Bring Me Children

by David Martin

  Books saved him — books he’d brought with him from the institution and then later books that the lawyer showed him how to order, books arriving at his shack via the almighty United Parcel Service, books through which Randolph learned what forest products could be safely collected and eaten and which ones should be avoided. Back-to-the-land, self-sufficient, independent-living books. Books that taught him to garden and how to care for the dogs that came wandering up to his shack.

  And just as important as these practical manuals were the books that nourished his soul, the stories Mother once read to him, books about heroes.

  On this evening, July 4, he is walking along all those running feet of bookcases that line the walls of his shack, the little hermit looking for answers. Except he’s too agitated to read anything beyond the titles. All day long his three dogs have been restless, given to bursts of sad howling that begin suddenly and end just as abruptly, caused by what Randolph can only guess. Caused by premonition. They know what’s coming too.

  He feeds the baby girl for the fifth time since noon. Why has she turned so voracious? What does all this mean?

  With the infant balanced on one cocked hip, Randolph carrying her like an experienced wet nurse, he searches with increasing worry among the titles of his books. Here at the bottom of one row of shelves are six juvenile westerns that Mother used to read to him, books starring the Wyoming Kid, an authentic hero.

  Of course.

  Carefully holding the infant’s head, just the way it said to do in that baby-care book, Randolph rushes to the back room where he keeps the trunks that he inherited when Mother died. Stored away in one of them is a gift she handed him on the very day he was driven to the institution a lifetime ago.

  Finding it too awkward to search through trunks with a baby on his hip, Randolph places her in the crib, where the infant girl turns on her side to watch the gnome open various of those old trunks, then close them, pulling out another one, opening its lid.…

  Here.

  Triumphant, Randolph reaches in and brings out a real leather bandolier holding a dozen cartridges, carefully placing it over his right shoulder and across his chest. Although it was given to him at age twelve, it still fits. Then he brings out a second bandolier, placing it over his other shoulder, crossing the first bandolier at his heart.

  Stepping to a mirror, he straightens up to assume an approximation of cowboy bearing. And from her crib the baby girl watches with total absorption.

  Next he takes from the trunk a real leather belt with double holsters, the rig closing around Randolph’s tiny waist with a big buckle, silver plating flaking off to reveal the tin beneath. Randolph bends down to tie the bottoms of the holsters to his thighs with real leather thongs.

  In the mirror he likes the way he looks.

  Then two six-shooters come from the trunk, Randolph dropping them into their holsters, the weight of those silver-plated pistols making him feel potent.

  The real leather chaps are red, a bright, shiny, cowboy-inappropriate red, but when Randolph ties them on and walks around the room he enjoys the way they flap, especially the real leather fringes.

  The baby girl grips one tiny pink-fleshed hand on a bar of her crib, the better to keep herself turned over on her side to continue watching this spectacle.

  Now the crown, kept in its own box within the trunk: a real cowboy hat with a colored string that goes around your neck, the string able to be tightened or loosened by pulling it through the hole in a red wooden bead the size of a marble.

  He puts it on.

  Unfortunately, his head size hasn’t improved since he was twelve, and although the cowboy hat is child-sized, it is still too big for Randolph. In fact it rests down on his ears, making them bend out even more than they do naturally, the hat nearly covering his eyes, the effect so comical that even the baby girl is prompted to laugh from her crib.

  But when Randolph steps to the mirror and pushes up the brim of the hat, pushes it all the way up and over so that the cowboy hat falls onto his back, held there by the colored string around his neck, then, yes, Randolph — at least in his own eyes — could pass for a miniature and ancient Wyoming Kid.

  When Mother presented him with this outfit — the big black car was already waiting at the curb to take him away — she emphasized that it was very expensive, all real leather, and was a precise duplicate of the outfit worn by the hero in those westerns Randolph loved.

  He goes up on his tiptoes in front of the mirror.

