“Lower,” Natalie said quietly. Mary moved her hand and kept patting. In a few seconds Drummer did his thing. He yawned in the folds of his blanket, getting sleepy again.
“I wouldn’t try to walk to the ranger’s station in the dark,” Mary advised. “You could break an ankle. I’d wait until the sun comes up.”
“Thank you for your concern.”
Mary rocked Drummer, a motion as soothing to her as it was to the infant. “Let’s don’t say good-bye as enemies. Okay?”
“Everyone’s your enemy,” Natalie told her. “You hate everything and everybody, don’t you?”
“I hate what tries to kill me, body or spirit.” She paused, thinking of something else to say though it was time to get going. “Thanks for helping me with Drummer. Sorry I had to take the ring, but I’m going to need some money.”
“Yes. Guns and bullets are expensive, aren’t they?”
“So is gas. It’s a long way to Canada.” There’s a morsel to feed the pigs, she thought. Maybe they wouldn’t be so hard on her. “Tell Father I asked about him, will you?” She started to turn away, to go out through the back door the same way she’d entered the house, using the key that always remained hidden on the doorjamb’s ledge. She hesitated. One more thing to say. “You can be proud of me for this, Mother: I never gave up what I believed in. I never quit. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”
“It’ll make a fine epitaph on your gravestone,” Natalie said.
“Good-bye, Mother.”
And she was gone.
Natalie heard the creak of the back door opening. The thunk of its closing. She stayed where she was, her hands folded in her lap as if awaiting the soup course at a formal dinner. Perhaps five minutes slipped past. And then a sob broke in the woman’s throat, and she lowered her face and began to cry. The tears fell from her cheeks onto her hands, where they glittered like false diamonds.
Mary Terror, behind the van’s wheel with Drummer swaddled and warm on the floorboard, saw the last of the house’s light in her rearview mirror before the skeletal trees got in the way. She felt weakened; her mother had always had the knack of draining her. Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but being at the weeping lady at two o’clock on the afternoon of the eighteenth, and giving Drummer to his new father. She could imagine the radiance of Lord Jack’s smile.
Today was Monday, the fifth. She had thirteen days. Time enough to find a cheap motel off the highway, lay low for a while and make some changes. Have to smell the wind and be sure the pigs weren’t near. Have to disappear for a while, and let the heat drift past. She said to the sleeping Drummer, “Mama loves you. Mama loves her sweet, sweet baby. You’re mine now, did you know that? Yes you are. Mine forever and always.”
Mary smiled, her face daubed green by the dashboard glow. The van made a rocking motion, almost like a cradle. Mother and baby were at peace, for now.
The van sped on, its tires tracking across the dark land.
IV
WHERE THE CREATURES MEET
1
Shards
ON THE FOURTEENTH DAY OF FEBRUARY, TWO THINGS happened: a TWA jet carrying two hundred and forty-six people exploded in the air above Tokyo, Japan, and a deranged man with an AK-47 assault rifle opened fire in a shopping mall in La Crosse, Wisconsin, killing three people and wounding five others before he took refuge in a J.C. Penney’s. Both these news items together drove the last nails into the flagging Mary Terror drama, dooming it to that part of the newscasts and papers known as “the coffin corner”: dead items.
The fifteenth dawned. Laura Clayborne awakened sometime around ten, after another restless night. She lay in bed for a while, getting her bearings; sometimes she thought she was awake when she was still dreaming. The sleeping pills tended to do it. Everything was confused and uncertain, an entanglement of reality and delusion. She gathered her strength to face another day, a monumental effort, and she got out of bed and peered through the blinds. The sun was shining, the sky was blue. It was windy outside, and it looked very cold. There were, of course, no more reporters. The reporters had trickled away, day after day. The press conferences held by the FBI—which were really only attempts to keep the story newsworthy—had ceased luring the reporters in. The press conferences had stopped. There was never any news. Mary Terror had vanished, and with her had vanished David.
