“Not at all, Ms Anderson,” she said. “After all the years you have done business with us, you're the last person we'd worry about when it comes to deadbeats. As for leashes, we've got a closetful.”
“Things seemed a little crazy there for a while.”
“Boy, were they ever! We had to call Medix for Mrs Perkins. I didn't think it was bad-she'll have needed stitches, of course, but lots of people who need stitches get to the doctor under their own power.” She lowered her voice a little, offering Anderson a confidence that she probably wouldn't have offered a man. “Thank God it was her own dog bit her. She's the sort of woman who starts shouting lawsuit at the drop of a hat.”
“Any idea what might have caused it?”
“No-neither does Dr Etheridge. The heat after the rain, maybe. Dr Etheridge said he heard of something like it once at a convention. A vet from California said that all the animals in her clinic had what she called “a savage spell” just before the last big quake out there.”
“Is that so?”
“There was an earthquake in Maine last year,” Mrs Alden said. “I hope there won't be another one. That nuclear plant at Wiscassett is too close for comfort.”
Just ask Gard, Bobbi thought. She said thanks again and hung up.
Anderson went back to the truck. Peter was sleeping. He opened his eyes when Anderson got in, then closed them again. His muzzle lay on his paws. The gray on his muzzle was fading away. No question about that; no question at all.
And by the way, Bobbi, what's that thing doing to you?
Shut up, Granddad.
She drove home. And after fortifying herself with a second Scotch-a weak one she went into the bathroom and stood close to the mirror, first examining her face and then running her fingers through her hair, lifting it and then letting it drop.
The gray was still there-all of it that had so far come in, as far as she could tell.
She never would have thought she would be glad to see gray hair, but she was. Sort of.
By early evening, dark clouds had begun to build up in the west, and by dark it had commenced thundering. The rains were going to return, it seemed, at least for a one-night stand. Anderson knew she wouldn't get Peter outside that night to do more than the most pressing doggy business; since his puppyhood, the beagle had been utterly terrified of thunderstorms.
Anderson sat in her rocker by the window, and if someone had been there she supposed it would have looked like she was reading, but what she was really doing was grinding: grinding grimly away at the thesis, Range War and Civil War. It was as dry as dust, but she thought it was going to be extremely useful when she finally got around to the new one… which should be fairly soon now.
Each time the thunder rolled, Peter edged a little closer to the rocker and Anderson, seeming almost to grin shamefacedly. Yeah, it's not going to hurt me, I know, I know, but I'll just get a little closer to you, okay? And if there comes a real blast, I'll just about crowd you out of that fucking rocker, what do you say? You don't mind, do you, Bobbi?
The storm held off until nine o'clock, and by then Anderson was pretty sure they were going to have a good one-what Havenites called “a real Jeezer.” She went into the kitchen, rummaged in the walk-in closet that served as her pantry, and found her Coleman gas lantern on a high shelf. Peter followed directly behind her, tail between his legs, shamefaced grin on his face. Anderson almost fell over him coming out of the closet with the lantern.
“Do you mind, Peter?”
Peter gave a little ground… and then crowded up to Anderson's ankles again when thunder cannonaded hard enough to rattle the windows. As Anderson got back to her chair, lightning sheeted blue-white and the phone tinged. The wind began to rise, making the trees rustle and sigh.
Peter sat hard by the rocker, looking up at Anderson pleadingly.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “Come on up, jerk.”
Peter didn't have to be asked twice. He sprang into Anderson's lap, getting her crotch a pretty good one with one forepaw. He always seemed to whang her there or on one boob; he didn't aim-it was just one of those mysterious things, like the way elevators invariably stopped at every floor when you were in a hurry. If there was a defense, Bobbi Anderson had yet to find it.
Thunder tore across the sky. Peter crowded against her. His smell-Eau de Beagle-filled Anderson's nose.
“Why don't you just jump down my throat and have done with it, Pete?”
Peter grinned his shamefaced grin, as if to say I know it, I know it, don't rub it in.
The wind rose. The lights began to flicker, a sure sign that Roberta Anderson and Central Maine Power were about to bid each other a fond adieu… at least until three or four in the morning. Anderson laid the thesis aside and put her arm around her dog. She didn't really mind the occasional summer storm, or the winter blizzards, for that matter. She liked their big power. She liked the sight and sound of that power working on the land in its crude and blindly positive way. She sensed insensate compassion in the workings of such storms. She could feel this one working inside her-the hair on her arms and the nape of her neck would stir, and a particularly close shot of lightning left her feeling almost galvanized with energy.
