Lost

by Devon, Gary;

  She dialed Ben Sizemore’s number and said, “Marcella, this is Ruth Phelps. Could you get Tom to the telephone?” She did not see the boy come to the square of light on the lawn, then edge up close to her kitchen window. Presently, she said, “There’s a boy here with a dog. It gave me something of a fright. I don’t know, I think the dog must’ve been shot. He looks awful bad.…”

  “All right,” she said finally. “All right. Come just as soon as you can.”

  Even in his panic, Sherman avoided the square of light.

  I knew it! he thought.

  She called the police!

  It was dark. Night.

  Though he fought to hold on, he could feel himself coming apart.

  His head was throbbing like a faulty circuit. He had no idea where he was; he had lost all sense of time and direction. Now they were walking alongside plate-glass windows. The cold wind made his eyes sting. Moving on the glass, their shadowed reflections looked like apparitions. A car passed, its taillights bleeding on the black night. It streaked across his eyes. On a rooftop scaffold at the corner, a sketch of a dog was tirelessly running in blue neon, its legs switching back and forth. It looked beautiful, effortless. Above it, in white neon, the word GREYHOUND blinked off and on.

  From the side of the bus station came an enormous chrome bus. With a ratcheting of gears, the bus swayed by him, spewing fumes and blowing exhaust, the cameo lights along its sides shining bright colors like a beautiful ship setting off for the stars. A bus, Sherman thought. Light wires fluttered over it as it sank from sight. A bus! I’d like to be on that bus. Shaking with cold and hunger, leading the Chinaman, he walked past gas pumps crowned with mock torches. The artificial light glowed everywhere around them.

  “What the hell happened to your dog?” the attendant asked.

  Sherman stared at him, turned and started to go, unable to remember why he was there. Suddenly he said, “How far is it to Kentucky anyway?”

  “You’re in Kentucky,” the man said. “Where is it you’re tryin’ to go?”

  Sherman stared at him again, then looked over his shoulder at the empty driveway. “I’d know where it is on one of your maps,” he said.

  With a shrewd glance at him, the man produced a map and unfolded it; Sherman studied it and showed him the dot and the name, Brandenburg Station, and the man said, “Well, sir, that’s clear over by Louisville.”

  “So how far’s that?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” the man said. “From here, I reckon it must be three, four hundred miles.”

  “So how long’d it take somebody to drive there?”

  The man squinted. “Lessee. Roads like they are, oughta be able to make it in three days. Two maybe, if they’ve got the roads cleared.”

  “Three days?”

  “Yes, sir. I imagine that’s ’bout right.”

  Outside, Sherman slipped into the rest room in back, coaxed the Chinaman in, and locked the door. Three days, he thought. Three days and this is one day and it’s almost over. Quickly he took off his jacket. She was getting away from him. And now that housewife had called the police and they would be looking for him. He pulled out all the papers in his shirt—the crumbling newspaper pieces, the last thousand-dollar bill he’d saved for his getaway with Mamie, the torn photographs of the woman, which he stared at closely now to refresh his memory. Everything had gone bad. He looked down at the Chinaman and saw him slumped in his own blood. He had to accept then that the dog couldn’t make it, couldn’t go with him, and a terrible, heartbreaking loneliness swept through him. I’ll be all alone without you, he thought. All alone. Only Mamie was left. He had to go find her right away. Just as soon as he got rid of that woman, he’d take Mamie—he had the money.… They would find some place to live, a new place. She was all he had.

  He picked up his jacket. Around the sleeve hole, the lining had ripped loose and he shoved his mess of papers down inside the jacket—they slid down to the waistband just where he wanted them. Now if the police felt in his shirt they wouldn’t find anything. He helped the Chinaman stand and they went outside. A police car turned the corner in a cloud of exhaust and black gutter leaves. Sherman rocked back, everything too bright to see.

  After that he remembered that they went through the chrome metal doors of the bus station. Sherman stood at a blackboard of chalked-in schedules, scanning for the name of the town he wanted. But he couldn’t read it; the letters wouldn’t hold still.

