"No," Kay said. "There were no real flames. There was no real smoke. There was not really a fire. Look down there."
He moved a few steps and looked, but they were too far from the end of the cliff trail, so she took him by the hand to walk him back. At that he froze.
"Just to the cliff," she said. "So we can see."
He shook his head.
"It didn't happen, Joseph. I'm telling you, it did not happen. We only imagined it. Now come!"
His head jerked again from side to side and she could not budge him.
At the hospital she was known to have a temper when one was called for. This occasion called for one. "Damn it, Joseph, don't be a child! Come and see!" her yank on his wrist all but pulled him off his feet.
He allowed himself to be hauled far enough back along the trail so that he could look into the valley. It was frighteningly far down, to be sure, but in no way was it marked by fire.
"You see? If there had really been a fire raging down there, you would still see smoke. Still smell it. Now will you believe me?"
"I know what I saw."
"You don't. You know what you thought you saw, that's all." Oh, God, if only there were words in Creole for this kind of discussion, but there were not. It was a bare-bone language, scarcely adequate even for dealing with basics. There were words for working, eating, and sex; so few to think with.
Well, then, stick to basics. Stop trying to explain things.
"All right, Joseph. There was a fire but it's out now. Let's go, hey?"
He shook his head. "No, M'selle. Not me. I am turning back."
"What?"
"These things that have happened are a warning. Worse will happen if we go on."
She faced him with her hands on her hips, knowing her face was white with strain. "You can't do this to me, Joseph. You agreed to guide me to Bois Sauvage. I've already paid you half the money!"
"I will give it back."
"Joseph, stop this. Stop it right now. I have to take Tina home, and you have to help me. These crazy things that have happened don't concern us. They're meant for someone else. Who would want to stop Tina from returning home?"
"I am going back, M'selle. I am afraid."
"You can't be such a coward!"
He only shrugged.
She worked on him. There, at the end of the cliff-side trail overlooking the valley, she talked to him for twenty minutes, pleading, cajoling, begging him to consider Tina, threatening him with the wrath of the police who had hired him out to her. Long before she desisted, she knew it was hopeless. He liked her; he was fond of the child; he was gray with fear.
She walked back to the mules, and he followed. Eyes flashing with anger, she wheeled on him. "All right. If you won't go any farther, you can at least tell me how to get there. Because I'm going without you!"
"M'selle, you must not!"
"Does this trail lead to Bois Sauvage, or can I get lost?"
In a pathetic whisper, with his gaze downcast, he said, "It is the main road. You will not get lost."
"Please, rearrange the saddlebags, then, so Tina and I will have what we need."
He did so in silence, while she and Tina watched him. The child's eyes were enormous.
"Now lift Tina onto my mule, please. I know I'll have to do it myself from now on, but you can do it one more time."
He picked the child up. Before placing her on the gray mule, he brushed his lips against her cheek. His own cheeks were wet now.
Kay carefully swung herself into the saddle, then turned and looked down at him. "You won't change your mind?"
"M'selle, I will wait for you at my aunt's house, where we stayed last night."
"Don't bother," she said bitterly. "A lizard might eat you."
Then, tight-lipped and full of anger, she clucked to her mule and rode on.
20
Mildred looked at her watch, its dial faintly visible in the lamplight. Two-twenty A.M. Lifting herself on one elbow, she peered at the other cot in the rectory bedroom. Sam Norman was still asleep. He hadn't moved in the past half hour.
Why, at a time like this, was she thinking about Daddy again? Because she couldn't sleep? Because she was frightened? Because he was the one person likely to understand what had happened to her?
What had happened? She didn't know. What she had told Sam was the absolute truth: She didn't remember leaving him at the post office. She didn't recall a thing until hearing his voice at that terrifying place by the river.
Daddy, I need you to tell me what's happening. Please, Daddy, you can do it. Remember the time I was coming home from school and you sent me to Morin's for the medicine? And the time you had the run-in with those tough kids?
