Nursery Tale Page 14

  "It's a shit damn German Shepherd!" Sam Wentis said, nodding in the direction of the barking dog. "A shit damn killer!"

  "Naw," said Timmy Meade, grinning. "There's this cat runs loose—great big thing—and I seen it chase that dog right up on his back porch. Funniest shit damn thing I ever saw."

  "Yeah, well my father says he's a shit damn killer!" Sam Wentis seemed offended. "My father says that and my father oughta know."

  "You're right," Timmy said immediately. "You're dead right, Sam."

  Sam looked suspiciously at him a moment. "So where you wanta go to?" he said again. "Riley's Glen? You wanta go there?"

  "Sure," Timmy answered.

  "That damned dog's barking again," Larry Meade said, looking out his kitchen window. "I thought we moved here to get away from that kind of thing."

  "Is that why we moved here?" Dora said. She was seated at the kitchen table, hands around a cup of black coffee. "To get away from barking dogs?"

  He glanced at her. "It was one of the reasons, anyway."

  "To live 'the carefree country life'?" she continued expansively, sarcastically. "'Fresh air and sunshine and good neighbors'?"

  Larry said nothing. Their relationship—never a match made in heaven—had taken a nose dive in the last few weeks and he wasn't at all certain what direction he wanted this present discussion to take.

  "Is that what the brochure told us, Larry?—'Fresh air and sunshine and good neighbors'?"

  "I didn't read the brochure, Dora."

  "Well I did. And it didn't say a thing about arsonists—"

  "C'mon, Dora—"

  "Or kidnappers, or the devil's fucking footprints—"

  "Christ almighty!"

  "It said, 'Fresh air and sunshine and good neighbors,' or words very much to that effect. Jesus, what a crock that was! Over here"—she inclined her head toward the Harrises' burnt-out home—"we've got a remnant of the South Bronx. And over there"—she nodded toward the Gellis home—"we've got Mr. Exhibitionist, Gun Nut, and up over there" —she nodded to the east—"we've got the infamous Reynolds Road, barely wide enough for one car to pass over, and right here"—she thumped her chest with her fist—"we've got the world's A-Number-One sucker. Mrs. Sucker, that's me—"

  "You sound a little angry," Larry cut in; he grinned at her. "Maybe even hysterical."

  She grinned back at him. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?! You'd like to watch cool Dora blow her stack. Well, that you won't see, my darling husband. They can burn this place down around me and you will not see me lose my cool!"

  "Let's hope it doesn't come to that, because I know you're cool, Dora—fifty degrees below cool, as a matter of fact . . ."

  "Go to hell!"

  He raised an eyebrow and tried to think of a snappy reply. He could think of nothing. He turned back to the window; he saw that the Gellises' dog was still barking—louder, now, and at a faster tempo, as if something was agitating it. "To hell, indeed," Larry muttered.

  "They were friends," Trudy Wentis explained. "Close friends. And now that Shelly's moved away, Lorraine's got no one. That's why I'm going over there."

  Dick Wentis sighed. She was right, of course. "Just assure me, darling, that you're not planning to . . . endear yourself to her. I mean, nobody's seen her since the fire. It's obvious she just wants to be left alone."

  Trudy straightened the collar of her brown wool coat and looked confusedly at him. "I'm surprised at you, Dick. What if I did endear myself to her—what's the harm in that?"

  He shrugged. "No harm, really. I suppose it would be very humanitarian. It's just that I don't care very much for the idea of an emotionally disturbed woman dropping over unannounced and weeping all over us." He grimaced. "Jesus," he continued, his tone apologetic, "that sounded callous as hell, didn't it?!"

  "Yes, Dick. It did." She opened the front door. "I won't be long. And don't worry—I won't bring her back with me."

  She rang the Grahams' doorbell again. For the fifth time. Because, there was no doubt, someone was in the house. The closed curtains on the picture window had parted very slightly after the second ring. And besides, the house felt as if someone were in it—the same feeling, Trudy thought, that she got whenever she called someone on the telephone and knew whether or not there would be an answer. In the same way, she now knew that someone was in the Graham house. It was intuition, and it was never wrong.

