by Laird Koenig
When Rynn, teapot in hand, turned to face him, he suddenly dropped his arms and stood motionless. Even though an immense surge of relief flooded him, and in spite of all the love he felt for this girl, he dared show nothing. He had to mask his sudden joy, or the abrupt change would betray all the doubts he had suffered till only a moment ago.
"Your father write that?"
"Emily Dickinson."
"Got anything she’s written?"
"I know most of it by heart."
Mario went to the rocking chair.
Rynn watched the boy sit. Slowly she moved across the room to the chair and sank to the floor beside him. She leaned her head against his knee. His hand sought her shining brown hair. Her hand covered his.
14
A WEEK PASSED.
Mario could not come to Rynn on Sunday, for Sunday as he explained, meant Mass in the morning, a family dinner of almost tribal proportions, and visits with countless relatives. But he came twice during the week.
On Monday he reported that the liver-colored Bentley had been towed, still locked, into his father’s garage. Everyone in town knew Mrs. Hallet was missing. At the service station and on the streets the year-round residents had begun to greet each other with a demand for news. As no facts were available, they supplied each other with rumors. These, Mario announced, only proved how much people hated the Hallets.
On Thursday he reviewed the week that had begun with most of the village saying that Frank Hallet’s wife had taken her children and left him. For the neighbors, the defection was the evidence they had waited for. Did that riot prove Hallet had something to do with his mother’s disappearance? By midweek everyone had agreed that Frank Hallet had always hated his mother. At the garage, Mario’s father was able to corroborate this assertion by reminding each local customer who stopped for gas, oil, or a tune-up that relations had always been strained between mother and son. After all, the woman had always refused to allow her son to drive the nOw legendary liver-colored Bentley.
No one but Mario came to the house in the lane.
More precisely, no one came to the door. During the night Rynn had seen a spotlight from a police car sweep the house. Officer Miglioriti was keeping an eye on the place.
Rynn was careful to lock the doors and windows, and she left the light burning in front of the house every night. If anyone—and she could not bring herself to think of that someone as Hallet—if anyone had passed the front window, she had seen no shadow on the curtains.
During school hours she did not appear on the streets of the village out of fear some adult would stop her and ask her why she was not in class. After school, when students wandered freely, she dared not leave the house in case she would miss Mario.
On the chance the telephone was tapped, they did not call one another.
This Saturday, like the last, Mario brought his bicycle into the hall, but not because of the rain. The day, so far, was cold and clear, but they agreed there was no sense in leaving it outside to show anyone who came down the lane that the boy was in the house.
What a wonderful day it was to get into the outdoors.
The sky above the tree branches was blue, dappled by fast-running clouds shifting the autumn sunlight between sharp spangles of yellow light and an amber haze.
Though Rynn realized it was painful for Mario to walk, she was grateful that he was at her side, hand in hand, and they wandered for more than two hours through the lane and along the beach, where a surf, gray as lead, unfolded. Under the wide sky the stretch of sand was empty except for a few gulls that waited until the two were almost upon them before they flapped, screeched, and sailed off on the wind.
Alone on the beach, Rynn led Mario to the damp sand where the breakers fanned out and vanished under their feet. She put something into his hand.
Mario did not need to look to know he held Mrs. Hallet’s keys. The girl told him he could throw farther than she.
When the keys had disappeared into the sea, they walked on in silence. Neither spoke of the work that lay ahead.
During the week they had planned every detail of what they must do. Now they were waiting till the football game began in town. Frank Hallet had said it, and Mario had agreed it was true: On Saturday everyone goes to the football game.
At one o’clock when the game began, they went into the grape arbor, which they explored in silence. Then Rynn posted herself at the side of the house, a sentinel on guard against anyone who might approach up or down the lane.
Mario raked the leaves from the patch of yard beyond the arbor and began to dig. The soil of the old garden, worked by so many generations, was free of stones and• tangled roots and yielded to the spade. At the end of an hour the girl, leaning in her duffle coat against a chestnut tree watching Mario work, listening to his spade clink on the occasional stone, saw only his head and shoulders above the pit.
When the hole was even deeper, they returned to the house where Rynn drewthe fron~curtains tight".
"Okay?" asked Mario.
Rynn nodded, the signal to begin.
Together they lifted the table to one side, rolled the braided rug, and pulled back the trapdoor till it leaned against the wall.
As Rynn ran to the kitchen for two boxes of Saran Wrap, Mario opened the window to the grape arbor. At another nod from Rynn, he led the way down into the cellar.
Only a plan that had been worked out in detail could have allowed them to act so quickly. They struggled up the cellar stairs with the first of their wrapped burdens.
"Careful," whispered Rynn. "Don’t get any of that chemical stuff on you."
"Rest it on the window sill," Mario grunted. "Okay. Now we both push."
They were carrying their second burden from the cellar when a car horn honked.
Their hearts stopped.
"It’s out in the lane," whispered Mario. "What if they’re coming here?"
For an instant Rynn searched Mario’s face before she motioned toward the open window.
"We have to get it out! Fast!"
