Mal . . . Mal ... Mal.
The following day brought him another visitor, this one from the police department. It was the young lieutenant. As before, July hid in the basement. The policeman knocked twice, briskly, then came in and went into all the rooms downstairs, checking the closets as well, and then went upstairs. After five minutes he came down, and from the basement window July watched him go into the barn and return to the house after lifting the hoods of the cars to see if the motors were warm. Twice he called out July’s name, opened the basement door, turned on the light, came halfway down the stairs for a quick check and went back up.
July heard him dialing the phone.
“Billy, this is Lester. Get me Snider, will you?”
Pause.
“Snider? Right. I’m over at the house now.”
Pause.
“There’s a phone here now. Somebody put it in for him. There’s a note here.”
Pause.
“No. Can’t find him anywhere.”
Pause.
“There’re three cars out front. . . . Listen, what have you got from—” Pause. “Oh, never mind, then. I don’t know what to do. Wait, I guess. Get a hold of Muscatine.”
Pause.
“I’m sure he’ll turn up.”
Pause.
“No I haven’t. What did you say? ‘66? Mercury?”
Pause.
“All three? What makes you think—”
Pause.
“Maybe so. I’ll be back in tomorrow morning. Talk to you then. I’ll be here another hour or so. Call if you need me. The number’s three eight six nine eight seven three.”
He hung up, but remained sitting on the sofa. He stayed in the house for another half-hour, then went outside and July saw him picking around in the driveway and road, inspecting the flattened mailbox and discarded flag. He came back to the house for a moment and left.
The note on the door said. Dear July, stopped by to see how you were. If you have the time, why don’t you come in and we’ll have lunch together. Call me 383-6464. Lieutenant Lester Helm. July opened the door and it fell onto the porch floor, where he left it.
But something was working away at him, and he tried to go over the telephone conversation—that much of it that he had heard. He tried to think, but it was almost as if he couldn’t. His grief had stunted him and hollow shouting was all he could manage before coming to rest once again at the foundation of madness, where hatred was his only rationality.
The following morning the back door of the house banged closed, announcing July’s entrance into the yard. He wore no coat and held his arms close to him with his hands in his pockets. Long, thin puffs of frozen breath, flared at the ends, came from his nostrils. He walked to the white fence and stood beside it for a long time, letting his hand slide gently over the tops of the wooden pickets. Then with no warning he yanked off one, wrenching the nails from the upper and lower rails, threw it out beyond the drive and kicked through several more. Then he walked around the house several times, beginning to shiver. Before he started to wander toward the barn, he recovered the picket, pounded it back in place with a chunk of brick, fitted the others together where they were broken, and backed away from the fence to see how far away one had to be not to notice.
He entered the barn and stood shivering in the doorway, his hands back in his pockets. His clothes looked a size too large for him. His face was thin and pale. Dark gray shadows hung beneath his red eyes. He went all the way in and closed the doubledoors. Immediately the inside of the barn darkened. Then he began pacing back and forth in front of the mangers, looking at the dirt floor under his feet.
He stopped to listen as a car went by in front, hearing it slow down, but continue on—thinking at first that it might be his aunt again. Then he opened the larger set of doors and drove the Chrysler in and reclosed the barn, in this way hiding it so that if she were to stop by she would think he wasn’t home and not wait around so long, or even get out of her car. For a long time he sat in the driver’s seat of the car looking at the dashboard, then started it and shut it off; then started it again, almost turned it off, but then, with his hand on the ignition key, slammed the foot pedal to the floor and ran it for several minutes wide open, the motor screaming. Then shut it off, got out, went up into the loft and lay in the hay looking at the cracks between the boards, which grew darker as the afternoon wore on. The hard core of light gone, he fell into the deepest despair and his thoughts became the color of old black rubber. In the middle of the night, shivering like a leaf, he stumbled slowly out of the haymow and went to the house and sat with his animals.
The next day, after having fought its way through layers and layers of cold sorrow and hatred, an idea came to him. He went out of the house and walked down the road, searched along in the ditch and found the comic book he had thrown there. As he had noticed before, on the back was stamped Property of Riverview Courts.
He drove to Iowa City and went to the library. There, in the Muscatine telephone directory was the name of a trailer court: Riverview Courts. It seemed quite a coincidence. Of course, there might be a thousand Riverview Courts across the country, but it did seem strange that there would be one in the only town he had overheard the lieutenant mention. Now, if there was in that trailer court another coincidence, a 1966 Mercury, it would be truly an odd set of circumstances.
July took
