The Burn Palace

by Stephen Dobyns

  After a few minutes, Nurse Spandex achieved a sort of nervous vigilance and Woody asked her to describe what had happened, which nearly set her off again. Then, with much faltering and stammering, she managed to collect the words to tell her story. She had been in the nursery until about two-fifteen, mostly at her desk but also seeing to the babies, the dear little things, but it was terribly difficult because she was torn up by her cramps. She should have called someone; she knew she should have. Instead, she ran to the bathroom down the hall, where she was again attacked by cramps. “Hard enough to make my teeth shake,” she said. After five minutes, or maybe ten, she made her way back to the nursery, stumbled back, if truth be told, and right away she saw something wrong in the Summers baby’s crib. He was struggling under his little blanket as if he couldn’t breathe, struggling to free himself. She had run to the crib and yanked away the blanket, and then . . . Here she again began to wail.

  Woody waited. Another thing he disliked was asking women about their periods. His embarrassment always showed; he might even blush. In high school he recalled how girls could just get up from their desks and walk out of the room unchallenged. Sometimes he knew for a fact the girl was leaving to smoke dope or to have a cigarette. It had struck him as unfair.

  When Alice was relatively calm, Woody asked about the snakes. Could she give an idea of the number? How many had she seen? Her lower lip quivered. At first it was ten, then that number went down. After all, ten six-foot snakes would more than fill the crib. Even five would be difficult. Maybe four, maybe three. Could it be one? No, it had to be more than one. More than one but less than two? Again she began to weep.

  During her story, Nurse Spandex glanced up at Woody, glanced away, wrinkled her brow, looked at the ceiling, rubbed her nose, bit her lip, wiped her eyes, sniffed, wrung her hands, and darted glances at Bernie Wilcox. Woody was sure she was lying. It seemed printed in block letters across her forehead. So he asked a few questions. When she’d been in the bathroom, had she heard anything? No, well, maybe she’d heard footsteps, she couldn’t be sure. Had she seen anyone, another nurse, someone on the staff? No, nobody. Was she sure she’d been gone five minutes, or was it a little more?

  When it grew apparent that Woody doubted her, Alice began to weep again and talk about the snakes, how they had reared up, how she thought they had eaten the baby. Then her whole body began to shake.

  So Woody gave it up for the time being. On the other hand, she might have taken the baby herself. She had the best opportunity, and she clearly was lying about something.

  As he left the room, Bernie Wilcox followed, and before he’d gone five feet she took his arm and pulled him back. “That slut’s not on the rag. She had her period two weeks ago and told us all about it, just like usual.”

  Woody turned in surprise and Bernie winked at him.

  In the next few hours, Woody talked to the head of the hospital, doctors, nurses, members of the maintenance crew, and people who had been in the hospital when the incident took place. Other police officers were also talking to these people, and Woody joined in with a few questions. In each case, the person either told him nothing he didn’t know or nothing he could use. In addition, each was afraid of something occurring to put his or her job at risk. They were circumspect, they professed ignorance, they cast troubled glances at the TV truck from Providence parked outside. They said they’d do “whatever it took” to get the baby back. Their hesitation was understandable, but Woody didn’t like it.

  Mayor Grantland Hobart, whose position was mostly honorific, took Woody aside. “Any chance of keeping this out of the papers?” He was a developer. If Brewster were known as a town where nasty things happened, it could cost him a fortune. Woody nodded toward the television news truck.

  The mayor tugged his lower lip. “I was afraid of that.”

  What struck Woody was that no one expressed concern for the missing baby. Oh, a few said, “What a shame, what a shame,” but it was a matter of formality, something to get out of the way before returning to the subject of their innocence. No, it wasn’t a matter of innocence or guilt—they were protecting their résumés. Was he being too cynical? But he was tired and his back hurt from the standing around.