As Mario clambered over the sill to follow the second bundle into the grape arbor, Rynn closed the windows, pulled the curtains, and raced to the front window to peer into the road. After more than a minute she left the front door to go into the yard where she could look down the lane. Then she hurried through the leaves around the corner of the house to report to Mario that a white dog had ambled in front of a car.
In the same way they had worked together inside, the two carried the wrapped bundles to the pit.
Mario grabbed the shovel and dug the earth; Rynn, at the corner of the house, felt a cold tingle of mist on her face as she huddled down where she could see both the backyard and the lane through the trees.
She listened to the earth from Mario’s spade thud into the pit and shivered as her eyes searched the gray clouds which thickened and filled the sky. A fine rain was already glinting on the leaves and branches.
When the gentle rain grew heavy, Rynn left her post long enough to bring her father’s macintosh from the house, only to find that Mario’s wool pullover and Levis were already sodden. His black hair was flat and wet on his head and water streamed down his frowning face. The fresh-turned earth was melting into slippery mud, an ooze that was heavy on the shovel, but the boy worked without stopping.
Rynn dashed back inside and heated a can of cream of celery soup, which she carried in a cup through a driving rain.
Mario paused only long enough to gulp the steaming soup.
“Go back in." His teeth chattered on the cup. "There’s no sense in both of us getting soaked."
Rynn took the empty cup that still warmed her hands and returned to her guard post. Soon the cup was cold and she pulled the damp coat that smelled of wet wool up to her ears. She wondered how long she would be able to bear shaking with cold, waiting here in the rain. At least Mario was digging and that kept him moving. Determined not to leave him and her post, she retreated only far enough to seek the protection of an
overhanging eave where water from a broken downspout gushed at her feet.
As minutes dragged by and she pushed strands of dripping hair back from her face, she was more and more tempted to do as he had insisted, to "run into the house, strip off the wet coat and build the fire into a warming blaze.
"Hi!"'
Rynn tensed.
Someone was calling through the rain. She dared not even breathe. She took care to look slowly, so as not to give away her surprise, in the direction of the voice. There, between the tree trunks near the road, was a man walking toward her, a man walking toward the backyard.
Should she call out to Mario? What could he do?
Rynn dodged past the downspout and hurried toward the stranger.
Halfway to the road she slowed her steps. The man wore a bright red parka that covered his head. With black rubber boots he looked like a tall, thin Santa Claus coming at her through the tree trunks.
Rynn’s mind raced for something to call out, something to do, some way to keep the man from approaching the house. On impulse she raced forward to meet him.
"You seen my dog?"
From where he stood Rynn was sure the man could not see into the backyard, but she feared he might still hear Mario’s shovel working the wet earth.
“My dog," he called. "I’m looking for my dog."
"What kind of dog?" Rynn forced her voice into a monotone in an effort to cover her panic.
"English pit bull."
"White?"
"You’ve seen him?" The man was about to come closer, but she nodded and pointed down the lane and away from the house.
"Out there."
He stopped.
"About ten minutes ago."
"Thanks.” The man turned, but he made no move.
Go!
What did he want now?
"You better get inside." His voice was a white mist. "Out here you’ll get wet."
Rynn watched his red parka move through the trees till he reached the road. Not until he was out of sight did she stumble back toward the corner of the house. Before she reached, the grape arbor she heard the slap of the shovel on mud.
She shrank back under the eave to watch Mario work.
When, at last the boy flattened the gobs of mud with the back of his shovel and began to rake wet leaves back over the wounded earth, Rynn ran into the house.
By the time he finished in the garden she was standing at the back window holding a huge bath towel.
"Throw the shovel under the porch."
Mud-spattered, his wet clothes clinging to him, Mario evoked in Rynn that same squeeze of the heart she had felt seeing a puppy, plump and fluffy, miserably wet and shivering. He was that thin and vulnerable.
The boy did not do as she ordered, Instead, he hurled the shovel into the dense tangle of underbrush at the back of the garden; This was not part of the plan and his thought was better than hers.
Rynn pulled Mario in the front door, turning quickly to slam and lock it. As he tugged off his muddy boots, she covered his dripping black hair with the towel.
"You’re soaked through!"
She began to rub his hair vigorously with the towel.
"We have to get you warm and dry. Hurry!"
When he reached out to his, bicycle for support, she nudged her shoulder under his arm. Bearing much of his weight, she moved him through the hall.
He coughed.
She urged Mario to dry his hair, backed him toward the stairs, and pushed him down to sit as she pulled off his wet socks. "You were right about doing it on Saturday," she said unpeeling the wet wool, pulling it down over his ankles and across his feet. "Everyone was at the football game."
He sucked his breath in over chattering teeth, incapable of speech, his entire body quaking.
Just as soon as we get you out of the rest of these wet things I’ve got a hot tub waiting upstairs. Hurry." She tugged at his pullover, heavy and wet. She unbuttoned a cold wet shirt, stripping it from his shivering white shoulders.
"Out there, I should have helped you."