  The bus station was a big, empty room with benches for sleepers and talkers. He didn’t wait for the watchman, who was headed for him, to tell him to take the dog outside. The nebula of high ceiling lights whirled around him. I gotta do something, he thought. There was a red candy machine; he took nickels from his pocket and quickly pulled the plunger. Three Hershey bars appeared in his hand. He put them in his pocket, then led the dog out of the station.

  The Chinaman staggered at his side. Sherman looked down at him. They were in among some railroad tracks. Farther and farther they wandered from the downtown lights, the muffled noise of traffic, and entered into a dark region of boxcars and weeds. Now he looked back to where the street crossed the tracks—the small lighted crossing bloomed in his eyes like a distant mirage. He unwrapped the first Hershey bar and broke it into chunks, his hands shaking so hard he almost dropped it. He fed the dog a piece. “You like this kind, doncha?” Sherman said, watching him carefully, spending these last few moments entirely with him. “Does it hurt you to eat, boy? It’s your favorite.” The Chinaman settled back and lay down. Sherman gave him another chunk, then the last one, and turned away while the Chinaman chewed on the chocolate. The boy drew the knife from his pocket, opened it, saw it glassily in his fist, and laid it on the iron hitch of a boxcar. Then he pulled off his jacket.

  Suddenly he paced down the dark glimmering track, gasping for breath, turned and came back. He unwrapped another candy bar, broke it in pieces, and gave it to the dog. Wave after wave of sweat broke across Sherman’s brow, and he could do nothing but wipe it away on his shirt sleeve. The wind was blowing, colder and colder. He let out a long shuddering sigh. He knew, the way an animal knows, what had to be done and how to do it, but his grief held him back. With his bandaged hand, he stroked the Chinaman’s broad sleek head. “You’re okay,” he murmured. “Chinaman, you’ll be okay.” The night rose up around him in a brilliant black haze and slowly began to whirl. “We’re just alike, you and me.”

  Fits of trembling ran through him as he unwrapped the last candy bar and laid it intact on the ground. He inched to the side. No longer trying to chew, the dog gulped the chocolate in hard swallows, the mottled sheen of his coat heaving on his frame. Sherman wiped his hand on his pants and clasped the knife. His dread grew monstrous; he expelled the air trapped in his lungs. Now. Abruptly he bent over the Chinaman. His bandaged hand stroked down under the dog’s head and gripped the fur already stiff with blood. Although he acted with speed, the knife seemed to fly downward with excruciating slowness. Sensing danger, the Chinaman twisted too late and looked up. The blade sank and tore across the furry throat.

  A hideous, strangling growl wrenched the air and the Chinaman pitched sideways in a paroxysm of astonished strength. Blood blew in a spray from the wound. Sherman stumbled forward, aghast. Terror struck him in hard convulsions. The dog thrashed about and came up, the wound reducing the flow of his movement to a spastic tossing, an odd broken cry tearing apart in his throat. “Stop it!” Sherman screamed. “Don’t cry!” In a frenzy to end it, before he could think to stop himself, he swung again, savagely. “Don’t cry!” The knife whipped down, missing, inflicting surface wounds as the Chinaman snapped at him, teeth flashing, then howled and squirmed. “Don’t cry,” Sherman gasped, “don’t cry, don’t cry,” driving the knife down again and again until he couldn’t lift his arm any more. The Chinaman rocked back and pulled himself up dazedly, fell and came up again, stumbling sideways, and with a burst of his old speed, tore into the brush.

  Sh
erman’s pain was as large as the air. Filled with horror at what he had done, he began to weep as never before, his voice breaking with grief. “I’m s-sorry,” he stammered. “I’m s-sorry, I’m sorry, boy, I’m sorry.” He ran blindly into the brush to find the Chinaman. Through his mind, as he ran, went that broken, unhinged cry. He reached the Chinaman and knelt for him, his hands sliding up the rigid lattice of the dog’s ribs, lifting him gently, slowly, into his arms, speaking to him, begging. “I take it back,” he said, “Chinaman, I take it back, I take it back,” the tears blinding him.

