Something Stirs, page 14
She brushed her hair and didn’t listen to the outside.
Chapter Sixteen
Joey stood at the end of the walk and threw up his hands. “What the hell’d I do now?”
Laine kept her back to him. She took the porch steps one at a slow time, opened the front door deliberately slowly, and went inside without even a wave.
“What’d I do?”
She didn’t come out.
He stood there for five minutes and she didn’t come out.
Take the hint, Costello, he told himself at last, and he walked off, kicking at stones and shadow, punching the air, picking up a hunk of rock salt and heaving it at a cat crouched in the middle of the empty street. He missed. The cat just looked at him. “Bastard.” He shook his head and moved on, around the corner, where he broke into a run that soon had him sweating, panting a little.
It was Katie Ealton’s fault, not his.
Last period, study hall, she comes up to him in the cafeteria with Scott and Fern, plunks herself down and starts talking crazy again. Walking scarecrows, invisible bugs, giants in the streets. Laine is there, getting nervous, and says something about someone hiding in her cellar. Her cellar! Jesus H.! So what can a guy do, right? He had laughed. He had looked down the table at Panch and Tang, and he had laughed. They laughed. Scott tells him to shut up and without thinking, he reaches over and grabs the gimp by the shirtfront, practically pulls him out of his seat.
That’s when Katie slapped him.
That’s when he let go of Byrns and took a backhand swipe at the mouse. Hell, he didn’t want to hit her, didn’t hit her, didn’t even come close. But she’s the one who started it, and she’s the one who claimed he knew something Eddie knew, something that would kill them all if he didn’t tell them now.
Crazy. Out of her goddamn mind.
He picked up a stick and belted a fence with it, lifting a go-to-hell hand when someone yelled a scolding.
God, Eddie had been right—women were a total pain in the ass. They made you say things you didn’t mean, and when you said things you did mean, they took it all wrong. Then they made you apologize whether you were wrong or not, and made you feel like a shit doing it. He grabbed another stick and heaved it across a yard, listening to it cut the air like helicopter blades before clattering against a trunk.
Well, this time he didn’t give a damn, he wasn’t going to call just to have someone to be with. He could have a lot of girls. Fern, for one, was always looking at him over the top of her notebook, he was sure of it; and Tang had been dumped again, she’d probably go out with him in a minute. He didn’t need Laine and her stupid temper, that’s for damn sure.
Eddie was right.
Women were a pain.
Eddie was …
He stopped in the middle of the block and looked around, suddenly aware that he didn’t know where he was. This wasn’t his neighborhood, that’s for damn sure. The houses were huge, set well back from a narrow road hidden from the sky by trees he figured were older than God. Stone fences, brick posts, white chains across curving driveways to keep the slobs from coming in and leaving their fingerprints on the grass.
Christ, where the hell was he?
He allowed himself several deep breaths, watched the steam rise and vanish, let his mind put Laine aside for the moment so it could catch up with him and give him a clue.
The block was long, and sloped down away from him.
He hated things like this—wandering around your own town, waking up and thinking you’ve suddenly gone into another state, maybe even another country.
He hated it.
It was spooky.
And he stared at the houses, the snow-topped walls, the leafless trees, trying to snap things back in focus, bring him back to Foxriver.
As he walked, a brilliant white limousine came at him up the low hill, windows tinted, reflecting the empty branches, the fences, and finally him as he turned to watch it slip away. A few backward steps, and his inner compass kicked in, and though he still didn’t know the specific name of the street, he knew, finally, exactly where he was.
“Oh shit,” he said, and turned back around.
There it was.
The river.
Not much of one, but sufficient to require a bridge at either end of town if you wanted to head west without going out of your way, and wide enough to stop all but the best swimmers from making it to the other side. Not deep, but strong, and the spring and autumn rains made it stronger, higher, which was why there were no homes on this bank. A few had been built there once, but the river had taken them a chunk at a time. Now it was all grass and trees, a long skinny park for people who wanted to do nothing but watch water move.
By the time he came to a full halt, the road ending in a T-intersection, he knew that he wouldn’t get home by supper if he went back up the hill. He’d have to walk along Bank Road and hope to catch a ride.
Shit.
So he swung left and began a slow trot, keeping his gaze on the narrow verge, wishing there were sidewalks, glad the night and the trees on the other side hid the river.
He heard it, though.
Between the crunch of his footsteps, the rasp of his breath, he could hear it.
Not everybody could.
Most people remarked on how peaceful it was here, the city above and traffic smothered by distance, the woodland on the other side keeping the next town out of sight.
They couldn’t hear it. The water. Slapping at the bank in the shallows. Hissing around the bridges’ pilings.
Grumbling to itself as it plowed southward toward the Atlantic. Whispering. Always whispering. But only if you could hear it.
Half a mile later he had to stop. A needle in his side, sweat in his eyes, a pebble in his sneaker that took forever to get out.
The hell with it.
He’d take a left at the next street.
He didn’t know why he hadn’t done it in the first place anyway, just turned around and gone back up.
