“She sounds nice,” Travis said, and blushed when that made the other men laugh.
“I think she is,” I said. “But Ben seems to be a long way from accepting any offers of friendship from her — which is too bad. I think it might have been good for him to let her help him out. Without David, I don’t know how he’ll manage.”
“Maybe he should stay with me,” Jack said.
“You aren’t really set up for houseguests,” Stinger said. “I speak from personal experience. A few more nights on that couch of yours, and I’ll need surgery myself.”
“That can be remedied,” Jack said.
“Damn straight,” Stinger said. “I’m going back home.”
Travis cleared his throat and said, “I’m going with him.”
“What?” Frank and I said in unison.
“Travis here has a notion he’d like to learn how to fly a helicopter,” Stinger said. “And I said that seeing as he has already made out his will, I’ll teach him.”
“I won’t let another twenty-odd years go by before I come back,” Travis said quickly, knowing my first concern. Until recently, family misunderstandings had separated me from my cousin, and I wasn’t willing to lose track of him again. “I’m just going to spend a little time trying something new,” he said. “I think I’ll probably set up a place of my own when I do come back, though.”
The men were looking at me, waiting for a response. “If it’s what you want to do,” I said, “that’s great. Just don’t become a stranger.”
He became animated, telling me about how much he had enjoyed riding up in the cockpit of the helicopter with Stinger, about Stinger’s desert retreat, about the work Stinger did with the helicopters.
“Any word on Parrish’s whereabouts?” Jack asked Frank.
Frank shook his head. “We’re getting reports from all over the place, some in town, some as far away as Australia. Not too uncommon to have this kind of stuff going on when there’s a serial killer on the loose. People feel afraid, they start seeing him everywhere.”
And how, I thought.
As soon as dinner was over, I told them I was going to bed early, that it had been a long day, and I was tired. It was the truth — perhaps not the whole truth, but the truth.
But when I lay down, I couldn’t sleep. I was tense, and felt an unhappiness, the cause of which I couldn’t name.
On the contrary, I had nothing to be unhappy about, I told myself. I was home safe and whole, unlike everyone else who had traveled to the mountains with me a week ago. I could not rid myself of visions of their faces, and found myself thinking especially of Bob Thompson, whom I didn’t even like, which for some reason made it seem worse to me, trying to remember him kindly when I felt so little kindness toward him.
Bingle came in, and put his head on the bed next to me. I petted him until I heard him flop to the floor in a heap and sigh. Cody came in and pointedly ignored him, but curled up in the crook of my knees and purred.
I don’t remember dozing off, but that night I dreamed I was standing in a field of pieces of men — not the mess of reality, but nice neat whole body parts: heads and torsos and feet and hands and arms and legs — all bloodless and clean, more like disassembled mannequins than men. It was up to me to reassemble them, and I felt that it was urgent that I should do so, but the mixture of parts wasn’t right, and I kept making mistakes. I’d put the wrong foot on a leg and couldn’t get it off again, the wrong neck on a head. And then I began to smell the stench of the real meadow, the death smell, growing stronger and stronger — the parts were going bad, because I wasn’t assembling them fast enough. Some of the heads were angry with me; they were dying because of me, they said, and started yelling my name, making an angry, protesting chant of it.
After a time, I realized that it was Frank, not yelling, just gently saying my name, holding me, stroking my back. I was shaking, and for the longest damned time, I couldn’t stop.
“Do you smell it?” I asked.
“What?”
When I didn’t answer, his hands went still for a moment, and then he said, “The field?”
“Yes. You do? I think maybe it’s on my clothes or something I brought back — or maybe Bingle—”
“Irene . . . no, I don’t smell it.”
I looked into his eyes, saw that he was serious, and said, “I have to get out of the house.”
“Okay,” he said, having plenty of experience with my claustrophobia.
We got dressed, gathered all three dogs, and went down to the end of the street. It was after midnight, and the cops who had been assigned to keep watch at the top of the stairs leading to the beach weren’t too crazy about our plans, but let us go past them.
The moon was up, and although it wasn’t full, it was bright enough to light our way. I took in great breaths of the salt air, and other scents receded. The sight of the endless silver stretch of moonlit water, the sounds of the advance and retreat of the waves, the soft give of the sand beneath my feet, all were so different from the mountain meadow of my dream. The terrifying images gave way, and I began to relax.
More aware, then, of Frank’s big warm hand holding mine, I said, “Sorry, you probably need some sleep, and here I am dragging you down to the beach.”
“I’ve had my share of bad nights, too. You can’t go through this stuff and expect that now that you’re home, you’ll just pick up where you left off.”
“No.” After a moment, I said, “This time — I don’t know how to come back from there, Frank. It’s with me. It frightens me.”
He put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Maybe you should talk to somebody.”
I didn’t answer. Two nights ago, I had told him everything that had happened in the mountains. He had listened patiently, and although he had been upset by how Parrish had terrorized me, and probably didn’t approve of my trying to draw Parrish away from Ben, he didn’t criticize me or blame me for what happened. The perfect listener, as far as I was concerned. So I knew that when he now said “talk to somebody,” he meant a therapist.
“Just a thought,” he said after a while. “I’m not trying to push you.”
“I know you aren’t,” I said, but felt relieved.
“And you can always talk to me.”
I pulled him closer to me. “Yes, I know. Thanks.” We walked a little farther, and I said, “I guess that’s why I don’t worry about needing a therapist. I’ve got a great husband, I’m surrounded by family and friends — I have a support group. Ben — I get the distinct impression that he’s not so lucky.”
“The other day at the hospital, that’s what Jo Robinson said. She was going to try to contact Ben’s sister and some of his friends, but in the meantime, she thought Ben could use whatever emotional support we could offer — although she’s concerned that you won’t take care of yourself.”
“Where does his sister live?” I asked, choosing to steer the conversation away from Jo Robinson and her concerns.
“In Iowa.”
The dogs came by and shook water on us, making us swear and laugh all at once. For a time, we simply walked and watched them.
Bingle was enjoying himself immensely; today he had definitely been the happiest I had seen him since we brought him home. It occurred to me that with his level of training, David must have spent many more hours working with him than we did with our dogs. How often each day was this dog used to being walked? Would he lose skills if we didn’t work with him?
The three dogs were getting along well together, engaging in harmless but rowdy play — dodging one another’s charges, tumbling dramatically in the sand, chasing one another into the water, then running up onto the beach.
Frank said, “I’ve been thinking about the front steps.”