for Polly had been a tonic for her nerves, and no mistake.
–and if he does happen to be in, give him my home number and ask him to give me a call if the item he wanted me to see came in. Could you do that?”
“You betcha!” Nettle said. She rose with the coffee-tray and took it into the kitchen. She replaced her apron on its hook in the pantry and came back into the living room to remove the thermal gloves.
Her coat was already on. Polly thanked her again-and not just for the lasagna. Her hands still hurt badly, but the pain was manageable now.
And she could move her fingers again.
“You’re more than welcome,” Nettle said. “And you know what? You do look better. Your color’s coming back. It scared me to look at you when I first came in. Can I do anything else for you before I go?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She reached out and clumsily grasped one of Nettle’s hands in her own, which were still flushed and very warm from the gloves. “I’m awfully glad you came over, dear.”
On the rare occasions when Nettle smiled, she did it with her whole face; it was like watching the sun break through the clouds on an overcast morning. “I love you, Polly.”
Touched, Polly replied: “Why, I love you, too, Nettle.”
Nettle left. It was the last time Polly ever saw her alive.
6
The lock on Nettle Cobb’s front door was about as complex as the lid of a candy-box; the first skeleton key Hugh tried worked after a little jiggling and joggling. He opened the door.
A small dog, yellow with a white bib, sat on the hall floor. He uttered his single stern bark as morning sunlight fell around him and Hugh’s large shadow fell on him.
“You must be Raider,” Hugh said softly, reaching into his pocket.
The dog barked again and promptly rolled over on his back, all four paws splayed out limply.
“Say, that’s cute!” Hugh said. Raider’s stub of a tail thumped against the wooden floor, presumably in agreement. Hugh shut the door and squatted beside the dog. With one hand he scratched the right side of the dog’s chest in that magic place that is somehow connected to the right rear paw, making it flail rapidly at the air.
With his other he drew a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket.
“Aw, ain’t you a good fella?” Hugh crooned. “Ain’t you a one?”
He left off scratching and took a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket. Written on it in his labored schoolboy script was the message the fox-tail had given him-Hugh had sat down at his kitchen table and written it even before he got dressed, so he wouldn’t forget a single word.
He pulled out the corkscrew hidden in one of the fat knife’s slots and stuck the note on it. Then he turned the body of the knife sideways and closed his fist over it so the corkscrew protruded between the second and third fingers of his powerful right hand.
He went back to scratching Raider, who had been lying on his back through all of this, eyeing Hugh cheerfully. He was cute as a bug, Hugh thought.
“Yes! Ain’t you just the best old fella? Ain’t you just the best old one?” Hugh asked, scratching. Now both rear legs were flailing.
Raider looked like a dog pedaling an invisible bike. “Yes you are!
Yes you are! And do you know what I’ve got? I’ve got a fox-tail!
Yes I do!”
Hugh held the corkscrew with the note pinned to it over the white bib on Raider’s breast.
“And do you know what else? I’m gonna keep it!”
He brought his right hand down hard. The left, which had been scratching Raider, now pinned the dog as he gave the corkscrew three hard twists. Warm blood jetted up, dousing both of his hands.
The dog rattled briefly on the floor and then lay still. He would utter his stern and harmless bark no more.
Hugh stood up, his heart thumping heavily. He suddenly felt very bad about what he had done-almost ill. Maybe she was crazy, maybe not, but she was alone in the world, and he had killed what was probably her only goddam friend.
He wiped his bloody hand across his shirt. The stain hardly showed at all on the dark wool. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dog.
He had done that. Yes, he had done it and he knew it, but he could hardly believe it. It was as if he had been in a trance, or something.
The inner voice, the one that sometimes talked to him about the A-A. meetings, spoke up suddenly. Yes-and I suppose you’ll even be able to make yourself believe it, given time. But you weren’t in any fucking trance; you knew just what you were doing.
And why, Panic began to race through him. He had to get out of here.
He backed slowly down the hall, then uttered a hoarse cry as he ran into the closed front door. He fumbled behind him for the knob, and at last found it. He turned it, opened the door, and slid out of Crazy Nettle’s house. He looked around wildly, somehow expecting to see half the town gathered here, watching him with solemn, judicial eyes. He saw no one but a kid pedaling up the street. There was a Playmate picnic cooler propped at an odd angle in the basket of the kid’s bike. The kid spared Hugh Priest not so much as a glance as he went by, and when he was gone there were only the church-bells… this time they were calling the Methodists.