  She stepped back from the door and scanned the front of the house. She cupped her hands around her mouth: "Lorraine?" she called. She waited a few moments and got no response. "Are you all right, Lorraine?" Still nothing.

  "Maybe she just wants to be left alone," Dick said from behind her.

  She jumped a little and turned quickly to face him. "Jesus Christ, Dick! Why don't you announce yourself?!"

  He nodded at the Graham house. "Like I told you, she's either not home or she just wants to be left alone. Why don't you wait till tomorrow?"

  "She might be in trouble, Dick." Intuition? she wondered. "She might have . . . done something to herself."

  "Of course she's in trouble, Trudy. She's lost both of her sons, for God's sake. How would you feel?"

  "But I saw the curtains move, Dick." She nodded at the picture window. "Someone is in there."

  "Which proves she just wants to be left alone, Trudy. If she's got strength enough to peek out the window, she's got strength enough to open the door. Now why don't you come away from there and we'll try again later."

  "We?"

  "Both of us. And if there's still no answer . . . I don't know, I'll pick the lock or something. Okay?" He took her hand and coaxed her away from the house.

  "Okay," she said. "But remember—you promised . . ."

  Marge Gellis said to her husband, "The neighbors are going to get angry, Norm." She lowered her head. "No," she continued hurriedly. "I'm sorry." And she wandered back into the kitchen.

  "You mean because of the dog?" Norm called. "He's like the guns, Marge, you know that. He's protection." Norm got out of his living room chair and joined his wife in the kitchen. "And besides, Marge, these damn houses are soundproof—almost, anyway. And Joe don't bark that much."

  "Yes," Marge said quietly; she slowly poured some pancake batter into a frying pan. "Yes, I know."

  Norm nodded at the stove. "You'd better turn the burner on, Marge, or that pancake's gonna take a hell of a long time to cook." He pretended to chuckle.

  She turned the burner on.

  "Marge?"

  "Yes?"

  "You got some kinda problem, Marge?"

  "No."

  "'Cuz you been like a damn spook, lately. What's it—that menopause thing again?"

  She said nothing.

  "Or are you still mad about what me and Malcolm Harris tried to do?" He paused briefly. "Maybe you think it was my fault his house burnt down."

  "No," she said quietly.

  Norm stared at her a moment. "Marge," he said, his tone soft, his words measured and slow, "things . . . are getting kinda shitty, aren't they?!"

  She flipped the pancake; she said nothing.

  "I admit it, Marge. And maybe some of it's my fault." He waited. She ladled the pancake onto a plate. "I just wantcha to know something, Marge." She poured more pancake batter into the frying pan. "I wantcha to know"—he looked away—"that what I'm doin'—it's all for you, Marge." He waited again, felt a nervous smile playing on his lips. "'Cuz I love ya, Marge."

  She tried to get the spatula under the just-poured pancake batter. The pancake hadn't yet cooked enough. "Damn it to hell!" she whispered.

  Norm left the room. He cursed himself; he felt very foolish.

  Chapter 28

  The Riley's Glen Campsites—which lay a half mile outside the southeast perimeter of Granada—consisted of a dozen park benches, a half dozen concrete and stone fireplaces (in various stages of repair), and a small green plaque, imbedded in a square of granite, commemorating "The spot where, in 1733, Nathan Riley established the first Community
Smokehouse in the region of Penn Yann."

  Sam Wentis kicked idly at the plaque. "What's a smokehouse?" he asked.

  Timmy Meade answered immediately, and with great authority, "It's where people go to smoke."

  "Yer fulla shit," Sam Wentis said.

  "No I'm not."

  "Yes you are, 'cuz a smokehouse ain't where people go to smoke."

  "Yeah?" said Timmy Meade. "What is it, then?"

  "I don't know—but it ain't where people go to smoke."

  Timmy Meade decided not to press the subject.

  The snowfall began lazily. A few large flakes settled onto the brown, autumn leaves that covered the ground here to several inches, and Timmy Meade watched sadly as the flakes quickly melted. "It's too damned warm," he murmured.

  "Too damned warm," Sam Wentis said.