She had been a sophomore at Warwick High at that time. It was the same school Daddy taught in. There was a gang of dropouts who tore around in junk cars and wore black leather jackets with heads of Trojan warriors painted on them in silver, and thought they owned the city. Three of the Trojans had caught little Margie Cirillo walking home from a girlfriend's house in East Greenwich one night and dragged her into the car they were riding around in. Margie was fifteen. They took her to an abandoned quahauger's shack and raped her.
Daddy had just happened to be driving home from an adult evening class which he taught in East Greenwich and saw them come out of the shack and pile into their jalopy and take off. When he learned the next day that Margie had been found there, raped and hysterical, he went to the police.
The police rounded up the boys and grilled them for hours. They swore they hadn't been anywhere near the shack and that Daddy was just trying to incriminate them because he disapproved of their lifestyle. "You're a fucking liar, Bell!" one of them yelled in his face at the police station. As for Margie Cirillo, the poor girl was scared out of her wits and said she didn't know who had dragged her to the shack and raped her. It was too dark to see their faces and she didn't recognize their voices, she said. The police couldn't make her change her story, and it didn't come out until later that the Trojans had threatened to beat up her young brother if she identified them.
Daddy taught his adult class three evenings a week, and exactly a week after the rape he did not come home at his usual time. It was a seven-to-nine class, and he was almost always home by ten, but eleven o'clock passed and still no sign of him. Mildred had finished her homework and was watching the late news in the living room. Mama was sitting at her sewing machine in the dining alcove, making some of her fancy place mats. Mama loved to sew, but that night, when the news was only half over she said in a tense voice, "Mildred, must you have that thing on?"
"Why, Mama? What's the matter?"
"Do you know what time it is?"
"Of course."
"Your father should have been home an hour ago!"
"Oh, Mama, he probably stopped to talk to some of the people in his class. You know how those evening classes are."
"I'm going to call the school," Mama said.
"What?"
"I'm going to call the school. Ever since Daddy got involved with those terrible boys, I've been worried."
She went to the phone and dialed the school's number. Mildred turned off the TV so she could talk without competition. But after a couple of minutes of waiting in silence, Mama put the phone down and said, "They don't answer. Mildred, do you suppose we ought to go and look for him?" The family's Olds was in the garage. Daddy always took Mama's Falcon to East Greenwich.
"Mama, wait. If we pass him on the road without seeing him, he'll get here and find the house empty and wonder where we are."
But that argument was only good for another half hour, and then Mama insisted.
They locked the house, leaving lights on and a note, in case Daddy did return, and Mama drove out to Post Road and through Apponaug to East Greenwich. The adult classes were held in East Greenwich High School. The school was dark, and the parking lot, empty. It was now past midnight.
"I think we ought to stop at the police station," Mama
said on the way back.
"All right. If there's been an accident, they'll know."
At the station in Apponaug, the policeman at the desk told them he didn't have a report of any accident. Listening to Mama's reason for being worried, he nodded. "I don't blame you, Mrs. Bell. Those are hard characters, those kids. I'll alert our patrol cars to be on the lookout for your husband."
Mildred and Mama went home to wait.
The next two hours were bad. Mama just wouldn't sit still anywhere but kept pacing through the house. She would stop and stare at the phone as if willing it to ring, then go to a window and stare out at the dark waters of Gorton Pond, then try to sit, only to jump right up again. She made coffee in the electric perc, which was broken and didn't shut itself off as it was supposed to; then she forgot she had started it, and the machine would have gone on blub-glugging forever if Mildred had not run into the kitchen and stopped it. All of this was causing Mildred's head to ache—or, something was —and after a while the throbbing inside her skull grew worse. She was sure she would begin screaming at any minute if it didn't stop.
Then she heard him.
"Milly… Milly… am I reaching you?"
"Yes, yes, Daddy! Oh, yes! Where are you?"