She unbuckled his belt. His shaking hands, blue with cold, fumbled, but worked the zipper and undid the fly so she could draw off his trousers. From under the towel, a tent over his head, she found his black eyes watching her, and felt a stab of guilt: He knew exactly what she was thinking, and as she pulled off his trousers, she made a point of not looking at his legs to see if they were crippled. Both legs, as far as she could tell, looked the same, both equally white and hairless; both shook with cold..
"Like letting someone look at your chipped tooth," he said.
She pulled him to her and wrapped the towel around him.
"Come on."
But after a single step: she froze. He lifted the towel from his head.
"Hear something?"
“No.”
"What is it?"
"Nothing." She said, but she was shaking.
"Don’t worry so much. The rain’s not going to wash away all that dirt in the back garden." His arm went around her. Now it was he who was helping her up the stairs.
"Come on. And don’t worry. I dug plenty deep."
Rynn tensed and stood motionless. Something even worse than the worry of the earth washing away from what had been in the cellar gripped her.
She could barely bring herself to speak the words.
"Her umbrella. We forgot her umb—"
"It’s with her."
From the bathroom upstairs they heard the telephone on the kitchen counter shrill again and again, long past the time when most callers would have given up. Rynn, drying her arms with a towel, raced down the stairs and clutched the instrument.
“Yes?"
She had not missed the call, but whoever was on the line said nothing. Silence. With that instinct that is only reasoning reaching a conclusion faster than the steps of logic can add up the facts, she realized Frank Hallet was standing somewhere in the rainy Saturday afternoon, breathing into a telephone. She fought to sound calm, and when she spoke; her voice was too flat, too level, too controlled.
"Mr. Hallet?"
Where was he? In the real estate office? At home? At a pay telephone somewhere? It did not matter; he knew where she was, and he was waiting.
"I know it’s you. Mr. Hallet. This afternoon everyone else is at the football game." She put an edge on her voice, that same edge she had heard women in London use when talking to sales clerks and waitresses. "Mr. Hallet, you should know I’ve told my father about last Saturday night. I’m afraid he felt he had to report your behavior to the police. They’re watching this house this very minute."
She should have hung up. She stayed on, she realized, an instant too long before she pressed the switch in the cradle. She wanted nothing in the way she ended the call to let the man know more of the terror she felt than he already knew.
In the hall she picked up Mario’s wet clothes and carried them to the hearth. She dropped his muddy boots, spread his shirt across the back of the rocker, and hung the socks from the armrest. His Levis she shook out and draped between the coffee table and the hearth.
With the poker she prodded wadded newspaper into the embers till the paper burst into flame. She added chips of bark from the woodbox and laid on another log. From the phonograph records she drew one disc from its sleeve. She adjusted the sound to low, and Liszt’s Piano Concerto began to fill the room.
A sock fell from the arm of the rocker. She picked it up and a finger found a hole gaping above the heel.
At footsteps on the stairs she turned.
It was a trick of the light, of course, but for a moment her father, complete to a pipe at his mouth, stood in silhouette.
"Nice robe," Mario said. "Even fits."
Rynn threw the sock onto the rocker and hurried to stand at the foot of the stairs in front of the boy who wrapped a towel around his neck. He drew the pipe from his mouth and handed it down to her.
"Found it in the pocket."
Rynn’s hand closed ar
ound the pipe feeling its familiar shape. With her other hand she reached up to the boy.
"You’ll be warm by the fire."
In the firelight she knelt behind him to dry his hair with the towel.
"Who called?"
"No one."
She toweled his hair.
"Rynn?"
"Really. Whoever it was didn’t say a word."
"Hallet?"
"Of course."
"Creep," he said and coughed.
"You’re still shivering."
From the couch she unfolded a blanket and wrapped it around him.
"Here. Closer to the fire. And, Mario? Don’t shiver. Please?"
"Okay," he said, as if he had some power over the chill the hot bath, the wool robe, and the blanket had not warmed away.
"You’re like ice."
Her hands went over his shoulders and down inside his robe to his chest. She rubbed.
"That feel better?"
Mario kissed her arm as it brushed his face. It was the first time his lips had touched her. The touch caused a silence that neither of them could think of any way to fill.
With the palms of her hands she stroked his breast, letting them stray to his thin ribs and to the firm young stomach muscles that jumped under her touch.
"Getting dark," he said, but most of the sound stuck in his throat.
She rested her head against the hollow between his neck and shoulder. Her hands smoothed their way to his back and up to his shoulders. When they started down again, over his chest, his ribs, onto his quivering belly, he stilled a gasp.
Her breath was hot against his ear. "Mario."
He said nothing.
"If you want," she said in a voice so quiet he might not have heard, "I’ll get into bed with you."
Not daring to look at her; he cleared his throat.
"Or if you’d rather, we can stay by the fire. I’ll move the couch."
She got up, pushing the coffee table to one side and turning the couch around to face the fire. She reached for the blanket to spread it over the cushions, but Mario clasped it around him.
He followed her bidding and sat on the couch, his head hanging down between hunched shoulders. He did not see her draw off her black sweater and unzip her Levis and push them down her smooth, golden legs. She climbed past him onto the couch, lay beside him, and pulled the blanket over them.