With

by Donald Harington

  He hadn’t meant to try anything today, but the very thought of her being alone in that house was just too much for him. He and Jack Samples had known of several cases where the kid was so trusting or just plain gullible that they would open the door for anybody. He thought he might as well give it a try. He drove on a little and parked out front, and went up and knocked on the door.

  But it wouldn’t work. He pretended to be her grandpa, but she wasn’t fooled. In the first of what he knew would be thousands of conversations in the years to come, he discovered right off the bat how smart and clever she was. He couldn’t get her to open the door, and finally he gave up, and drove down the road a ways and parked and sat there for a good bit thinking about the ways that he might possibly take her into his custody. He could just bust out a window in the house. There wasn’t no other neighbors within view, and even if she hollered probably nobody would hear her. But he didn’t want to scare her too bad, and he put on his thinking cap to see if he couldn’t come up with the words to keep her gentled down. He already told her that him and her was fated to spend the rest of their lifes together and that he was her lover-boy, but he doubted she’d believed him. Shit, when you got right down to it, he was old enough to be her grandpa, and she would probably prefer a much younger guy to spend the rest of her life with.

  “Lord, lord,” Sog said aloud, “help me to find a way to get her to go with me to our new home.” Sog wasn’t hardly religious at all, and when he said this prayer he wasn’t even picturing the Lord Above, but he was sure earnest in his request.

  And be damn if, at the very moment he said those words, she didn’t appear! Riding her bike! “Thank you, Lord!” he said. But when she caught sight of him she threw on her brakes or something and the bike crashed.

  And then here came that feller who turned out to be her real granddaddy, or her step-granddaddy leastways, a guy some years older than Sog and kind of puny and Sog was prepared to fight him for the girl, but then he figured it was already bad enough that he was letting the man get a good look at him so that later on when Robin disappeared the man would be able to describe him and maybe even help ’em draw a picture of him. Up at CID they had a real sketch artist who could talk to you and get you to give him enough info about a suspect to get his likeness down exact on a piece of paper.

  So Sog he figured he’d better get on out of there, and he drove off, hoping the feller hadn’t bothered to take down his license number or nothing. But come to think on it, the feller didn’t seem to be loaded with brains.

  He went to the drive-in for a couple of cheeseburgers and a milkshake. He was going to miss cheeseburgers and milkshakes and maybe these was his last ones, because tomorrow evening, his last evening here in town before heading off home with his beloved, he intended to have his “last meal,” that is to say, his last restaurant meal, and he’d already decided on Western Sizzlin’, where he could get himself a nice big cut of steak, something he’d never be having again up there on the mountain. He’d considered but rejected the idea of keeping some beef cattle up there; it would be just too hard to get them up there unless he carried them when they were still calfs, and he might not be able to do that. Probably a calf weighed more than a davenport and was harder to manage and carry unless it was tranquilized.

  Thinking of tranquilizers, he remembered that he’d already given some thought to the possibility of using some chloroform on the girl. But buying some of the stuff was out of the question. You can’t get it at the drugstore. He’d thought of trying to get some from a vet with the excuse of using it to put his old sick dog to sleep (his dog, if he still had her, was young and fit), but there again, when the news of the girl’s kidnapping was announced, the vet might remember him and put two and two together.

  No, his best bet was just to make his own. A few years back he’d arrested this guy in Yellville who ran a meth lab and made a lot of other chemical stuff besides, and the feller had told him how to make chloroform real easy: you just take you some Chlorox bleach and mix in a little acetone with it and stir it up. Hell, he could get the fixings for that right over at Wal-Mart. What would have acetone in it? Why, any old nail polish remover would do.

