gun, but I’m good enough to load his shot and clean his game.” A hard edge crept into his voice every time he talked about his father.
“ Then we have to get some silver. But where? And if we get it, are you sure you can make the shotgun shells? And if we make the shells, are you sure you can shoot the gun? I could shoot my dad’s gun. It’s still got five shots left, but they’re not silver.”
“ Your dad’s gun won’t make any difference. We gotta have silver bullets, I tell you. They gotta be silver. I just know it. If they’re not silver, they won’t work.”
“ Maybe we should tell someone,” she said.
“ Who? No one would believe us.”
“ Harry Lightfoot might. He knows things.” Every kid in town knew about Harry and how he knew before anyone when it was going to rain, and when it was going to stop, and how he could walk in the forest and talk to the animals.
“ Hey, that’s an idea,” Arty said, his voice chock full of new enthusiasm.
“ What?”
“ Harry collects silver coins. I can load silver dimes into twelve gauge shells. Boy, if that wolf gets hit with a shell full of dimes, it’ll be like it got hit with a dozen silver bullets. It’ll be good and dead forever.”
“ Think Harry will help us?” she asked.
“ He’ll think we’re crazy.”
“ Then what are we going to do?”
“ We’ll have to steal some of his dimes.”
“ I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t steal anything. It’s a sin.”
“ So’s swearing and you do that?”
“ That’s different.”
“ How do you figure?”
“ Swearing doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s not the kind of sin that counts.”
“ Listen, if we don’t get the dimes, then we can’t make the shells, and if we can’t make the shells, then we can’t kill the werewolf. Do you want me sleeping at your house forever? And even if I do, sooner or later that thing is going to get us, ’cuz it wants you.”
“ How do you know?” Her eyes had stopped their waltz and were now wide and still.
“ Because it keeps coming back here,” he said.
“ Only two times,” she said.
“ Two times too many.”
“ So what are we going to do?”
“ Tomorrow, when Harry is delivering the milk, I’ll break into his house and get the dimes,” he said.
“ You won’t take more than you need?”
“ ’ Course not. He has so many, he’ll probably never know that some are missing,” he said.
“ I don’t know. Harry knows a lot.”
“ Even Harry doesn’t know everything.” Arty stood up. “Now, I really gotta go. I got my route.”
“ Okay,” she said.
Arty pushed himself off the bed and went back to the window. He silently eased himself out into the space between the houses. He turned to see her at the window. She was holding her ferret in one hand, brushing the hair out of her eyes with the other.
“ Lock the window,” he whispered up at her.
“ You be careful,” she whispered back, lowering the window. He heard the click of the lock as he dropped to his knees. Then he scooted through the bushes, ready to meet the day.
He pushed himself up from the dew damp grass, brushing leaves and dirt from his wet knees. Then he jogged across the lawn, turned right at the sidewalk and started home. He had a half hour of folding papers ahead of him. He was looking forward to reading the headlines and smelling the ink on his hands, while he worked.
Then he saw the body lying across the sidewalk. At first he thought it was one of the few homeless men that slept in the park. But something about it wasn’t right. Then he saw the blood and froze. The cloud cover was fading, the moon offered plenty of light. He recognized his father’s flannel shirt, but it didn’t click that this was his father. He moved closer for a better look, and his mouth dropped. He recognized the worn, black steel-toed boots. He’d been forced to dodge them on more than one occasion. It was his father.
He was thankful the body was facing away from him. He’d never seen a dead person before, but he remembered the vivid description Ray Harpine gave after his uncle’s funeral. He had no desire to ever see that pasty white skin and waxy smile Ray had talked about. However judging from the amount of blood around the body, Arty didn’t think his father was smiling, and he didn’t think all the undertakers in the world would be able to put a smile on his face.
He thought about going back to Carolina’s and calling the police. It didn’t make any difference now if he got caught staying out all night, his father was never going to beat him again. He had to do something. Call someone, tell someone, wake someone up.
Numb in mind and body, he stared at the lifeless form of the man that had terrorized him since memory began. He drank in the sight and wondered if he was somehow responsible, and decided that he didn’t care. His father seemed insignificant now, and besides, he had a paper route to tend to-people counted on him and he wasn’t going to let them down. He’d never missed a delivery. He delivered his papers, even when he was sick with the flu and couldn’t go to school.
He thought again about calling someone, but then he’d have to explain what he was doing here, and that would mean telling about the wolf lady, and nobody was gonna believe him. They’d think he was crazy nuts. He decided to go home, fold his papers and come back, by then old Harry Lightfoot would have come by in his milk truck. It would be better, he thought, if Harry made the discovery.
So he stepped around the man that had caused him so much misery and started toward home. He was half a block away from the body when the thought attacked him. The wolf lady. Discovering his father’s dead body had been so startling, that he hadn’t thought about the how of it. He turned around and walked back to the body, his steps getting shorter as he got closer.
Ten steps away and he saw a pair of legs sticking out from behind a pickup.
Another body.
Who?
The breeze blowing over the bodies brought a foul odor. Arty took shallow breaths, with his hand over his mouth, thumb and index finger pinching his nose. He wanted to leave, but he wanted to know. He inched closer to the pickup, holding onto the tailgate with his left hand as he bent over to look.
He bit back a scream.
The man was bleached white as desert bones, except for the red gash on his neck where his throat had been torn out.
Arty wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t help himself. The bloodshot eyes, open and reflecting the moon’s glow, were staring into nowhere, and a small trickle of dried blood had oozed out of the man’s mouth.
What was his father doing here? Who was this other man? Why had the wolf lady killed them? And then his young mind grabbed onto part of the answer. They were following him. But why? Arty figured he’d never know.
He studied the lifeless face, trying to remember if he’d ever seen the man before, but it was hard to tell. He stared at the wide head, the shock of dirty hair and the big nose, covered with blue veins. Then a fat roach squeezed its way out of the man’s small mouth.
Arty jumped back, gagged and vomited on the man’s legs. Great wracking heaves that clenched his stomach muscles and took his breath away. He let go of his hand hold on the truck, bent over and grabbed his stomach with both hands, continuing to cover the corpse with red and yellow, spaghetti and meatball, projectile vomit.
He gagged for air between spurts, but couldn’t get enough. He felt himself getting light headed, but he couldn’t stop the jagged spasms. He doubled over even more, to try and relieve some of the pressure on his heaving stomach, and he lost his balance and started falling forward toward the corpse.
He threw his arms out in front of himself to break the fall. His right palm landed in the center of the dead man’s chest, and slipped through the vomit, causing Arty to wind up flat on both the dead body and his own mess, as he finally started to catch his breath.