This was stupid. He was going to be late no matter what he did, his mother would lecture him all through dessert, and then he’d have to practically promise on his damn knees to clean his room for the rest of his life before she let him out again. But only after he’d taken a shower. It was a thing with her—you go out at night, you take a clean body and clean underwear.
Eddie was right.
He started running again, and did take the next left, and did climb the hill, and was late for supper.
He didn’t care if his mother yelled.
At least he couldn’t hear the river.
And he wasn’t surprised when, the second he walked through the front door, his mother, standing in the kitchen at the end of the hall, took one look at him and said, “Pah, you smell like a pig! You go up and take a shower before you come down into my house!”
She was at the stove, polka-dot apron around her waist, greying hair in a net to keep it out of the pots steaming and simmering as she wielded spoon and spices while jutting her chin at the ceiling.
“Now, before you stink the place up!”
“Ma!”
“Go!” she commanded, and he shook his head dismally as he trudged up the stairs, muttering at the unfairness of it all the way to his room. His father was on the living room couch, suspenders down off his shoulders, evening newspaper in front of his face. But there was no appeal there; the old man ran the world outside, but the old lady was in charge once you came through that door.
Maybe he ought to just go to bed.
And thought it again, several times, when the house proceeded to conspire against him: there was hardly any hot water and he could barely raise any suds, the faucet in the sink sprayed him from a leak, he tripped over the throw rug in his bedroom and slammed his shoulder against the wall, and, on his way back down in fresh clothes, a splinter on the banister lanced into the heel of his right hand.
“Shit,” he said, sucking on the wound.
“Joseph!”
Shit, he thought.
They were already at the kitchen table—the tiny dining room was for Sundays and guests—and his father glowered at him over the top of his glasses.
“Language, boy,” he warned, voice sounding like glass poured over sand.
“Sorry, Poppa,” Joey said, and took his seat.
“You shower?”
“Yes, Ma.”
“You don’t smell like it.”
“I did, already! God.”
His father picked up a knife and used it for a pointer. “You don’t talk like that in my house, you hear me, Joseph? I get enough of that at the company. Now you apologize to your mother for your tone.”
On an ordinary evening he would have done so gladly and eloquently, just to keep the peace. An acceptance, a kiss on the head from his mother and a gentle warning not to do it again, and within minutes they’d begin teasing him about his girlfriends, his hair, the music he played too loudly in his room. But Laine had defied him today, treated him like dirt, practically accused him of wanting to get into that woman’s pants right there in the Starlite.
How the hell was a man supposed to take something like that? Why the hell wasn’t she more like his mother?
“Joseph,” his father said. Quietly.
“Right. Sorry.”
A crowded plate of meat and vegetables was dropped in front of him, and gravy slopped onto his lap.
It was scalding.
“Christ!” he yelled, shoving back his chair and swiping at the spreading stain with his napkin. “Jesus fucking Christ!”
His father lunged to his feet, beefy face angrily dark. “Joseph!”
Joey looked from him to his mother, who hadn’t made up her mind yet whether to be sorry for the accident or furious at his language. Then he said, “Aw, the hell with it,” and, leaving the man bellowing after him in Italian, he stormed out of the room, grabbed his coat and stormed out of the house.
By the time he reached the street, the old man was on the porch, screaming, and Joey spinning about to walk backward, yelled, “Why the fuck don’t you speak English!” turned again and ran.
God, he hated them.
All the time they were embarrassing him, the whole damn neighborhood embarrassed him. It was like living on some kind of old movie lot—old men on porch steps smoking cigars at night, old women in rocking chairs or lawn chairs, flabby arms crossed over their flabby breasts, yelling at the kids playing in the street, the air constantly filled with the aroma of spices and pasta and cheap perfume and car polish.
He hated it.
One more year, though; one year and he was eighteen and out of here before anyone remembered what the hell he looked like.
Three blocks away there was a drugstore with a pay phone, and he stood in the booth for five minutes, flipping a quarter in one hand, willing himself to call Laine.
He couldn’t do it.
It wasn’t his fault.
When his stomach began to grumble, he stopped at a luncheonette and ate a tasteless hamburger, playing conversations in his head—first, telling off his parents and having them tearfully accept him back, then settling Laine into the woman she ought to be. It always worked in his head. It never worked when he had to do it.
Some little kids were having a snowball war in an empty lot not far from the river. They asked him to be umpire, make sure no one put rocks in their missiles. It lasted ten minutes before they asked him to leave. At the tops of their voices.
Christ, he thought, ready to rage, ready to cry, what the hell am I gonna do now?
The first thing he thought of was to go get himself some beer.
The evening turned warm, warmer than it had been for almost a week, and mist rose from the snowbanks, the lawns, nudged by a light breeze to run in coils across the street. Scott thought it all too much like early autumn, and he was glad when he finally reached the bookstore. Fern wasn’t working tonight, Mr. Tobin and Arlette Bingham talking alone behind the counter. He nodded to them and headed for the Island, changed his mind and made a slow tour of the aisles, not really interested in anything in particular, not really caring if he left without buying. All he had wanted was to get out of the house, away from his mother, who wouldn’t let things alone.
