In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02]
Page 13
No clouds.
No wind.
She could have sworn it was thunder.
She knew it had to be thunder when the wind squall came up. Sharp. Cold. Scattering her papers across the road. Forcing her to turn around and hunch her shoulders, cover her eyes, close her mouth.
The force of it shoved her a few paces toward the bridge.
Dust slapped the back of her jacket and jeans.
She was ready to go to her knees, when abruptly it stopped.
The first thing she thought was: Great, now I’ll have to take a shower.
The second thing was: It didn’t make any noise.
The wind didn’t make any noise.
* * * *
Deputy Schmidt squinted knowledgeably at the sky through his sunglasses. “Sonic boom,” he declared with assurance.
Chief Baer watched the attendants wheel a humming Mrs. Grauer into the ambulance. “Thunder,” he said.
“No clouds.”
Baer looked up and frowned. “Oh.”
“Sonic boom.”
No contrails, no silver speck, nothing up there but nothing.
When the squall hit, it took his hat from his head and pinwheeled it across the old lady’s lawn. He chased after it, shading his eyes with one hand, cursing when he slipped on the grass and fell on his rump.
He heard the frantic creak of a shutter.
He heard Schmidt yelp in pain.
He heard Mrs. Grauer’s slow rising scream.
What he didn’t hear was the wind.
* * * *
Kyle rolled his eyes when the thunder broke, thinking that today of all days it was finally going to rain, he was going to get drenched, catch triple pneumonia, spend the rest of his life in a hospital, and never get to go out with Sharon.
When the wind slammed him to his knees, he cried out in startled pain and ducked his head, feeling the grit scour the back of his neck while his teeth chattered in the knife-edge cold.
When the wind stopped, he thought he had gone deaf because, except for the thunder, he hadn’t heard a thing.
* * * *
Mag stood at the kitchen door and hugged herself while she searched for the clouds the thunder told her had to up there.
When the squall hit the back porch and knocked all her mother’s plants off the railing, she tried to open the door and save them, but the wind wouldn’t let her.
It blasted through every crack and window in the old house.
The furnace roared on.
Napkins fluttered helplessly off the kitchen table.
In the yard the umbrella clothesline spun like a carousel.
She reached for the door again, and the wind stopped.
Everything stopped but the clothesline.
* * * *
Les stood in the stable doorway, holding on hard to his hat, and watched the horses, afraid they would bolt the way they had been acting, counting himself lucky he had kept them in the large paddock instead of the pasture.
The thunder had frozen them.
The wind made them turn their backs, lower their heads. Even from here, he could see their flanks quivering, their nostrils flaring.
They’re going to bolt, he thought; they’re going to bolt.
A few yards away from the herd, Royal stood alone. Ignoring the wind. His head up and slightly tilted. His ears pricked and turning.
What do you hear, boy? he thought; what do you hear?
It must be something, because he couldn’t hear a damn thing.
* * * *
3
I
n southern Indiana, the trees have already lost most of their leaves, and those that remain have barely any color. The dry summer has given autumn dust instead, spinning along the highway, every few days lifting like smoke to blur the sun and sky.
When the wind blows, the dust sounds like hail on the windows.
* * * *
The bus pull’s into Evansville depot just a few minutes past noon, brakes hissing, passengers lurching slightly. The schedule claims a forty-minute layover, and half the people aboard make directly for the restrooms, the snack bar, or the fresh air to stretch their legs, turning their backs to the easy wind and blowing dust.
The others just sit, dozing or staring out the tinted windows, hoping without much hope that the weather will be better once they get home.
The little cowboy, hat dangling on its beaded strap down his back, squeezes into the aisle past his mother, excusing himself when he accidentally steps on her foot.
“Where are you going, honey?”
“I have to pee.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No,” he says with a soft smile. “It’s okay, Mommy. You can see the door from here.” He points out the window, just in case she’s missed it.
Reluctantly: “All right. But you know the rules.”
“Yes, Mother.”
She giggles. When he nods like that and calls her “mother,” she knows she’s stated the obvious again. She slaps him lightly on the rump. “Just be careful.”
He nods, closes his eyes, opens them quickly as a long peal of thunder startles him, tumbling, crackling, rising and fading like a train growling through the night. Outside, passengers look up hopefully; inside, two more hurry from their seats to the exit, muttering that it was about time.
The little cowboy looks up the aisle after them.