  The Wyoming Kid. Shy with women but h—–1 on leather. Randolph rests the palm of each small hand on the butt of each silver pistol. Cocks his hip a little. The Wyoming Kid, steely-eyed and good with a gun. Never a better friend, never a worse enemy. He squints off into the middle distance, wondering where the cowboy boots ended up. And spurs. Which reminds him, that’s what the Wyoming Kid’s sidekick was called, Spurs.

  Randolph turns to the baby and draws both pistols, absolutely delighting her.

  “Stands befoe you, a hewo,” he insists. “A big two-hawted hewo.”

  She gurgles happily.

  “What’s tat you say, wittle wady? Am I weddy? Weddy?” In a gunman’s crouch, he swivels ominously toward the mirror, getting the drop on himself before straightening up and reholstering the twin hoglegs. Telling the baby, “Shoot, ma’am, ta Kid was bawn weddy.”

  CHAPTER 32

  In silence they drive to the outskirts of Hameln, past trailers with vegetable gardens in the side yards, with chained dogs lying on the tops of homemade plywood doghouses that during the day are protected from the sun by scraggly trees trying to survive the dogshit.

  “Why did you take me to that house where those two blind women live?” Lyon finally asks her.

  Claire makes a sound, a sighing groan, that indicates she has been dreading this question.

  “What was the point?”

  She speaks reluctantly. “When I was a teenager, my grandparents would occasionally visit those women, bring them things from town, and whenever I was in a room with them, with those two women … it’s when I first felt invisible, felt the power of being invisible. I was hoping …” Claire shakes her head. “It was stupid. It was embarrassing for you, for me, for the women, just totally inexcusable.”

  “But you started to say you were hoping. Hoping for what?”

  Claire doesn’t answer.

  “I’m not criticizing, I’m trying to understand.”

  “I was hoping to show you what it felt like, being invisible. I was hoping you’d think I was, that I was different from any woman you’ve ever met, that I —”

  “You are different from any woman I’ve ever met, there’s no doubt —”

  “I was hoping to stop you from leaving me.”

  They are just driving into Hameln proper when it occurs to Lyon that he and Claire have no tools with which to disinter a coffin. No stores open either, not on the Fourth of July. He is jolted by hope, because without tools they’ll have no choice except to call off tonight’s adventure.

  But when he mentions this to Claire, she says they’ll simply steal some shovels out of a garage.

  Lyon mutters a curse.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s just one thing after another, isn’t it? I mean, now we’re going to precede the obscenity of grave robbing with a little breaking and entering, theft — what else?” His famous face is twisted with worry.

  Claire is worried too. She doesn’t want to lose Lyon over this, especially not after the way he stormed out on her following the debacle at that house where the two blind women live. “We could try going through official channels,” Claire suggests. “Maybe petition a judge to issue a disinterment order.”

  “Based on what?” he snaps back. “Your grandmother’s accusations have been thoroughly discredited, I’d break down crying in the judge’s chambers, you would disappear before —”

  “All right, John.”

  Driving the side streets of Hameln, he realizes he
doesn’t know where he’s going, what he’s looking for. The town is deserted, Lyon passing no cars, seeing no one walking. Most of the houses and trailers are dark; there are no streetlights.

  Then in the middle of one quiet residential block, Claire orders him to stop.

  Lyon does, asking her what’s wrong.

  “See the garage to the side of that house?”

  He turns around in his seat.

  “Just pop in there and grab a couple shovels. The house is dark, no one’s home. We’ll bring the stuff back after we’re done. Not stealing, John, borrowing.”

  But he makes no move to get out of the car.

  Claire nudges him. “Taking a shovel from a garage is not the worst of what we’ll be doing tonight.”

  “I know. God, I should’ve had a drink back at the cabin. Several.” He settles for taking deep breaths. “When I was a little boy I was attacked by a dog. Got put in the hospital.” His mouth is dry. In the past few days Lyon has thought a lot about that episode. “Did you notice those trailers we passed on the way in, all the dogs? Everyone in this town has dogs. There’s probably two or three in that garage. Waiting for me.”

