“Yeah, I guess I could of.”
Jan stopped crying long enough to say, “Emery, don't be mean.”
“What were you being when you made the girls say I had molested them?”
“Well, you did!”
Brook said, “He tried to shoot me. I saw him. I think the safety was on. I tried to get to him fast before he wised up.”
“That rifle doesn't have one, just the half-cock.”
Brook was no longer listening. Under his breath, Emery explained, “He was short-stroking it, pulling down the lever a reasonable distance instead of all the way. You can't do that with a lever-action—it will eject, but it won't load the next round. He'll learn to do right pretty soon, I'm afraid.”
Jan asked querulously, “What about Aileen? Aren't you going to look for Aileen?”
“Alayna, you pointed toward the lake when I asked which way your sister went. Are you sure?”
Alayna hesitated. “Can I look out the window?”
“Certainly. Go ahead.”
She crossed the cabin to the front window and looked out, standing on tiptoe. “I never said you felt us and everything like Mama said. I just said all right, all right, I see, and yes, yes, because she was there listening.” Alayna's voice was almost inaudible; her eyes were fixed upon the swirling snow beyond the windowpane.
“Thank you, Alayna.” Emery spoke rapidly, keeping his voice as low as hers. “You're a good girl, a daughter to be proud of, and I am proud of you. Very proud. But listen—are you paying attention?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“What you tell your mama—” he glanced at Jan, but she was taking off her coat and lecturing Brook, “isn't important. If you've got to lie to her about that so she won't punish you, do what you did. Nod and say yes. What you tell the lawyers is more important, but not very important. They lie all the time, so they've got no business complaining when other people lie to them. But when you're in court, and you've sworn to tell the truth, everything will be terribly important. You have to tell the truth then. The plain unvarnished truth, and nothing else. Do you understand?”
Alayna nodded solemnly, turning to face him.
“Not to me, because my life's nearly over. Not to God, because we can't really hurt God, only pain him by our spite and ingratitude. But because if you lie then, it's going to hurt you for years, maybe for the rest of your life.
“When God tells us not to lie, and not to cheat or steal, it's not because those things hurt him. You and I can no more harm God than a couple of ants could hurt this mountain. He does it for the same reason that your mama and I tell you not to play with fire—because we know it can hurt you terribly, and we don't want you to get hurt.
“Now, which way did Aileen run?”
“That way.” Alayna pointed again. “I know because of the car. There was a lady at the front looking at the motor, and she sort of tried to catch her, but she got away.”
“You say—Never mind.” Emery stood. “I'd better go after her.”
“Comin' with,” Brook announced.
“No, you're not. You're going to see about Alayna's arm.” Emery put on his coat. His gloves were in the pockets and his warmest cap on a peg. “There's plenty of food here. Fix some for the three of you—maybe Alayna and her mother will help. Make coffee, too. I'll want some when I get back.”
Outside, the creek and the hill across it had disappeared in blowing snow. It would have been wise, Emery reflected, for Jan to have turned the car around before she stopped. It was typical of her that she had not.
He squinted at it through the snow. The hood was still up. The intruders—the boys who had robbed his cabin—had no doubt intended to strip it, stealing the battery and so on, or perhaps hot-wire it and drive it someplace where it could be stripped at leisure. There were three, it seemed—three at least, and perhaps more.
Reaching the Lincoln, he peered into the crowded engine compartment. The battery was still there; although he could not be sure, nothing seemed to be missing. Jan, who had told him he should have locked the cabin door, should have locked the doors; but then Jan seldom did, even in the city, and who would expect trouble way out here during a blizzard?
Emery slammed down the hood. Now that he came to think of it, Jan left her keys in the car more often than not. If she had, he could turn it around for her before the snow got any deeper. Briefly he vacillated, imagining Aileen hiding behind a tree, cold and frightened. But Aileen could not be far, and might very well come out of hiding if she heard the Lincoln start.