Laura went to the bathroom. She didn’t look at her face in the mirror because she knew it would be a terrible sight. She felt as if she’d aged ten years in the twelve days since David had been stolen. Her joints throbbed like an old woman’s, and she constantly had headaches. Stress, the doctor had told her. Perfectly understandable in this situation. See this pink pill? Take half of one twice a day and call me if you need me. Laura splashed cold water into her face. Her eyelids were swollen, her body bloated and sluggish. She felt warm wetness between her thighs, and she touched down there. Watery reddish fluid on her fingertips. The stitches had pulled loose again; nothing would hold her together anymore since her baby was gone.
It was the weight of not knowing that was killing her. Was David dead? Murdered and thrown into the weeds by the roadside? Had she sold him on the black market for cash? Was she planning to use him in some kind of cultish rite? All those questions had been pondered by Neil Kastle and the FBI, but there were no answers.
Sometimes the urge to cry suddenly overwhelmed her, and she was forced back to bed. She sensed it coming now, growing stronger. She gripped the sink, her head bent forward. An image of David’s body lying in the weeds swept through her mind. “No!” she said as the first tears burned her eyes. “No, damn it, no!”
She rode it out, her body trembling and her teeth clenched so hard her jaws ached. The storm of unbearable sadness passed, but it stayed flickering and rumbling on the horizon. Laura left the bathroom, walked through the untidy bedroom, through the den and to the kitchen. Her bare feet were cold on the floor. Her first stop, as usual, was the answering machine. No messages. She opened the refrigerator and drank orange juice straight from the carton. She took the array of vitamins the doctor had suggested for her, swallowing one after another the pills that might have choked a horse. Then she stood in the middle of the kitchen, blinking in the sunlight and trying to decide if she should have raisin bran or oatmeal.
First, call Kastle. She did. His secretary, who’d initially been sweetness and Georgia peaches but was now more crisp and lemony at Laura’s sometimes-dozen calls a day, said Kastle was out of the office and wouldn’t be back until after three. No, there was no progress. Yes, you’ll be the first to know. Laura hung up. Raisin bran or oatmeal? It seemed a very difficult decision.
She had Wheat Chex. She ate standing up, and she spilled some milk on the floor and almost cried again, but she remembered the old saying so she let it go. She wiped the drops of milk away with her foot.
Her parents had gone home the previous morning. It was the beginning, Laura knew, of a cold war between her and her mother. Doug’s mother had returned to Orlando two days previously. Doug had started back to work. Somebody’s got to make some money, he’d told her. Anyway, there’s no use just sitting around here waiting, is there?
Doug had said something the night before that had sent Laura into a rage. He’d looked at her, the Wall Street Journal on the sofa beside him, and he’d said, “If David’s dead, it won’t be the end of the world.”
That remark had sliced through her heart like a burning blade. “Do you think he’s dead?” she’d asked him savagely. “Is that what you think?”
“I’m not saying he’s dead. I’m just saying that life goes on no matter what happens.”
“My God. My God.” Laura’s hand had gone to her mouth, her stomach roiling with horror. “You do think he’s dead, don’t you? Oh Jesus, you do!”
Doug had stared at her with heavy-lidded eyes, and Laura had seen the truth in them. The subsequent storm had driven Doug out of the house, racing away in his Mercedes. Laura had called C. Jannsen’s nu
mber. When a woman had answered, Laura had said bitterly, “He’s on his way. You can have him, and I hope you enjoy what you get.” She’d hung up, but not with a slam as she’d first intended. Doug wasn’t worth the effort. Sometime before midnight she’d found herself sitting on the bed, cutting apart their wedding pictures with scissors. It came to her, as she’d sat with the shards of memories in her lap, that she was in real danger of losing her mind. Then she’d put all the pieces into a little pile atop the dresser and she’d taken two sleeping pills and searched for rest.
What to do? What to do? She wasn’t ready for work yet. She could imagine herself trying to cover a social function and collapsing in the foie gras. She put on the coffeepot, and she wandered around the kitchen straightening things that were already straight. As she passed near the telephone, she thought of calling Neil Kastle again. Maybe there would be some news. She picked up the phone, put it down, picked it up once more, finally left it in a helter-skelter of indecision.