  “You stay here,” Claire says, opening her door.

  “No.” He gets out, closes his door, and then turns around to talk to Claire through the open window. “Slide over here so you can drive, make a quick getaway if it comes to that. And if you see anyone near that garage, anyone at all, give the horn two short honks. Make sure that passenger door stays unlatched so I can get in fast if I have to.”

  Claire reaches up to the window and takes his hand. “You’ll be in and out of there in thirty seconds.”

  He nods, looking up over the car’s roof to watch the garage for a moment, then bending down to speak to Claire again. Except he can’t think of anything else to tell her.

  Finally Claire says, “Why don’t I just dash in there and —”

  “No, no. I’ll do it.”

  Lyon has on his face a little boy’s expression — I’m trying to be brave about this — as he nods a farewell to Claire and pushes off from the car, walking around the back of it and heading for the garage, blowing air through pursed lips as if to whistle.

  At the driveway leading to the garage, Lyon pauses. Still no cars, no pedestrians, all the houses on this street dark. Where has everyone gone? Maybe people are afraid to be out at night because that’s when Quinndell roams the town, finding his way through these yards by memory or being guided by Carl, the two of them looking for victims. Lyon actually shudders — fifty years old and still scaring himself the way he did when he was a kid. Doesn’t this ever change?

  He reaches the side door to the garage and looks in one of the four panes of glass. No car there but Lyon can see a long row of tools hanging along one wall: shovels, axes, hoes, everything you could possibly need to dig up a grave. Turning the handle, he finds that the door is unlocked.

  Two steps into the garage, however, and Lyon is attacked by a dog.

  It has him by the pants leg, this fiercely yapping little fur ball clamped down on Lyon’s cuff, shaking its head and ripping the material as Lyon bounces backward on one leg, dragging the creature with him, reaching the door and hopping out on that one leg, closing the door on his leg so the dog can’t escape, finally able to retrieve his leg and then shut the door between him and the Pomeranian.

  Looking through the glass, Lyon sees the fluffy red bastard sitting on the other side of the door staring up at him with a malevolent grin, a strip of trouser material hanging from the dog’s pointy mouth.

  If it were a real dog in there, a German shepherd, for example, Lyon would simply return to the car and tell Claire to forget this particular garage — but he can hardly admit to her that he was held at bay by a Pomeranian.

  He opens the door a crack and yells, “Sit!”

  The dog does.

  Opening the door a little wider, Lyon orders, “Stay!”

  And the creature acts as if it’s going to obey that too.

  When Lyon finally screws up enough courage to step into the garage he draws out a warning, “Staaayyy,” the Pomeranian opening his mouth to pant, dropping the swatch of material and keeping his eyes on Lyon — but the dog stays.

  Moving gingerly, Lyon makes his way to where the tools are hanging, selecting two shovels, a pick, an axe, and a crowbar. Bundling these tools under his left arm, Lyon turns now for the open door, reminding the dog, “Staaayyy.”

  He is halfway to the exit when the Pomeranian bolts from the sitting position and runs to the doorway, the dog’s red fur bristling, the animal suddenly angry at Lyon, growling and then yapping, the Pomeranian in the doorway obviously prepared to make a Horatius-like stand.

  Lyon tries out a variety of commands on the dog — Sit, Stay, Get outta here, Go home, Fetch — but nothing works. He tries feinting in one direction and then the other, only infuriating the dog all the more. Lyon is worried that someone is going to hear the barking and come out here to the garage with a gun. He tries speaking softly to the dog, asking him to be quiet, using babytalk — nothing works.

  Lyon takes out the shovel. He’s going to have to brain the little mutt. But can he do it?

