“I had a job on a ranch once. And believe me, I worked harder than any old cows.”
“Grandma’s ranch?”
“No. This one was far away.”
The noise from the next room stopped abruptly. Juanita had disappeared into another part of the house, and Mrs. Rosario was kneeling alone in front of the little shrine, the head of Jesus cradled in her left hand. She prayed silently, but from the vindictive look on her face Fielding thought she must be invoking punishment, not forgiveness.
“I want my daddy,” the boy said.
“He’ll be back one of these days. Now how about Miss Muffett, would you like to hear about her troubles? ‘Little Miss Muffett sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey. Along came a spider and sat down beside her, and frightened Miss Muffett away.’ Are you afraid of spiders?”
“No.”
“Good boy. Spiders can be very useful.”
Fielding’s collar was damp with sweat, and every few seconds his heart gave a quick extra beat, as if it were being chased around inside his chest cavity. He often worried about having a heart attack, but when he was at home, he simply took a couple of drinks and forgot about it. Here he couldn’t forget. It seemed, in fact, inevitable, a bang-up climax to the crazy afternoon of the broken crucifix and the shattered door, the grim praying woman and the terrified children, Juanita and Miss Muffett. And now, ladies and gentlemen, for our grand finale of the day we give you Stanley Fielding and his death-defying coronary.
“Miss Muffett,” he said, listening to his heartbeat, “was a real little girl, did you know that?”
“As real as me?”
“That’s right, just as real as you. She lived, oh, about two or three hundred years ago. Well, one day her father wrote a verse about her, and now children all over the world like to hear about little Miss Muffett.”
“I don’t.” The boy shook his head, and his thick black curly hair tickled Fielding’s throat.
“You don’t, eh? What do you like to hear about? And not so loud; we mustn’t disturb Grandma.”
“Talk about the ranch.”
“What ranch?”
“Where you worked.”
“That was a long time ago.” Ladies and gentlemen, before our star performer does his death-defying act, he will entertain you with a few highlights from his life story. “Well, I had a mare called Winnie. She was a cutting horse. A cutting horse has got to be fast and smart, and that’s what she was. All I had to do was stay in the saddle, and Winnie could pick a cow from a herd as easy as you can pick an orange from a bowl of fruit.”
“Grandma gave us an apple before you came. I hid mine. Want to know where?”
“I don’t think you’d better confide in me. I’m not so good at keeping secrets.”
“Do you tell?”
“Yeah. Sometimes I tell.”
“I tell all the time. The apple is hid under the—”
“Shhh.” Fielding patted his head. The boy, without speaking, had already told him what he’d come to find out. His black eyes and hair, his dark skin had spoken for him. One thing was clear now: a mistake had been made. But who had made it, and why? My God, I need a drink. If I had a drink, I could think. I could think with a drink. Think...
“What’s your name?”
“Foster,” Fielding said. He had used the name so often that it no longer seemed like lying. “Stan Foster.”
“Do you know my daddy?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Where is he?”
It was a good question, but an even better one was going around in Fielding’s mind. Not where, but who. Who’s your daddy, kid?
The boy was clinging to his neck so tightly that Fielding couldn’t move his head even to look around the room. But he was suddenly aware of a peculiar odor which he’d been too excited to notice before. It took him a minute or two to identify it as burning wax.
Rising from the bed, he eased the child gently onto the floor. Then he turned and saw the picture of the curly-haired young man behind the flickering candle. His heart began to pound against his rib cage, and the noise of it seemed as loud as the noise Juanita had made banging on the door. Flashes of red struck his eyes, and his hands and legs felt numb and swollen to double size. This is it, he thought. Ladies and gentlemen, this is it. Here I go...
It was a trap.
He saw it now very clearly. The whole thing was a trap; it had been written, rehearsed, staged. Every line, even the little boy’s, had been memorized. Every piece of business, including the shattering of the door, had been practiced over and over until it seemed real. And all of it had been leading up to this moment when he saw the picture.
He raised his swollen hand and wiped away the sweat that was dripping into his eyes, obscuring his vision.
They were in there now, in the other room, waiting to see what he would do, Mrs. Rosario pretending to pray, Juanita pretending to be getting ready to go out, the children pretending to be scared. They were in there listening, watching, waiting for him to give himself away, to make the wrong move. Even the little boy was a spy. Those innocent eyes looking up at him were not innocent at all, and the angelic mouth belonged to a demon.
“He is with the angels by this time,” Mrs. Rosario had said. Fielding knew now whom she’d been talking about, and crazy laughter rose in his throat and stuck there until he began to choke. He loosened his tie to get more air but immediately tightened it again. He must not let the watchers see that the picture meant anything to him or that he was trying to find out about the little boy’s father.
He was aware, in a vague way, that he wasn’t thinking straight, but he couldn’t clear his mind of the haze of suspicion that clouded it. In this haze, fact and fiction merged into paradox: a troubled girl became a master criminal, her mother a scheming witch, and the children were not children at all but adults whose bodies hadn’t grown up.
“Hey, I’m ready,” Juanita said.
Fielding whirled around so fast he lost his balance and had to steady himself by grabbing one of the bedposts.
“It’s a brand-new dress. How do I look?”
He couldn’t speak yet, but he managed to nod. The haze was beginning to lift, and he could see her quite clearly: a young woman, slim and pretty in a blue and white full-skirted dress, with a red sweater flung over her shoulders and red snakeskin shoes with heels like needles.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of this spookery.”
He walked out of the bedroom, rubber-kneed, trembling with relief. There had been no plot, no trap. His mind had invented the whole business, molded it out of fear and guilt. Juanita, Mrs. Rosario, the children, they were all innocent. They didn’t even know his real name or why he had come here. The picture beside the bed was one of those ugly coincidences that happen sometimes.
And yet...
I need a drink. My God, get me to a drink.
Mrs. Rosario crossed herself and turned from the little shrine. She still had made no acknowledgment of Fielding’s presence, not even a casual glance in his direction. She looked over his shoulder, addressing Juanita. “Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“You will buy me a new crucifix.”
Juanita moistened a forefinger on her tongue and smoothed her eyebrows. “I will, eh? Fancy me being so bighearted.”
“You are not bighearted,” Mrs. Rosario said steadily. “But you’re sensible enough to realize this is my house. If I lock the door against you, you’ll be out on the street.”
“You just tried the lock bit. See where it got you.”
“If there’s any more of that, I’ll call the police. You’ll be arrested, and the children will be taken to Juvenile Hall.”