Straighten up in the den, she thought. Yes, it needed straightening.
Laura walked in and spent a few minutes going through magazines in the basket where they collected. She chose issues that were two or three months old and stacked them up for the trash. No, no; this one couldn’t go. It had an article about breastfeeding in it. This one couldn’t go, either; it had an article about how babies responded to music. She drifted away from the magazines to the bookshelves, and began to line the volumes up so that their spines were exactly even. The larger-sized books gave her a fit of consternation. And then she came to a volume that made her hand stop its relentless arranging.
Its title was Burn This Book.
Laura took the book down. Mark Treggs, the holdover hippie. No author’s photo. Mountaintop Press, Chattanooga, Tennessee. A post office box. She skimmed through the book, searching for the part where Treggs had talked about the Weather Underground and the Storm Front. On page 72, she found it: “The Love Generation, bleeding from a thousand wounds inflicted by the militant counterculture, may well have expired on the night of July 1, 1972, when police in Linden, New Jersey, cornered the terrorist Storm Fronters in a suburban tract house. Four Storm Fronters died in the firefight, one was captured alive but wounded, and four more escaped, including their main man ‘Lord Jack’ Gardiner. The pigs searched, but they could not find. Some say Canada, that saint of America’s political fugitives, took them into her forests. You can hear it still today if you put your ear to the right track: the Storm Front’s out there somewhere. Maybe still licking their wounds, like old bears in a cave. Maybe muttering and dreaming, aging longhairs huddled over candles with their stashes of pot and acid. I knew one of the Storm Fronters, a long time ago before the flames destroyed the flowers. She was a nice kid from Cedar Falls, Iowa. A farmer’s daughter, can you dig it? To her I send a message: keep the faith, and love the one you’re with.”
Laura’s gaze flickered back up the page. I knew one of the Storm Fronters.
Not Mary Terrell. She was born in Richmond. Who, then?
Somebody who might help the FBI find her baby?
Laura took the book to the telephone. She dialed Kastle’s number in such a hurry that she messed up and had to redial. His secretary, the lemony bitch, answered after the second ring. No, Mrs. Clayborne, Mr. Kastle isn’t in yet. I told you before, he won’t be back until after three. No, I’m sorry, I don’t have a number where he can be reached. Mrs. Clayborne, it’s not doing anybody any good for you to keep calling. I’m terribly sorry about your situation, but everything possible is being done to find your—
Bullshit. Laura hung up.
She paced the kitchen, her heart pounding. Whom could she tell about this? Who could help her? She stopped at the telephone again, and this time she dialed Directory Assistance in Chattanooga.
The operator had no number for Mountaintop Press. There were two Treggses: Phillip and M.K. She scribbled down the latter number and called it, her stomach doing slow flip-flops.
Four rings. “Hello?” A woman’s voice.
“Mark Treggs, please?”
“Mark’s at work. Can I take a message?”
Laura swallowed, her throat dry. “Is this…the Mark Treggs who wrote the book?”
A pause. Then, cautiously: “Yes.”
Thank God! she thought. Her hand was clenched around the receiver. “Are you his wife?”
“Who is this, please?”
“My name is Laura Clayborne. I’m calling from Atlanta. Is there a number where I can reach Mr. Treggs?”
Another pause. “No, I’m sorry.”
“Please!” It came out too fast, too charged with emotion. “I’ve got to talk to him! Please tell me how I can find him!”
“There’s no number,” the woman said. “Laura Clayborne. I think I know that name. Are you a friend of Mark’s?”
“I’ve never met him, but it’s vitally important that I reach him. Please! Can’t you help me?”
“He’ll be home after five. Can I give him a message?”
Five o’clock seemed an eternity. In frustration, Laura said, “Thank you so much!” and this time she did slam the receiver down. She stood for a moment with her hands pressed against her face, trying to decide what to do. The image of David in the weeds came to her again, and she shook it off before it latched in her mind.