  So he went to Wal-Mart once again. He knew he probably wouldn’t run into that saleslady who had sold him all the clothes and toys and stuff for his girl, because that was a different department. First he went to the laundry soap aisle and picked up a jug of Chlorox bleach. He reflected that he was sure going to miss being able to take his dirty clothes to the coin-op laundry in Jasper. But they were going to live in the manner of the old-timers and wouldn’t need such as that. There was a big old black iron kettle or wash pot that the Madewells had left behind, and such had been good enough for his grandmother to boil up enough water for a wash of clothes, and it would be good enough for him, and maybe the girl too if she really wanted to help could learn how to do laundry.

  Then he headed for the cosmetics aisle to get the nail polish remover. He was checking the back of the bottle to make sure it said acetone on it when he looked up, and here come that woman Karen Kerr with her daughter his darling! Sog ducked behind the aisle just in time and they didn’t see him. He spied on ’em from a distance, ready to duck if they looked his way, and saw that the girl was picking out a bright pink bottle of what looked like bubble bath mix. His head was filled with visions of her in a bubble bath. They wouldn’t have a bathtub as such up on the mountain but there was a big galvanized tub with handles that they could carry around and set up on the kitchen floor to fill with hot water from the stove and maybe even both of ’em get in it at the same time.

  From a distance Sog followed when they went on to the greeting card aisle and the girl got a package of bright wrapping paper and then spent a while picking out a card from the rack that said “Birthdays.” Sog didn’t have to be a genius to figure it out: the girl was planning to give a friend a birthday present of bubble bath stuff and maybe even go to a birthday party. Maybe a party where they’d be playing in the yard or something and Sog could watch for a chance to grab her and chloroform her. But probably the party would be tomorrow, Saturday, when Sog had to be out at Stay More running the goddamn yard sale.

  Sog kept himself hidden until they’d left the store, and then he went back to the cosmetic aisle and got a whole case of that bubble bath mix and put it in the cart with his Chlorox bleach and nail polish remover. Then just a couple more things: he needed some sponges, one good one for the chloroform, plus a little plastic bucket to mix the stuff in, and a wooden spoon to stir it. Then he was all set.

  If he’d had the sense God gave to people to pound sand in a rat hole, he would have gone on home to Stay More and done a few things to get that yard sale ready and then got a good night’s sleep in preparation for the biggest day of his life tomorrow. But, idiot that he was, he had to drive once more down the road to the Kerr place, or near enough to it to park down the road and spy on it, just to see if anything was going on. There was always a chance the birthday party was being held there, and always a chance it was this evening instead of tomorrow. His burning eagerness to get it all over with had already cost him a bad moment or two and now here he was a-scheming to try something else. As he sat there, he even thought about the idea of asking Karen Kerr for a date sometime, and taking her out, and step by step making friends and then watching for a chance to make his move on the girl. But no, the girl would recognize him if he tried that. And besides it was just too damned slow. He had to act now, and get his business all settled so him and the girl could live happy ever after up on the blessed mountaintop. There was only two ways to abduct a kid, Jack Samples had once told him, one, by ruse, the other, by blitz. It was time to blitz.

  The house was still, but the car was in the driveway, so they were home. By and by the lights went on as it come on to dark. As he sat there pondering, Sog finally made up his mind what he had to do: he had to get Karen to open the door and then he was going to chloroform her first, and then, after she was d
own, he would chloroform the girl.

  He got out his stuff, and set the bucket on the seat beside him, and commenced to do his chemistry. He poured a pint or so of the Chlorox bleach into the bucket, then tossed in several dollops of the nail polish remover, then took the wooden spoon and began to stir ’em together. Whew, did those fumes stink. He figured he’d better protect himself against it, and was fishing in his pocket for his handkerchief to wrap around his nose when it suddenly got too black to be just plain dark.

