The dog barked a second time, then yelped.
Pete rose and went to the window, wiped away the cloud of his own breath and peered down.
There were three men in the street, all of them dressed the same. They were talking animatedly, but keeping their voices low so they would not wake the tenants in the buildings around them.
He strained to hear what they were saying, but they were being too quiet.
He returned to the sofa and sat, his head turned toward the window.
Claire’s face swam to the surface of his thoughts, and he felt his nerves twitch. He hoped more than anything she didn’t hate him for leaving her alone at the hospital, and made a note to tell her that he wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t been frightened by the amount of people suddenly rushing toward him at once, all speaking at the same time, the look in their eyes serious, demanding answers. He’d fled, and hadn’t made it a whole mile down the road before he’d regretted it.
There was still time to set things right. That’s why he was here. There would be ample opportunity to explain himself to her in person. The thought made him smile. He imagined her as he’d seen her on the news—scarred and bruised but cleaner and healthier looking than she’d been in Elkwood. Her eye was still gone though, and he ached at the thought of how much pain it must have caused her, both in having it torn out, and waking to find it gone. The picture he’d seen had shown her looking exhausted, the lids of her missing eye stitched together with black thread so that it looked as if she might only have been in a serious fight. Her hair had been combed, her lips colored a little. The sight of her had made his heart beat faster.
Down in the street, there came the rumble of a car engine, the slight squeak of brakes. One of the men raised his voice, but his words were no clearer. He sounded annoyed.
Though Pete had long abandoned the idea that Claire would fall madly in love with him just because he’d had a hand in rescuing her, he hoped more than anything she would be glad to see him. He wondered what she would say when he told her that he was going back to Elkwood to punish the men who had done such horrible things to her. Would she think him a hero, or a crazy fool? Would she try and stop him? It’s too dangerous, she might say, and he would have no words to argue, because it was true.
The men down there might hurt him. They might kill him. These things he knew, and it saddened him to think that all he might find back in Elkwood was failure. His father would go unavenged, and he would never see Claire again. And then of course, there was Louise, who he had never dared believe he would find, and yet here he was now, sitting on her sofa while she slept in the other room.
He worried that she might try to stop him, that she might lie to him and lure him to the police station where she would tell them what he was planning to do and they would throw him in jail to prevent it. This sudden concern was so strong he almost leapt to his feet and bolted. But then he thought of the cold, and of the men in the street, and stayed where he was.
A car door slammed shut.
Someone cursed loudly.
Pete sighed, suddenly feeling more alone and more frightened than he’d ever been. Tears leaked from his eyes as he pictured his father as he had last seen him. Fear in his eyes. The terror. The desperation. Why had he left him alone? Why hadn’t he known there was something terribly wrong and stayed to help his Pa deal with the men?
Because you’re none too clever, he heard his father say. And you never was.
In truth, he had known something was wrong, but the fear of his father if he disobeyed him had been greater, and so he’d taken the truck and headed out to Wellman’s. But it wasn’t only that and he knew it. He’d wanted to see the girl so bad it had muddied his instincts, made him reluctant to stay with the old man.
And now his father was dead.
Behind him, the bedroom door opened. He turned and saw in the doorway the vague shape of the man who lived here with his second mother. His eyes were dark hollows in the gloom. For a moment he lingered there, watching Pete, then slowly eased out into the room, pulling the door almost shut, but not quite. Then he quietly crossed the room, stopping by the sofa where Pete sat looking up at him.
“What you doin’ up?” Wayne whispered.
“Somethin’ woke me,” Pete whispered back.
Wayne glanced toward the window, nodded pointedly.
“Those men out there?”
Pete shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Well, you just forget all about them, now, you hear me?”
There was a hard edge to his voice that Pete didn’t like, so he nodded. He knew it was wrong to judge a man he hardly knew, but he couldn’t help it. ‘Wayne’ had driven the car that had spirited his mother out of his life all those years ago and the pain that came with that memory made it impossible to think of the man as anything other than mean. And now the tone of his voice—conspiratorial, vaguely threatening—only added to Pete’s disdain for him.
“I’m just goin’ for a walk is all. To get some air.”
Again, Pete nodded.
“If Louise wakes up, you tell her I couldn’t sleep and went down to the All-Night store for cigarettes.” He rose, but continued to stare at him. “I’ll be back soon.”
Curiosity, as it had so often in his life, got the better of Pete and he asked, though he knew he shouldn’t, “Where are you really goin’?”
“That ain’t none of your business, boy.”
Wayne watched him for a moment longer, but then the voices from the street drifted up as if summoning him and he sighed and headed for the door. “Remember what I said,” he told Pete, and exited the apartment.
As Wayne’s footsteps echoed in the corridor outside, Pete turned his head toward the window and listened to the voices from down below.
-21-
Distant thunder rumbled on the horizon as Papa-in-Gray stared at the wall. Before him was a chipped mug full of some kind of murky brown liquid he had as yet failed to identify, but it smelled like toilet water. He shoved it away from him and stared at the wall. There was little to see there but cobwebs and flaking paint. Jeremiah Krall hadn’t bothered decorating the place, though he’d been living here for years. Every surface was coated with a thick layer of dust. A stone fireplace held nothing but a shroud of spider webs speckled with small brown egg sacs. Broken wood littered the place, as if rather than venture into the surrounding woods for firewood, Krall had smashed up his furniture, sparing only one rickety table and two wobbly chairs for comfort. He was a capable hunter, and hunted often, and yet the cabin remained utterly devoid of trophies, skins, or prize animal heads. His living room was just that, a room for living in, nothing more. Still, Papa wished there was something other than the stained surface of the table and that crumbling wall to focus on, because while they might be living in this room, he had come to talk about death, and one he feared Krall was not going to take too well.
He looked down at his fingers, at the faint maroon stains on his skin. It seemed he always had blood on his hands no matter how hard or how often he washed them. He wanted to believe it was a sign from God—stigmata of a sort—that he was doing His work, and doing it well. This would have encouraged Papa, though he secretly wished for more than some ambiguous rusty stains on his skin as acknowledgment of his commitment, reassurance perhaps, however slight, that a life spent worshipping and serving God hadn’t been in vain, and that in the end, the Men of the World would not be victorious.
“Gimme strength,” he whispered to the room.
As a child, he had questioned the existence of God, reasoning that the beauty of the world was not proof enough, that there had to be something else, something more. Something a child could look to for solace, and hope, for in his world there was little beauty, even less when his mother took the old belt to him for daring to doubt their Lord. She would punish him, and then order him to pray for forgiveness. Over time, he learned to view his fervent whisperings in the dark as penance he should not have to give for simply expressing his curiosity, and learned to resent the god for whom they were intended.