'No one in this family has ever broken the law! Joseph, if your grandfather-'
'I don't care! I'm sick of you! I'm sick of this place! I'm sick of all of you!'
'Go to your room!'
'Jerry!'
'I'm going! I'm going!'
'Jerry, don't hit him!'
'You selfish miser! I know you! I know you!'
The wooden door was eased shut. The voices became muffled. I stood in the shadows and waited. The wooden door flew open again, then the screen door. Joey Deem burst out into the night, charged across the lawn, flung open the driver's door of the T-bird, then banged it shut.
The lock clicked.
Sandra Deem stepped out in a bathrobe and hair curlers and stood for a moment on the low stoop. She pressed her fingers across her cheek several times. Then she turned and went inside, closing both doors behind her.
I walked on down the road.
A light burned in the Wilson living room, and I crept up to a window in the darkness. Wilson was seated in an easy chair, a row of Pabst empties lined up on the table beside him. His gaze was fixed on a noisy spot across the room. 'And as we move into the top half of the eleventh, inning, it's still all tied up, Yankees six, Brewers six.' I could see Kay's immense bare legs hanging over 73 the end of the couch.
I backtracked onto Moon Road and walked the remaining fifty yards down to Central. The Saturday night revelers traffic was heavy, but in the car dealer's lot across the avenue I could make out two figures seated in the front of a blue Dodge. It was the only Chrysler product in three acres of Hondas. I shot them a two armed Nixonesque victory sign, then turned and walked back toward Dot's.
Just after one-thirty I chose my spot. I brought an old Army blanket from the back of my car and placed it under the curtaining arch of a group of forsythia bushes, the kind of cool, secret bushy cave where I'd hidden from the world when I was eight. I stuffed one end of the blanket up into the thicket of branches to form a lumpy, scratchy backrest. The mammoth clump of bushes grew atop a slight rise halfway between a rear corner of the barn and the pear orchard, and I had an unobstructed view of the house, the mailbox, and, off in the other direction to my right, the farm pond.
I settled back and listened to the peepers, and the muted roar of traffic back on Central and from the interstate beyond the woods on the other side of Dot's house. A couple of times I heard rustling in the bushes down at the other end of the barn, and once I watched four men in flak jackets emerge from the barn and stumble into the foliage across Moon Road.
I smeared myself with insect repellant, which had little effect, though my constant scratching and slapping at the gnats and mosquitoes kept me from dozing off. The air was as heavy and tepid as a night in Panama. The fields smelled sweet.
At five to two the back door of the house creaked open. The outside spotlights had been shut off, but in the starlight I could make out McWhirter and the patrolman who'd been in the kitchen moving quickly across the lawn. They climbed into the back seat of Bowman's darkened car and carefully pulled the door shut, click-click. Then it was quiet again. I felt more alone than I wanted to.
At two-ten I was startled to see the back door of the farmhouse ease open yet again. Two figures emerged. One wore a long frilly bathrobe, peach-colored it seemed in the white starlight, and she poked the wobbly beam of a flashlight a few feet ahead of her.
Edith was followed across the veranda and onto the lawn by Dot, who carried towels and was clad in a red terry cloth beach robe, which hung loosely on her slight frame. The two women spoke in low voices and made their way across the damp grass toward the pond.
At the water's edge Dot set the towels on a wooden bench and let her robe fall away. Edith removed her robe and folded it carefully before placing it and the flashlight on the bench. Dot was naked, but Edith had been wearing a calf-length nightgown under her robe, and now Dot helped her hitch it up over her head and place it neatly alongside the folded robe.
Dot stepped into the water first and bent to splash her face and breasts.
'Oh, my! Oh, it's just grand, Edie!'
Edith moved her head about, up, down, right, left, trying to focus on the surface of the black water before stepping down to it. Dot reached out and guided her. The two women stood waist-deep facing each other for a moment before Dot squeezed Edith's hand, let go of it, and let herself fall backwards into the water. She backstroked languidly to the far side of the pond while Edith watched, then turned and sidestroked back again.
Lowering herself into the water with a little cry of astonishment, Edith lay on her back and let her feet bob whitely to the surface. Dot also fell back now, and the two floated in lazy circles, exclaiming softly from time to time, as the moon rose higher above them.
When the women rose dripping from the water after a time, they gently wrapped towels around each other. After a moment Dot let her towel fall away and wrapped Edith's around the both of them as they embraced. They stood holding each other for a long time before they lay down together atop Edith's towel on the moon-whitened grass.
I lay back and looked up at the stars through the leafy branches of my cave, and I thought about my life. I said, Timmy. end user
17
I tried to focus on the luminous dial of my watch, but it kept blurring out. I rubbed my eyes furiously, squinted, brought the watch up to within six inches of my better eye, backed it out to ten inches, and saw it. I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them, looked again, and said, 'Christ.'
It was ten to five.
I poked my head out of the bushes and saw Bowman standing with two cops on the veranda of the farmhouse.
The sky was gray above, pink in the east. I crawled out, shook and stretched as I moved, and crossed the lawn.
'You look like shit, Strachey.'
'Where is he?'
'Where Izzy? Dunno. Where Heimie?'
'Greco. Is he inside?'
'Hey, Strachey, did I ever tell you the one about the rabbi and the monsignor who were up in a plane that flew through a storm? This plane is bangin' and bumpin' all over the sky, see, and the monsignor starts crossing himself, and-'
'They got away, didn't they?'
'— and then the rabbi, he starts crossing himself too, and the monsignor, he looks over at the rabbi and he says-'
'Spit it out, Ned. Who fucked up?'
He yawned lightly. 'Your money's safe, pal. Not to worry. It's in the kitchen.'
'Good. So what happened? I fell asleep.'
That brought him to life. 'Is that a fact? Fell asleep. Well, I'll be mothered! Hey, you guys hear that? 'Travis McGee takes a Nap.' 'The Deep Blue Snooze.' Hope you didn't flake out too early to miss the late show up by the pond last night, huh, Strachey? You didn't let that get by you, did you? Huh?'
He chuckled lewdly, and the two cops with him picked up the cue and joined in. They looked like shit too.
I said, 'What happened? With Greco. Where is he?'
'Beats me. As a matter of fact, not a goddamned thing happened. It was no show. No pickup, no drop-off'. The department paid out a lot of overtime, though. Boys don't mind that at all.'