  When he came to, the black was being replaced by a sliver of light in the east. He looked at his watch, and although his watch said five-thirty, his mind was only thinking about his determination to get rid of the watch as soon as he was settled on the mountaintop. Next his mind became aware of how his whole damn head felt—like it was being pounded into a rat hole. Next it was not his head screaming for his awareness of its pain, but his stomach. He had just enough mind left to think to get the fucking door open, and then he puked out into the road. He went on puking until there wasn’t nothing left. Then he had sense enough to pour out what he’d already mixed in the bucket. He started up the truck and turned it around and headed for the highway, and at the first culvert he passed he slowed down just enough to toss the Chlorox and the acetone out into the ditch. He had to stop once more to puke, and then he headed for Stay More.

  And goddamn it all to hell if he wasn’t stopped by the fucking state police once again! And wouldn’t you know it was ole Hedge again.

  “I wasn’t doing sixty-five,” Sog protested.

  “Naw, Sarge, you was only doing forty. But you was driving erratic. Better let me sniff your breath.” Hedge got his face up close and drew a big breath and said, “Wowee, have you been drinking varnish?”

  “I aint been drinking,” Sog said.

  “What are you out this time o’ night for?” Hedge wanted to know. “Or early morning, I ort to say.”

  Sog thought fast. “Some friends of mine were giving me a goodbye party.”

  “’Scuse me, Sarge,” Hedge said, “but you aint got no friends.” Sog wouldn’t challenge the accuracy of that shitty observation, so Hedge went on, “And if you was at a party, you would of been drinking, wouldn’t you of?”

  “Hedge, I wouldn’t take a drop because I knew you’d catch me,” Sog said. “Now if you’ll just let me go on, I’ll drive more careful.”

  “You better do that, Boss,” Hedge said. “Oops, you aint my boss or nobody’s any more, are you?”

  “Then you ort to be glad of that,” Sog said and drove off fast. Tomorrow—or, more exactly, today—when he came back to Harrison, coming and going he’d have to take back-roads to stay out of Hedge Larrabee’s territory.

  It’s forty twisting miles from Harrison to Stay More. As soon as he got home, he popped a fistful of aspirin, which helped just a little, took half a glass of bourbon, which helped more, and then dragged what possessions he had left out into the yard. Just as he figured, almost nobody showed up for his yard sale. Stay More was practically a ghost town anyhow, and only a few people from hereabouts took a notion to come. George Dinsmore came and offered to buy his chickens, and he had to explain he’d already sold ’em. Latha Bourne, who used to be postmistress of Stay More before it lost the PO to Parthenon, offered to buy his davenport, and he had to explain he’d already sold it.

  Mid-afternoon he stuck the unsold stuff back into the house and shut it up and locked it, which he never had done before. He taped a sheet of paper on the door: GONE TO CALIFORNIA. He took one quick drive around what little was left of the town, including the old empty schoolhouse across the creek, taking a kind of farewell look. If it hadn’t been for his headache he might have allowed himself to get nostalgic over the scenes of his boyhood but he wanted to just tell them all to go to hell.

  Back in Harrison for the last time, he skipped the last supper at Western Sizzlin’ because his stomach still wasn’t settled.

  He took up his spy post near the Kerr place and waited and followed when Karen Kerr drove the girl away and across town to somebody else’s house, and left her there, probably for that birthday party. The girl was carrying the gift-wrapped bubble bath. He parked down the street for a stake-out on that house, and hadn’t been waiting very long before two of the cars took a whole bunch of the girls, six or seven of them, back across town to a roller skating rink.

  There is kind of a little balcony at one end of the roller rink, where the skaters stop and step out to take a breath of air or to goof off or whatever. Sog drove his truck around behind the roller rink so that he could watch that little balcony.

  It began to get dark. Usually two or more of the girls would appear on that balcony together. Sog got out and stood so he could reach up to the balcony, which wasn’t very far above the ground. His eyes was level with the rink floor and he could see inside the rink, where a whole bunch of skaters was a-gliding all over the place, and there in the midst of them was his truelove, doing all kinds of fancy turns and spins and even leaps. She took his breath away. And he loved her more than ever.

