I hurried past Lillith Smew's bedroom and went into the children's room. It was more orderly than many I'd seen (and one I'd inhabited), and I wondered which of the house's inhabitants was responsible for this unchildlike tidiness.
Interesting, but not useful, I told myself as I packed some of Martin's clothes in a bag, then continued to wander through the house, trying to imagine the sounds of a family going about its daily grind.
The children had had breakfast at the kitchen table. Buzz had come home, had a conversation with Lillith, scolded Martin about the mess in the toolshed, and then gone to bed. Martin had climbed a tree to chase a gimpy squirrel, and Lissie had watched television until her father sent her outside. No one had stopped by for a visit. At some point, Lillith and Buzz had shared the package of coconut cakes laced with a polysyllabic pesticide. Martin had not, but had ended up with the same poison in his system.
"Root beer and crackers," I snapped at a cockroach on the counter. I grabbed a fly swatter off a hook, but the little bugger had vanished by the time I turned around. I slapped the swatter down anyway to hear the crack of plastic on plastic, replaced it, and looked at the artwork taped on the front of the refrigerator, along with coupons and an unpaid electric bill. The last item reminded me of what Buzz had said about needing his mother-in-law, which made me feel even worse. There would be no more Social Security checks.
I let myself out, locked the door, and put the key back under the flowerpot. I then remembered the open window, but decided to leave it so the house would be slightly more bearable when Buzz and his children returned home.
None of this had accomplished anything, and I figured I wasn't going to get anywhere until I talked to Buzz. There were a couple of hours until practice, so I decided to pick up Lissie and drive once again to the hospital.
"Isn't this just amazing?" Estelle gushed. "Here I am to ask a few questions about your telephone service, and it turns out you drive one of those monster trucks all the way to California! That sounds so romantic I can hardly stand to think about it."
Arnie smiled modestly. "I like to think of myself as a lone rider, like a cowboy running a herd up the canyon. And lemme tell ya, It ain't easy making the long haul. I drive twenty or thirty hours at a time, listening to my tape player or talking on my CB with the other boys."
"Just amazing," she said, crossing her legs so he could appreciate her ankles, which she secretly felt were every bit as good as a lot of Hollywood starlets'. "I do believe I'll accept your kindly offer of a beer. Being a telephone company pollster can make you dry as the desert."
As soon as he went into the kitchen, she hurried to the window and looked down at the dumpster. The lid covered the half nearest the building and obscured the view of most of the interior. She thought she caught a flicker of motion, but at that moment, Arnie came padding back into the living room.
"Watching the planes come in?" he said as he gallantly opened her beer and handed it to her.
"Nothing to see at the moment." She moved away from the window and perched on the edge of the sofa. "I do wish you'd sit right there across from me and tell me more about truck driving. Those ol' things are so big, I don't see how you can steer them."
He flexed his muscles. "It ain't a job for a weakling. Now the rig's got a hydraulic system, of course, but it boils down to man against machine.
"Really?"
He went into a long rigmarole about the philosophical implications of changing gears, but Estelle was having a hard time trying to look fascinated while fretting about poor Ruby Bee in the dumpster with the rats. There was an increasingly loud rumble from outside, as if Arnie's truck was pulling in, and she finally realized it wasn't an airplane landing.
"Excuse me for interrupting," she said, "but what in tarnation is that racket outside?"
"Sanitation truck. What I was saying was that life's like that black ribbon of asphalt that disappears into the distance. You think you can see where it's going, but then you come-"
"Sanitation truck?" Estelle put down her beer and ran to the window. An enormous white truck was approaching the dumpster. Two metal arms reached out to embrace it on either side, and a rectangular section in the back of the truck slid open.
It was all she could do to keep from shrieking as she dashed out to the balcony. "Stop that!" she shouted sternly. "You in the truck! I said stop that, and I mean it!"
"Are you okay?" Arnie asked from the doorway.
The driver looked up, puzzled, and said, "You talking to me, lady?"
"Who else do you think I'm talking to?"
"I dunno, but I've got to finish my route earlier 'cause of my bowling league having a tournament." He turned back to the controls, and again the metal arms reached for the dumpster.
"Stop!" Estelle screeched as she stumbled down the stairs. Her eyes felt as though they were going to pop right out of their sockets, and the blood pounding in her veins was hotter than chili con carne. "Stop!" she repeated in the same voice. "You're about to commit murder!"
"You're the one who needs to be committed," the driver said. The metal arms slid into their allotted slots. The truck let out a groan as the dumpster began to rise on its trip over the front of the truck to be emptied into its belly.
Estelle was jumping up and down and squawking her head off, but the driver refused to acknowledge her, and Arnie, who was watching from the balcony above, somberly resolved never again to invite women from the telephone company in for a beer. Other residents wandered out of their apartments to gawk at the crazy redheaded lady and offer opinions to each other.
The dumpster had passed its zenith and was beginning to be tilted as a state police car pulled into the lot. Estelle ran to the driver's side and pounded on the window. "Thank God it's you! Make him stop! He's gonna kill her and it's all my fault!"
Plover dutifully ordered the driver to stop. He later admitted, but only in private, that the ensuing scene was the weirdest damn thing that had ever happened to him in his entire career, and if he lived to be as old as Methuselah, he'd just as soon not go through it again.
"Where'd you say you found these?" Kevin demanded, feeling a mite faint as he gaped and gulped at the grainy photographs. He was terrified he would hear footsteps on the stairs outside, but he couldn't stop gaping and gulping. "On the dirt," Hammet said. "I was hightailin' it past the trailer when they came out the window and liked to flap me in the face and make me fall. I jest grabbed 'em and scuttled under the trailer to have a look-see, 'cause it dint make no sense for someone to be throwing things out the window."
"And that was yesterday," Kevin said slowly. His eyes were slightly crossed as he tried to think things over without getting more confused than usual. "Kinda late in the afternoon, you said."
"You ain't gonna tell Arly, are you? I don't want her to get all riled at me for looking at pictures of…" Hammet couldn't find the appropriate words, so he settled for rolling his eyes and twisting up his mouth. He wasn't real sure about Kevin, who didn't appear to be much smarter than a possum heading for certain death on the highway. Hammet had been sitting on the top step outside the apartment and hadn't noticed Kevin until he heard a gasp and realized he'd been caught red-handed with the magazines. Now he figured he was at this dumbshit's mercy. "You ain't gonna tell Arly?" he repeated urgently.
"I ain't gonna tell Arly."
"You ain't gonna tell nobody, right?"
After a moment of silence, Kevin smiled just a tad and said, "I think I'd like to buy those magazines off you, Hammet. How much do you reckon it'll cost me?"
"Why do you want to buy them? They ain't nothing but a lot of…" Again, words failed him and he made a face.