Hide and Seek

by Jack Ketchum

  She did, for a while. But then the waiting started to get to her so she decided to drive on home, and asked the nurse to call her when the doctor was through.

  She was only in the house a few minutes when the phone rang. It was the vet. He said the dog was all right and asked her if she was home alone. She said she was. He told her to get out of the house right away, to go stand on the lawn or on the street. The police, he said would be over right away.

  She was not to ask questions. She was just to leave as fast as possible.

  They found her waiting on the front lawn, walking in circles, confused and worried. Two squad cars emptied four officers into her house.

  Upstairs, hiding in her father's closet, they found a man with ashirt wrapped tight around a bleeding index finger. Or what was left of it.

  I guess the dog had proven itself a good watchdog but a clumsy eater.

  He'd taken the intruder's finger off at the knuckle and swallowed it whole. And that was what was lodged there in his throat.

  "I'm supposed to believe that?"

  "Absolutely."

  Two finger stories in one week, I thought.

  "If you don't believe me, ask Casey. The girl used to babysit for her brother."

  "Her brother."

  I guess I jumped on that one a little.

  "Sure. You ... you knew about her brother, didn't you?"

  "Yes and no."

  She knew she'd made a mistake. I watched her get more and more uncomfortable, trying to figure how to handle it. Finally she said, "Well, you can ask Casey about Jean Drummond. She'll tell you."

  "-r , I,

  Talk to me about her brother, Kim.

  She considered it. I had the feeling that there was something there she thought I ought to know. I knew she liked me. I remembered her warning about Casey over Cokes that day. Loyalties, though. They die hard.

  "I'd ... rather not. That's Casey's business."

  "Not mine? Not even a little?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "So? Should I ask her about it, Kimberley?"

  She paused. "Maybe you should. I don't know. It depends.

  "On what?"

  "On how well you need to know her, I guess."

  "Suppose that's a lot?"

  She sighed. "Then ask. Ask her for god's sake. Jesus! I can't hold your goddamn hand for you."

  She stood and walked away from me into the shallows. As far as I knew it was the first time she'd gone into the water all summer. I called out to her.

  "You won't like it."

  She turned around and looked at me. She spoke quietly. "Neither will you."

  The opportunity to ask her about her brother came along two nights later.

  I think I remember everything there is to remember about that night.

  The smell of fresh-cut grass on her lawn, the warmth of the air its exact temperature-the scent of the hair moving toward me and then away on the flow of breeze through the open windows as we drifted along in the car, the feel of damp earth under me later and the smell of that too, the long empty silences, crickets, night birds, her awful shallow breathing.

  I remember every bit of it, because that night put all the rest in motion. And the next day was Saturday, and the next night was Saturday night. And I've never looked at Saturdays the same way since. Maybe you'll find that hard to believe. But you weren't there.

  You don't carry it around with you like a sackful of cinders.

  Like I say, you weren't there.

  I'd taken the day off again and this time the boss wasn't happy with me at all. I was "ill" again. McGregor wasn't stupid. You only had to look at Casey once or twice to know what was keeping me away.

  I was endangering the job. I didn't care.

  We drove to Campobello for the day to see the Roosevelt summer home. We were the only ones there, so the guide gave us

  special attention. Steven, whose hand was still wrapped in bandages, found it all a bit hard to take.

  "There's an awful lot of wicker."

  He was right as far as I was concerned. Nice house, big, but otherwise nothing special. The guide was a lot more impressed than any of us were. But that was her job. She was a nice old woman and you didn't want to insult her. Except for Steve, who kept wandering off impatiently by himself, we followed her and nodded attentively.

  It was a relief to get outside, though.

  "Thank god," said Steve as we piled back into the car. "How do tourists stand themselves, anyway?"

  "They still believe in education," Casey said.

  Steve nodded. "Self-improvement."

  "History."

  We stopped for a drink at the Caribou on the way home. Hank always served us, though I'm sure he knew they were underage. I suppose he needed the business.

  It was still early and the after-work crowd hadn't arrived yet, so we had the place nearly to ourselves. Steve played some Elvis and Jerry Lee on the jukebox. All the drinks were the usual-scotch with beer back for me, Bloody Marys for Casey and Steve and a tequila sunrise for Kimberley. We finished one round and ordered another. And that was when the disagreement started.

  We'd planned to drive to Lubec that night to listen to a local band there, one Kim happened to like. Steve and I were agreeable. But Casey hadn't committed herself. And now it turned out that there was a movie she wanted to see over in Trescott. It was nothing to me either way, but Steve got annoyed with her.