  They had not been watching the sky. The walk to Riley's Glen from Granada was through small stands of woods and underbrush, and it was a dangerous walk unless you kept your eyes on the ground. So they hadn't seen the quickly advancing line of dark gray clouds coming at them from the north.

  Timmy Meade saw it now. "Jesus damn!" he said. "We'd better head home!"

  And Sam Wentis said, "Head home!"

  The ragged front edge of the storm was almost directly overhead, and the wind had strengthened noticeably, pulling frigid Arctic air in with it. Timmy Meade shivered, more in anticipation of what was coming than the cold or the wind itself. Because he could see what was coming—and, he realized, it was sweeping into Granada at that very moment. ("Like a crazy old woman with a giant whisk broom," he remembered his father telling him years before, about a similar storm.)

  "Head home!" Sam Wentis said again.

  And then, as if it had been straining angrily at some vast, invisible barrier, and had finally broken through it, the storm was upon them.

  Timmy Meade found that he couldn't speak, that the sudden and incredibly strong wind wouldn't let him. And, like a thousand tiny bees, the hard, furious snowfall stung his eyes and eyelids, and the exposed skin of his face and neck. He turned his back to the wind; he put his head down and closed his eyes; he hugged himself tightly for warmth. "Sam!" he screamed, and he barely heard himself above the awful frenzy of the storm. "We gotta . . . hide somewhere."

  He waited a full minute.

  He heard nothing from Sam Wentis.

  "We've got all hell coming at us now," said Larry Meade. "Jesus, they didn't say anything about this over the radio." He let go of the curtain on the big picture window, turned and faced Dora; she was in a Queen Anne chair on the other side of the large room. "Let's make sure everything's closed up tight, Dora. I have a feeling this storm isn't going to give up right away."

  She pushed herself out of the chair reluctantly. "We've got to talk, Larry."

  He looked quizzically at her a moment, then understood. "We'll talk later."

  "Larry, I am sick of this whole charade."

  "That's very theatrical, Dora, but let's check out the house first, okay?"

  "And I'm sick of you, too—"

  He cut in urgently, "Dora, where's Timmy?"

  "He's with the Wentis kid. I told them not to go far from the house. Now are we going to talk or not?"

  "Then why aren't they here, Dora?"

  "Christ, I don't know. They probably went to the Wentises'."

  Larry rushed to the phone; he hurriedly dialed the Wentises' number.

  "Dick? This is Larry Meade. Is my son there?"

  "Timmy? No. I was just going to call you, in fact—"

  "Hold on, Dick." He glanced at Dora. "What was Timmy wearing, Dora?"

  "I don't know," she began, trying to remember. "His denim jacket, I suppose—"

  "Christ almighty! You sent him out there dressed in his denim jacket?!"

  "It was warmer this morning, Larry. I didn't know we were going to get a damned blizzard. What are you getting so excited about?"

  "You seem to forget, Dora, that two other little boys have turned up missing."

  Dora said nothing.

  Larry said to Dick, "I'll be over in a minute. We've got to go looking for them."

  Norm Gellis groped blindly for the latch on Joe's collar while Joe whimpered pathetically at him. "It's okay, dog," Norm said. "We'll get you inside and put you down in the cellar and you'll be warm as toast. What'd you think—I was gonna leave you out here to freeze your poor nuts off?" Norm wished frantically that he'd put his gloves on. The task of finding the small latch on Joe's metal collar—a task made difficult, anyway, by the storm, and by Joe's nervous twitching—was made almost impossible by the fact that his fingers had become numb already, and so were next to useless. "Fucking shit!" Norm hissed. Finally, he found the latch; he twisted it hard to the left; it wouldn't give. "Goddamnit!"

  Joe whimpered louder.

  "Shut up!" Norm commanded, and whacked the dog on the snout with his open left hand. The dog stopped whimpering abruptly.

  "Fucking damned dog!"

  He twisted the latch again. It was frozen. "Chrissakes!"

