“That water keeps comin’ up, it’ll take out this road by morning,” Ted said. “You better talk that old man into comin’ out with us now.”
A yellow light shone from a small window. I knocked on the door, heard a voice inside, and walked in, Ted behind me. Caleb stood in the center of the room, a bent old man who looked closer to ninety than seventy. A woodstove in a corner threw some heat, but it was cold in the room. An oil lamp on a table was the only light.
Caleb looked at us in alarm, but his expression softened as he recognized me. “How do, Henry,” he said almost formally.
“You’re welcome to come in and set, Henry,” Caleb said to me, “but I know why you’re here and I’ll tell you like I told those people yestiddy...” He straightened as much as his back would allow. “I ain’t goin’ to leave my place here, no, sir!”
I knew he was stubborn, and I wasn’t about to argue with him. “That’s all right, Caleb,” I said pleasantly. “You can stay here if you want to. I came to fetch Chester.”
“Chester?” He looked at me in surprise. “What do you want with him?”
Chester was Caleb’s dog, a little cocker spaniel, the only thing in the world the old man had to love, and to be loved by. I made a show of searching around the room, looking behind the only armchair, under the skirt of the table.
“I’m not going to see Chester maybe drown or starve to death,” I said over my shoulder. “Now, where is he?”
I saw Caleb’s eyes go toward the woodbox by the stove. As I crossed the room, Caleb moved to stop me.
“You can’t take him, Henry! You got no right!”
“Yes, I do, Caleb. I’m still an officer of the law, you know. I won’t stand by and see a crime committed. I’m taking your dog to the shelter in town where he’ll be safe. You can stay here if you want to.”
The little dog was in a box behind the stove. Its hind legs were withered sticks, the result of a long-ago accident. Caleb had found the dog beside the road minutes after a car had run over his hindquarters, crushing his legs. Caleb had cared for the dog, and later he fashioned a two-wheel cart and harness with which the dog could pull himself around.
I stooped to pick Chester up. “Find me a blanket to wrap him in,” I said.
Caleb stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.
“Wait, Henry! They told me I couldn’t keep him with me in town,” Caleb said, his voice ragged with panic. “He’s all I got, Henry, you know that!” His voice cracked. “He needs me!”
“I know, Caleb.” I touched his shoulder. “Listen to me. They were wrong. You can keep him with you at the shelter.” From close by outside I heard the snap and crash of another tree falling. From the door Ted said, “We best be going, Hank.”
Caleb straightened up, the little dog in his arms. “Do I have your word on that, Henry?”
“You do. Now, let’s go before the river takes out your road here.”
“All right then.” Caleb put on an old overcoat and wrapped Chester in a wool sweater. He handed me the little cart and harness. To Ted, standing by the door, he said, “We’re ready, sir.” To me he said, “We thank you, Henry.”
When we got back, I had a message to call Sergeant Early in Ray Brook. I had to wait for the phone. There was only one line, and people in the shelter were using it to contact relatives on the outside, but I finally got him.
“You still got that ’94 Pontiac out there in the boonies? The one the city boy was driving?”
“Yes, Vern, it’s still here.”
“Keep your eyes on it.” He paused. “I can’t tell you much, buddy, but Customs and BCI picked up on the description and the plate of that car. I don’t know why they’re interested, but they are. I told them it was over there in Fountain and you had seen it, all right?”
“Sure. It won’t go anywhere; it’s blocked by a big tree.”
“Don’t do anything to get the guy suspicious. We’ll get back to you.” And he hung up.
As I walked down the hall to the kitchen, the ceiling light came on. I didn’t realize what had happened until I heard people cheering all over the building. We had fight! The electric company had restored service to this part of town.
We were still prisoners of the storm, but part of our sentence had been lifted.
By noon the next day I had been entrusted with four more envelopes addressed to a Reverend Daniel Fisher in Orlando. I was suspicious. I recalled the mail scams I’d heard of — you have won a fabulous prize, an uncle you never heard of left you some priceless real estate, all you have to do is send us your life savings.
What did I know about the people who had written the letters? They were all elderly, the ideal targets for a mail fraud, all members of Saint Agnes Church in town. Not much to go on, but my friend Ted was also a member of Saint Agnes.
“You happen to get a letter from a Reverend Fisher down in Florida?” I asked Ted over coffee.
“Yeah. Felt sorry for that old missionary he wrote about. Dying of cancer like that. I was going to send a few bucks, but I got busy.”
I tried to be casual. “Something about needing an operation, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. Big medical bills. The old man was booked into Sloan-Kettering for an operation but needed payment in advance. Plus airfare.”
“Reverend Fisher’s church is in Orlando, right?”
“He said it was a small church. Just getting started. Not in the official register yet.”
I didn’t say anything. Of course it wouldn’t be fisted.
Dolls. The box Elaine was so careful of contained a dozen or so new dolls. I happened to walk through the dining room as she was showing them to a circle of delighted children and parents. The dolls were cute little figures of animals and people, soft plush bodies and endearing expressions.
“You’ve got your Barbies and your Kens,” Elaine was saying, “and your Barneys and Cabbage Patch Kids and your Elmos, but now—” she held up two of the dolls “—here’s the new thing in dolls, the new collectible... the Beanie Baby!”
She handed one to me. It was a little fox about ten inches long, brown and white with little button eyes. A heart-shaped tag in the one ear said his name was Sly, and there was a little poem about him.
“They don’t talk or snore or dress up,” Elaine told the mothers. “They just cuddle, and they’re inexpensive enough so you can have lots of them. There’s Dotty the Dalmatian and Mel the Otter and Stinky the Skunk and Percy the Goose...”
The Beanie Babies were trade-marked. Their popularity made them obvious targets for illegal imitating, and it would take an expert to tell whether these were genuine. I asked Elaine what she planned to do with the dolls.
“They’re for display in the shop where I work,” she told me. “Then I’ll use them for birthday presents.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, Mr. Sessions, I know about trademark infringement; I wouldn’t sell bootleg stuff.”
I was getting worried about the people in the shelter. They were getting restless, and it was depressing to realize that the cleanup after the storm would take months. Men worked outside if they were able. Women kept the kitchen open, improvised a laundry, fretted about the homes they’d had to leave.
All of us were afraid the ice sheet would ruin the spring alfalfa crop. Eight miles of transmission lines were still down just north of here. There were more reports of flooding. The governor called for emergency funding. The latest count of people without power was over a hundred thousand in five counties.
There were many stories of wildlife suffering — deer injured by falling limbs, trapped in deep snow, starving because their food was encased in ice.