  "Anything you want, Casey. Don't mind me."

  She swirled the ice in her Bloody Mary, oblivious to his irony.

  "Fine."

  "You go to your movie and we'll go see the band."

  "All right."

  "What about you, Clan?"

  He was pointing his finger at me again. He was using the bandaged hand and it was sort of funny-looking but I didn't dare laugh. I kept it straight.

  "That's fine too."

  You could see he was ready to walk out in one of his ten-minute sulks.

  He still had a half a drink left, but he got up off his stool.

  "Sit down, Steven," said Kimberley. "We can all get together tomorrow night. Relax."

  It didn't really take. He still wanted to march off on us, you could tell. It was all display. Competitive, possessive and pretty silly.

  By tomorrow he'd have forgotten all about it. In this kind of contest of wills with Casey he never won anyway. You wondered why he bothered.

  But he sat, and he finished his drink. And then stalked off, without a word or a smile for any of us. I turned to Kimberley.

  "Are you going to get more of this tonight? Maybe you ought to come along with us."

  "No, he'll be fine. He'll walk it off now. Besides, I'm the one who wants to hear the band, remember?"

  Casey was expected home for dinner. So I ate alone at the diner, something very rubbery they had the guts to call steak, and then drove out to her place around seven in the pickup. I turned off the ignition and waited. I didn't like going inside unless I had to. The few times I had, Casey's mother had been very uncomfortable. I had the distinct sense that she thought her daughter was slumming. She was a fluttery, mousy thing, and I didn't like her much. Casey's looks came from her father. As for him, he made me uncomfortable.

  The street was so quiet you could almost feel the dusk turn to dark around you like a slag of fog descending. I heard crickets, and somebody dropped a pan a few doors down. I heard kids shouting somewhere out of sight down the block, playing some ga me or other, and a mother's voice calling one of them home for dinner.

  Casey was late.

  After a while I heard voices raised inside their house. I'd never had the illusion that they were a happy family. On the other hand, I'd never heard them fighting, either.

  I checked my watch. Ten minutes after seven. The movie started at eight. It would take us half an hour to drive to Trescott. It was going to be tight, but we'd still have a little leeway.

  (waited. I didn't mind waiting. There was no temptation to turn on the radi
o. I'd always liked the evening quiet of Dead River. It was one thing the town had to offer, a kind of gentle cooling of the spirit that comes along with the cooling of the land. The summer nights were almost worth the winter nights, when you suffered, housebound, through the cold. You could almost feel the stars come out, without seeing them.

  I was eased back, sitting low in the seat, dreaming.

  I jumped when I heard the door slam.

  There was no light on in front of the house, so it was hard to see her face at first as she came toward the car, but I could tell from something in her walk, in the way she moved, that she was upset. Her movements were always so controlled and confident, made up of loose and well-toned muscle. But now, I saw a rough abruptness about her that I wasn't used to. She pulled the door open on the passenger side.

  "Drive."

  She launched herself into the seat. Her voice seemed thicker, angry.

  "Yes. I don't care. Anywhere. Fuck it!"

  I think she took a good five years off the life of my car door. My ears rattled in tandem with the window. I started the car.

  "Easy."

  She turned to me, and something took a dive in the pit of my stomach.

  Those lovely pale eyes gleamed at me. I'd never seen her cry before. I started to reach for her, to comfort her.

  "Please!"

  She was begging.

  Casey, begging. I couldn't quite believe it at first.

  I did what she asked. I drove.

  "What's up?"

  "Please just drive."

  "You still want the movie?"

  I'll don't know where we went.

  The outskirts of town for a while, then up and down the main

  I tried to get her to talk about it, but she shut me up with a look so painful that I kept my own eyes fixed to the road ahead after that and gave her the long quiet that was clearly all she wanted from me and all I had to give. I felt her body shaking gently and knew she was crying.

  It astonished me that anything could happen in that colorless, moneyed, lifeless household that could possibly make her cry. It astonished me that she should cry at all, I think. The command was gone, the toughness melted away, and beside me was a woman like any other. And even though I liked that toughness and that command, I realized I'd been waiting a longtime to see this, to see what was underneath.

  It was good to know I could help her just by being there. I felt oddly comforted. I'd never cared for her more.

  It was quite a moment.

  I remember we'd turned onto Northfield Avenue when I felt her straighten up beside me. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her wipe the tears off her face. It was a single harsh gesture with the fingertips of both hands. I heard her sniffling back the mucus and heard her clear her throat. We turned to one another at the same time.