  Raising the shovel overhead, he approaches the Pomeranian, which continues that maddening yapping, Lyon hefting the shovel to gauge its weight, its deadliness. He’ll probably only wound the little beast with the first blow, have to keep hitting and hitting, maybe use the axe to cut off its head. Ghastly business. Can he do it?

  Within shovel range now, lifting it high with his right hand, the other tools still tucked under his left arm, the dog ignoring the overhead weapon, staring boldly into the man’s eyes, Lyon assuming a firm grip on the shovel’s handle, about to strike when a shadow — black and white — moves in from the side of the doorway.

  It’s Claire, bending over to scoop the Pomeranian into her arms, petting the dog’s head and then when the creature continues barking at Lyon, she puts her hand over its snout and holds its mouth closed. “Oh, John, what were you going to do?”

  He looks up at the raised shovel, guilty.

  The tools are in the trunk, Lyon is in the front passenger seat. When Claire, who is driving, starts to speak, he stops her by holding up one finger, “Not a word.”

  Fighting to contain her laughter, she says, “At least you got the shovels.”

  “Yeah, so far it’s going like fucking clockwork.”

  The entrance to Cemetery Road is blocked by a single steel pipe hinged on one end, chained and padlocked at the other. To the middle of that pipe is taped a hand-lettered sign: CLOSED ON THE FOURTH.

  “I guess that pretty much kills the plan for tonight,” he says hopefully.

  “Don’t be silly. This is good. Now we know no one else will be up there to bother us, to see what we’re doing, this is perfect.”

  “Except how do we get in?”

  She answers him by slipping the car into gear, depressing the accelerator, and bumping into the pipe — making a terrific racket but not breaking the chain. Claire backs up and hits the pipe a second time, harder, snapping the chain and causing the pipe to fly open and then bounce back against the car, shattering a headlight.

  “Damn!”

  But Claire is unconcerned, driving forward to push the pipe out of the way and then calmly telling Lyon, “Go back and close it, wrap the chain around the end so no can tell it’s been broken.”

  He obeys, wondering, if Claire is so goddamn resourceful dealing with dogs and chained gates, then why the hell does she need him to dig up the grave?

  Cemetery Road continues on up the side of a ridge, Claire driving the steep incline slowly but without using the single headlight she has available to her. When Lyon suggests she should at least turn on the parking lights, Claire tells him, “We don’t want anyone to know we’re up here.”

  “Right,” he replies, gripping the armrest and seat edge, waiting tensely for Claire to drive off the side of the shadowy road and plu
nge them into the darkness below.

  The cemetery itself is on four sloping acres just down from the crest of a hill high over the town of Hameln. Claire and Lyon walk one of the paths to the edge of the cemetery, seeing there at the base of Cemetery Hill a hundred cars and perhaps five hundred people around an open field so far below the cemetery that Claire and John Lyon feel as if they’re looking down from an airplane.

  “Fireworks,” Claire informs him. “That’s why no one was in town, they’re all waiting for the fireworks to begin.”

  “Good, I hope they stay down there. I’ll go get the tools. I assume you’ve already selected a grave for desecretion.”

  She flashes him her big eyes.

  “Now listen to me, Claire, if we open the coffin and find that the body … I can’t believe I’m really going to do this. If the body is intact, if there’s no indication that the baby was butchered by Quinndell, then we put everything back and go home — yes?”

  “That’s the plan.” Except Claire sounds as if she’s keeping her options open.

  “You don’t have any alternative plan in mind, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  He doesn’t believe her.

  She takes his hand. “Claire always said that the babies themselves would bring Quinndell down, that his victims are waiting to indict him. I’m trusting that she knew what she was talking about.”

  “I’m not doing this for your grandmother, I’m doing it for you.”

  “I know,” she says softly. Then more businesslike, “Go get the tools and the flashlight, I’ll find the grave. I know all those children’s names by heart, Claire drilled them into me.”

  A few minutes later they are standing by the grave of Nancy Masters, who died six years ago at two months of age.

  “What’s going to be left after six years?” Lyon asks.