Barry’s face went hard as he coolly threw the bottle at the trunk of a dead tree. The bottle splintered and fell, leaving a trace of foam on the gray wood. To end the discussion, he started the engine, slammed the car into gear. Worn tires dug, leaving twin furrows. “Just can’t figure it out, can you, detective?” he smirked. “Never stopped to think maybe ole Frank and me know some guys who wouldn’t be too crazy about a search party. Or maybe we got some stuff of our own hidden we don’t want nobody messing with.”
“You going to start that crap about your fancy mob connections again?”
Barry snorted contemptuously, and they rode for a time without speaking. Then, casually, he asked if there had been any interesting bulletins lately.
“Yeah, a good one. Maybe you should read them once in a while. I mean, just for entertainment.”
Barry stopped humming. “What the hell’s the matter with you all of a sudden?”
Determined not to answer, Steve gulped from his beer, but the angry silence couldn’t be maintained against the heat and the stale swim of alcohol in his brain. “They brought in some woman, just about dead from exposure—bulletin said—found her deep in the woods. Practically catatonic at first.”
Barry watched the road, frankly bored.
“Then she started babbling about how her and her daughter’d been camping with some friends and got attacked by some guy who came out of the woods. They’re still trying to figure out when the hell all this is supposed to have happened. Nobody knows how long she’d been out there. Or what direction she came from.”
“Shit, Steve, she could’ve just been on drugs or something and got lost out there.” Abruptly, his face took on an uncustomary expression of interest. “Say, did they ever catch that guy? You know, the one got away from the asylum?”
“Putting one and one together like that.” His partner nodded. “Dangerous lunatic escapes. Campers get attacked. Might be a connection. Regular steel trap, that mind of yours. Ought to be a cop or something.”
“Well, us country boys can’t think too good. Shit. Know what I’m talking about? Not like you big city officers. Shit. I suppose you’re gonna tell me dogs did this too? Look, Frank’s got us working on it, don’t he?” He lowered his voice to what he considered a persuasive tone. “What in hell more do you want?”
“Yeah, great job he’s got us doing, too.” Steve held up the map Buzby had given them, a topographical chart marked with red Xs and circles. “For crissakes, spreading traps and poisoned meat over half the county.”
“Reckon that should do it for the dogs, don’t you? Easier than sending a damn army out here.” Barry smirked again. “Probably get that loony too.”
Steve watched the trees go by. “I hope they catch him soon,” he muttered. “Starving—that’s no way to die. And this heat. Dying of thirst must be like burning to death, only slow.”
“Yeah, well, I guess you’d know all about thirst.” He took his hands off the wheel, cracked his knuckles and grinned. The car veered rapidly toward a wall of trees. Smiling broadly at Steve’s sharp gasp, he settled his hands back on the wheel and wrenched the car back on course.
Again, Steve tried not to speak. He took a deep breath, imbibing the musty pine smell. “Poor Athena. Must’ve been quite a shock for her yesterday. Finding him like that.”
“Shit, she ain’t all that upset.”
Matty lay at the rim of a hollow: smooth contours suggesting the foundation of a vanished house, only a smear of white in the lichen to show where the frame structure once had stood. Small cacti grew in the loose soil. He knew of many such places in the woods.
The boy played with some pebbles, rolling them down the sloping sand, his voice a constant gentle murmur. Dooley sniffed about him, then plopped down in the sand and studied a grasshopper that made its way across the turf. Sunlight ran warm across them, and wind rattled in the dry weeds.
Bare arms on heated sand, the boy continued to launch the stones. They w ere runners, racing downhill, and he was in the lead, feeling the wind cool his face, feeling courage and grace surge within his body. He was winning the race, and she stood at the bottom, cheering him. And now the rolling shapes became soldiers, like his father in the pictures or the ones Pammy had told him about, racing down a dune to the rescue. His mother was among those camped at the bottom, captive, straining her eyes toward the bright figure at the head of the column.
The pebbles changed again. Now they became other people. Bad people. The ones who pointed at him and laughed. But now they ran before him, ducking through the wild pines, screaming like babies. Like loonies. He’d show them. He was the brave one now, the fierce strong brave one, and try as they might they would not escape as they struggled and slid. Bad people, all of them…like the one with the clear bottle of foul stuff.
He shut his eyes and fragments of half-forgotten dreams drifted under the lids: a dusty road…himself floating…the windowless shack in the swamp.
Dooley whimpered, then howled. Matty looked up to see the dog backing away from him, body low against the ground. “Dooley?”
The animal continued to retreat, but its tail wagged briefly.
“Dooley!”
The dog hesitantly returned. Matty reached out to rough the dusty whorls of fur, and the dog’s tail beat his legs. Soon, they rolled together, happy and relaxed again. The boy’s breathing steadied, and in another moment the soldiers might have resumed their charging rescue. But the boy’s quick eyes caught movement overhead. A hawk circled in the air, searching, wheeling lower. It swept in ever-tighter circles.
It dove, disappeared into the trees. The boy’s eyes followed the motion, and he stared into the breeze-swept, kaleidoscopic pines. Patterns altered. Matty’s hand ceased to stroke the dog’s back and slid forward, coming to a stop on Dooley’s neck. Through his light fingers, he could feel the pulse. The hot, infuriating pulse. His body stiffened.
Dooley sprang away, vanishing into the brush.
The voice spoke, clearer this time, more compelling.
Chabwok.
And for five minutes, his face gone dark and fierce, it was as though the boy lived a raging, biting life on the forest floor.
“No! Go away!” He stood, angry and confused, hurtling stone after stone into the woods. “You were gonna hurt Pammy! You were gonna hurt her! Ain’t your friend no more. Go ’way!” With a dull thump, the final pebble bounced off a pine trunk and fell noiselessly into the sand.
“Look, Frank, calm down, will you? I’m telling you, it’s not gonna be a problem. We’re…Frank…Frank…We can handle this ourselves, boss.” Barry opened the phone booth, letting some of the heat out of the glass box. “Would you…would you listen…would you listen to what I’m telling you for just a minute, Frank? What? Yeah. Don’t worry. I’m gonna talk to her about it. Yeah. It’s that Doris. She’s the one might cause trouble. Huh? Yeah, I will.”
“Hey, Bar.” Looking over the map, Steve sat with the car door open. “Hurry it up, will you?”
“Listen, Frank, I got to go. Yeah, I don’t want ‘Buford’ over here to know I been talking to you. I told him I was calling home. Like I said, we got all the poison placed and everything. It’s only cause a the stateys and the reporters that we can’t move the cars yet, but soon as the dogs are all dead, everything’ll quiet down again.”
Steve refolded the map as Barry approached. “You ready?”
“Yeah, let’s go in,” Barry muttered, shading his eyes against the sun to peer at the diner.