“Jack,” Wolcott said, nodding.
“What are you doing here?” Durkin asked, his voice coming out as a low croak. “You’re not supposed to be out at Lorne Field. It’s against the contract.”
“I don’t believe I’m at Lorne Field.” Wolcott slapped his neck and studied the palm of his hand before wiping it against his pants leg. “I’ve been standing here waiting for you and getting bit up by mosquitoes. Damn things are the size of hummingbirds here. I don’t know how the hell you stand it.”
“What do you want?”
“Jesus, Jack, you know what I want. Your son had his thumb cut off. You need to tell me about it.” Wolcott’s eyes narrowed. “Jack, is something wrong? You look sick.”
“Never mind how I’m feeling. You ain’t my doctor.”
Wolcott chuckled softly. “No, I’m not. But you don’t look well at all. What happened out there today, Jack?”
“Didn’t you talk to Lester yet?”
“Not yet. He’s doped up on painkillers and his doctor asked me to wait ’til tomorrow.”
Durkin felt lightheaded and almost lost his balance. He could see that Wolcott noticed it.
“So Lester’s okay?” he asked.
“As okay as a seventeen-year-old boy can be after having his thumb chopped off.”
“It wasn’t chopped off.”
Wolcott raised an eyebrow and waited for Durkin to explain further.
“Lydia knows what happened. She didn’t tell you?”
“All she said was that there had been an accident.”
“That’s all she told you?”
“Jack, what happened?”
Durkin met Wolcott’s eyes and told him that an Aukowie had gotten Lester’s thumb.
“Come on, Jack-”
“I’m tellin’ you what happened.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“That’s what happened.”
“Damn it, Jack, I’m trying to give you every benefit of the doubt here.” Grimacing suddenly, the sheriff slapped hard at his forearm, then his right ear. He looked back at Durkin and shook his head at him as if he were talking to a five-year-old child. “I need you to explain it to me, Jack.”
“Don’t you patronize me. Not after what I do for you and your family everyday.”
“Yeah, I know, you save the world for us. Thanks, Jack, we appreciate it. But you have to tell me exactly how Lester lost his thumb. And telling me that an Aukowie got it isn’t good enough.”
“It ain’t, huh? I wish I could take you down to that field so you could see for yourself.”
“Is that a threat, Jack?”
“Nope, just something I wish I could do.”
Wolcott straightened up, flinched and slapped the back of his neck. He searched the palm of his hand to see if he’d been quick enough. “Well, why don’t we do that, Jack?” he offered.
“I can’t. That would be violating my contract.”
“You violated it earlier today, didn’t you, Jack? When you brought Lester in from the field?”
Durkin’s face reddened. “Yes, I did,” he admitted.
“Of course you did,” Wolcott said. “You had to. What else were you going to do? Leave your son out there to bleed to death?”
Durkin stared stone-faced at Wolcott. Wolcott waited for a response but didn’t get any. He slapped at another mosquito, then sighed as he glanced at his watch.
“Look, Jack, it’s getting late. I have a family to get home to. Why don’t we take a walk back to the field and you can explain to me what happened.”
Durkin didn’t say anything, just continued to stare hard at the sheriff. Wolcott smiled pleasantly. “Come on, Jack,” he said, “you violated your contract once today, what’s one more time?”
“I ain’t doing it. Not never again.”
Wolcott started to sigh, then hopped to one side, ducking his head and brushing furiously at his ear. “Goddamn these mosquitoes!’ he swore. He glared angrily at Durkin, his temper slipping away. “I want to hear right now what happened to Lester’s thumb,” he demanded, all signs of folksy pleasantness gone from his manner.
“Not much to tell. Lester dropped this camcorder. When he reached down to pick it up one of the Aukowies chewed his thumb off. It all happened too fast for me to do anything about it.”
“You’re telling me a weed bit off his thumb?”
“They ain’t weeds.”
Wolcott put a hand to his eyes and rubbed them with his thumb and index finger. He did for a while. When he took his hand away his eyes were rimmed with red. “Jack,” he said, “you realize how nuts this sounds?”
“That’s what happened. Ask Lester if you don’t believe me.”
“Jack, Jack, Jack,” Wolcott repeated softly. “You’re making this so damn hard on yourself. You want me to arrest you right now?”
“What for?”
“What for? How about maiming your son?”
“I didn’t touch Lester. Ask him yourself.”
“Sure. You didn’t touch him. A weed bit off his thumb.” Wolcott rubbed his eyes again, then pushed his hand through his hair. His hair was damp enough with sweat that it spiked up. “What was Lester doing with the camcorder?” he asked.
“He was helping me videotape those Aukowies in action.”
“Yeah? You didn’t by any chance videotape that weed biting off your son’s thumb?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. He was videotaping me trying to dig up one of the Aukowies when the damn thing whipped the spade out of my hands. That was when Lester stumbled and dropped the camcorder. Maybe it landed so it was pointing in the right direction to videotape what happened to Lester.”
“So now you’re telling me that a weed grabbed a spade out of your hands?”
“No, I said an Aukowie, not a weed.”
“My mistake. An Aukowie. And let me guess, it threw the spade at your son.”
“Yep.”
Wolcott showed a tired smile. “And it hit Lester in the thumb, right? Chopped it right off?”
Durkin shook his head, scowling. “Nope, that’s not what I said. The spade missed Lester. He had his thumb chewed off when he put it too close to an Aukowie. I kept warning him all afternoon not to do that.”
Wolcott looked at Durkin and tried to make up his mind whether or not to keep humoring him. “Why don’t you show me what you videotaped,” he said finally.
Durkin pulled the view screen out from the camcorder and tried to play back the video. His scowl deepened as he stared at it. “I can’t remember how to use this damn thing,” he muttered.
“Give it to me.”
Durkin handed Wolcott the camcorder. The sheriff tried to turn it on and frowned at it also. “I think it’s broken,” he said.
“Lester did drop it,” Durkin said. He remembered with some shame dropping it also when he fainted. He remembered the ground around where he fell had been hard and that there were rocks there too, but he didn’t mention any of that.
Wolcott examined the camcorder more carefully. “There’s no tape inside.”
“What?”
“There’s no tape inside. See for yourself.”
Wolcott pointed a finger at the empty slot where a tape should’ve been. Durkin squinted at it, shaking his head.
“That don’t make any sense,” he said. “There should be a tape there.”
“Jack,” Wolcott said, his expression turning grim, “why don’t you quit wasting both our time and tell me what really happened at Lorne Field today.”
“I’m telling you, there should be a tape in there. I don’t understand why there ain’t. There was one in it last night.”
“It’s empty now. Why is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you why. Because you took it out and got rid of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if you buried it.”
“Why would I do that?”
Wolcott looked at Durkin with a mix of exasperation and pity. He swallowed back what he wanted to say, which was that he did it because he was nuts. Instead he kept his voice as calm as he could and said, “Because somehow you’ve convinced yourself you could make a videotape proving that those weeds are monsters. But when the videotape showed they’re nothing but weeds, you had to try something else. Is that why you cut off Lester’s thumb? So you could claim they bit it off and prove they’re monsters that way? Come on, Jack, just admit this and let’s make this easy for everyone. Especially your family.”