Thirty minutes later his dad was waiting for him on the front porch, a beer in his hand. He was wearing the kind of look a rat has when it’s torn into the food bin and it knows you can’t catch it, because it’s too fast and the other side of the kitchen is too far away.
“ Where ya been? Your mom’s got chores for you to do.” Translated that meant his mother had to work late and there was no one to clean up after him or to make his dinner.
“ Mom working late?” Arty said, without thinking.
“ Don’t back talk me.” Bill Gibson lashed out, catching Arty on the right cheek with the back of his hand. He’d never hit him in the face before. The busted lip and black eye must have given him the idea.
“ Got in a fight on the way home from school.” Arty backed away from his father.
“ I can see that. Someone whipped you good.”
“ I got my licks in.”
“ Sure ya did, kid, and the Pope’s stopping by for dinner.”
Arty wanted to say something smart, but for once he kept his flapping lips under control. His face was beat up bad enough. He didn’t need to give his father any encouragement. But he didn’t want to sound like he was just a punching bag, so he said, “I got him a good one, right in the mouth.”
“ Who won?”
“ He did, but I least I went down fighting.”
“ Good for you, kid. Now why don’t you straighten up the living room, do the lunch dishes and then see what you can make us for dinner.”
He looked in the mirror and winced. His lip looked like a fat worm sitting sideways on his chin. He reached up to touch it and shivered. It felt like he was being stabbed with a needle. He moved his hand to his forehead, pushing his bangs out of his eyes and looked at the shiner. He’d never had a black eye before. It was like a badge of courage.
He tapped the new bruise on his right cheek and vowed that someday he’d get even with his father. It wasn’t fair. He comes home with a battle scarred face, ’cuz a bigger boy had used it for a punching bag, then his father lights into him.
He reached into his back pocket, brought his comb out and ran it through his wet hair. He’d just come out of the shower, but he wasn’t in his pajamas and he wasn’t going to bed. He turned away from the mirror and went out the window like he’d done the night before. It was eight-fifteen and his parents were at their separate ends of the house, his mother in the kitchen, his father in the living room playing cards with a friend. Arty thought that was strange, because he didn’t think his father had any friends.
He felt a glow of excitement run through his body. Once again he was sneaking off into the dark. Only tonight he felt good, unafraid, steady and brave. He walked with a saunter and a slight spring in his step, but he knew sneaking out two nights in a row was tempting fate. It was dangerous, but he was looking forward to seeing Carolina. So much so, that he didn’t bother to look behind. He didn’t see the two men hanging back in the fog, following him.
He was halfway down her street when he was struck by the silence. He stopped walking and listened. He was used to the noises of the night. The silence was out of place, and so was he. Instinctively he knew the middle of the sidewalk was a bad place to be, so he moved to the curb and hunched down between two parked cars, straining his ears, searching for familiar sounds, a cricket, the cry of a cat, the bark of a dog. Something. Anything. Nothing.
He poked his head out from his sanctuary and looked down the block, toward Carolina’s and he saw it, a large dog. He’d never been afraid of dogs. In fact, he’d kind of had a way with them ever since he could remember, especially big ones, like Condor, the Bingham’s super big Doberman Pincer. But something told him to keep still and not alert this one.
The dog was walking slowly up the sidewalk, like it owned it, coming toward him, but it stopped at Carolina’s and moved into the bushes between her house and the house next door. He thought of the red eyes looking in the window and knew it wasn’t a peeping Tom. Somehow that big dog had gotten up on its hind legs and was peering in at them.
He shivered with the thought. Carolina said she would leave a milk crate outside her window to make it easier for him to climb in. He had to get over there. He had to warn her. He put his hands back on the bumpers and started to push himself up when he saw the dog come back out from between the houses. He eased himself back onto his knees.
Oh, Lord, he thought, it wasn’t a dog. He kept low. There was something in its mouth. His knees hurt. He took even, shallow breaths, because he knew that what was out there might not be able to smell him with the breeze at its back, but it had excellent hearing and he didn’t want to be guilty of making even the smallest sound.
He saw the creature’s head start to turn and for a flash of a second he thought he was finished, but before that great head with those piercing eyes came to rest on him, the wolf was engulfed in a flash of blinding red-white light that took away his night vision. Then as fast as the flash appeared, it was gone and in its place stood a stooped over old black woman. He closed and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again, she was shuffling along the sidewalk, getting farther away from him with every small step.
He stayed silent and still, until she turned the corner, then he pushed himself up and ran to the bushes between the two houses and scooted through. Her window was open and the crate was in place.
“ Carolina,” he whispered.
“ Yeah, I’m here,” she whispered back. “I thought I heard you a minute ago, but when I looked there wasn’t anybody there.”
Arty stepped up onto the crate, put his arms through the window and squeezed in.
“ It wasn’t me you heard,” he said. Then he added, “We’re gonna need some silver bullets.”
Chapter Nine
“ I tell you he’s up to something,” Bill Gibson said. “I shoulda busted him when he snuck back in this morning, but he was out all night and I wanna know what he’s up to.”
“ I’ll take three,” Seymour Oxlade said. Gibson dealt him three from the top of the deck.
“ Two for me.” Gibson tossed his cards into the center of the table and dealt to himself, also from the top of the deck. He wouldn’t try anything with Seymour. If he got caught it would bust up their friendship and Seymour would bust his nose.
“ Quarter.” Seymour Oxlade tossed a coin into the center of the table.
“ And a quarter.” Gibson tossed two into the pot.
“ Ya got something, Billy Boy?”
“ Cost you twenty-five cents to find out.”
“ Fold. I ain’t got shit ’cept a pair of threes.” He tossed his cards on the pot, then said, “Hey, maybe he’s got a girl?”
“ Not Arty. He’s up to something, but it ain’t no girl.” Gibson lit a cigarette.
“ Got ten bucks says it is.” He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a ten dollar bill and tossed it in the pot.
“ You’re on, buddy boy.” Gibson covered the ten with one of his own.
“ How we gonna find out?” Seymour asked as the faint sound of Arty’s window going up creaked through the house.
“ Guess we’ll have to follow him and find out.”
“ Grab a couple a beers,” Oxlade said.
The two men waited till Arty was halfway down the block, before they left the house in pursuit. Two men that had met at the neighborhood bar less than a month ago. Two men with a lot in common. They both drank, liked poker, abused their children and beat their wives, only Seymour Oxlade’s abuse ran a different course than Gibson’s-he had two daughters.
They stayed a block behind, each nursing a beer, good old boys, both out of place in an over educated town.
Oxlade pulled his pants out from the crack of his ass, took a pull on his beer, and whispered, “We shoulda brought a couple more beers.”
“ Yeah,” Gibson said, “help kill the cold.” Both men were wearing flannel shirts, but neither was wearing a jacket and the brisk breeze coming from the sea wasn’t very friendly.