“No, thanks”—Cathy waved away the spoons—“I’ll drink it black. So, anything else been happening?”
Matthew waited around a turn in the road, and Pam caught up to him.
“Tha’ sonafabitch.” Her hands shook. “That bad man, did he bother you, baby? What was you doing over here all by yourself? Just playing like a good boy? Don’t you let him bother you. If he ever comes round here again, you just come get me. You hear? I’ll show him.”
“Says…he says…sumthin’ ’bout a old man.” Dark bars of shadow leaned across the road, and the boy couldn’t look away from them. “Inna woods. I seen…”
“Now, don’t you pay no attention a him. I don’t know what he’s talking about anyways. Don’t even know hisself. Everbody knows his father just run off.” Seeing how he stared down the road toward town, she stopped.
“Sumthin’ might be…gonna happen a him.” The empty brilliance of his eyes held a dark wonder. “Sumthin’ bad.”
“Nothing much,” Jack was saying. “Couple cases of heatstroke.”
“Looks like you’re in for more of those.” Cathy fanned at the neck of her blouse, then sighed and looked around the hall. “It’s been so long since I’ve been over here. Oh, is it my turn? Rummy.”
“Shit.” Larry tossed his cards down. “I quit. Look at this hand,” he laughed. “Cathy? Look at what I’ve got.”
“Yeah, Cath, it’s been a while since you came by. You should stop around more often.” From behind his glasses, Jack’s eyes studied the thin material of her blouse.
“Oh, you know.” She shrugged, adding up her score. “Doris doesn’t like it. I sure wish she’d let me run again. I go crazy in that house.”
Athena laughed, a small explosive noise that cut off when they all looked at her. “I was only…trying to imagine sitting around the house.”
“How many points you got stuck with, man?”
“You saying that house of yours is still standing, ’Thena?” Jack winked at Cathy as she gathered up the cards and began to shuffle. “I’m telling you, you should get in touch with the historical society.” Taking off his glasses, he massaged the bridge of his nose. “Besides, ain’t you scared of that dog pack way out where you are? I heard they killed somebody.” With an elaborate gesture, he got up and flexed his muscles. “Sitting so long makes me all stiff.” He smiled at Cathy.
“Who’s winning?”
The bay door, shut against the mosquitoes, trapped the heat and boxed in the steady drone of the fan. Picking up her cards, Athena played mechanically, trying to ignore the conversation, only occasionally glancing up at the other woman. From time to time, she caught Cathy looking back at her.
“You guys still running to fires with those old Indian pumps?” Cathy snickered. “You’re going to get your asses fried.”
“We had a couple good ones last month.” Jack nodded. “Couldn’t figure out what started them. Turned out Fort Dix was using the woods for artillery practice.”
They all laughed. Then the back door banged, and everyone tensed. Invisible from the table, the rear exit was behind the refrigerator. “Christ, another hot night. I swear to God, I’m not going to live through this summer.” Shirtsleeves rolled up, Doris stopped in front of the table. “What are you doing here?”
“I came over to see my friends, Doris.” Cathy sat up straighter. “I do still have friends here, you know.”
“Yeah? Well, I guess stranger things have happened.” Turning her back on them, Doris stomped toward the lockers, silence trailing after her. “You do those reports yet, Jack?” she barked. Everyone just looked at their cards while she grabbed some cleaning rags and headed for the exit.
The door banged shut behind her, and Cathy slapped her cards down.
“Hey, Cath.” Jack put his arm around her shoulders. “You shouldn’t let her upset you that way.”
“What gets me is the way she acts mad—like I did something to her. It’s the other way around. I was always her friend.”
Athena gave Larry a small smile and put her cards down. “Well,” she said softly, “so much for rummy.”
“The call came in real routine, you know, that last one I went on?” Cathy’s voice droned almost too low to hear, a self-absorbed monotone. “House hold accident, supposed to be. Nobody else was on, just me and Doris, and this guy answers the door, standing there with a beer in his hand. ‘All right.’ That’s all he kept saying. ‘She’ll be all right. Just needs a little rest.’ We found her under the kitchen sink with a drill bit broke off and sticking out of her head. While we were getting her out, he asked me if I wanted a beer.”
Athena watched her closely.
“In the rig, it started coming out again. All over the place. I didn’t know which hole to plug first.” She laughed with a sound like tearing cloth. “At the hospital, they counted seventy-one of them. And Doris kept yelling at me.”
“Didn’t you call the cops?” Jack asked. “Did your husband come?”
“Yeah, Barry was there.” She nodded, expressionless. “Me she fires, but that goddamn useless Siggy she keeps on. I know I freaked, but Doris didn’t have to be so goddamn mean.”
No one spoke. Athena wiped an arm across her forehead and got up. “I just want to see if she needs any help back there.” As she left the table, the group stayed silent.
She reached the back door, pulled it open and heard the hiss of the hose, then decided Doris would probably appreciate something cold. Letting the door slam, she turned back to get a couple of Cokes from the refrigerator.
“She gets on my nerves, that’s all.” Cathy’s voice had risen sharply. “She’s so stuck up, and it’s a joke. She thinks she’s so smart. What did she ever do? Tell me that. Far as I can see, she’s never done anything.”
Athena froze. She felt the anger harden within her, then fade again as quickly. In the shadows, she leaned against the bulletin board. Then a thin crust of sand particles whispered beneath her shoes as she moved back to the door. She closed it quietly behind her.
All the rig’s doors stood open, and the hose played across and through them. Floodlights glared from the garage roof, throwing the words “Mullica Emergency Rescue” into stark relief.
“She must know.”
“What? Oh, hiya, honey.” Doris looked up and smiled. “What did you say? Grab a rag.”
“That time of the month again so soon?”
“Christ, you’ve been hanging out with me too long.”
Things from the rig, stacked along the wall, tilted precariously, and a radio, perched on a window ledge, muttered and squawked about sending money “to help develop mental defectives in south Jersey.”
“Is that really necessary?” Doris stepped back to snap it off, then gestured toward the rig. “The old girl washes up pretty good, doesn’t she?”
“You look lovely to night, yes.”
“Oh jeez, I walked right into that. I repeat—you’re definitely spending too much time around me.”
Athena hefted a bucket of water. “You were a little hard on Cathy just now, weren’t you?”
“I don’t want her hanging around here.” She twisted the nozzle on the hose, squeezing off the water. “Besides, it’s not like I fired her. She quit on me when I needed her.” Taking the bucket, she heaved soapy water onto the floor of the rig. “She wants to come back, doesn’t she? Well, she can forget it.”
“We need runners.”
“Not like her, we don’t. What the hell good is she if she’s going to get hysterical on calls?” Doris snorted. “Got to run home and spend a week in bed.”
“Some people just aren’t strong enough to…”
“Then they don’t belong here! Strong! Oh Christ, I’ve heard that before. Like it’s a curse. Does that mean we’ve got to spend our lives mopping up after people that aren’t?”
“Isn’t that what we do?”
Doris shrugged. “Never thought of it that way.” She opened a first-aid kit and sorted through it. “Let me ask you something. Don’t you ever, I don’t know, kind of resent all the people who expect something from you just because you’re supposed to be strong? Don’t answer that. Where the hell are the BP cuffs? Oh.”