Chattanooga was about a two-hour drive from Atlanta, northwest along I-75. Laura looked at the clock. If she left now, she could be there around one. I knew one of the Storm Fronters. Treggs might know more about the Storm Front than he’d written in the book. A two-hour drive. She could make it in an hour and forty-five minutes.
Laura went into the bedroom, put on a pair of bluejeans that fit snugly around the puffiness she was still carrying, and she shrugged into a white blouse and a beige cable-knit sweater. It occurred to her that she might have to stay in Chattanooga overnight. She began to pack a suitcase, another pair of jeans and a crimson sweater, extra underwear and socks. She loaded up her toothpaste and toothbrush, decided to take her shampoo and her hair dryer. Money, she thought. Have to go by the bank and get a check cashed. Got my Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. Have to get the BMW’s tank filled. Leave a note for Doug; no, forget that. Get the tires checked, too. It wouldn’t be good to have a blowout, a woman alone in this hard old world.
She knew now that violence could strike from any direction, without warning, and leave tragedy in its wake. She walked to the dresser, opened the top drawer, and lifted up Doug’s sweaters. She took the automatic pistol out, along with a box of ammunition. The shooting lessons be damned; if she had to use it, she’d learn fast.
Laura gave her hair a quick brushing. She forced herself to look at her face in the mirror. Her eyes had a glassy shine: either excitement or insanity, she couldn’t decide which. But one thing she knew for sure: waiting in this house, day after day, for word about her baby would surely drive her over the edge. Mark Treggs might not know anything about the Storm Front. He might not have any information at all that could help her. But she was going to Chattanooga to find him, and nothing on earth was going to stop her.
She put on her black Reeboks, then deposited the automatic pistol and the box of ammunition in her suitcase, along with her hairbrush.
The pile of cut-up photographs caught her attention.
She swept them into a trash can with the edge of her hand. Then she picked up her suitcase, got her tan overcoat, and walked into the garage. The BMW’s engine started, a throaty growl.
Laura drove away from the house on Moore’s Mill Road, and she did not look back.
2
The Pennywhistle Player
CHATTANOOGA IS A CITY THAT SEEMS STOPPED IN TIME, LIKE a rebel’s rusted pocketwatch. The broad Tennessee River meanders around it, interstates pierce its heart, railroads connect the warehouses and factories with those in other places; the river, interstates, and railroads enter Chattanooga and leave it, but Chattanooga remains like a faded damsel waiting for
some suitor long dead and buried. She turns her face away from the modern, and pines for what can never be again.
The huge mass of Lookout Mountain rises over Chattanooga, the faded damsel’s dowager hump. It was Lookout Mountain that Laura saw before she saw the city. Its appearance, at first a looming purple shadow on the horizon, made Laura’s foot heavier on the BMW’s gas pedal. At eighteen minutes after one she pulled off the interstate at Germantown Road, found a pay phone with a phone book, and looked up M. K. Treggs. The address was 904 Hilliard Street. Laura bought a city map at a gas station, pinpointed Hilliard Street on it, and got the gas jockey to tell her the best way to get there. Then she was off again, driving in the bright afternoon sunlight toward the northeastern side of Chattanooga.
The address was a small wood-frame house in a nest of similar houses across from a shopping center. It was painted pale blue, and the house’s postage-stamp-size lawn had been turned into a rock garden with a pebbled walkway. The mailbox was one of those plastic jobs with redbirds on it. A rope and tire swing hung from a tree branch, and in the driveway was a white Yugo with rust splotches. Laura pulled her car in front of the house and got out. The chill breeze ruffled her hair, and made the six or seven wind chimes that hung from the front porch’s rafters clang and bong and jingle and clink.
A dog next door began to bark furiously. Big brown dog behind a chain-link fence, she noted. She walked up onto the porch and rang the doorbell, surrounded by chimes.
The inner door opened, but the screen door stayed closed. A slender, petite woman with braided brown hair peered cautiously out. “Can I help you?”
“I’m Laura Clayborne. I called you from Atlanta.”
The woman just stared at her.
“I called you at eleven,” Laura went on. “I’ve come to talk to your husband.”
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