  It seemed a long time before he had secured the dog firmly against him, drawing him up on his body in a series of shrugging, sliding movements, still asking him, still pleading, “Come on, Chinaman, come on, I’m sorry,” and finding it almost impossible to move himself as the paws dragged and scraped around his shoes. Once, he picked the dog up and carried him and then fell back to his knees. No matter what he did, the black eyes, still open and alive-looking, were fixed on him.

  His hands and shirt turned dark with blood. He went on struggling with the dog, as if he could somehow make it be all right if he only tried hard enough, but the body was falling through his arms; the big head nodded loose against him, and he felt a spasm fly through the crooked hindlegs like a wild shudder of breath. And at once Sherman let go and shrank back, staring transfixed, unable to utter a sound. His hand reached out and stroked the Chinaman’s head, and from the dog’s stubby face the eyes now stared with a dull, milk-black luster.

  He was dead.

  Sherman reached out and took the big tufted paw and held it tenderly, stroking it, to rub all the pain away. He couldn’t find his breath. Then a cry broke from his mouth so loud and high-pitched it carried out over the freight yard, and from the neighborhoods of that little town a cry rose with his, a reverberation of grief from every back-yard dog that heard him. And the wind blew, ruffling the Chinaman’s fur, gently lifting the sleek, black ruff around his face, as if somehow that small part of him were still alive.

  PART FOUR

  20

  With a soft whir of tires, the new black Pontiac slipped smoothly through the night. Glancing at the river beyond the trees, Leona could see the first rays of morning pierce the dark and then the light washed across fields and trees and dim houses, drawing them up in sudden levitation, like faded water-color landscapes in pop-up Christmas cards. Moments later, as if sensing the new light, the children began to wake up around her. “We’re almost there,” she told them. “It’s not much further.”

  In the cold, luminous dawn, the Pontiac sped through the outskirts of Brandenburg Station, slowed to the speed limit, and turned down the steep main street. The town was still asleep. All night the temperature had hovered near zero and now, driving down the empty street, Leona saw the effect of the unusually cold weather spread before her in a wide perspective. Beyond the small gazebo of the waterfront park, under sketchy layers of fog, the Ohio River had frozen over in great tilting slabs of ice.

  At the bottom of the hill, near the edge of the little park, she brought the car to a standstill. Hazard Road, which would take them through winding curves to a point near the island, was barricaded. Signs read: ABSOLUTELY NO ONE PERMITTED ON LOST RIVER. ICE UNSTABLE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. NO DRIVING ON ICE. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Leona hesitated scarcely a moment. Would the police expect to find her here? She couldn’t risk being seen. She turned the steering wheel, jockeyed around the barricades, and headed out Hazard Road. She had seen those signs before. Inevitably, every few years the river froze over, and just as inevitably, parties of daredevils walked or skated or—if the temperature was really severe and the ice deep—drove across the river to the Indiana shore. After a bitter cold spell, the ice posed little danger; it was an adventure, something to recall for their grandchildren. The warning signs were routine. To Leona, the thought of crossing the ice on foot, even with children, presented no real danger.

  She was home. Everything looked familiar. Even the withered brown stalks of weeds, protruding through snow, took on a special nostalgia. She drove effortlessly. The air continued to brighten above the shifting fog. Hazard Road was an old highway laid between the water’s edge and the adjacent sandstone bluffs. Where the cliffs gapped, the crumbling pavement was ribbed with thin horizontal bands of snow. Leona slowed the car. In a long hooking curve, they passed a smattering of fishermen’s shacks; then the road dipped and swerved through a bog and trickled away through a stand of tall loblolly poplars. Offshore, rising through the frozen crust of the river, was the island. Île des Chats. Cat Island.

  The Pontiac crossed frozen puddles and came to a stop among the trees. Leona turned the ignition off and settled back, rubbing her tired eyes, filled with relief and a sense of final victory. “Look, everybody,” she said. “There’s what I promised you.” She opened the door and let it swing away from her, enjoying the fresh, cold air that struck her face.

  The children were clamoring to get out. She reminded them to put on their caps and gloves, then let them step into the pure cold morning.