Katie this, Fern that, shadow scarecrows and dead bums—she insisted he was making too much of nothing and was, in the process, ruining his health. But she hadn’t heard the terror in Katie’s voice or seen her ghostlike complexion in school today. And she definitely hadn’t heard Laine’s story of invisible prowlers in Dr. Freelin’s cellar. He didn’t tell her that. If he had, she would have called out the psychiatric brigade and locked them all up.
For their own good.
“Looking for anything special?”
He jumped as he came around the head of the aisle. Miss Bingham smiled politely at him from behind the register. Mr. Tobin was gone.
“No, thanks. Just looking around.”
Miss Bingham shrugged, said something about being available if needed, and turned her back.
He wandered on, hovered around the children’s section and thumbed through fairy tales, stared at the young adult section and examined mysteries and thrillers, looked at his watch and decided he was wasting his time. What he really wanted to do was find a quiet place to think, and perhaps talk with the Pack. Being jumpy on his own was one thing; having everyone seeing monsters around every corner was something else again.
And whether it was grief, as his mother insisted, or something else he couldn’t name, it all had to do with Eddie.
He left, paused in the recessed doorway to zip up his jacket, flip up his collar, then turned right toward the Strip. Carols in the distance sounded tinny and too loud. The Santa Claus competed with the Salvation Army. As he passed a string of clothing shops, he reminded himself not to wait too much longer to get a gift for his mother.
Maybe for Fern, too.
Nothing spectacular, of course. Nothing that would break him and give her the wrong idea. But she was all right, all things considered, so why not? A bottle of perfume or something. Bath oil. Scented powders.
Whatever girls liked these days. But if he did, he had to be prepared for some world-class kidding. Pancho would be unmerciful, Barnaby would be downright nasty, and his mother would probably worry about him and Fern eloping and moving to California.
Maybe it wasn’t worth it.
The store with the mannequins.
He stopped, looked in the window. There were customers inside, a cleric leaning against a glass counter and blowing on her nails, and the mannequins still in their winter vacation poses.
You didn’t move, did you? he asked them. You couldn’t have.
You couldn’t.
Murtaugh hovered at the mouth of the alley. There was money to be made down at the movies, tonight was Date Night, especially if the customers had had a good time; but there was also that damn rat he knew was waiting for him back there.
Of course, if he went to the theaters he might be able to get himself something to drink at the Stag or one of the other bars. Then he wouldn’t give a damn about the rat, or the cold, maybe even forget about Slap all chewed up to hell and never drawing again.
No. Damn, goddamn, no damn good.
If he did that, he wouldn’t be alert enough tomorrow to hustle some work from people cleaning their driveways. Maybe find something permanent for the spring working yards and gardens. Alleys weren’t safe no more, park filed with killers, he didn’t think it would come to this, but it might be time to get out.
Gonna get out, Slap, he thought tearfully; shit, I don’t want to die.
There was even a guy up at the Heights, a cop, who had offered him a steady job last week, just to take care of the grounds. The same guy who used to talk to Slap about his drawing. That would get him out.
That would keep him safe and away.
That scared him.
Because right now, tonight, there were only the alleys and himself.
And the goddamn rat and all its cousins.
He looked down the street toward the Strip, wiped his mouth, puffed his cheeks and blew.
If he took that job, hotshot Hot Trick Boy, his life would have to start over.
That scared him too.
The board he’d been carrying around all day was lead in his hand, and his shoulder ached, and his feet.
If he went in, the battle would be short.
Rat brains.
He grinned.
And heard something moving, a gliding, a whispering, far enough back to be part of the black.
He shifted the board to his other hand.
The rat had called his buddies.
But this here was his bedroom.
Goddamn rat.
A trash can rattled.
An eighteen-wheeler blasted past him, pushed him closer to the dark.
Money, or rat?
He stood on the sidewalk, shifting from foot to foot, crooning to himself, trying to make up his mind, knowing this was no good, knowing this wasn’t the way to do something for Slap, his memory, no good at all. Kill the rat? Get a job? Jesus, he hated this; Jesus Lord, he was scared.
Then a hand touched his shoulder, and he whirled, board high, teeth bared, eyes so wide they instantly began to tear.
Scott held up his hands and backpedaled quickly. “Hey, Blade, Jesus, man, it’s me. Scott Byrns, remember? Relbeth’s Market?” He swallowed as he watched recognition scrub the fear and tension from Murtaugh’s face, but he kept his eye on the two-by-four until it dropped to the man’s side. “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything. Really.”
“It’s all right,” Blade muttered, shifting away from the alley’s mouth. “Can’t be too careful these days. Can’t be too careful.”
Scott glanced at the traffic, looked down the boulevard toward the diner. A police car stopped at the traffic signal, motor idling, its passenger window down to release the crackle and static of its radio. “Hey, I’m sorry about Slap, y’know?” His hands moved, circled, found their way back into his jacket pockets.
“Bad news.”
Blade, his face nearly hidden by his topcoat’s wide collar, shuffled a few steps north, a few more south.
“Yeah. Bitch.”