  The fact was a baby boy less than twenty-four hours old was missing. Between people’s worries about their jobs and those damn snakes, it was like the kid had vanished twice: once in truth and once from people’s stories. For crying out loud, the baby didn’t even have a name yet. The mother couldn’t decide between Brad, Clint, and Sean. Movie-star names. In the same way, his own father had been torn between Woody, Dylan, and Elvis. Can’t there be a law to protect kids from stupid names? “Is it short for Woodrow or Woodward?” people asked him. Nope, just Woody. It was right there on his birth certificate. At least it wasn’t Elvis.

  What mattered was the baby. The snakes were frosting. But he was tempted to grab someone, anyone, by the arm and shout, “Don’t you give a fuck about the goddamn baby?”

  That was almost what Susie had said. “Don’t you want to have a goddamn baby?” But he was working and she was working; they were never home at the same time and there was his temper and the marriage kept being put off and then she left. And there were other problems, or “issues,” as she called them.

  Up on the second floor everything was quiet. Lights had been set up in the nursery. Frank Montesano dusted for fingerprints and put small red arrows next to the ones he found—walls, cribs, cabinets, they were all over. Janie Forsyth was busy with her camera. Lou Rossetti moved crabwise across the floor with his nose six inches above the tiles, armed with tweezers, evidence tubes, glassine envelopes, and the rest. They eased around cribs, chairs, tables, sinks, and rolling carts like slow-motion dancers. They wore blue latex exam gloves and booties. Their “exhibits,” as they were called, would be taken over to the state crime laboratory, part of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Rhode Island.

  Woody stood in the doorway and kept his hands in his pockets. On the walls were watercolors of piggies and duckies, puppies and kitties—a free-for-all of the intensely cute meant for parents and staff, since to the infants they were scarcely a blur.

  Montesano and his crew didn’t look at him. Woody knew they could be busy till daybreak, hardly aware of the passage of time. It was like grade school—some kids spent hours fussing with model ships and cars; some preferred to rush through the world with muscles throbbing. Woody had belonged to the second group.

  “Any more snakes?” asked Montesano, still focused on fingerprints.

  “Shit,” said Rossetti. “I’ll bet ten bucks there wasn’t more than one.”

  Looking at the cribs, Woody imagined how he would feel if one had contained his son, even a daughter. “And I bet you’re right.”

  “I got some interesting mud,” said Rossetti. “They must clean this floor at least six times a day, so this is interesting recent mud.”

  “I like good mud,” said Woody.

  “How’s Susie been?” asked Montesano, still without looking up.

  “Oh, she’s fine, fine. You know, like always.” Why am I lying? Woody asked himself, ashamed. But it was too late to say, “By the way, she’s left me.” Maybe he could say something to Montesano when they were alone.

  “We’d like to have you both over for dinner some night.”

  “Sure thing,” said Woody. “That’d be great.”

  “Yeah,” said Montesano, “it’s been too long. Maybe I’ll invite Rossetti here if he swears to eat with a knife and fork. I’ve even seen him eat soup with his fingers.”

  The men laughed. Then Woody saw Janie Forsyth look at him questioningly and remembered she was friends with Susie’s sister. That meant Janie already knew.

  • • •

  Jill Franklin parked her Tercel on Chestnut Street a block from the hospital. It was past six, and the sun would soon rise over the ocean. She grabbed her camera bag and notebook and climbed out, careful not to slam the door. A white fro
st hopscotched the nearby lawns; the leaves, past their peak, were sallow or brown. She had no wish to be where she was, but her editor had called, and if she wanted to keep her job she had no choice. He had given her a room number and a few instructions, adding, “Don’t forget, I want art.”

  Jill was thirty and a single parent. Luckily, her own parents lived only two miles from her apartment in Wakefield, so she had been able to drop off Luke. He was six. Jill had been substituting in local schools before the job had come through at the Brewster Times & Advertiser at the beginning of summer. It wasn’t perfect, but it beat substituting. She was a little under average height but athletic and had played field hockey in high school and college. Now she sometimes coached it and could still outplay any girl on the team. But she was tired of being a jock, tired of schools, and she hoped her job with the Brewster Times & Advertiser would lead to a bigger paper, like the Providence Journal. Really, she’d like anything where writing was involved.

