“I doubt it.” The throbbing in Steve’s brain receded. Talking shop like this, they almost sounded professional, and he sat up straighter, his vision even clearing a little. This was as close as he ever got to the way he used to feel, back in the days before his most important duty all week might involve a broken garage window. “We should make our rounds.” He took out his pipe, then felt his other pocket and muttered, “Stop at Brower’s, I want to get some tobacco.”
Barry emitted another loud yawn.
“You want me to drive?”
The expression on Barry’s face spoke volumes about his opinion of his partner’s driving. He put on his sunglasses and checked himself in the rearview mirror.
“Those shades make you look like some kind of giant bug.”
Barry switched on the ignition, and they lurched forward, slamming Steve against the seat. As the car swung onto hot dirt, Barry kept his foot on the gas. Scrub pines flashed past as the car accelerated, and the sand road emptied onto asphalt.
“Wait a minute! Slow down!” Steve twisted around in his seat. “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“Back there.”
“Not that kid with the bandages on his head again?” he asked, not slowing.
Steve peered out the back window. “You know him?”
“Billy Mills picked him up a couple times last week. He’s a retard. Just goes wandering the woods. Father died in a car crash. Athena was telling me. Lives with an old aunt or something. She don’t want him. If he gets picked up again, probably going to wind up in Harrisville.”
Already, they’d left the boy far behind them.
Steve mulled it over. In one flashing glance, he’d observed the dirty bandages, the outstanding ears, the lost look. Yes, probably a defective. Certainly, there was no shortage of them around here. “You’re driving too fast,” he said with considerable force. “Have you ever seen inside of Harrisville? Poor harmless half-wits they lock up, but murdering lunatics walk.” With the wind in his face, he just stared out the window: the pines, a house, another, a half-plowed field. The homes looked like converted farms now. Up ahead, a pregnant woman in a halter top reclined in a beach chair. She glanced up without interest and then continued smearing her arms with suntan lotion. Barry slowed slightly and muttered a comment.
“I hear Larry Jenkins is working with the ambulance now,” mentioned Steve. “He’s good friends with your buddy Jack, isn’t he?”
“Jack Buzby ain’t no friend of mine. Damn!”
“What’s the matter?”
He drove one-handed. “A splinter or something.”
“How you do that?”
Barry sucked noisily on his finger.
“It’s a good thing Athena’s not here.” Steve grinned. “She’d have wrestled you to the ground by now, been giving you heart massage, maybe mouth-to-mouth respiration.”
A sly look came into his partner’s eyes. “Yeah,” he slurped. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He took his finger out of his mouth. “You’d like to see that.”
Steve went rigid. Suddenly, his back felt soaked against the seat, and he looked away, tried to pretend he hadn’t heard. “Christ, it’s hot.”
Watching him out of the corner of his eye, Barry cleared his throat. “They’ll catch him.”
“What?”
“The escaped loony. They’ll catch him.”
“Maybe.”
“Come off it, Steve. Soon as they put the dogs on him, they’ll get him.”
Steve popped open the last beer. “If he makes it to the northern quarter…”
“You’d better hide that. We’ll be in town in a second.”
A distant look on his face, he didn’t respond. “I hear there’s stretches out there, forty thousand acres, some of them, without a living soul. If he wanted to, seems to me a fellow could stay lost for a long, long time.”
“Yeah?” Sunlight glinted off Barry’s dark lenses. “And what’s he gonna eat?”
Periodic cicadas had commenced their high-pitched, twitching whine, and the sound filled the woods, making them resonate, until the whole tangled structure of pine and cedar around the stream seemed to throb. And the air—the heavy liquid atmosphere of the summer afternoon—seemed to pulse as well.
Jenny floated. Though the creek’s level seemed low, such sunlight as filtered through the swath of red-brown liquid failed to reach the bottom, revealing only the tops of shattered tree trunks, ghostly in the murk.
“Isn’t this great?” Kicking sideways, Sandra swam over. “It’s deep over here!” Her tiny gold earrings flashed dully in the water as she sank to her chin, then bobbed up, large breasts just breaking the surface as she splashed. “Did you see the snake?”
“Snake?!”
“Alan said this great big copperhead went swimming by. I didn’t see it, thank God.” Turning from Jenny, she giggled and splashed back upstream, her pale buttocks visible through the dark water but the rest of her vanishing in the murk.
Diving from a rock, Casey splashed down heavily, drenching everything around. Everyone yelled. He surfaced, blowing like a whale, then tossed his head violently to clear his eyes. He’d finally put on his T-shirt, and it billowed up around him, holding air, his muscles knotting beneath it as he thrashed about.
Though she laughed with the others, Jenny remained tense. She sensed a…wrongness in making noise here. This place held silence, almost like a church. Wondering that the others didn’t feel it, she allowed herself to drift farther away from them, toward a bend downstream.
They were an intrusion. No question about it. She treaded water, and the murky warmth felt wonderful, soothing. Yet she kept peering up at the bank. The sun’s rays slanted low through the scrub above her, and deep shadows fell on the stream. Small insects flew drowsily, quietly, and the humid air seemed to press on the water.
A thick-bodied dragonfly hovered, iridescent wings glistening; then it thrummed heavily on, following the current. It made her think of jade. Emeralds. She watched it go. Green fire. She bobbed low. The current was sluggish but undeniably there, deep down, cool and heavy. She turned over to float on her back, and water dribbled out of her mouth, trickled shining down her chin and throat. Again she glanced up at the bank. Nothing moved, and she wondered what she kept expecting to see. All day, she’d thought these woods unutterably dreary and drab, but now in the lengthening shadows…
Sand and pebbles, late afternoon sun full upon it, the bank shelved steeply down to the murky current. Light striped the water but couldn’t penetrate. Bright bands of sediment eddied.
They kept clutching at her ankles—the black and twisted roots that grew out of the banks and deep into the water. And suddenly she recalled that Casey had mentioned giant snapping turtles. The voices of her friends drifted to her as she paddled against the stream toward them, her toes instinctively curled.
“…weird…no beer tabs or broken bottles.”
“Only because the water’s so dark, you know,” said Alan, lazing on the edge of the current. “Anything might be down there.”
“…use to think cedar water was just like weak tea, but this looks more like coffee.”
“Amelia, don’t you think you should get out soon?” Jenny stroked smoothly. “Before you’re permanently stained?”
“Oh, Mom!”
“While there’s still sun to dry off.”
“I’ll watch her, Jenny.” Sandra scissored past.
Turning her shining back to her mother, Amelia plunged at Casey, and he yelped as she wrapped her arms and legs around him, commanding him to carry her after Sandra. Watching their glistening limbs, Jenny suddenly felt drained, her leg muscles aching, feet throbbing from the day’s hike. Still, the warm water soothed; she wanted only to rest. Then an odd suspicion formed: the stream was attempting to lull her. Goose bumps rose on her arms and legs, and she wanted out.