“Rats,” he panted. His tough little body felt like Jello under her hand.
“Fure, for Chrissake. I ought to know a field mouse when I see one. They used to run all over our kitchen in the Hollow. They won’t hurt you.”
“They went for me… “
“They couldn’t do that. They’re harmless.”
“They bite… “
“Not people. They’re grain eaters. Not like rats. See, they’re all gone now.” There was a hundred-pound sack stamped golden bulky in the shed. The mice had gnawed holes in it, the dirt floor was honey brown where they had burrowed. “The Thatchers must keep a horse here summers. This is horse feed, Fure, that’s what they were after, not you.”
He didn’t believe her. He kept shivering and hugging himself.
Hinch was spreadlegged in the entrance with a puzzle written on his face. He was looking from Furia to the dirt floor of the shed and back again. Furia’s wild heaves had struck two mice. One was lying with its head flattened out in an omelet of blood and brains. The other was still alive, scrabbling with its forelegs as if its back were broken.
“You scared of these bitty things?” Hinch asked in a wondering voice.
Furia swallowed convulsively.
Hinch walked over to the wounded mouse with a grin and kicked. It flew up and against the back wall of the shed and fell like a shot. He picked it up by the tail and went back and picked up the other one by the tail and went back again and dangled the two dead mice inches from Furia’s nose. Furia screeched and tried to climb the wall. Then he was sick all over the dirt. Goldie had to jump back.
“Be goddam if he ain’t scared shitless,” Hinch said. He walked out and threw the mice all the way over into the empty pool. It was as if Hinch had just learned that babies didn’t come out of their mothers’ armpits.
Furia couldn’t get down more than a couple of mouthfuls even though Goldie did the steaks exactly the way he liked them. She almost laughed in his face.
She found it a gas too the way he kept hanging on to the fireplace poker, a five-footer with three prongs at the business end. His eyes had grown as quick as the mice, darting about the floor, especially in corners. He drank three cups of black coffee without letting go of the poker.
Barbara woke up whimpering and Furia got ugly. “Shut that brat’s yap or so help me Jeese I’ll ram this thing down her goddam throat.”
“All right, Fure, all right,” Goldie said, and found some powdered milk in the cupboard and stirred up a glass. She brought the child the milk and a piece of cold steak. Barbara sipped some of the milk but turned away from the meat, her eyes were rolling up, I guess I gave her too much of a slug, well, better drunk than dead. She finally dropped back to sleep.
“She won’t bother you now,” Goldie said, coming out.
“Cool it, big man,” Hinch said with a wink. “A couple of lousy mice.”
That was when Furia swung the long fire tool and ripped Hinch’s cheek. If Hinch hadn’t been so quick the prongs would have gone through to his tonsils. He looked astounded. Goldie had to swab the wound with antiseptic she found in the medicine chest, she swabbed good and hard, and she slapped one of those three-inch Band-Aids over it.
Hinch kept looking at Furia with his eyebrows humped up like questions.
Saturday morning passed in jerks like a film jumping its sprockets. Malone wandered about the house picking things up and setting them down as if to satisfy himself that they were still there. The next thing he was taking in the milk. The milk brought Bibby into focus and he shut the refrigerator door as reverently as if it were the lid of a coffin. When Ellen set breakfast before him he simply sat and looked at it. He did not even drink the coffee. She finally took the dishes away.
Ellen had mourning under her eyes, bands of dark gray. Once she said, “Noon. What happens after noon, Loney?”
He turned away. He resents my reminding him. As if he needs reminding. What a thing to say, now of all times. Why am I so good to him at night and so bitchy daytimes?
But she’s my child.
My lost, my frightened baby.
They sat in the parlor, he on the sofa, she on the rocker, watching the little cathedral clock on the mantel. When noon came they both sat up straight, as if at a call. When the clock stopped striking it was like a death.
Ellen began to cry again.
Malone jumped up and ran out into Old Bradford Road leaving the front door open. It was a mean day and the meanness slid into the house. He stood in the middle of the empty street staring in the direction of Lovers Hill. The Cunninghams’ mongrel bitch came trotting up and licked his hand. Malone wiped his hand on his pants and went back into the house, shutting the door this time. Ellen was upstairs, he heard her moving about in one of the bedrooms.
Bibby’s I’ll bet.
He sank onto the sofa again and placed his hands uselessly on his knees, looking at the clock. When John Secco drove up it was twenty minutes of two and Malone was still sitting there.
Secco came in his own car, a three-year-old Ford wagon with no markings. He was in civvies.
“No sense getting your neighbors wondering,” the chief said. He had more than midafternoon shadow and Malone doubted he had shaved. For some reason it made him angry. “Ellen, I know how this has hit me, I can imagine what you’re going through.” Ellen said nothing. “Been a call? Letter, message?”
“Nothing,” Malone said.
“Well, it’s early. Could be they’re putting some pressure on. Or giving you plenty of time to play ball.”
“With what?” Ellen said. Secco was silent. “I knew that’s what you’d do, Loney.”
“Do what?” Malone said.
“Tell the whole thing to John. You promised you wouldn’t. I told you I’d walk out on you if you did.”
“Wes did the only thing,” Secco said. “Do you suppose I’d put your little girl in danger, Ellen?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you considered me your friend.”
“You’re a policeman.”
“I’m also a husband and a father. You ought to know me better than that.”
“I don’t know anything any more.”
“Do you want me to leave?” the chief asked.
They waited for a long time. Finally Ellen’s mouth loosened and she said, “John, we don’t know what to do, where to turn.”
“That’s why I’m here, Ellen. I want to help.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “Get me that money.”
“Ask me something that’s possible, Wes. Anyway, I think there’s something we can do.”
“Without the twenty-four thousand?” Malone laughed. “Furia thinks I’ve lifted it. You figured out a way to convince him I didn’t?”
“I’ve been thinking over what you told me, I mean about what you did on your own.” Secco seemed to be picking his way through the available words and choosing only the finest. “Maybe when they rented that cabin at the Lake last summer they at the same time rented a second cabin as a backup just in case. I thought
