Athena stopped walking. “Do you want the flashlight?” she called. “It’s in the car.”
“I can see. G’night. I’m takin’ Dooley.”
“Are you sure?”
A faint voice drifted back through the darkness. “I sure hope them wild dogs ain’t nowheres round here!”
“Pamela?”
An insect trilled.
Beginning to sweat, Athena forced one foot in front of the other, quickly passing beyond the farthest perimeter of light, her footsteps making almost no noise in the sand and clumped weeds. She skirted the unused shed as a skittering sound issued from within its indefinite shape. Maybe rats, she thought. The weeds grew higher this far from the house, and they rustled dryly as she moved through them. Behind the shed, well beyond the yard, the trash heap was a formless hump, and to night the smell seemed especially bad. It would have to be burned soon. Trusting her nose for sense of direction, she chucked the garbage, and a tin can rattled.
Pines circled everywhere, beyond the mound, around the shed.
Another cricket called to the first now, softer, subdued, fading. I’m an intelligent adult. Then a third began. It’s irrational to be afraid of the dark. Heading back toward the porch, she tripped over something invisible, almost falling. I will not run. The yellowish light of the doorway seemed faraway. Never make it. The dark began a hollow roaring in her ears; like a swimmer swept out to sea, she foundered, the lighted doorway providing her only lifeline.
As she climbed the porch steps, she could feel the darkness sucking at her. Heartbeat a little faster. She slammed the door and leaned against it. Respiration a bit more rapid—that’s all. All around her, the house lay still.
Alone. Clearing the coffee cups, she stacked them with the rest of the week’s dirty dishes. Alone in the house. She picked up the scanner. All the downstairs lights were on, yet shadowed corners filled the rooms. Except for Matthew, of course. Her hand hesitated before switching off the kitchen light. Quietly, almost stealthily, she checked the living-room windows. Most were boarded, but through one intact pane the strumming night showed solid: iron nothingness. She tried to cover it by pulling and poking the skimpy curtains closed, but it was as though the window glass had been coated with black paint that seeped through the fabric.
At the center of the room, an armchair stood on scrolled claw feet, and she perched on one of the massive arms. She’d always liked this chair. The frayed material, scratchy with the ghost of a raised pattern, had long ago faded to some indeterminate and dusty shade of gray. It was ugly, really, but so solid, so protective.
She wound the rubber band out of her hair, smoothing back the dark curls with one hand, holding the scanner lightly in the other. She knew she should go to bed now. The armchair faced a tight, grimy fireplace, and blackness lay in the cracks of the floor. Dimness around the lamp transformed the room into something smaller, more personal. She crossed her arms in front of her breasts, hugged herself, breathing against the pressure, then letting go, allowing her arms to fall away and fade in her lap. She thought about bed again, but it seemed an impossible distance. She’d have to climb the stairs to her airless room, all that way. So far. Crickets sounded dimly through the walls, an empty nighttime noise, like the voice of faucets leaking at the edge of her awareness.
Darkness pressed the house.
Pamela picked her way across the bridge. Just my luck to fall in some night. She grinned to herself. They’ll hear me yelling from here to Leeds Point. One of the planks was missing, and she could smell the brown water below.
Far ahead, she heard Dooley bark, the sound deep in his barrel chest. Chasing a possum or something. The dog often escorted her home, always ranging far into the night around her. She stepped up the pace. Her trailer lay just down the road toward town, making her Athena’s nearest neighbor.
She heard loud breathing and the soft sound of running, then Dooley charged past her. “Good dog.” Panting, the dog padded around, licking at her. “Yuck.” She petted his head, wiping her hand on his fur. “Good boy now.” He trotted alongside a moment, then launched off into the darkness again.
That pig. Following, Pam frowned. That piney bitch. Her mother also lived along this road. Always flauntin’ all them men in my face, even when I was little.
As she walked on, the memory of one afternoon in Athena’s kitchen came to her. She’d been boasting about how important her job at the army base had been. Becoming excited, she’d babbled about her “double life,” dropping exaggerated hints about the night she’d managed to get herself used by a group of drunken GIs. Maybe she’d been trying to shock Athena, or perhaps she’d wanted some sympathetic response. What ever she’d been looking for, she hadn’t found it: Athena’s face had twisted with disgust. I don’t see what she got so high and mighty about anyhow. It ain’t like everybody don’t know about her and that cop. Immediately, she felt ashamed. I shouldn’t think that way about ’Thena. Why she’s…she’s the most…
Her landmark towered over her—a dead cypress the locals called “Hanging Tree.” They say she hung there till she was just a skeleton. The cypress loomed about the pines, one thick limb stretching over the road. Till the bones just dropped off one by one. By daylight, the rotted remnants of rope fibers could still be seen clinging to the bark. Athena always said it was probably just an old tire swing, but Pam believed, even cherished, the tale of the hanged witch.
A branch of the road, just a fading trace, lay behind the thick cypress. Saplings and tall weeds had begun to cover it. Lonny’ll take care of things when he comes home. But some inner part of her understood that Lonny would approve of the overgrown road, that he’d like the way to the trailer being hidden, impassable, because the state police would never find it now. She was fairly certain their trailer was stolen and hoped Athena never found out. She gets so funny about that sort of thing. Sighing, she walked on. Such a shame, Wallace dropping dead like that. They was so happy.
A breeze stirred in the smaller trees.
Lonny’s been gone almost two years this time. Leaving the road to town behind her, she wended between the little pines. Lord, I miss him. Even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t really true. What she missed was what she’d never had.
Something rustled in the bushes.
“Dooley?” She stopped moving, stopped breathing. “Is there somebody?” She heard the dog bark somewhere far behind her. “Who is that?” Her voice trembled.
A match scratched and flared, and she flinched from the sudden light. “You scared me all to death!” she screeched, beginning to giggle.
Framed by tangled white-blond hair, a bloodless face floated in the dark. Marl Spencer stared stupidly, the flame glowing purple in his eyes. “Skeared ya?” The match twitched away.
Pam heard sucking. “You burn yourself, Marl?” Suddenly maternal, she moved toward him. Another match flared, and she paused, blinking.
Marl held the flame high with the other hand as he blew on his wet fingers. He had a crumpled paper sack under his arm, heavy shapes inside it.