She kissed him again, went to the door, blew him another kiss, went outside, and descended the porch steps to the Toyota parked in the gravel driveway.
He grabbed his cane from the back of one of the kitchen chairs and used it to move more quickly to the door than he could have with only the assistance of his leg braces. Wiping the steam from the cold pane of glass, he watched her start the car and race the engine until, warmed up, it stopped knocking. Clouds of vapor plumed from the exhaust pipe. She drove out to the county road and off toward the elementary school three miles away. Jack stayed at the window until the white Toyota had dwindled to a speck and vanished.
Though Laura was the strongest and most self-assured person Jack had ever known, he worried about her. The world was hard, full of nasty surprises, even here in the rural peace of Pine County. And people, including the toughest of them, could get ground up suddenly by the wheels of fate, crushed and broken in the blink of an eye.
"You take care of yourself," he said softly. "You take care and come back to me."
SEED DROVE TEEL PLEEVER'S BATTERED OLD JEEP WAGON TO THE END OF the abandoned logging road and turned right onto a narrow blacktop lane. In a mile the hills descended into flatter land, and the forest gave way to open fields.
At the first dwelling, Seed stopped and got out of the jeep. Drawing upon its host's store of knowledge, Seed discovered this was "the Halliwell place." At the front door, it knocked sharply.
Mrs. Halliwell, a thirtyish woman with amiable features, answered the knock. She was drying her hands on her blue-and-white-checkered apron. "Why, Mr. Pleever, isn't it?"
Seed extruded tendrils from its host's fingertips. The swift, black lashes whipped around the woman, pinning her. As Mrs. Halliwell screamed, a much thicker stalk burst from Pleever's open mouth, shot straight to the woman, and bloodlessly pierced her chest, fusing with her flesh as it entered her.
She never finished her first scream.
Seed took control of her in seconds. The tendrils and stalks linking the two hosts parted in the middle, and the glistening, blue-spotted black alien substance flowed partly back into Teel Pleever and partly into Jane Halliwell.
Seed was growing.
Searching Jane Halliwell's mind, Seed learned that her two young children had gone to school and that her husband had taken the pickup into Pineridge to make a few purchases at the hardware store. She had been alone in the house.
Eager to acquire new hosts and expand its empire, Seed took Jane and Teel out to the jeep wagon and drove back onto the narrow lane, heading toward the county road that led into Pineridge.
MRS. CASWELL ALWAYS BEGAN THE MORNING WITH A HISTORY LESSON. Until he had landed in her sixth-grade class, Jamie Watley had thought that he didn't like history, that it was dull. When Mrs. Caswell taught history, however, it wasn't only interesting but fun.
Sometimes she made them act out roles in great historical events, and each of them got to wear a funny hat suitable to the character he was portraying. Mrs. Caswell had the most amazing collection of funny hats. Once, when teaching a lesson about the Vikings, she had walked into the room wearing a horned helmet, and everyone had busted a gut laughing. At first Jamie had been a bit embarrassed for her; she was his Mrs. Caswell, after all, the woman he loved, and he couldn't bear to see her behaving foolishly. But then she showed them paintings of Viking longboats with intricately carved dragons on the prows, and she began to describe what it was like to be a Viking sailing unknown misty seas in the ancient days before there were maps, heading out into unknown waters where — as far as people of that time knew you might actually meet up with dragons or even fall off the edge of the earth, and as she talked her voice grew softer, softer, until everyone was leaning forward, until it seemed as if they were transported from their classroom onto the deck of a small ship, with storm waves crashing all around them and a mysterious dark shore looming out of the wind and rain ahead. Now Jamie had ten drawings of Mrs. Caswell as a Viking, and they were among his favorites in his secret gallery.
Last week a teaching evaluator name Mr. Enright had monitored a day of Mrs. Caswell's classes. He was a neat little man in a dark suit, white shirt, and red bow tie. After the history lesson, which had been about life in medieval times, Mr. Enright wanted to question the kids to see how much they grasped of what they had been taught. Jamie and the others were eager to answer, and Enright was impressed. "But, Mrs. Caswell," he said, "you're not exactly teaching them the six-grade level, are you? This seems more like about eighth-grade material to me."
Ordinarily, the class would have reacted positively to Enright's statement, seizing on the implied compliment. They would have sat` up straight at their desks, puffed our their chests, and smiled smugly. = But they had been coached to react differently if this situation arose, so they slumped in their chairs and tried to look exhausted.
Mrs. Caswell said, "Class, what Mr. Enright means is that he's afraid I'm pushing you too fast, too hard. You don't think that I demand too much of you?"
The entire class answered with one voice: "Yes!"
Mrs. Caswell pretended to look startled. "Oh, now, I don't overwork you."
Melissa Fedder, who had the enviable ability to cry on cue, burst into tears, as if the strain of being one of Mrs. Caswell's students were just too much to bear.
Jamie stood, shaking in make-believe terror, and delivered his one speech with practiced emotion: "Mr. En-Enright, we can't t-t-take it any more. She never lets up on us. N-n-never. We c-c-call her Miss Attila the Hun."
Other kids began to voice rehearsed complaints to Mr. Enright:
"— never gives us a recess—"
"— four hours of homework every night—"
"— too much—"
"— only sixth-graders—"
Mr. Enright was genuinely appalled.
Mrs. Caswell stepped toward the class, scowling, and made a short chopping motion with her hand.
Everyone instantly fell silent, as if afraid of her. Melissa Fedder was still crying, and Jamie worked hard at making his lower lip tremble.
"Mrs. Caswell," Mr. Enright said uneasily, "uh, well, perhaps you should consider sticking closer to the sixth-grade texts. The stress created by—"
"Oh!" Mrs. Caswell said, feigning horror. "I'm afraid it's too late, Mr. Enright. Look at the poor dears! I'm afraid I've worked them to death."
At this cue, all the kids in the class fell forward on their desks, as if they had collapsed and died.
Mr. Enright stood in startled silence for a moment, then broke into laughter, and all the kids laughed too, and Mr. Enright said, "Mrs. Caswell, you set me up! This was staged."
"I confess," she said, and the kids laughed harder.
"But how did you know I'd be concerned about your pushing them past sixth-grade material?"
"Because everyone always underestimates kids," Mrs. Caswell said. "The approved curriculum never challenges them. Everyone worries so much about psychological stress, the problems associated with being an overachiever, and the result is that kids are actually encouraged to be underachievers. But I know kids, Mr. Enright, and I tell you they're a much tougher, smarter bunch than anyone gives them credit for being. Am I right?"