  He waited patiently, and just like they say, everything comes to him who waits. By and by, she come out onto the balcony by herself, breathing hard after all those stunts. She was too winded to put up any struggle. He grabbed her and gagged her and took her away.

  Chapter nine

  She didn’t mean for him to see her. She intended to take possession of the yards and fields and to let her in-habit know that this was her new home, and live in peaceful co-existence with the mean bastard without being his dog. She kept herself hidden in the grass, spying on him while he brought in a crate filled with chickens from the old home and turned them loose in the yard near the dilapidated henhouse, then broadcast chicken feed around the yard. The chickens discovered her while scratching around for their feed, but they knew her and did not even bother to cackle in recognition, and of course she wasn’t making a sound. Later she watched with great interest as he appeared, coming up the trail from the forest with some enormous thing on his back. It took her a while to recognize it, possibly because it was upside down and didn’t seem to belong on a man’s back out in the woods, but she caught a distant whiff of its scent and realized it was the big soft feel-good piece of furniture that had been in the old house, that she herself had once tried to sleep upon because it was so comfortable. He had kicked her off of it, and had said, “Bitch, don’t never let me catch you on there again.” Well, she reflected, whatever doubts she might have had that he intended to forsake the old place entirely and move into this mountaintop homestead were now laid to rest. He loved that piece of furniture more than he loved anything else in this world. That piece of furniture was his wife, and now the new home was complete.

  When she had heard the first distant thunderclaps she had cringed and burrowed her belly into the earth, lowering her ear flaps down over her ears. But then the thunder came nearer and louder and the hard blankets of water fell from the sky and she started losing her mind, and decided to make a mad dash for safety and shelter in the building that had been a workshop. She didn’t care if he saw her or not. Inside the workshop she was protected from the waterfall but not from the terrible noise, and she took a leap and landed inside of one of those tall round wooden things, where she cowered and trembled. The walls of the wood around her offered only a little protection against the crash of the thunder, and once again she was convinced that the world was coming to an end. Eventually the hideous noise stopped, and she had to make three or four jumps before she could extricate herself from that deep drum. She sniffed the air and detected that he was approaching just in time for her to hide herself in a dark corner of the shop.

  It was while she was hiding that she became unmistakably aware of an in-habit that was so present and clinging that for an instant she thought another person had been there recently. But like all in-habits, it had no scent. And yet this in-habit was so powerful she knew it had been around for a long, long time, and she had to choke herself to
keep from calling “Hreapha!” to it, which would have given away her hiding place to him, who was now peering into the wooden drum as if searching for her, and then was calling “Bitchie babe?” in such a gentle voice she was tempted to answer him. She could almost see the in-habit shying away from him. No, she couldn’t see, but she could perceive, and this in-habit was a tousle-haired boy in overalls. She wanted to lick his hand, which he held out to her, but she didn’t want the man to see her. She waited until the man was gone, and then she attempted to lick the in-habit’s hand, but the hand, darn it, simply was not there.

  One night she and Yowrfrowr had taken a stroll together to the Stay More cemetery, an interesting place to play, and Hreapha had detected her very first ghost, if that is what it was. Yowrfrowr had nudged her and cautioned her not to call her name to it, because ghosts hate barking. So they had both pretended the ghost wasn’t there, and it had gone away.

  What’s the difference, she had asked Yowrfrowr, between a ghost and an in-habit?

  A whole world of difference, my dear, he had said. The primary difference is that ghosts are the spirits of creatures who no longer live. In-habits are the spirits of creatures who are still alive.

  Do you mean that when an in-habit dies it becomes a ghost?

  Yowrfrowr had chuckled and grinned. Not exactly, he had said. Many ghosts have never been in-habits. And many in-habits never become ghosts. An in-habit is part of someone who loves a particular place so very much that regardless of where they go they always leave their in-habit behind. If I should ever have to leave Stay More, perish the thought of that unlikelihood, my in-habit will fiercely take possession of this whole damn town.