She remembered an odd conversation she'd once had with Jim Gardener. Gard had a steel plate in his skull, a souvenir of a skiing accident that had almost killed him at the age of seventeen. Gardener had told her that once, while changing a light bulb, he had gotten a hell of a shock by inadvertently sticking his forefinger into the socket. This was hardly uncommon; the peculiar part was that, for the next week, he had heard music and announcers and newscasts in his head. He told Anderson he had really believed for a while he was going crazy. On the fourth day of this, Gard had even identified the call letters of the station he was receiving: WZON, one of Bangor's three AM radio stations. He had written down the names of three songs in a row and then called the station to see if they had indeed played those songs-plus ads for Sing's Polynesian Restaurant, Village Subaru, and the Bird Museum in Bar Harbor. They had.
On the fifth day, he said, the signal started to fade, and two days later it was gone entirely.
“It was that damned skull plate,” he had told her, rapping his fist gently on the scar by his left temple. “No doubt about it. I'm sure thousands would laugh, but in my mind I'm completely sure.”
If someone else had told her the story, Anderson would have believed she was having her leg pulled, but Jim hadn't been kidding-you looked in his eyes and you knew he wasn't.
Big storms had big power.
Lightning flared in a blue sheet, giving Anderson a shutter-click of what she had come to think of-as her neighbors did-as her dooryard. She saw the truck, with the first drops of rain on its windshield; the short dirt driveway; the mailbox with its flag down and tucked securely against its aluminum side; the writhing trees. Thunder exploded a bare moment later, and Peter jumped against her, whining. The lights went out. They didn't bother dimming or flickering or messing around; they went out all at once, completely. They went out with authority.
Anderson reached for the lantern-and then her hand stopped.
There was a green spot on the far wall, just to the right of Uncle Frank's Welsh dresser. It bobbed up two inches, moved left, then right. It disappeared for a moment and then came back. Anderson's dream recurred with all the eerie power of deja vu. She thought again of the lantern in Poe's story, but mixed in this time was another memory: The War of the Worlds. The Martian heat-ray, raining green death on Hammersmith.
She turned toward Peter, hearing the tendons in her neck creak like dirty doorhinges, knowing what she was going to seeThe light was coming from Peter's eye. His left eye. It glared with the witchy green light of St Elmo's fire drifting over a swamp after a still, muggy day.
No… not the eye. It was the cataract that was glowing… at least, what remained of the cataract. It had gone back noticeably even from that morning, at the vet's office. That side of Peter's face was lit with a lurid green light, making him look like a comic-book monstrosity.
Her first impulse was to get away from Peter, dive out of the chair and simply run…
…but this was Peter, after all. And Peter was scared to death already. If she deserted him, Peter would be terrified.
Thunder cracked in the black. This time both of them jumped. Then the rain came in a great sighing sheetlike rush. Anderson looked back at the wall across the room again, at the green splotch bobbing and weaving there. She was reminded of times she had lain in bed as a child, using the watchband of her Timex to play a similar spot off the wall by moving her wrist.
And by the way, what's it doing to you, Bobbi?
Green sunken fire in Peter's eye, taking away the cataract. Eating it. She looked again, and had to restrain herself from jerking back when Peter licked her hand.
That night Bobbi Anderson slept hardly at all.
Chapter 4
The Dig, Continued
When Anderson finally woke up, it was almost ten A. M. and most of the lights in the place were on-Central Maine Power had gotten its shit together again, it seemed. She walked around the place in her socks, turning off lights, and then looked out the front window. Peter was on the porch. Anderson let him in and looked closely at his eye. She could remember her terror of the night before, but in this morning's bright summer daylight, terror had been supplanted by fascination. Anyone would have been scared, she thought, seeing something like that in the dark, with the power out, and a thunderstorm stomping the earth and the sky outside.
Why in hell didn't Etheridge see this?
But that was easy. The dials of radium watches glow in the day as well as in the dark; you just can't see the glow in bright light. She was a little surprised she had missed the green glow in Peter's eye on the previous nights, but hardly flabbergasted… after all, it had taken her a couple of days to even realize the cataract was shrinking. And yet… Etheridge had been close, hadn't he? Etheridge had been right in there with the old ophthalmoscope, looking into Peter's eye.