As he had half expected, the keys were in the ignition. He started the engine and admired the luxurious interior until warm air gushed from the heater, then allowed the big car to creep forward. Alayna felt certain her twin had run toward the lake, and he had to go in that direction anyway to turn around.
He switched on the headlights.
Aileen might come running when she saw her mother's car. Or he might very well meet her walking back toward the cabin, if she had sense enough to stick to the road; if he did, she could get in and warm up at once.
The Lincoln's front-wheel drive, assisted by its powerful engine, seemed to be handling the snow well so far. At about two miles an hour, he topped the gentle rise beyond the cabin and began the descent to the lake.
Aileen had run down this road toward the lake; but in what direction had the boys run? Emery found that though he could picture them vividly as they fled—three small, dark figures bunched together, one carrying his rifle (somehow carrying away his death while fleeing from him)—he could not be certain of the direction in which they had run. Toward town, or this way? Their tracks would be obscured by snow now in either case.
Had they really fled, as he'd assumed? Wasn't it possible that they'd been pursuing Aileen? It was a good thing—
He took his eyes off the snow-blanketed road for a second to stare at Jan's keys. The doors had been unlocked, the keys in the ignition. If the boys had wanted to strip this car, why hadn't they driven it away?
He stopped, switched on the emergency blinkers, and blew the horn three times. Aileen might, perhaps, have run as far as this—call it three-quarters of a mile, although it was probably a little less. It was hard to believe that she would have run farther, though no doubt a healthy eleven-year-old could run farther than he, and faster, too. Not knowing what else to do, he got out, leaving the lights on and the engine running.
“Aileen! Aileen, honey!”
She had told Phil Gluckman that he, Emery Bainbridge, her foster father, had molested her. Had she believed it, too? He had read somewhere that young children could be made to believe that such things had happened when they had not. What about a bright eleven-year-old?
He made a megaphone of his hands. “Aileen! Aileen!”
There was no sound but the song of the rising wind and the scarcely audible purr of the engine.
He got back in and puffed fine snow off his glasses before it could melt. When he had left the cabin, he had intended to search on foot—to tramp along this snow-covered road calling Aileen. Perhaps that would have been best after all.
Almost hesitantly, he put the automatic transmission into first, letting the Lincoln idle forward at a speed that seemed no faster than a slow walk. When a minute or more had passed, he blew the horn again.
That had been a shot he had heard as he sat arguing with Jan; he felt sure of it now. The boy had been trying out his new rifle, experimenting with it.
He blew the horn as he had before, three short beeps.
That model held seven cartridges, but he couldn't remember whether it had been fully loaded. Say that it had. One shot fired at him on the hill, another in the woods (where?) to test the rifle. Five left. Enough to kill him, to kill Jan, and to kill Brook and both twins, assuming Aileen wasn't dead already. Quite possibly the boy with the rifle was waiting in the woods now, waiting for Jan's big black Lincoln to crawl just a little bit closer.
All right, let him shoot. Let the boy shoot at h
im now, while he sat behind the wheel. The boy might miss him as he sat here, alone in the dark behind tinted safety glass. The boy with his rifle could do nothing worse to him than he had imagined himself doing to himself, and if he missed, somebody—Jan or Brook, Aileen or Alayna—might live. And living, recall him someday with kindness.
The big Lincoln crept past the dark, cold cabin of his nearest neighbor, a cabin whose rather too-flat roof already wore a peaked cap of snow.
He blew the horn, stopped, and got out as before, wishing that he had remembered to bring the flashlight. As far as he could tell, the snow lay undisturbed everywhere, save for the snaking track behind the Lincoln.
He would continue to the lake, he decided; he could go no farther. There was a scenic viewpoint there with parking for ten or twelve cars. It would be as safe to turn around there as to drive on the road as he had been doing—not that the road, eighteen inches deep in snow already, with drifts topping three feet, was all that safe.
