“Kaiser isn’t sure the Bureau ever found all the bones in the mud beneath it. And Reverend Sims told Carl that Mrs. Cleotha Booker knew the worst story in the world. Maybe we should ask her about that tree.”

“If she’s really the one. And if she doesn’t have Alzheimer’s or something.”

“To tell you the truth,” I say bitterly, “if I went back to that tree, I’d dump five gallons of high-octane gas over it and burn what’s left down to the ground. Like St. Boniface felling Thor’s oak.”

Serenity finally turns from the window and gives me a long look, as though she wants to ask me another, more personal question. But in the end she looks through the windshield and watches the blacktop being swallowed by the car.

We find the house Carl Sims described without too much trouble. It’s more shack than house, really, standing alone at the end of a dirt road, just as Carl’s father, Reverend Sims, said it would. The road itself doesn’t register on my GPS unit, but it’s there nonetheless. Mrs. Booker’s home leans like a listing ship or a house drawn in a Dr. Seuss book, but no canted house in Whoville ever looked so poor. I can see cracks between the unpainted barn boards of the front exterior wall, and the patched tin roof has been dented by a hundred fallen limbs. Behind the dwelling lies a junk-filled gully spiked with trees being slowly strangled by kudzu.

The raised porch is the kind that often shelters a mean dog who will attack anyone who approaches, but no animal emerges as Serenity and I walk up the steps. No one answers our knock. Then a curtain flutters in the window to our right, and a gray cat leaps onto the sill and regards us with intense curiosity.

“What do you think?” I ask. “Does this look like the place where you hear the worst story in the world?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you think there’s anyone inside?”

Serenity nods. “She’s in there.”

I hear a strange clump and shuffle that reminds me of someone walking on crutches, or on a walker with tennis balls on its feet. Then the door opens, and I see what looks like the oldest woman in Mississippi standing before us, gripping a dented aluminum walker. Sure enough, the ends of its four legs have been jammed into slits in faded green tennis balls. The old woman blinks at the daylight with yellowed eyes set in a head that trembles constantly on her neck.

“Mrs. Booker?” I ask.

“Sho’ is. And you’re Dr. Cage’s boy. I can see it in your face.”

“Can you really?”

She nods. “You’ve got his eyes. Kind eyes. Dr. Cage was a true healer.”

“Thank you, ma’am. This is my friend, Serenity Butler. She’s a writer, too.”