Chapter 28Cresson, Pennsylvania, 1958When E.Q. Beacon followed his father into the shop at the Magic Castle greenhouse, he saw that a stranger had Mary Anne Filigree by the throat.
E.Q. stopped and stared. It wasn't exactly the scene he'd expected to see.
The stranger was a bulldog of a man, short and stumpy and broad-shouldered. He might have been in his middle or late twenties, though it was hard to tell. He wore the grimy brown coveralls of a coal miner, and his face was blotched with soot.
His friend, who was a little older, looked more like a miner on his day off. He wore bluejeans and a red flannel shirt instead of brown coveralls. He was taller than the man who was choking Mary Anne, and almost as muscular. If his skin wasn't blotched with soot, it at least had soot down de