Hugh hurried down the walk. He told himself not to run, but he was trotting by the time he reached his truck, just the same. He fumbled the door open, slid in behind the wheel, and stabbed the ignition key at the slot. He did this three or four times, and the fucking key kept going astray. He had to steady his right hand with his left before he could finally get it to go where it belonged. His brow was dotted with fine beads of sweat. He had suffered through many hangovers, but he had never felt like this-this was like coming down with malaria, or something.
The truck started with a roar and a belch of blue smoke. Hugh’s foot slipped off the clutch. The truck took two large, snapping jerks away from the curb and stalled. Breathing harshly through his mouth, Hugh got it started again and drove away fast.
By the time he got to the motor pool (it was still as deserted as the mountains of the moon) and exchanged the town truck for his old dented Buick, he had forgotten all about Raider and the horrible thing he had done with the corkscrew. He had something else, something much more important, to think about. During the drive back to the motor pool he had been gripped with a feverish certainty: someone had been in his house while he was gone, and that someone had stolen his fox-tail.
Hugh drove home at better than sixty, came to a stop four inches from his rickety porch in a squash of gravel and a cloud of dust, and ran up the steps two at a time. He burst in, ran to the closet, and yanked the door open. He stood on his toes and began to explore the high shelf with his panicky, fluttering hands.
At first they felt nothing but bare wood, and Hugh sobbed in fright and rage. Then his left hand sank deep into that rough plush that was neither silk nor wool, and a great sense of peace and fulfillment slipped over him. It was like food to the starving, rest to the weary… quinine to the malarial. The staccato drumroll in his chest finally began to ease. He drew the fox-tail down from its hiding place and sat at the kitchen table. He spread it across his fleshy thighs and began to stroke it with both hands.
Hugh sat like that for better than three hours.
7
The boy Hugh saw but failed to recognize, the one on the bike, was Brian Rusk. Brian had had his own dream last night, and had his own errand to run this morning in consequence.
In his dream, the seventh game of the World Series was about to start-some ancient Elvis-era World Series, featuring the old apocalyptic rivalry, that baseball avatar, the Dodgers versus the
Yankees. Sandy Koufax was in the bullpen, warming up for Da Burns. He was also speaking to Brian Rusk, who stood beside him, between pitches.
Sandy Koufax told Brian exactly what he was supposed to do. He was very clear about it; he dotted every I and crossed every t. No problem there.
The problem was this: Brian didn’t want to do it.
He felt like a creep, arguing with a baseball legend like Sandy Koufax, but he had tried, just the same. “You don’t understand, Mr.
Koufax,” he said. “I was supposed to play a trick on Wilma jerzyck, and I did. I already did.”
“So what?” Sandy Koufax said. “What’s your point, bush?”
“Well, that was the deal. Eighty-five cents and one trick.”
“You sure of that, bush? One trick? Are you sure? Did he say something like’not more than one trick’? Something legal like that?”
Brian couldn’t quite remember, but the feeling that he’d been had was growing steadily stronger inside him. No… not just had.
Trapped. Like a mouse with a morsel of cheese.
“Let me tell you something, bush. The deal-” He broke off and uttered a little unhh! as he threw a hard overhand fastball. It popped into the catcher’s mitt with a rifleshot crack. Dust drifted up from the mitt, and Brian realized with dawning dismay that he knew the stormy blue eyes looking at them from behind the catcher’s mask. Those eyes belonged to Mr. Gaunt.
Sandy Koufax caught Mr. Gaunt’s return toss, then glanced at Brian with flat eyes like brown glass. “The deal is whatever I say the deal is, bush.”
Sandy Koufax’s eyes weren’t brown at all, Brian had realized in his dream; they were also blue, which made perfect sense, since Sandy Koufax was also Mr. Gaunt.
“But-” Koufax/Gaunt raised his gloved hand. “Let me tell you something, bush: I hate that word. Of all the words in the English language, it is easily the worst. I think it’s the worst word in any language. You know what a butt is, bush? It’s the place shit comes out of.”