  Jill had straight blond hair, an angled bob that she believed made her round face look thinner, a slightly snubbed nose that her father liked to say was like Socrates’s nose, and nice lips and teeth. She didn’t spend much time looking in the mirror. “It is what it is,” she said. But she was proud of her athletic ability and didn’t mind her thick calves, a result not just of running but of broken-field running, the stops, turns, shifts, the abrupt changes of direction. Anyway, she mostly wore jeans, which she was wearing now—jeans, a dark sweater, a black leather jacket, and running shoes. At the last minute, she decided to leave the jacket in the car.

  She went straight to the main entrance, walking quickly, as if she had a destination in mind, someplace that wanted her as much as she wanted it. She breezed past the cop at the door with only a brief nod, which said, If I weren’t in such a rush I’d stop to chat. “Never look uncertain,” her boss had told her. Ahead was the information desk, at which sat a volunteer, an elderly woman who looked up with a smile.

  Jill smiled back as she made a no-no gesture with an index finger. “I’m late, I’m late.” She turned right toward the stairs.

  It pleased her to run up two flights of stairs and not be out of breath. Her vanity needed comforting, considering that she was behaving in a way she disliked. Face it, she told herself, I’m behaving badly. She opened the door to the hallway and turned left. Several rooms were being cleaned; a nurse and doctor were discussing a chart; a man in a wheelchair stared at the ceiling. Jill breezed by them, and at the end of the hall she turned right. The room she wanted—314—was halfway down. A policeman stood outside. Jill walked quickly forward and then turned into room 316. An elderly man was asleep in the bed. An untouched breakfast tray was on the swing-out table. Jill picked up the tray and left the room, turning right.

  The policeman outside room 314 looked disgruntled and sleepy. Again Jill smiled. “I’ll bring you a breakfast as soon as I get rid of this. You sure look like you could use a cup of coffee.” As she entered the room, she saw he was trying to smile back, a rudimentary beginner’s smile that made his face warp. Maybe she really could bring him a cup of coffee.

  Peggy Summers lay in bed staring at her with an unfriendly expression, not suspicious, just unwelcoming. She was sixteen or seventeen, with stringy blond hair and a narrow face. Her mouth was slightly open and her two front teeth looked like a rabbit’s. She held a white plastic spoon in her hands, which she was breaking into smaller pieces in a series of snapping noises.

  “Would you like something to eat?” Jill asked cheerfully. “Coffee, eggs, French toast—looks awfully good.”

  The unfriendly expression didn’t change. “I just want to get the fuck out of here.”

  Jill put the tray down on the table, trying to conceal her surprise. “I know you’ve had a dreadful shock. It must be terrible for you.”

  “How’s it terrible? Tell me.”

  Despite the girl’s tone, Jill found herself wondering if Peggy even knew her baby had been stolen. If that was the case, there was no way Jill wanted to be the one to tell her. “Well, your baby—”

  “You ever seen the movie Rosemary’s Baby?” interrupted Peggy. “It was like that, you know what I mean?”

  Jill had begun to take out her camera; now she stopped. “I don’t think I do.”

  “A Devil baby. I’m glad it’s gone.”

  Before Jill could answer, a man hurried into the room followed by the policeman who had been at the door. It was Woody Potter, though this was the first time she’d ever laid eyes on him. Even so, despite his boots and jeans, she guessed he was a cop.

  “Who are you?” demanded Woody.

  Jill meant to say something about delivering the breakfast tray. Instead she said, “My name is Jill Franklin and I work for the Brewster Times and Advertiser.”

  Woody’s anger came as a relief, something like a breath of fresh air. He grew red in the face. “Get out! Don’t you have any self-respect? This poor girl has had her baby stolen and you’re sneaking around trying to ask her questions? What kind of person are you?”

