"Huh?"
"One of your stories," she said. "Every time you want to say something you think is important, you have to start off with a story of some kind. And every time," she added with a disarming smile, "it doesn't have a thing to do with whatever you're saying."
He leaned away slightly. "I do that?"
She nodded.
"All the time?"
She nodded again.
"I'll be damned."
She laughed soundlessly and lay a palm to his cheek, pulled the hand away and covered his on the seat's back. "Just tell me, Col. This once, just tell me."
His tongue swiped at his lips once, and his cheeks puffed with apprehension. "It's-"
"Just tell me."
He watched her for a long time, and she didn't look away. Then he tucked his chin toward his chest and took a deep breath. "I want to marry you, Peg. I mean, I want you to marry me. I mean, will you marry me is what I mean. I mean. Yes." He nodded once, sharply. "Yes, I want to marry you."
"Then it's mutual," she said.
"No joke," he said, his stomach suddenly feeling queasy and hollow.
"No joke, Colin."
He frowned. "But I've never said I loved you."
She slid toward him and laced her hands around the back of his neck. "Yes you have," she said quietly. "Every time I see you." She kissed him, and he sighed and wrapped his arms around her, kissed her gently and leaned his chin on her shoulder while he stared at the trees.
"This is… nice."
She said nothing.
"I mean, this is great! I mean-" He pulled away and looked at her, frowning until he saw the color slipping from her face. "Peg?" Her lips were quivering just enough for him to see, and her right hand was pushing hard at his shoulder. He turned. "What's…" His eyes widened.
Across the road was an elm whose branches had been shaped by the wind until they grew around the trunk, leaning away from the ocean. The bole was wide and gnarled, several knobs of roots thrust through the ground.
He saw a hand there, part of an arm, a dark shape beyond them stretched under the tree.
The hand was a dull red, and so were the leaves beneath it. Peg was out of the car before he could move, waiting by his door when he finally realized she was gone. They held hands as they crossed the tarmac, slowly, trying not to stare and staring just the same. At the opposite verge she stopped and pulled back, but Colin released her and kept going until he could see Warren Harcourt sprawled in the shadows.
A fly walked across the dead man's brow.
"Oh… Jesus," he whispered, and closed his eyes, too late. At the man's neck, over his coatfront, and staining the tops of his sandy bare feet… never in his life had Colin seen so much blood.
Tess Mayfair liked to cook. If she had her way, she'd stay in the yellow-and-copper kitchen from breakfast to dinner and do nothing but watch the blue flames on the stove reach under the pots to boil the water and brown the fries and crisp the potato skins and curl the bacon. All while the TV on the windowsill would play her favorite western.
These days, of course, there was precious little to do what with the summer people gone and Muriel North working nights at the drug store and no one else from town bothering to come out to see her. That left her alone. All alone. Alone enough to wish sometimes she hadn't driven her third husband away five years ago because he was fooling around with a girl he'd met on the beach in July. And that's what she was. A girl. Thirty years younger than he, and there she was with her tanned little stomach and her tanned little legs and no chest to speak of and no brains, either, considering her choice.
It was damned embarrassing.
She'd seen him with her twice, suspected him more than that, and in a temper and snit on a Sunday afternoon she'd packed his bags and left them on the porch. Locked the door. Pulled down the shades. Listened to him bellow and plead and finally tell her what he thought of her and her westerns, while he staggered and stumbled down the flagstone walk to the street, staggered and stumbled along the pebbled verge until he was out of sight. Still yelling. Still cursing.
Five years gone, and the son of a bitch hadn't even sent her a postcard.
Crumb didn't even know what he was missing. Lord, she still had all her teeth, and her hair was still black without any fancy rinses, and her eyes were still bright and brown, and so what the hell if she was a little overweight.
She sniffed, and shook her head and plunged her hands back into the dishwater. A slow job tonight, just her own plates and coffee cup. As she stood at the sink she looked out at the garden through the gap in the yellow chintz curtains on the eye-level window. Next spring, she decided, she'd have to do a little weeding. Zinnias didn't grow this year, and those fool roses looked like hell. The wall of irises on the left she didn't need to touch at all; they were like her, independent and strong and too stubborn to die. The squirrels had dug up the tulip bulbs, though, all around the birdbath. Mums and tulips, she decided with a nod that rippled her three chins, mums and tulips against the birdbath.
She reached for a towel to dry her hands -
She reached for a cold roll she hadn't eaten at dinner.
She looked out the window again before heading in for the big TV in the living room, and saw the boy standing just in the trees.
A groan of exasperation, the dishcloth splashed back into the sink. Why, she wondered, didn't they ever learn? Every year it was the same thing. They didn't even bother to think of something new-wait until she had put a tape on the machine, or was watching a regular show, then sneak up the back and make a grab for the bowl on the concrete pedestal. They thought she couldn't hear them, but they didn't know she had ears that would put a prime fox to shame. They thought she couldn't run, but she grinned when she remembered the summer Cart Naughton had made it all the way to the birdbath, and she was out the door and down the steps before he could look up. Just a little luck and she would have had him, had his neck in her hands and his life popping out his eyes. But he ducked, and all she got was his black leather jacket.
The scream he gave when it tore off his back and dangled in her hand had her laughing for a week. She even tied it to the flagpole in front of the house and prayed he'd try to get it back. A lot of kids drove by and yelled, pointed, laughed when she beckoned with a sweet smile and a fist hidden behind her waist. But Naughton never came for it, and finally a storm ripped it free and blew it away.
So there he was again, and she sighed. On another day she would have welcomed the fun, but not tonight. Tonight she needed to rest because today had been worse than the hottest day in August-sweat bulging on her forehead, making her hair itch, had her looking out every window in the house hunting for the thunderheads she was sure were overhead. It wearied her. It made her think about starting that diet again, maybe even cutting down on her smoking.
She wasn't in the mood for this crap, not at all, not at all.
So she picked up the baseball bat she kept by the stove and she pulled open the door.
"Damn you," she shouted in her worst, fiercest voice. The boy didn't move.
She leaned forward, peering, and the breeze took the hem of her print dress and snapped it at her legs, drew it tight across her massive chest, puffed the sleeves and gave her a chill. A brittle leaf bounced across the porch. Tentacles of ivy dropped from the gutter and wove at her, scratching the air and whispering to themselves.
"Beat it!" she shouted.
The boy didn't move.
The woods behind him were encased in black, a soft and shifting black that shaded up toward dark green. She could hear a gull wheeling overhead, and the faint sound of the ocean moving in with the tide. A step forward, she grabbed a roof post, held the bat on her shoulder and decided that this might be better than TV.