  “Where is this place?” Patsy said.

  “It’s the Ohio River, just as I told you.”

  “But how’ll we get out there? There’s no boat.”

  “We can just walk across,” Leona told them.

  “That’s river water out there.”

  “Yes,” she said, and laughed. “And when it melts, it’ll be wet.”

  “What if we fall in?” Walter asked her.

  “Oh, you won’t fall in. I won’t let you.”

  “My mommy said I would. She said I’d fall in.”

  “Walter, trust me, this is different.”

  From the trunk, Leona collected the few things they would need immediately, the can of gasoline and the smallest bag of groceries. “Can we take the Christmas presents?” Mamie said. “I want to carry ’em.” Leona saw no harm in it and said, “Of course you can. Now, who wants to carry my briefcase?” Both Patsy and Walter jumped forward. “All right,” Leona said, “you’ll have to take turns.” The other, heavier suitcases and the large box of groceries would have to wait until she had time to move them piece by piece. Leading the children through the trees, she came to the bank at the river’s edge. In the narrow channel, wind kept the ice clear of snow; where a corner of ice jutted up, it was sometimes possible to see the depth of the frozen mosaic. The ice was universally solid and deep. Nothing moved.

  “I’m afraid,” Patsy said. “I don’t want to walk on froze-up water.”

  “Then you all can wait here. I’ll come back and carry you.”

  But Leona had gone only a few steps on the ice when she heard Mamie yell, “Hey, wait for us,” and watched them scramble down the bank and trail toward her.

  “Be careful,” she warned them. “Walk very slow and easy.” And she waited till they drew near.

  The waterway spanned through the rooty tufts of the small outer islands; each landmass jutted a yard above the ice, crowned thick with weeds and saplings. Around these outcroppings of earth and rock, the ice was thin and green, bubbling with air pockets. Leona pointed out the thin places and warned them of the danger. They passed down the crooked aisle of solid ice and saw the stone house, much as Leona had described it, through the morning fog.

  The little wooden pier, where Doc Merchassen had tied his motorboat each summer, still stood, its pilings mired in pale green socks of ice. Uncertain of its stability, Leona bypassed the weathered wood and lifted the children to land where the shallow cove met the slope of the yard. Without blemish or track, a crisp mantle of snow covered the entire irregular terrain. There was no path to take. They went directly toward the house, past a dilapidated rose trellis. Icicles hung from the high gables and eaves of the two-story cottage, some so long they nearly touched the ground.

  Leaving everything they had carried on the cistern cover, Leona removed the padlock on the cellar and lifted the slanted door. It made an eerie noise and she saw the apprehension on
the children’s faces. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “We’ll need to make a fire until I can get the furnace going. Why don’t you try to find some dry wood?”

  Looking at the other two children, Walter said, “Firewood like at Aunt Vee’s?”

  “That’s right. Just stack it up out here. And I’ll go in and try to get the front door open.”

  In the cellar she found a soggy box of candles and, setting them in mason jars, managed to light four of them. With the gasoline she started the old generator.

  “What’s that thing?” Mamie asked, standing at the bottom of the cellar steps.

  “It’s a generator. I hope it’ll make electricity so we can have lights.” As soon as it was running smoothly, Leona plugged in the water pump and the hot-water heater. When she glanced back again, Mamie was gone, the spill of gray morning light now unbroken on the cellar steps. She loosened the bottled-gas spigot and lit the pilot light in the small furnace. Taking one of the lighted candles, she went up the dark basement stairs toward the living quarters, not knowing what she might find there, although from the outside of the house nothing appeared to have been tampered with.

  As far as she could tell, the rooms above ground were just as she had left them months ago. She stood in the vaulted living room. Except for the light from the candle she held in her hand, she stood in total darkness and it accentuated the little sounds she made, the sound of her breathing against the bone-chilling cold. She lit the kerosene lamp, and in the small walnut table in the hall found the front-door key where she had hidden it so many months ago. The door opened on a sheet of plywood. Using an old wooden mallet from the kitchen, she knocked the wood panel away, and the morning light spread through the door.