'I'm not lying,'
Toby said.
I said, 'You both wait here.'
'Don-' Connie began, reaching for me with her free hand.
I wasn't going to be restrained, for I remembered the pair of amber lights at the stable window. A child might have called them 'yellow'.
At the time I had wondered what sort of an animal carried lamps or lanterns around with it, had decided that the only thing that did was a man, and had not considered any other explanation for those dual circles of light. And now Toby had given it to me: eyes.
But? eyes? Well, the eyes of many animals seemed to glow in the dark. Cats' eyes were green. And some of them, like the mountain lions and wildcats, had yellow eyes, amber eyes-didn't they?
Sure they did.
Yellow eyes.
But yellow eyes as big as saucers??
In the living room I looked quickly around at the three large windows but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I went to each window then and stared through it at the brief view of snow-covered ground, darkness, and shifting, skipping snowflakes. Whatever
Toby had seen, whether eyes or lanterns, man or animal, it was now long gone.
I recalled how fast it had moved away from the barn when I had set out after it..
Behind me, Connie and Toby came into the living room. He clung to her with one hand and wiped tears out of his eyes with the other hand. In a moment he would stop crying; in two moments he would smile; in three he would be recovered altogether. He was a tough little man; he had had to learn to rely on himself early in life.
'Which window was it?' I asked him.
He let go of Connie's hand and walked over toward the window that lay immediately to the left of the front door.
When I went to check it again, I thought to look down at the drifted bank of snow which had built up on the floor of the front porch-and I saw the prints.
The same prints. Sharp, well defined holes in the snow. Eight holes in each grouping.
Connie sensed the new tension that blossomed inside of me. 'What is it?'
I said, 'Come and look.'
She came; I showed her.
'Was it that animal again?' Toby asked. He crowded in between us, pressing his nose to the glass. He had stopped crying.
'I think it was,' I said.
'Oh, that's all right then,' he said.
'It is, huh?'
'Oh, sure. I thought it was something a whole lot worse than just some old animal.' He was actually smiling now. Looking up at Connie, he said, 'Can I have another piece of cake, Mom? My piece at supper wasn't very big.'
She looked at him closely. 'Are you feeling okay, Toby?'
'Just hungry,' he said. The fear had dissipated like an electrical charge. He said, 'It was only that animal. When the snow stops, tomorrow maybe, Dad and I are going to put on our snowshoes and track it down and find out what it is.' When neither of us could think of a reply to that, Toby said, 'Mom? The cake?'
'To be ten again,' I said.
Connie laughed. She put one hand in Toby's mop of hair and messed it up, a show of affection he stolidly endured. 'Come into the kitchen, me lad, where you can eat it without getting crumbs over everything.'
I let them go. The whole time that Toby had his cake, I stood at the window and looked at those queer prints as the wind and the snow erased them.
5
Later, when Toby was upstairs taking a bedtime bath and we were sitting on the sofa before the fireplace, Connie said, 'Do you think you should-load the gun?'
When I had been drafted into the Army, Connie had purchased a.38 automatic which she had kept in the house for protection against burglars. We still had the pistol and the box of ammunition. In the army I had learned how to handle a gun; therefore, we weren't exactly unprepared.
'Load it?' I said. 'Well
? Not just yet.'
'When?'
'Maybe it won't be necessary.'
'But this animal might be dangerous.'
'I don't think so,' I said. 'And even if it is dangerous, it can't get in the house all that easily.'
'Well?'
'I don't like having a loaded gun lying around.'
'I suppose you're right.'
'It's not that I'm afraid to load the gun, Connie. If a time comes when I have to use it, I will. I'll be able to use it. I no longer feel that a gun, of itself, is evil. I've spent hundreds of hours with Dr. Cohen, you know. I can use a gun again without going to pieces.'
'I know you can.' She looked away from the crackling flames that enshrouded the birch logs. Her face was flushed and pretty.
'I think the first thing I should do is call Sam Caldwell and see if he can help me.'
'Now?'
'It's as good a time as any.'
'I'd better go up and see how Toby's getting along, make sure he brushes his teeth.' When she reached the bottom of the stairs she looked back at me and said, 'Don, you mustn't worry so much about what we think of you.
We love you. We always will. We love you and trust you to take good care of us.'
I nodded, and she smiled at me. I watched her climb the steps until she was out of sight, and I wished that I could trust myself as much as she trusted me.
Would I, could I, load and use the pistol if the time came for that sort of action-or would the weapon remind me of the war, Southeast Asia, all of those things that I had fled into catatonia in order to forget? Would I be able to defend my family — or would I back off from the gun like a man backing off from a rattlesnake? I simply didn't know; and until I did know, I didn't deserve her smile.
In the den I dialed Sam Caldwell's number. It rang four times before he answered.
'Sam? Don Hanlon.'
'You ready to be snowbound?' he asked.
'You think it'll come to that?'
'Sure do. Looks to me like we're in for the first big fall of the year.'
'Well, I'm kind of looking forward to it.'
'That's the proper attitude. Being snowbound is restful, peaceful.'
I decided that was enough
Smalltalk. Neither of us cared much for long discussions about the weather, politics, or religion. Sam, especially, was scornful of wasted words; he was very much a taciturn, friendly, but totally self-sufficient and self- contained
New Englander.
He had come to the same conclusion a split second before I did.
'What did you call for?' he asked in that brisk, short, but not impolite manner of his.
