover design by Rafael Andres

  Edited by Leighton Wingate

  First edition

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  To Redfield

  Blessed are the peacemakers,

  for they will be called children of God

  - Matthew 5:9 (King James Version)

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Preview of “Fatal Ground”

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park

  Prologue

  1961

  It was a perfect night for skating. The first weeks of December had been unusually warm. But right before Christmas, an arctic cold front swept into the mid-Atlantic states, and the weather became more seasonal in south-central Pennsylvania. Temperatures at night were in the teens and single digits, and it rarely rose higher than thirty degrees during the day. It had snowed only a few inches during the last ten days. The combination of extended cold, light precipitation, and little or no wind allowed the small pond on the Davidson property to freeze over with a smooth, dark glaze.

  A full moon hung low on the horizon of the cloudless New Year’s Eve sky. The moon created eerie shadows on the ice from a lone willow tree that grew by the pond and swayed in the early-evening breeze. Graham poked his head out the kitchen window of the two-story house that overlooked the pond several hundred feet below. He breathed in the crisp night air and felt a chill that made him shiver under his T-shirt. Pulling in his head, he gripped the top of the window sash and yanked it down, giving it an extra tug to make sure it was sealed.

  “Hey, Frank!” he yelled excitedly, running across the kitchen into the family room. “Do you wanna skate tonight?” As he entered the room, he saw his older brother putting on his coat. Frank had tied the laces of his skates together so he could hang them over his shoulder.

  “I’m headed there right now,” Frank replied with a grin while picking up his skates. “John and Ray just showed up. They’re waiting for me down by the shop. We’re gonna get the spotlight hooked up on the roof and shine it down on the pond. But I’m not sure we even need it tonight with that moon. Come on down whenever you’re ready.”

  “Aw c’mon, Frank!” Graham pleaded. “Can’t you wait for me?”

  “Nope. Gotta go. You ain’t gonna miss much. We’re just going to fool around on the ice before we set up the goal. Better check with Mom. She might want you to bring Billy along with you.” Frank’s words faded away as he pulled the door closed and hurried down the walkway toward the shop.

  Graham had looked up to Frank for as long as he could remember. They were two and a half years apart in age. But now that Frank was almost fourteen, their age difference seemed much greater. Lately Frank would rather hang around with his friends than be bothered by his eleven-year-old brother.

  It wasn’t always this way. Until recently, the two older Davidson boys were inseparable. They built forts out of scraps of lumber from their father’s workshop. They spent hours setting up bottles and cans on a log and plinking them with an air rifle. They took long walks on the railroad tracks that ran just over the hill behind their house, throwing rocks at the glass insulators on the utility poles and seeing who could walk farther on a rail without falling off. But Frank was growing up much faster; he saw the world through the eyes of a teenager, while Graham still had the innocence of a boy.

  Graham quickly pivoted from the front door and ran toward the steps leading upstairs, taking them two at a time. He burst into his mother’s bedroom, announcing his intentions while slightly out of breath. “I’m going down to skate with Frank. See ya’!”

  “Whoa, wait a minute, young man,” Helen Davidson answered as she turned from the closet, where she was deciding on what to wear. “You need to look after Billy tonight, remember?”

  Graham had committed to watching his five-year-old brother for a few hours this evening. Every New Year’s Eve, his mother and father invited a few close friends over to play cards. They never stayed past midnight. But the boys were expected to entertain themselves on these occasions, even if it just meant watching television. Graham’s younger sister, Susan, was staying overnight with a friend who lived just down the road.

  An idea immediately popped into Graham’s head. “What if Billy comes down and plays on the ice with us?” he asked hopefully. “He doesn’t have to wear skates. He can just slide around on his sneakers while we play hockey.”

  “He can go with you, but only if you promise to watch him,” Helen said sternly. “Billy can’t be wandering around by himself on that pond.”

  “Okay, okay,” Graham said quickly. “We’ll make sure he doesn’t get into anything.”

  “You will make sure he doesn’t get into anything. This is your responsibility. Frank has his friends here, and we agreed you would help me with Billy tonight.”

  “All right. I got it. Can I get Billy bundled up so we can get down to the pond?” Graham was imagining the other boys already having fun on the pond while he was standing in his mother’s bedroom pleading his case.

  “One hour. You check in with me after one hour to make sure everyone is okay. And make sure Billy has his mittens. Got it?”