  He took the tether in one hand and followed it to where it was attached to a post screwed into the ground twenty feet away. He put his hands on the post and winced at the burning coldness of the metal; he turned the post counterclockwise, aware—as it gave with agonizing slowness in the hardened soil—that the wind and cold were sapping his strength by the second. He thought about going back into the house for a breather, and to put his gloves on, when he realized that Joe's tether had slackened. "Joe?" he said. He pulled the tether; it was broken. In panic, Norm realized Joe had broken it.

  "Goddamned fucking dog!" he screeched. "Goddamnit it all to hell fucking dog you're going to freeze your fucking nuts off!"

  He stood silently beside the post and broken tether for several minutes, wondering what, precisely, he was going to do.

  "Mr. Jenner?" Janice McIntyre realized she was whispering into the receiver and that the man on the other end of the line probably couldn't hear her. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and cleared her throat. She took her hand from the mouthpiece. "Mr. Jenner?" she said again, louder.

  "Yes, this is Jenner."

  "Is my husband there, Mr. Jenner? This is Janice McIntyre. Miles had an appointment with you."

  "Yes, Mrs. McIntyre, your husband arrived not more than two minutes ago. Would you like to speak with him?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  A short pause, then Miles came on the line. "Janice? What's wrong?"

  "I was worried, Miles. About you, I mean, and this storm—"

  Miles exhaled, as if pretending to be out of breath. "I barely outran it. I don't think it'll last long, though. These things usually blow themselves out pretty quickly."

  "You're not going to try and drive back through it, are you?"

  "On Reynolds Road? It'd be suicide. No, believe me, I'm going to wait until I hear the all clear signal."

  "I'm glad to hear that, Miles." She smiled. "And you're right; it shouldn't last long."

  "Of course I'm right, Jan. Now I've got to get back to Jenner—you do still want to sell the house, don't you?"

  "Yes, of course—"

  "It was a rhetorical question, Jan. I'll be home when I can, but don't hold supper for me. Bye." He hung up.

  Janice hung up.

  Her smile faded. She had always liked storms—summer storms, winter storms; they were so beautifully chaotic, so humbling, and they provided a wonderful time for reflection.

  But this storm—so big, and so loud, and so sudden—was like a quick slap in the face, a screamed obscenity. It should really have announced itself first, she thought.

  With effort, Larry Meade pushed the door closed behind him. Dick Wentis was waiting; he had dressed well for the storm—a long goose-down-filled coat, Timberland boots, heavy, oversized wool mittens. He flipped the hood on his coat up and nodded to indicate the suede gloves Larry was wearing. "Your hands will freeze in five minutes, Larry." He looked toward the stairway. "
Trudy," he called, "would you bring down my other pair of mittens, please."

  "Thanks," Larry said.

  Trudy called, from upstairs, "Where are they?"

  "Fourth drawer down," Dick answered, and turned again to Larry. "The boys could be any of a number of places, Larry. Did your son say anything to you?"

  "No. We told them to stay close to the house." He shrugged. "Of course, you can't really tell the kid to do something . . ."

  Trudy appeared with the wool mittens; she handed them to Larry, he took them, peeled his suede gloves off quickly—as if embarrassed by them—and put the mittens on. He nodded to the west. "The boys liked to play in the woods. That's probably where they are now."

  "That would be best," Dick said.

  Larry looked questioningly at him.

  "It's well protected from the wind," Dick explained. "But of course," he went on, "a lot of those trees are pretty old, and that wind is awfully strong . . ." He stopped, leaned over, kissed Trudy. "We won't be long," he said.

  "I can come with you," she said, making it obvious that it had been a topic of prior discussion. Larry patted her hand paternally. "I know you can, and if we don't find them right away, I promise you—we'll bundle you up good . . ." He turned, opened the front door slightly; he kissed her again. "If you're worried," he said, "don't be."

  Together, he and Larry left the house.

  Chapter 29

  Norm Gellis explained that Joe was missing, that he'd probably run off, "dumb ass dog that he is." Marge listened quietly, nodded in the right places, and when Norm was finished she went to the closet, got her best coat—gray wool, with a rabbit's fur collar—shrugged into it, and said, "I'm going to Mass now. Can I have the car keys?"

  After a moment's confused hesitation, Norm said, "Are you out of your mind?"