“Joey?”
“Huh?”
“Are you all right?”
He nods, a little shakily.
“It’s just thunder, honey. I know you don’t like it, but it’s only thunder.” She leans toward the window, the better to check the sky. “Rain, maybe, huh?”
“I don’t...” Suddenly he smiles. “Can I have some change?’’
“Why?”
He leans across her and points again. “When I’m done, I want to make a call.”
“Honey, I don’t know.”
“Please, Mom? Huh? Please?”
She looks at the telephone fixed to the depot’s outside wall, and shakes her head. “You’ll never reach it, sweetheart. It’s too high, see?”
“Then you can dial for me, okay? Okay?”
She sighs so he knows she knows she’s being over-indulgent and regretting it. Then she grabs her purse and pulls herself to her feet. “All right, kiddo, all right.”
As they make their way up the aisle, the bus rocks against an abrupt blast of wind. She grabs the back of a seat and waits until it passes, then leans over and whispers, “So who are you going to call?”
He doesn’t look back. “Guess.”
* * * *
4
1
I
t wasn’t hard to picture Mag: in the kitchen, one of the chairs dragged under the wall phone, feet up on the seat, one arm wrapped around her shins, the receiver constantly shifting from ear to ear, the coiled cord forever threatening to strangle her. Sharon had seen it often enough; there were times when she seemed to spend as much time at the Baers as she did at home.
“I’m telling you,” Mag said, her voice in a whisper as if fearing to be overheard, “it spun for about five minutes.”
“Sure.” Sharon sprawled on the living room couch, head propped on one armrest, feet dangling over the other, her favorite phoning position.
“Weird.”
“Now that’s true. It took me forever to get all my papers.”
“I almost freaked. Maybe it’s the end of the world, you know?”
Sharon laughed. “Yeah, right. One lousy thunder thing, it’s the end of the world?”
“There weren’t any clouds, Sharon. No clouds.”
“So?”
“So you can’t have thunder without any clouds.”
“How do you know that?”
A long patient sigh. “Science, you dork. Don’t you ever pay attention?”
Sharon didn’t answer that one. Her grades were significantly better than Mag’s, a fact she never, but never, br
ought up. Instead, she said, “You’ve been listening to that guy too much.”
She winced.
Mistake. Bad mistake.
“Reverend Trask isn’t a ‘guy,’ Sharon,” Mag said stiffly.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”
“He knows what he’s talking about.”
“Okay, already, I said I’m sorry.”
Considering where they lived, cable was a godsend. Brother Phil always said that all they ever got with an antenna was the mooing of the damn cows. He had been saying that, she thought, since the day she was born, and it still, once in a while, made her laugh.
But it had brought them some of the most bizarre programs, too. One of them, in her mind, was the “Lord’s Gospel News,” a church thing from someplace down South that had hooked Mag big time. No one knew why; no one could explain it. And she was so defensive about it, no one had the nerve to put her on the spot.
“Just so you know,” Mag said, pouting.
Sharon looked at the ceiling for help. For all Mag’s language—which Mom called “earthy” and Brother Phil called “longshoreman”—for all the way she dressed sometimes, for the trouble she got into and the not-always-undeserved reputation she had around school, she still took her belief in God seriously.
Okay, Reverend Trask’s God.
“No bread today,” her friend persisted. “Mom called from the bookstore. She couldn’t get any bread.”
“I know.”
“So...?”
This one was too dangerous. She lifted her head and looked out the window. “Hey, there’s Fish Man,” she lied.
“Really? No kidding?”
“Nope.”
Now there was excitement, the prospect of gossip. “What’s he doing?”
“Hard to say. It looks like ... oh my God.”
“What? What?”
“He just ate a frog.”
She bit her lips and closed her eyes.
When Mag finally shrieked her name in the midst of laughter, she relaxed. A close one. But leave it to icky George Trout to provide the way out of a sticky situation. Neither of them liked him very much. He was nice enough, she supposed, but he lectured all the time, and all the time talked about nothing but the crimes he had written about, the crime scenes he had been to, all the famous cops and FBI guys he knew and had known. It was like he was the world’s expert on people cutting and shooting and slicing other people up, even though he had never once been on TV, and he wanted everyone else to know it. She figured you had to be sick in the head to like stuff like that. There had to be something wrong with you to actually enjoy stuff like that. And somehow he had sucked Mr. Bannock into it, too. Now Mr. Bannock was gone, and Joey and Patty were gone, and the Fish Man refused to talk about it. None of his business, he had told her once when she’d had the nerve to ask; none of his business, none of hers, and besides, John Bannock was only following his dream.