  “Sure. Thanks, Mom!” Graham knew his chances of getting what he wanted were much better with his mother. His father was seldom persuaded by any argument Graham conjured up. He wa
s glad his father was at the store right now getting some last-minute items for the party. Graham turned and headed to Billy’s bedroom.

  Ten minutes later, Graham was leading his younger brother by the hand down the steep hill to the pond, weaving around dormant peach and cherry trees. He could hear the voices of Frank and the other boys echoing against the ice in the moonlit night. The sound of clacking hockey sticks told Graham they were already taking practice shots at the homemade goal made from two traffic cones the boys “borrowed” from the highway department when the road that led to town was resurfaced earlier this year.

  “C’mon, Billy,” Graham urged, as he tugged on the young boy’s coat sleeve. “Can’t you walk faster?”

  “It’s really slipp’ry on this hill,” Billy replied. “Don’t let go of me till we get to the bottom!”

  The boys soon reached the edge of the pond. “Sit here while I put on my skates,” Graham ordered. Billy obliged.

  “Okay, now give me your hand and walk onto the ice. I’ll hold you up until you get a feel for how to keep your balance.” Billy took his older brother’s hands, and Graham started to slowly skate backward. Billy used sliding steps to shuffle along on his tennis shoes, looking more like a penguin than a small boy as he cautiously shifted his weight to maintain his balance. In a few minutes they had reached the area where Frank and the older boys were shooting pucks at the goal, whose outer boundaries were outlined by the orange traffic cones.

  “Billy!” Frank shouted, as he skated over to his brothers. “You’re lookin’ good!”

  “I promised Mom I would watch him,” Graham explained. “It’s the only way she would let me come down.” He turned toward Billy and said, “Look, you can just sit on this crate and watch us play. If a puck skips off the pond, you can fetch it for us.”

  Billy looked disappointed, but he didn’t say anything. He walked gingerly to the old milk crate and sat down dejectedly, cradling his chin in his knitted woolen mittens.

  It didn’t take long for the older boys to get serious about playing hockey. Everyone took turns defending the goal while the others attempted to score. An old plastic football helmet was the only protection afforded the boy who attempted to block the shots from his friends. Twenty minutes had passed, and it was Graham’s turn to be the goalie. As he was placing the helmet on his head and adjusting the chin strap, he glanced over at the milk crate. Billy was not there.

  Graham ripped off the helmet and skated over to the crate, shouting Billy’s name. Frank stopped skating to look over and saw their little bother was missing. Within seconds a quartet of voices was yelling Billy’s name, imploring him to answer. But there was no response.

  Frank ordered everyone to skate in different directions to locate the small boy. The area farthest from the spotlight was dark, with the only light coming from the moon, which had climbed slightly higher on the horizon. One word - “Billy!” - filled the night air from all corners of the pond.

  Suddenly Frank shouted to the others, “Over here!” He had skated to the overflow pipe at the deepest part of the pond. The others quickly reached the area and saw Frank lying on his belly reaching toward a hole in the ice with his hockey stick. “Billy! Billy!” he was shouting toward the hole.

  “Run up to the house and get Dad! Hurry!” Frank’s voice was quavering with panic.

  Graham skated in the direction of the house as fast as he could. When he reached the edge of the pond, he leaped onto the ground and started sprinting up the hill, not bothering to remove his skates. He struggled to keep his balance and fell several times. Each time he quickly jumped back up and dug the skates into the frozen soil, using the blades on his feet like crampons to gain traction. He could feel panic welling up in his chest as he struggled to get to the porch.

  Graham threw open the door and burst into the family room where his parents and their friends were seated around a table playing cards. He collapsed and blurted out breathlessly, “Billy fell through the ice! We can’t find him! Help!”

  Leroy Davidson stood so suddenly his chair fell over behind him. He shouted across the table to Helen, “Call the fire department!” He grabbed his coat from a peg at the front door and leaped over Graham, who was crying. Two other men quickly followed Leroy out the door.

  Graham tried to stand but was unable. His left ankle was throbbing in pain. He slumped against the wall by the front door with his head in his hands, praying fervently his worst fears would not be realized. Inside the kitchen, he heard his mother using the phone, the rotary dial circling back into place with each spin from her shaking finger. After she hung up, Helen sat down heavily on a chair and began to sob uncontrollably. Graham could hear two other women trying to comfort her. He could also hear faint voices from the pond, which carried all the way up the hill to the house on a frigid night with a full moon.