Kicking snow from his boots and brushing it from his coat and trousers, he got back into the car, took off his cap, and cleaned his glasses, then eased the front wheels into the next drift.
When Jan and the twins had left the cabin, they must have seen the boys, perhaps at about the time they were raising the hood. Jan had shouted at them—he had heard her—and gone to her car to make them stop, followed by the twins. What had she said, and what had the boys said in reply? He resolved to question her about it when he returned to the cabin. Somebody had knocked her down; he tried to remember whether her face had been bruised, and decided it had not.
The Lincoln had pushed through the drift, and was already approaching another; here, where the road ran within a hundred feet of Haunted Lake, the snow swirled more wildly than ever. Was there still open water at the deepest part of the lake? He peered between the burdened trees, seeing nothing.
When one of the boys had hit their mother, Aileen had run; Alayna had attacked him. Aileen had acted sensibly and Alayna foolishly, yet it was Alayna he admired. The world would be a better place if more people were as foolish as Alayna and fewer as sensible as Aileen.
Alayna had said something peculiar about their attacker. The boy with the hood. He hit Mama and Aileen ran away.
That wasn't exactly right, but close enough, perhaps. The boy had worn a hood, perhaps a hooded sweatshirt underneath his coat, the coat and sweatshirt both black or brown; something of that kind.
For a moment it seemed the Lincoln would stall in the next drift. He backed out and tried again. Returning, he could go through the breaks he had already made, of course; and it would probably be a good idea to turn around, if he could, and return now.
Two dark figures stepped out of the trees at the edge of his lights. Between them was a terrified child nearly as tall as they. One waved, pointing to Aileen and to him.
He braked too hard, sending the crawling Lincoln into a minor skid that left it at an angle to the road. The one who had waved gestured again—and he, catching a glimpse of the smooth young face beneath the hood, realized that it was not a boy's at all, but a woman's.
He got out and found his own rifle pointed at him.
Aileen moaned, “Daddy, Daddy…”
The smooth-faced young woman who had waved shoved her at him, then patted the Lincoln's fender, speaking in a language he could not identify.
Emery nodded. “You'll give her to me if I'll give you the car.”
The women stared at him without comprehension.
He dropped to his knees in the snow and hugged Aileen, and made a gesture of dismissal toward the Lincoln.
Both women nodded.
“We'll have to walk it,” he told Aileen. “A little over two miles, I guess. But we can't go wrong if we stay on the road.”
She said nothing, sobbing.
He stood, not bothering to clean the snow from his knees and thighs. “The keys are in there.”
If they understood, they gave no sign of it.
“The engine's running. You just can't hear it.”
The freezing wind whipped Aileen's dark hair. He tried to remember how the twins had been dressed when he had seen them getting out of the Lincoln in front of his cabin. She'd had on a stocking cap, surely—long white stocking caps on both the twins. If so, it was gone now. He indicated his own head, and realized that he had left his cap in the car; he started to get it, stopping abruptly when the woman with his rifle lifted it to her shoulder.
She jabbed the rifle in the direction he had come.
“I just want to get my cap,” he explained.
She raised the rifle again, putting it to her shoulder without sighting along the barrel. He backed away, saying, “Come on, Aileen.”
The other woman produced something that looked more like a tool than a weapon, a crooked metal bar with what seemed to be a split pin at one end.
“I don't want to fight.” He took another step backward. He pointed to Aileen's head. “Just let me get my cap and give it to her.”
The shot was so sudden and unexpected that there was no time to be afraid. Something tugged violently at his mackinaw.
He tried to rush the woman with the rifle, slipped in the snow, and fell. She took his rifle from her shoulder, pulled down and pushed up its lever almost as dexterously as he could have himself, and pointed it again.
“No, no!” He raised his hands. “We'll go, I swear.” He crawled away from her, backward through the snow on his hands and knees, conscious that Aileen was watching with the blank, horror-stricken expression of a child who has exhausted tears.
