When they got to the mounds, Nolan and his classmates went and lined up outside by the path. Near the mound that housed the ancient temple there were burn marks on the ground. Of course, there were no bones left from the night before. The local sheriff had taken the remains to small farm nearby and fed them to the hogs. The park director was tired and told the teachers the story about the teenagers having a fire out there. He claimed to have received a call in the middle of the night and came with the sheriff to run them off. The wind picked up a little as he was speaking but it was only wind.
Nolan’s class was in the front so the park director himself took them on the tour. There were different guides for the different visiting classes and it just happened to line up that way. Nolan and David walked together and secretly made fun of everything and everyone. Ringing in Nolan’s mind were the words from his Abraham Lincoln dream. Surely, there wasn’t an extinct race of giants in the Indian Mounds. He looked at the green manmade hills and the burnt place. They weren’t allowed to walk off of the path and the path didn’t get within 100 yards of some of the mounds.
The park director mentioned the mound in the center which housed the temple. He told about the pow-wows in the area. Native Americans from all around would come to that temple during the festival times. Nolan wondered how they knew it was festival time? Did someone go round everyone up? Was there a pony express type of system? Did they have a calendar? Did they read the stars? Of course, they must have read the stars to know when to arrive. Nolan didn’t ever ask the question out loud but in the little movie maker in his brain he could see the stars. That’s how he learned a lot of things. He wasn’t much of a student but when he wondered about things, he saw answers in the pictures in his mind and they always felt right.
After they walked past a couple of mounds and the temple area, they went over to the river. There was a large wooded deck that allowed them to walk out over the water. This was the rest spot too. There were some benches on the deck and a water fountain near the entrance. A couple of middle aged women were sitting on one of the benches and Nolan got an eerie feeling when he walked past them the first time. He and David and several of the boys noticed a cotton mouth swimming in the water and they began to ooh and ahh. The park director said to just leave it alone and it would leave you alone. Some of the girls were interested in watching it but most of them squealed and moved to the other end of the deck.
Nolan looked in the snakes eyes and this thing happened to him that he had never quite understood. He sort of flew out of his eyes and into the snakes eyes. When he did, he could see the women on the bench again and this time he recognized them! They were from his dream the night before! These were the two witches in his dream that had grabbed him to drag him back to the caldron when he was trying to get away! As it turned out they recognized him too, at that same moment. He was the boy from the vision, the one they had drawn a picture of to curse him. What he doing there? What were they doing here? Did he know? Did they know?
Nolan and the two women were all on razors edge. This was a difficult situation to navigate. The two women called the park director over, they knew him by name. They quietly pointed out Nolan and told them he was the young prophet from their visions! Nolan had his back to them but he was looking right at them through the eyes of the cotton mouth in the river. Suddenly, David shook Nolan back to himself. He had been trying to say something to him and Nolan couldn’t even hear him. David grabbed Nolan by the arm and literally shook him and yelled at him to wake up. Nolan shot out of the snake’s eyes and back into his own with a shocking feeling that he was very familiar with. There was a log that looked like a gator and David was desperate to trick somebody into seeing a gator.
Practice Outlaw 