“I went around to the front of the house.” He stood self-consciously in the doorway, finding the kitchen dark after the glare. “I take it you’ve got some of the rooms shut.”
“The floors are rotten. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t fall through the front porch.” Brushing off plaster dust, she looked at him in confusion, wondering if she should understand his presence here. “Oh, I’m sorry. Can I get you some coffee? Come on in.”
“No. I mean, no coffee, thank you, but I’ll come in for a minute, maybe.” He took a few hesitant steps into the kitchen. “What were you doing?”
She picked up the hammer again. “Some of the boards over the windows looked a little loose.”
“That to keep something out or something in?” Startled by loud giggling, he spun around. A plump blonde with plastic barrettes in her hair loomed in the doorway. She held one hand over her mouth, her face going deep red at the sight of him.
“This is my sister-in-law, Pamela Monroe,” said Athena with evident reluctance. “Pamela, this is Barry’s partner.” She peered out the back door. “Where’s Matthew?”
“Well, hello now.” Pam still giggled like a five-year-old, though the flesh around her eyes was swollen and bruised looking. “So nice to…We sure don’t see too many people out here, ’cept for them pineys.”
“Pamela, where’s Matthew? I thought I told you to stay with him.”
“He’s over that way somewheres.” Pam shrugged. “Playing with Chabwok.”
“If you can’t watch him, I want him inside. I have to leave soon anyway.”
“Oh, but he’s just right there.” Complaining under her breath, Pam wandered back outside. “I’ll get him.”
“This is the wife of the man who was killed? She seems to be taking it okay. What did she say? Chabwok? What’s that, an Indian name or something?”
“’Thena, I just want to tell you one thing.” Pam stuck her head back in the doorway. “If you want…I know you want me to watch Matty and all, but I just want to tell you this. I can’t find Dooley anywheres, and he wasn’t around for breakfast neither. That’s all I wanted to tell you.”
When she withdrew, he asked, “Is Dooley your dog?”
“More or less.”
“Then you better find him and keep him in the house. That’s why I wanted, I mean, the reason I stopped by was to tell you the state troopers are hunting the dogs.”
“Oh?” Suddenly, she became aware of the condition of the kitchen. Dirty pots covered the stove, and newspapers were spread on the floor around the sink. To keep him from looking around, she stepped closer to him.
“Yeah.” Confused, he backed away from her, out onto the porch. “They’re down that direction now.” He pointed toward the woods.
“That’s something, anyway.” Following him as far as the doorway, she raised one hand against the sunlight. “Or don’t you believe me either?”
He shuffled his big feet. “Feels like you got another weak spot.”
Silence.
“In the floor,” he added, avoiding her eyes. “You should do something about it. Place could fall down.”
“No such luck.”
He let out a sigh. “I’m not sure what I believe anymore. I can’t find what could connect those two deaths. Is it possible…? Could your brother-in-law have been involved in an attempt to steal what looked like an abandoned car? An attempt that somehow ended up…?”
She stared at him with sad disbelief.
“How long has this screen door been down like this? House must get full of bugs. Hinges look all right.” Moving quickly, he dragged the door loudly across the porch, stood it upright. “Where’s that hammer you had? Are there nails?” He pushed past her into the kitchen.
“Uh, yes…in that can…there. Wait, you don’t have to…”
Smiling and humming, he started hammering the door back onto the old iron hinges. “Quite a house.”
She gave a laugh. “Thanks. It’s a little big and pretty ugly, but we hate it. You don’t have to do that,” she repeated over the banging. “I’ve been meaning to get to it myself for—”
“You really hate it?”
“I’m a city girl. It’s like being buried alive out here. Really, you don’t…” She stood and watched him. “Why do I get the feeling this is my cue to say how nice it is to have a man around the house?”
“What? Can’t hear you.”
Red flakes of rust settled from the screens. “You want to fix the shutters next?”
Hammering away, he ignored her. The full heat of summer beat at the edges of the porch. “Good solid cedar,” he said between grunts, crouching to work at the lower hinge. “These old houses. Built to endure.”
Reeling from the heat and the hypnotic pound of the hammer, she murmured, “Tell me about it.”
His hair fell across his forehead like a golden claw, curling at the back where it grew long. Heat stinging his sweat-washed face, Matty stood rapt, one hand cupped about the slender pine. Cloud light, filtering through the trees, conveyed a greenish tinge to everything it bathed.
The insect had to be close to three inches long, and he thought it the fiercest, most evil-looking thing he’d ever beheld: the leering caricature of a face, the crablike pincers that reminded him of a crawdaddy. Especially, he stared at the cruel claws, then reflexively pulled away his hand. Seventeen years ago, years before his own birth, a rattling cloud had swarmed the woods, leaving their grubs beneath the loam, and now again it was their season, the air thick with the beat of transparent wings and with the urgent, rasping love song of the males.
Clinging tightly to the bark, the thing never moved.
He tapped it with one finger, and the carapace crackled like paper. Now he saw the jagged hole in the back, and he put his eye up close. Empty. Hollow. As though something had pecked through and eaten the insides. But, no, that wasn’t it….
And suddenly the boy understood.
The bug had climbed out of that hole in its own back. He pictured it, pliant and green, struggling to squirm from the prison of its old dried body. He could almost see that horrid face pressed against the translucent tightness, chewing its way free, giving birth to itself.
“Matty! Matty, where are you?”
“You there! Keep it moving. Spread out. Keep your formation.”
“Damn.” Out of earshot of their sergeant, one of the troopers kept up a steady stream of complaints. “Ain’t seen a damn thing all day. Course there could be elephants out here for all we know, let alone a couple mutts.”
“Duke bagged a deer,” said his buddy. “Didn’t ya hear?”
“Damn, it’s hot.” He tried to estimate the distance to the green-covered hills. As the horizon wavered, hazing toward invisibility, he strained his eyes, and vision blurred and flattened. One mile? Or five? He squinted from the blinding clouds. The sun looked enormous through the haze, bright hot only at its center. “When are we supposed to get a break anyway?”
Their uniforms darkened under their arms and down their backs.
“Not until we meet up with one of the other squads, I heard.”
“Damn.” The tiny round burrs that stuck tenaciously to clothing turned cruel where they touched flesh. The thorned seeds held life, waiting only to be carried to richer soil.
Their uniforms a dull gray through the scrub, the men trudged, shotguns held low. “Hey, what’s that over there?”
Twenty yards away, the thicket had begun to rattle and shake. They took aim. Another trooper, battling vines that clung to his uniform, broke through the brush. “Don’t shoot!” The newcomer saw the barrels pointed at him. “Don’t shoot!”