"Listen carefully, child. I'm in bad shape. Those kids stopped my car, five of them. Two got into the Falcon and drove it off, I don't know where. And the other three, the ones who raped that girl, forced me into their car and drove me to where I am now. I'm hurt, Milly. They've beaten me up pretty badly. You'll have to come and get me, you and Mother."
"Daddy, where are you?"
"In some kind of boat house. At least, there's a boat in it, a small sport cruiser up on blocks. I can't tell you where it is; they tied a filthy rag around my eyes and I couldn't see where we were going. But you can find me, I think. If I just keep sending, you can home in on me like a plane to an airport. Try it, Milly."
"You can't get out of there?"
"I'm locked in, child. And hurt besides. Bring something to bash the door open with. That sledge in the furnace room."
"All right, Daddy, I'm coming!"
Mildred got out of her chair and went into the kitchen, where Mama had at last poured some coffee and was trying to drink it. "Mama, listen. We have to go out."
"What?"
"I don't have time to explain now, but Daddy's been communicating with me. Now wait a minute, please. You know we can do it sometimes when we try hard. He says he's hurt, Mama. The Trojans beat him up."
Mama had to put her cup on the counter because her hand had begun to shake so uncontrollably. Her eyes grew wide and glassy, almost colorless, as her gaze fastened on Mildred's face. "I don't believe you," she said. "I don't want to believe you!"
"Mama, please! Would I tell you such a thing if it wasn't true? He's in a boathouse somewhere, and hurt. We have to go for him."
"What boathouse? Where?"
"Mama," Mildred wailed, "will you please stop asking me questions and come on? Daddy needs us!"
There was really no way Mama could refuse, of course. She hated being told that Mildred and Daddy were able to communicate in ways she didn't understand, but in a situation such as this she could hardly put her hands on her hips and say, "I'm not going!" She had to drive the Olds.
They got into the car, which Mama had left in the driveway, as if she had known they would have to use it. "All right," Mama said, "where is this boathouse?"
Mildred sat with her eyes squeezed shut and her hands clenched in her lap. "Drive out to the Post Road."
Mama didn't speak again until they got there. Then she said, "Which way?"
"Right."
"How do you know, if you don't know where he is?"
"Mama, I'm hearing him. Don't talk, please." What she was hearing was her own name endlessly repeated, as if it was being chanted at her by some kind of electronic gadget. "Milly, Milly, Milly, Milly," over and over.
When they reached the junction of West Shore Road, Mama stayed on Post Road, and there was a change in the signal Mildred was receiving. "No!" she said quickly. "The other way! Left!"
"Oh, for heaven's sake," Mama said. But she stopped, made a U-turn, and followed West Shore instead.
Four times more Mildred had to say "Stop!" and then, "Go right," or, "Turn left," and the last turn took them into the driveway of one of the big, handsome homes on Warwick Neck. As they drove in, Mildred waited tensely for floodlights to come on and dogs to begin barking, but nothing happened. The owners must be away, she decided. Maybe that was why the Trojans had picked the place.
"Stop here," she told Mama.
The signal in her head was loud now—"MILLY! MILLY! MILLY!"—and her head was pounding like one of those huge drills they used to break up concrete. She could even taste the pain inside her skull—a sickly sweet taste like some of those gooey drinks for kids. When the car stopped, she got out of it and yanked open the back door and grabbed the sledge off the back seat.
"Come on, Mama."
"Where?" Mama demanded, peering at the big, dark house as if she were afraid it would fall on them and crush them.
"This way." Mildred pointed to the bluestone path which the headlights shone on. It led past the house and down a smooth, sloping lawn toward the sea.
"Milly, we don't have any right to do this! We're trespassing!"
Without bothering to answer, Mildred began running.
The path led to some concrete steps, quite a lot of them, and at their foot was a wooden building painted white. While running down the steps, she gripped the sledge with both hands because it was beginning to feel heavy. Her head was about to explode like a bomb from the force of Daddy's voice inside it. "MILLY! MILLY! MILLY! MILLY!"
