Carl had to obey her. He had no more choice in that than he did in where or when he shat. But Merle was another matter. Merle had not forged his fetters. Merle controlled him more by brute force than by psychic compulsion. For that reason Carl could offer some resistance to Merle, ineffective as it might be against Merle’s boots, his prod, his cigarettes, and his deep reservoirs of spite. Carl had known C.O.’s like that, especially at the old lockup, before New Ravensburg was built and staffed from scratch. But he’d never appreciated how terrible it was to fall into the power of such a man, to live at his sufferance.
And then, to die at his command. For that day had finally arrived. Carl knew, as the equipment was moved into place, that his and his companions’ fate was sealed. He did not understand how the work was to be done, how each engine was to be employed, but he knew that the path to his death had been mapped and strewn with gravel.
And when no mash appeared in the trough at the end of the day, he knew that was no accidental omission. They would be starved for a little while before they were slaughtered.
Carl tested the gate, but with no more success than when he’d butted against it a hundred times earlier. With the flick of a finger any human might have lifted the noose that secured the gate to the post of the fence, but that simple act was beyond his power. He might as well have wished for a machine gun.
And then, as the moon lifted above the crest of the hill, the girl appeared, luminous as the angel who visited Paul in his prison cell.
“Oh, Hamlet,” she said, “I thought you’d still be awake. And I am, too. I have to go away tomorrow, so I won’t be here when they… do that stuff. I’m not even supposed to know about it.”
Carl was wonderstruck, for he understood every word the child said. And he knew who she was: his daughter, his only child, Kelly.
The knowledge was an anguish almost beyond bearing, but his terror was greater still. He squealed in a way that was a plea for mercy, for salvation, for the child to recognize him in turn.
“I’m so glad Mommy’s coming back. I just hate Aunty Di! I hate her. And Merle, too, he scares me. But they’ll go away, and it will be just Mommy and me. And maybe Daddy will come back, too. Alan says he thinks he will. Anyway, I just came to say good-bye. Okay, Hamlet?”
Carl squealed, but he had no larynx that would transform his pain into speech.
Kelly sighed. “I know you want to get out. It’s just awful. But if I did let you out, would you go away? You’d have to hide in the woods, I guess. And not come back here when you get hungry. Aunty Di says a pig that escapes from its sty will always come back when it’s hungry enough.”
Had she understood him, as he’d understood her? Would she answer his prayer? She was tall enough to reach the noose and lift it from the post.
She had understood him! For she nodded her head and said, “Okay, Hamlet. I’ll do it for you, but not the others. You were always kind of special. But you got to be quick. Here.” She flicked off the noose and pulled open the gate just wide enough to allow him through.
He trotted away, unthinking, at his fastest pace, until he realized that he was heading straight toward the smokehouse. He veered at once in the opposite direction, almost knocking Kelly off her feet, before he vanished over the crest of the hill, in the direction of the rising moon.
44
“I’m sure she’ll turn up any moment,” Officer Lincoln insisted brightly. “She can’t have gone far. I didn’t turn my back two minutes.”
“Please,” Alan said placatingly, “don’t be upset. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine. I just wish I could go out there and help look for her.”
“I can understand,” said Officer Lincoln, touching her crown of tight braids as though it might somehow have become disarranged. “But unfortunately, since we’ve put the grounds on alert, we can’t allow that. Everybody’s been ordered to their rooms so we can do a check cabin by cabin. If Kelly—that’s her name, Kelly?”
Janet nodded grimly. She’d said almost nothing since learning that her daughter had disappeared from the prison’s playground while she was being processed for departure. She just glowered. Alan didn’t think she was really that worried or pissed off and was actually enjoying the situation in a way, since she was unarguably in the right and the System at fault.
“If Kelly has gone into one of the residences,” Officer Lincoln went on, “—and honestly, I can’t think where else she could have gone, since the surveillance cameras can spot anyone who’s on the grounds—then she’ll be found by one of the residents.”
“Unless she’s hiding,” said Janet.
“She does love to play hide and seek,” Alan volunteered. “And she doesn’t always hide in obvious places. And she loves to climb. So I don’t know, I’m not sure you’re going to find her that easy, until she wants to be found.”
“She may not even be on the grounds anymore,” Janet pointed out. “Have you thought of that?”
“Yes, and there are cars—unmarked cars, of course, in the immediate neighborhood who are helping to look.”
“Maybe you should issue some kind of announcement?” Alan suggested. “You must have some kind of system for that as part of your security system.”
Officer Lincoln winced. “I think it would be premature to send out a sound truck. We don’t like to alarm our neighbors needlessly. It’s not as though Kelly poses a danger.”
“Not to anyone but herself,” Janet commented. “And maybe the staff here—if she’s not found.”
“Mrs. Kellog, she will be found. But I do understand your being anxious. So right now I think it might be better, less stressful, if I left you here in the visitors’ lounge with Mr. Johnson. Feel free to help yourself to the coffee and any of the pastries over there. I’m getting signals on my beeper that the warden wants to see me. Probably for a chewing out.” She stood poised by the door. “Okay?”
“If the warden chews you out?” Janet asked. “It’s okay with me.”
Officer Lincoln rolled her eyes expressively but didn’t insist on having the last word.