When he was ten yards or more behind the Lincoln, he stood up and called, “Come here, Aileen. We're going back.”
She stared at the women, immobile until one motioned to her, then waded slowly to him through the snow. His right side felt as though it had been scorched with a soldering iron; he wondered vaguely how badly he had been wounded. Catching her hand, he turned his back on the woman and began to trudge away, trying to brace himself against the bullet that he more than half expected.
“Daddy?”
He scarcely dared to speak, but managed, “What is it?”
“Can you carry me?”
“No.” He felt he should explain, but could think only of the rifle pointed at his back. “We've got to walk. You're a big girl now. Come on, honey.” It was easier to walk in the curving tracks of the Lincoln's tires, and he did so.
“I want to go home.”
“So do I, honey. That's where we're going. Come on, it can't be far.” He risked a glance toward the lake, and this time caught sight of ice lit by blue lights far away. More to himself than to the doleful, shivering child beside him, he muttered, “Somebody's out there on a boat.” No one—no sane, normal person at least—would have a boat in the lake at this time of year. The boats had been drawn up on shore, where they would stay until spring.
He took off his glasses and dropped them into a pocket of his mackinaw, and looked behind him. Jan's Lincoln would have been invisible if it were not for the blinking red glow of its taillights. They winked out together as he watched. “They're stripping it,” he told Aileen. “They just got the alternator or the battery.”
She did not reply; and he began to walk again, turning up his collar and pulling it close about his ears. The wind was from his left; the warmth on the other side was blood, soaking his clothes and warming the skin under them, however briefly. Slow bleeding, or so it seemed—in which case he might not be wounded too badly and might live. A soft-nosed hunting bullet, but expansion required a little distance, and it could not have had much, probably had not been much bigger than thirty caliber when it had passed through his side.
Which meant that life would continue, at least for a time. He might be tempted to give his body to the lake—to walk out on its tender ice until it gave way and his life, begun in warm amniotic fluid, should terminate in freezing lake water. He might be tempted to lie down in the snow and bleed or freeze to death. But he could not po
ssibly leave Aileen or any other child out here alone, although he need only tell her to follow the road until she reached his cabin.
“Look,” she said, “there's a house.”
She released his hand to point, and he realized that he was not wearing his gloves, which were in his pockets. “It's closed up, honey.” (He had fallen into the habit of calling both the twins “honey” to conceal his inability to distinguish them.) “Have you got gloves?”
“I don't know.”
He forced himself to be patient. “Well, look. If you've got gloves or mittens, put them on.” This girl, he reminded himself, was the wonder of her class, writing themes that would have done credit to a college student and mastering arithmetic and the rudiments of algebra with contemptuous ease.
“I guess those ladies didn't give them back.”
“Then put on mine.” He handed them to her.
“Your hands will get cold.”
“I'll put one in my pocket, see? And I'll hold your hand with my other one, so the one glove will keep us both warm.”
She gave a glove back to him. “My hand won't go around yours, Daddy, but yours will go around mine.”
He nodded, impressed, and put the glove on.
It might be possible to get into his neighbor's lightless cabin, closed or not. “I'm going to try to break in,” he told Aileen. “There ought to be firewood and matches in there, and there may even be a phone.”
But the doors were solid, and solidly locked; and there were grilles over the small windows, as over his own. “We've had a lot of break-ins,” he confided, “ever since they paved the road. People drive out to the lake, and they see these places.”
“Is it much farther?”
“Not very far. Maybe another mile.” He remembered his earlier speculations. “Did you run this far, honey?”
“I don't think so.”
“I didn't think that you would.” Somewhat gratified, he returned to her and the road. It was darker than ever now, and the tire tracks, obscured by advancing night as well as new-fallen snow, were impossible to follow. Pushing up his sleeve, he looked at his watch: it was almost six o'clock.
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