more. There were hand-hewn beams in the ceiling, and the wood on the
doors and moldings where it wasn't stained and smeared with god knows
what was still good high-quality cedar and oak. But the rest was
incredible. Filthy. Foul. Floors caked with dog shit, reeking of
urine. Old newspapers stacked everywhere, almost reaching the ceiling
in some places, damp and yellow. A couch and an overstuffed chair torn
to shreds, pieces of them scattered everywhere. The refrigerator door
hung open, empty. Cabinets and doors were chewed and clawed to
splinters.
A few of us kids stood at the front door, making twisted faces at the
stink. We watched them as they brought out the dogs one by one and
locked them into the ASPCA van. Many had to be carried out, they were
so weak. And all. of them were pretty docile after the feeding. I
wondered if they'd dropped some drugs in there too. I remember a lot
of them looked sort of bewildered, dazed. They were pathetically
thin.
I stopped looking when they found the bodies.
There were four of them. One was just a puppy. One was a Doberman.
The other two had been medium-sized mutts.
Obviously the other dogs had eaten them.
pretty angry. He pulled me into the car and then just sat torting,
shaking his head, his face getting redder and redder. I knew he wanted
to hit me, and I knew how hard it was for him not to.
1 guessed I'd disappointed him again.
So I told them all this over two rounds of egg creams. I had them
wide-eyed.
"Ben and Mary they never found, by the way."
"Never?" Steven had this habit of pointing his index finger at you
when he asked a question as though he were accusing you of lying. He
would also dip his head a little and look at you up from under those
dark eyebrows. I think he was practicing for the law. It was very
astute-looking.
"Never. We got some clues, though, about a week later. At least you
could figure why they'd disappeared. All of a sudden the big word
around town was that the bank had evicted them the month before for
nonpayment of their mortgage. So it looked like they just ignored the
notices for a while, and then, when Ben Murphy went out there to tell
them face-to-face that they'd have to leave, they just listened and
nodded and then when he was gone, they just cleared out."
"Awful thing to do to all those dogs, though." Kimberley slurped the
bottom of her glass through the long striped straw. "So cruel. How
could you care for all those animals and then be so rotten to them?"
"People do it all the time," said Steven.
Casey leaned toward me. "Did they look for them? Ben and whatsername,
Mary, I mean?"
"Sure they did. I don't know how hard, though. The eviction business
seemed to explain things well enough, so I don't know how hard anybody
worried about it, really.
"About the dogs, though. See, there was a lot of talk after that. My
mom and dad, for one thing, were a lot more free about discussing it in
front of me. And I remember being shocked at the time to hear a friend
of my mother's say that Ben and Mary were brother and sister, and only
in their thirties. We'd always pictured them as
withered ancients, you know and married. The evil old man and his
witchy wife. Not so.
"But here's the important part. They'd been raised, b< them, in the
bughouse. Literally. At Augusta Mental. Till they w< in their teens.
The schizo son and daughter of a crazy Boston combat-zone stripper,
alky too I guess. So you have to wonder what kind of shape they were
in to worry about a pack of dogs, you know
"Geez."
"Good story," said Casey.
And it was. Good enough, certainly, to wile away an hour o\ sodas at
Harmon's. But it still left us with nothing to do. Workt had stripped
the Crouch place and refinished it, and for a coupl< years a retired
doctor and his wife had lived there, civilize presumably, tamed it. So
that now, even though the old man was longer there and the house lay
empty, it was just another house the woods. Nothing you'd want to
visit.
It had amused us, though, back then when we were kids, the next few
years Dead River had its very own haunted hoi Somewhere to go to scare
yourself on Halloween. That was befc the doctor came in.
Teenage folklore being what it is, our stories about Ben and Mary
They were really dead, for one thing. Their ghosts had frightened
workmen cleaning up the basement. They could be heard calling dogs on
foggy, rainy nights. Some of these yarns I started myself, before I
outgrew them.
My favorite turned on the disappearance itself.
According to this one the eviction never happened. The truth was that
the dogs had turned on Ben and Mary and eaten them. Every scrap.
Bones and all. I liked that story. I think Rafferty made it up. I
kept remembering all those lost, dazed eyes.
I thought the dogs deserved their revenge.
I think I told them about Ben and Mary two or three days after we
met, no more. By then Casey and I were thinking about becoming
lovers.
That first afternoon in the bar I had all I could do to keep small talk
running and keep my hands off her. I'm not stupid. There are girls
you push and girls you don't. And there are some who only want you if
they can see no particular need in you, who want to know you're calm
enough and tough enough to live with or without them. Girls like Casey
want calm and confidence. You did not have to be a genius to see that
rushing her would mean a long walk home alone.
So I sat on my hands and tried to keep it nice and easy, willing but
not eager. I walked home alone anyway.
I was coming back from the diner on the corner that same night when I
saw them drive by in the white Chevy. All three of them waved at me,
laughing. But the car didn't stop.
I figured that was that.
The conversation in the bar had been innocuous, probably too innocuous,
and now I was the local horse's ass.
Not so.
They stopped by the lumberyard at lunchtime the next day.
around for another set of chocks, I damn near took her head off with
the lift blades. If the manager had seen her there that close to me
I'd have lostthejobthen and there, (turned thethingoff and climbed off
it.
"They fire you for disemboweling a customer."
"What customer? I'm your cousin from New Paltz. Your aunt my mother-
is over at the house and probably she's dying. Her last wish is to see
her sister and her favorite nephew. You've got the day off. It's all
fixed. I didn't even have to ask for it."
"Huh?"
"He said I could tell you just to go home for the day."
"You assume a lot, you know that?"
"Sure I do. You mad at me?"
The way she asked me, it was a serious question, nothing coy about it.
If I thought she'd gone too far, then she wanted to know. I liked
that. Even though I had the feeling that my answer was not going to
make or break her afternoon either way.
"I'm not mad. It's too hot for this stuff anyway. Let's go."