At the side of the shed was a door. She ran to it without even pausing.
"Daddy, are you in there?"
"Right here, baby, waiting for you. Did you bring the sledge?" It was really his voice this time, not just something in her head. But it was weak, despite a note of triumph in it. She guessed he was really hurt.
"I have it, Daddy."
"All right. Just wait 'til I get back a little …" She sensed he was on the floor dragging himself away from the door. "All right, go ahead. But be careful. Don't hurt yourself."
As she stepped back to take aim, Mama finally reached her and screamed, "No, Milly, you mustn't! We could be arrested!" At the same time, Mildred saw there was a key in the lock.
Lowering the sledge, she stepped forward and tried the key. It turned without any trouble, and the door swung open. The inside of the boathouse was pitch dark.
She had brought a flashlight, but had left it in the car, and, of course, Mama hadn't thought to pick it up. "Daddy?" she said, stepping through the doorway.
"Here, Milly."
She turned toward the voice and saw him on his hands and knees, crawling toward her. Saw the boat he had mentioned too, or at least a pale shape that looked like a boat. Then Daddy touched her foot and looked up at her, and she began crying. If she had found him on a highway somewhere, she would have thought he was some stranger hit by a car.
"Where's Mama?" he asked.
"I'm here, Rog," Mama said and came timidly through the doorway as if she were walking into a haunted house. Seeing him, she began to make gasping, shuddering noises, but almost at once got control of herself and went down on her knees to look at him more closely. Then she looked up at Milly and began giving orders.
"Take his arm on that side, Milly. Lift when I do, but gently. Don't hurt him, now!"
They got him to his feet, and he held himself erect by putting his arms around their shoulders. "We must take him straight to the hospital," Mama said. "Oh God, the steps. How are we going to get him up those steps?"
By negotiating one step at a time and resting after each one, they got Daddy to the car and put him on his back on the rear seat with his knees upthrust. Milly knelt on the floor to keep him from falling off, and Mama drove back through Apponaug to the Kent County
Hospital.
It was three weeks before Daddy's face healed enough for him to return to teaching. During that time, the police found the Falcon in some woods, stripped of its wheels and everything else that could be removed. When they were confronted with the fact that their fingerprints were all over the car, the Trojans finally admitted what they had done. They had broken into the big house weeks before and were using the boathouse for a meeting place while the owners were in Europe, they said. Mildred and Daddy were present at the station when Captain DiFalco said to them, "When you creeps beat this man up and left him locked in there, did you actually expect to get away with it? Couldn't you figure out he'd be found some day, even if he died in there?" The Trojans only laughed, and Captain DiFalco turned to Daddy and shook his head. "Subhuman, that's what they are," he growled. "Junior monsters. And I'll give you ten to one they don't spend a day behind bars for any of this, because we're going to have a lot of marshmallow peddlers saying they never had a fair shake."
As for Mama, she talked a lot about how the Trojans had beaten Daddy and stripped her car—the missing parts were never recovered—but she discussed the other part of the incident even more.
The first time was a lecture. A kind of a lecture.
The three of them were having dinner the evening Daddy came home from the hospital, and after asking the blessing, Mama took a deep breath and said, "Now, before we start eating, just please let me say something. It's about this communicating that you two seem to be able to do by projecting your thoughts to each other. I know other people can do it, too, in varying degrees, and books have been written about it, and all that. I know it's supposed to be all very scientific. But I want you to know I think it's the work of the devil, pure and simple, and if you keep it up, you'll be punished. There. I've said my piece and don't want any discussion, thank you, and I won't be mentioning it again. Roger, I hope your jaw is strong enough to chew this filet mignon. Perhaps I should have bought hamburger, but I wanted something really nice for your first meal at home."
Of course, Mama didn't keep her word about never mentioning her favorite topic again. Until the day she died she found something new to say about it at least once a month. Mama just wasn't going to let the devil put her down.
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