When Mag finally sobered, she said, “So what about Saturday? You going or what?”
Sure enough, when Sharon told her about Kyle, she insisted they head for Dove’s after school the next day. This would require major planning if Sharon didn’t want this one to get away.
“This one? What do you mean, this one?”
“Figure of speech, girl, now pay attention.”
“Can’t go tomorrow anyway. Mom’s working late, Phil’s going to Cairo to chew out some supplier, so I gotta make supper.”
“No sweat. Wednesday, then.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe. Yes. Always yes. Besides, those jeans are getting a little rank, if you know what I mean.”
Sharon blinked. “What?”
“Horses, dust, personal perspiration excretion. You need something fresh, girl, something...” Mag’s familiar wicked smile was clear. “Tight.”
Sharon sat up. “You’re disgusting.”
“I work with what I have.”
“Even worse.” She stared out the window. “And how do you know he’ll even notice.”
“He’s a man. He’ll notice.”
“It’s a football game, for God’s sake.”
“So you think he’ll be looking at the players’ tight pants?” Mag laughed. “You, my dear, have a lot to learn.”
“And you have so much to teach me,” she mock sneered.
“You know it. Now go away, I have to clean this place before Momma Baer gets home and has a cow.”
Mag hung up without another word, and Sharon let the receiver drop onto its cradle. She hung her head, hands draped between her knees. Tight jeans. Kyle. Mag as her mentor. The next thing she knew, Mag would have her trying on one of those new bras, the kind that squeezed and pushed, trying to give her a figure where not much of one existed. Tight jeans. Kyle.
She massaged her temples to forestall a headache, sighed, and decided she might as well sweep off the front porch. She had already run the vacuum over the rugs to pick up the dust the wind had forced inside; she had checked the refrigerator for the evening’s supper menu and made sure all the ingredients were there; she had called Phil to be sure he’d be home for supper, called her mother at the insurance office for last-minute instructions; she had done everything that was expected of her.
Every day.
Every time.
Tight jeans.
Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
It would sure give Phil fits, and that just might be worth it. She loved her big brother, she’d clobber anyone who said different, but the older he got the harder he tried to be the father, the more he got on her and her mother’s nerves.
Tight jeans.
A slow and wicked smile, just like Mag’s.
* * * *
2
Cornman Center wasn’t the largest or most prestigious hospital in the county, but it was adequate enough to serve Vallor and the area immediately surrounding it. Originally a long two-story brick building, additional single-story wings on either side in the sixties had given it a squared U-shape and made it look far larger than it was.
Chief Baer stood under the east wing entrance portico, a cigarette in one hand, not so glad that he was finally able to smoke as he was grateful to be outside. The psychiatric unit had never been his favorite place. Blank eyes, blank stares, mutterings and murmurings; the patients who stayed here were, for the most part, only in transit. Evaluation, interim treatment, then on to someplace where the facilities for longer-term treatments, or permanent residence, were more readily available.
Mrs. Grauer, like those dancers before her, would not be leaving.
The glass doors behind him slid open, and a paunchy man, whose wire-rim glasses and severe tonsure made him look more like a monk than a doctor, joined him, shivering a little in the portico’s shade.
“She be all right?” Arn asked.
Carl Bergman shrugged. “I guess so.” A stethoscope dangled around his neck; his hands were tucked into the pockets of his long white coat. “She’s sedated. We’ll do the tests. We won’t find Alzheimer’s or a stroke or drugs, prescription or otherwise, and we’ll wait for the family to blow its stack and somehow blame us for whatever just happened.”
“I wish I were twenty years older,” the chief said miserably. “Then I could truthfully say I was getting too old for this damn job.”
Bergman chuckled. “You hate puzzles.”
“Damn right.”
“Always have.”
“Damn right.”
“So, you want one anyway?”
Arn groaned loud enough to make the psychologist laugh again, then nodded as if this were his lot and no miracles in sight to protect him from it.
“One of my boys went inside,” Bergman said, referring to the ambulance attendants he had trained himself. “Guess what they found?”
“Don’t tell me.”
“The TV was on.”
“Carl, I’m begging you.”
“Guess who was on?”