  * * *

  At the funeral, Graham stood by the gravesite with his family as light snow fell softly from the sky. In the week since the tragic incident on the pond, no one said anything to him about not watching Billy closely that night. But Graham knew what they were thinking. An oppressive guilt squeezed his heart like a vise.

  Graham searched in his coat pocket until he found the mittens Billy had worn. He had led his little brother down the hill, helped him across the ice, and sat him on the crate—all while holding Billy’s hands in these mittens. Graham used one hand to squeeze the mittens in his pocket, while using his free hand to grip Frank’s hand. Billy was gone. He needed reassurance his older brother would not abandon him.

  As the tiny coffin was lowered into the frozen January ground, tears dripped from the cheeks of Graham’s bowed head onto his boots.

  Chapter 1

  1965

  The world seemed to be trending toward chaos in early 1965. Martin Luther King Jr. had led more than three thousand civil rights demonstrators on the fifty-mile march to Montgomery from Selma. The US had landed its first combat troops in Danang, South Vietnam, and rapidly increased the number of troops sent to the war. There were six days of rioting and looting in the Watts section of Los Angeles.

  And Susan was driving her brother Graham crazy. Since Billy’s death four years ago, Susan was clearly the “baby of the family” and the only Davidson child who was a girl. When Graham complained about his sister’s petulant behavior, his mother replied, “She’s only eight. She was really close to Billy and misses him terribly. She’s just trying to cope like the rest of us in her own way.”

  Well, I was close to Billy, Graham thought, and I don’t act that way. He didn’t understand how his sister could make petty demands of everyone in the family and not be corrected by his mother or father. Didn’t their parents recognize he was carrying immense guilt from Billy’s demise? If anyone could be excused for acting immature, it should be he.

  He had tacked Billy’s mittens onto the small cork bulletin board that hung above the desk in his room. The knitted hand warmers dangled over a picture of Billy on a wooden sled pulled by Graham. It was one of Graham’s favorite memories of his brother. The pair had spent an entire afternoon sliding down the snowy hill beside the house, ending their journey on the frozen pond. Graham would sit on the sled, hold Billy between his legs, and steer the sled with his feet. As the sled coasted to a stop, Billy would shriek with delight and shout, “Again!” Graham would pull the sled back to the top of the hill with Billy aboard and start the cycle again. Billy loved the ride, and Graham loved to hear his gleeful laughter.

  But four years later, Graham was struggling to remember the many details that made Billy unique. There was the peculiar way his nose wrinkled when he spied something on his dinner plate he didn’t like. There was his habit of repeating, “Well, well, well, well . . .” before breaking his stammer and finding words to say. And there was the way he grabbed Graham’s thumb when they walked together across a street because his hand was too small to fully grasp his older brother’s palm.

  Helen Davidson had seemed to move on from the “tra
gic incident,” as everyone referred to Billy’s drowning in the pond. Soon after the funeral, she busied herself with activities at Susan’s school and their church. She contributed to bake sales, made crafts, organized photo albums, visited fellow church members who were hospitalized, distributed food at the soup kitchen, and read books to kindergartners at school and first-graders at Sunday school. Graham considered her activities odd. His mother rarely volunteered outside the home when Billy was alive. Now she seemed to be campaigning for county volunteer of the year. But this was his mother’s healing path, and he was glad she found comfort by helping others.

  Leroy was another story. He was despondent over his youngest son’s death and became withdrawn. He signed up for overtime hours at the factory where he worked and frequently asked his boss if he could work Saturdays. And he spent most evenings alone in his workshop, walking briskly down to the small wooden building almost every evening after dinner, often returning to the house after nine o’clock. To his father, life had become a set of chores that needed to be done. Nothing more.

  The family pond, once a hub of activities such as swimming, fishing, boating, and skating, fell silent. The Davidson children would still do these things on occasion, but their father never joined them. The small body of water had changed from a source of fun into a solemn memorial, the placid surface a reminder to everyone about what happened there.

  Frank was seventeen and mature enough to let Susan’s antics slide when she insisted on something he deemed harmless or irrelevant. He developed an interest in auto mechanics and was currently working on rebuilding the engine of a ’57 Plymouth Fury. Like his father, Frank would disappear from the dinner table almost every evening to work on his car. The carport adjacent to the wood shop became Frank’s work area. It was an awkward situation.