  THREE

  THE BOY ZIGZAGGED HIS BIKE along Water Street through downtown Brewster in the absence of any early-morning traffic. In summer it was different, the street was full of cars and motorcycles heading to the beach, but right now at seven o’clock on a Thursday morning in late October he had the street to himself, or pretty much, because a delivery truck was double-parked in front of the Brewster Brew. The boy’s name was Hercel McGarty Jr. and, as he told himself, he was the only Hercel in Brewster, the only Hercel in Washington County, and probably the only Hercel in Rhode Island. He liked that. His father’s name was also Hercel. His father was from Oklahoma, and his father said that in Oklahoma lots of kids were named Hercel. It was as common as Joe-Bob, or almost. His father didn’t know where it came from, except he guessed it was short for Hercules, but Hercel Jr. probably shouldn’t go bragging about that. It was a secret between them. Hercules—the strongest man in the world. But now his father had gone back to Oklahoma, taking his name with him, and Hercel Jr. wouldn’t see his dad until summer vacation. He wouldn’t even see him at Christmas. Instead, Hercel was stuck with his stepdad, Carl Krause, and it wasn’t simply a matter of not liking Carl—or Mr. Krause, as he wanted to be called. He was scared of him, even though his dad told him never to be scared of anybody. Of course, he had his mother, but Hercel thought she had also got scared of Mr. Krause, though she wouldn’t admit it.

  Hercel was ten and in fifth grade, but right now he had serious business to take care of before he rode his bike over to Bailey Elementary on the corner of Gaspee and Bucklin: serious business concerning a snake. Hercel was tall for his age, blue-eyed and thin with blond hair. “You look like a hillbilly kid,” Mr. Krause had told him, and Hercel didn’t know if that was true or not, but he looked like his dad and his dad looked like him, so if they looked like hillbillies then they were like hillbillies together, which was okay by Hercel, though he’d have been hard-pressed to know exactly what hillbillies looked like and he sure wasn’t going to ask Mr. Krause, because Mr. Krause didn’t like questions. In fact, he’d get mad.

  Why his mother had married Mr. Krause was one of those mysteries. Like just when Hercel thought he’d got stuff figured out, adults would do something absolutely ridiculous. His mom marrying Mr. Krause was like that. Hadn’t they been getting along fine without him? Of course, it’d been hard for her taking care of him and Lucy—she was his sister and she was five—after his dad left, hard to take care of them and keep her job at CVS, but marrying Mr. Krause seemed a rash decision. After all, Hercel made some money delivering stuff and collecting returnable bottles and raking leaves. “You call that money?” Mr. Krause had said. “That ain’t shit.”

  Hercel’s bike was a twenty-four-inch Pacific Highlander mountain bike. It was bright green and could go flying off curbs with no trouble, hardly even bounce. His dad bought it at the police auction for thirty bucks when it was almost new. It had eighteen gears and a vor
tex suspension fork, which his dad called important, though Mr. Krause more than once called it a “hunk-a-junk.” The embarrassing part was even though Hercel had had the bike for more than a year, he still couldn’t ride “no hands.” One hand was okay, but not no hands, except for ten feet or so, which didn’t count. Since he didn’t have a helmet, that was just as well—at least that’s what some people thought, people like his mom. But Hercel, as he told himself, had limited funds, and given the choice between a helmet and lock, he’d bought the lock. Maybe he’d get a helmet for Christmas, who knew. Mr. Krause said he never wore a helmet as a kid, they were “sissified,” but Hercel knew he wasn’t a good advertisement. So far, knock on wood, Hercel had never had a serious accident, and lots of times he’d ridden to the beach and out to Burlingame and over to Charlestown, and he kept meaning to ride out to Tig’s farm to see her sheep and two big dogs.

  So riding down Water Street at seven a.m. with his book bag on his back and his Red Sox hat pulled down tight on his head, Hercel lifted his left arm off the handlebars, and then, once he felt comfortable, he slowly lifted his right. One, two, three, but then the bike wobbled and he grabbed for the handlebars and the bike swerved and a car honked, but he was really okay, and the bike straightened out. He was embarrassed, that’s all. The trouble was that the bike started to wobble when he got nervous, like maybe he started to shake and the bike felt it and started to shake, too. So if he could take his hands off the grips without getting nervous, without worrying what might happen, he’d be fine. He was chicken, wasn’t that the truth? He was afraid of falling and getting hurt, and that made him angry with himself.