  For me it was just a glance before I had to look back to the road again. But I felt her stare on me long after that, measuring me somehow.

  When she spoke, her voice was gentle, but I sensed that she'd turned a corner again, and what lay beneath it was not. I'd seen a crack in the wall, no more than that. Her voice ran drifts of ectoplasm over me like the thin, strong lines of a spider.

  "I want to go back."

  "You want me to take you home?"

  "Please. Yes."

  "All right."

  We weren't far from there. We drove in silence. I turned onto her street and noticed a pothole in the road I hadn't seen when we'd

  IDE AND SEEK

  passed it before. It seemed out of place on that one good street in all Dead River.

  I parked across from her house and put the pickup in parking gear. It rumbled: the idle was running high again. I put my arm across the seat and turned to ask her if she wouldn't like to tell me about it before she went inside again. I wanted to know. It wasn't just curiosity.

  She was putting me through some very fast changes. I felt she'd cut me off again, done it quickly and thoroughly, and I wanted back in. She opened the curbside door.

  "Wait for me here."

  She closed the door carefully, quietly.

  I turned off the car and watched her.

  She crossed the street and walked up the field stone path that cut the lawn in two and led up to the porch. There were low shrubs planted in a rock garden roughly as deep as the porch on either side. They ascended in height, the symmetry almost too neat to please the eye. She stopped in front of the first step and looked off to her left. She was looking for something on the ground.

  Now what the hell?

  She took a few steps to the left and kept on looking. I had the ridiculous momentary impression that it was night crawlers she was after. That we were going fishing. She bent down into the garden and took something up in each hand, seeming to weigh them before she stood again.

  From that point on her movements were completely economical. The Casey I was used to, and even more so.

  It was clear that she knew exactly what she was doing. She took three steps backward onto the lawn and looked up into the left front window.

  There was a light burning inside from a floor lamp. I tried to remember the layout of the house, and I thought it would have to be the den, her father's workroom.

  There is something terrible to me about the sound of breaking

  I remember we had a cat when I was a kid who woke us all one night by knocking a cheap cut-glass vase off the kitchen table. I was on my feet and into the kitchen so fast that I wasn't fully awake when

  I got there. With the result that the sole of my foot took seven or eight stitches.

  That's how it was this time too.

  I think my hand was on the ignition as soon as her rock went crashing through the window. I think the car was in drive and my foot on the brake before the shattering sound even left my ears. Part of it was instinct, part of it self-preservation.

  It was her house. But I had the feeling it would be my ass.

  My throat felt constricted.

  "Jesus!" I yelled. "Come on!"

  Somehow I couldn't get her attention.

  She was still moving in that same determined way across the field stone path and then across the right side of her lawn, ignoring me. I knew instantly what she was doing, where she was going. I knew it like I knew how my head would hurt if you hit it with a hammer. There would be no stopping her. Calling out would only make it worse. The sound of breaking glass had been so loud I half expected to see porch lights go on all along the street. But everything was still quiet. As she marched across the lawn and over a macadam driveway to the house next door.

  I looked back to her place. My hands were sweating on the steering wheel. I saw her father framed in the window. He had just come through the doorway and was standing there in perfect profile, staring down at the damage, at all the broken glass I imagined winking up at him from the floor.

  He turned slowly toward the window and looked out. He looked to the right and then to the left, and then he looked at me.

  I had to turn away.

  There was too much sadness there, too much guilt in me.

  I heard another crash. Louder than before. She had put the second rock through the right front window of the house next door.

  I didn't ask myself why. I knew why. There would be questions now, plenty of them. Her father would be answering some of them.

  There was shouting inside. A woman. A man. Casey was straightening up, recovering the follow-through. A slab of glass came drifting down off the top sill like the blade of a guillotine, hit the

  bottom sill and shattered. The shouting sounded almost hysterical tome.

  I watched her walk back to the car. She took her time.

  There was a moment when I almost left her there I glanced back to her place and saw that her father was gone from the window. The porch lights went on. Soon he would be standing there. I leaned out to her.

  "Get in, goddamn you!"

  Sympathy can turn so quickly. Just add fear. Stir.

  By
the time she was back in the car I was burning. Burning and scared.

  I had just enough control left not to gun the thing to get away from there. We slid away from the curb nice and slowly.

  See no evil, hear no evil.

  I wondered if anybody was buying it but me.