Chapter 7
The next morning Jack Durkin was out of bed two hours earlier than usual. Keeping as quiet as he could, he snuck down to the kitchen, poured himself a bowl of cereal, made a cup of instant coffee and was out the door before Lydia woke up, or at least before she had a chance to come downstairs and nag at him. He was two-thirds done with his second pass of weeding when Wolcott and two town police officers, Bob Smith and Mark Griestein, approached the field. The three men walked up to him, and Wolcott told him he was under arrest for cutting off his son’s thumb.
“It’s a long hike back to the cruiser, Jack. I’m hoping I don’t have to put handcuffs on you. You’ll come along peacefully, won’t you?”
Durkin nodded. He looked from Wolcott to the other two men with him. Griestein’s face was a blank screen, his eyes shielded by mirrored sunglasses. Bob Smith, on the other hand, looked deeply worried. Durkin had finished his freshman year of high school before dropping out. During that year he played third base for his school’s varsity baseball team, while Bob Smith, a senior, played first. His coach thought Durkin had major league potential, and so did the scouts who came to watch him play. That was the reason he dropped out after one year; he didn’t want to hear about all the potential he had when his future was already set. But during that season him and Bob had been good friends.
“Okay, Jack,” Wolcott said, “you can leave the canvas sack where it is. Let’s go.”
The last thing Durkin wanted to do was give Wolcott any satisfaction, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying how an Aukowie chewed off Lester’s thumb and if his boy couldn’t remember what had happened it was because of his being in shock.
“Is that so?” Wolcott said. “One of these weeds bit it off, huh? It’s funny, to me they only look like weeds. Maybe godawful ugly ones, but still just weeds. How about you, Mark? These weeds look like they could bite off someone’s thumb?”
Griestein shook his head.
“How about you, Bob?” Wolcott asked. “You think they could do something like that?”
“Dan, let’s just do our job and get out of here.”
“One minute. I just want to see how hungry these man-eating weeds really are.” Wolcott walked over to a clump of two-inch Aukowies and lowered his hand towards them. Durkin closed his eyes. He didn’t want to watch what was going to happen. After several seconds of squeezing his eyes shut tight, he was surprised when he didn’t hear any screaming.
“Come on, Jack,” Wolcott said, “take a look for yourself and tell me why my fingers aren’t being bitten off.”
Jack Durkin opened his eyes. Wolcott’s fingers were right in the middle of the Aukowies. He could see their little faces as they smirked at him, and he understood.
They knew.
How?
Somehow they knew they could hurt him if they resisted their natural urges. That they could beat him this way. But he could see the strain building on them. He could see them weakening.
“Just keep your fingers where they are,” Durkin said.
Wolcott stood up, not bothering to hide the disgust on his face. “Come on, Jack, let’s get you to the station.”
Griestein nudged Durkin, and he followed behind Wolcott while the two police officers stayed on either side of him.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Durkin told Wolcott. “Without me weeding they’re going to be four to five inches by nighttime.”
“I’m doing my job, Jack. That’s all I’m doing.”
When they got onto the path leading back to the cabin, Durkin asked if they could stop by his house so he could tell Lydia what was happening.
“Sorry, Jack, I need to take you to the station. After you’re processed, you can make a phone call.”
Bob Smith glared at Wolcott, then over Wolcott’s protestations, handed Durkin his cell phone. “Go ahead, Jack,” he said, “give Lydia a call.”
Durkin stared at the phone as if he were being asked to perform an emergency appendectomy. Trying to keep his voice low so Wolcott couldn’t hear him, he admitted that he didn’t know how to use it. Even if he did, he doubted whether he’d even be able to push the buttons on it with his fingers being as thick and swollen as they were. Bob Smith asked for his home number and dialed it for him. When Lydia picked up, Durkin told her he was being arrested and for her to bring his contract to Hank Thompson and tell him what was happening. “I know you know where it’s hidden, so don’t try arguing otherwise. And I don’t want that other lawyer involved.”
Durkin handed the cell phone back to Bob Smith and thanked him for his help. Bob Smith looked like he badly wanted to ask him a question, but he restrained himself.
Even though Lydia had been expecting that very call from her husband all morning, it was still a shock after she got off the phone with him. She sat at the table and chain-smoked through half a pack of cigarettes before she felt like she could move. Then she brought the phone to the kitchen table and tried to make up her mind about what to do.
Her right hand, the one she had injured hitting the table, had swollen to twice its normal size and was a purplish-bluish color around the base of her palm. It hurt too much for her to hold the receiver in it, so she had to rest the receiver on the table while she dialed with her left hand and then picked it up also with her left hand. When she told the receptionist who she was, she was put on hold for five minutes before Paul Minter answered. His voice sounded odd as he told her it was over.
“What?”
“It’s over, Mrs. Durkin.”
“What do you mean it’s over?”
He sighed. “Just what I said. The town council doesn’t want anything to do with this anymore. I spoke with all of them and it’s over.”
Her head was spinning as she tried to get a handle on what he was telling her. Not that it surprised her. Not that it wasn’t exactly what she was expecting. Ever since the lawyer told her they could make millions she knew Jack would ruin it for them.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said, although she knew it made perfect sense, but she still couldn’t help herself asking why it was happening.
He sighed again. “Because your son, Lester, is telling the authorities that your husband grabbed him, wrestled him to the ground and cut off his thumb. I understand that the police are going to be arresting him soon. It’s probably better if you hire another lawyer to represent him.”
He hung up then.
She sat clutching the phone for another few minutes before heading upstairs to the bedroom to pack her clothes away in a small tattered cloth suitcase that she had last used nineteen years earlier when Jack took her on a trip to Miami. When she was done she called her friend, Helen Vernon. After that, she smoked a couple of more cigarettes, carried her suitcase out to Jack’s Chevy Nova and, with some effort, swung it into the trunk. She stood frozen for a long moment. When she looked back at the house, she daydreamed about lighting a match to it. In her mind’s eye she could see it going up in flames. But she didn’t light any matches. Instead, she got in the car and drove away.
Hank Thompson showed up at the police station while Jack Durkin was being fingerprinted. He was a tall, lean man in his early seventies with a thick bushy head of hair the color of cigar ash and an imposing air of authority about him. He waited until Durkin wiped the ink from his fingers, then offered his hand.