When they were left alone in the lounge, neither Alan nor Janet could think of anything to say. Alan had fixed his attention on the big handpainted mural on the wall behind the dining area, which showed a family of deer and assorted forest creatures beside a brook of turquoise blue. There was another mural almost exactly the same in the visiting area of the New Ravensburg prison. Alan imagined the painter going from prison to prison all over Minnesota painting the same greeting-card animals, the same smudgy leaves and pastel sky.
“Would you like a coffee?” he asked at last, poised to push himself up from the low, orange vinyl, many-sectioned sofa.
“No,” said Janet. “I’d like a beer. That was the first thing I was going to ask for as soon as we got out of here. A can of Budweiser. No, make that a six-pack. I figure that would last most of the drive home. How long does it take?”
“We were on the road about four hours coming this direction.”
“Right now we’d be passing by St. Peter, even if we’d stopped to pick up the beer. If Kelly hadn’t decided to disappear.”
“I can imagine it must be frustrating. You’ve been released but you’re still stuck here.”
“But there’s no rule says we have to wait here in Bambi Hall till they find Kelly. I’m sure they will find her. In an odd way this is probably one of the safest places a kid could get lost in.”
“Yeah, but we still have got to sign out with the guard at the main gate. And I don’t figure they’re going to want to check us out to go get a beer, and then check us back in when we come back for Kelly.”
“We don’t have to say why we’re going out. You’ve got a cellular phone. So the minute they find Kelly they can call you. I just want to be on the other side of the gate. In the free world. Please?”
How could he say no? So they went and got his car in the lot and the guard at the gate didn’t give them any hassle. She took down the number of Alan’s
phone, and they set off in the direction of the shopping strip north of town. It seemed funny to Alan to be leaving Kelly in prison, but was it that different, really, from dropping her off at day care?
“So—how are things back at the ranch?” Janet asked once they were beyond range of the grounds of the prison and she’d swiveled round to watch the road ahead of them. “Kelly didn’t seem that happy when I saw her earlier.”
“To tell you the truth, Janet, I’m just as glad to be away from there today myself. Today’s the day they’re slaughtering those pigs. And Diana was kind of upset this morning because one of the pigs is missing. In fact, she blamed Kelly for letting it out of the sty deliberately. She really got on her case. For a while I thought she wasn’t going to let her come along on the ride.”
“Did she let it out?”
“Probably. I told Diana it was me, but I don’t think she believed me. But she had to pretend to and let up on Kelly. But, boy, was she angry! I never really saw that side of her before. I don’t know what it is with those pigs and her.”
“How long will they be at the slaughtering? It’s not exactly my idea of the ideal homecoming.”
“They’d already got started before we left, but they’ll still be at the butchering when we get back there. Unless they take a really long time finding Kelly.”
“Then let’s hope they do. There!” She pointed to the 7-Eleven they were approaching. “Pull in there. They’ll have beer. There’s even a picnic area. We can sit outside with the beers and I can have a cigarette.”
“I thought you gave up smoking?”
“In the joint I was a god-damned born-again Christian, and so is everyone else. We’re all nuns in the joint. But that is over now. Praise Jesus!”
The way she said “Praise Jesus!” made it sound like a curse, but rather than argue with her on the subject of smoking, Alan just pulled into the parking lot at the 7-Eleven and took a space near the two metal picnic tables. Janet unbuckled the seat belt and took up her purse.
“To be able to spend my own money again! Do you know what it feels like to never have anything but small change for candy bars and toothpaste? You just can’t imagine.” She opened the car door. “Anything I can get for you in there?”
“A Coke would be nice.”
She nodded and, halfway to the door of the 7-Eleven, called out, “Grab one of those tables.”
For all their obvious differences, they were so much alike, Diana and her sister. The way they both ordered him around like he was a waiter in a restaurant. Never so much as a please or a thank-you. The way both of them just surrendered to their appetites. “Grab one of those tables,” Janet had told him. They were grabbers, and Kelly was growing up to be another. It was an enviable quality, unless of course what they were grabbing belonged to you. It must be hard to live in a family of grabbers.
Janet emerged from the store with a plastic bag bulging with purchases, which she proceeded to spread across the mottled, sticky tabletop: a can of Budweiser for her, a Coke for him, a big bag of barbecue-flavored Doritos, two packs of Kents, and a Reuben sandwich heated in the store’s microwave and oozing cheese into its clear plastic wrapping. “We’ll stop for a proper meal later,” Janet assured him, “but when I saw this in the dairy case, I just couldn’t resist. Here—” She undid the wrapping and pulled the sandwich apart, careless of the melted cheese, globs of which dribbled out, along with sauerkraut, and added to the deposits on the table. “Half’s for you.”
Alan held the sandwich in his hand and watched as Janet washed down huge, half-chewed mouthfuls with her beer. Only when she’d finished did she notice that he hadn’t started. “Is something wrong with it?”
“You know, I think this morning turned me into a vegetarian. Don’t ever watch pigs get slaughtered if you like bacon.”
“It’s corned beef in the sandwich, not pork. But if you don’t want it…”
He handed her the sandwich and went on: “I shouldn’t have gone to watch them, but I was curious. God, I am so glad I didn’t have to be involved. At first Diana was planning that we’d do it ourselves, just the two of us. But when she’d read up on it, she realized it was just too big a job. So she brought in this friend of hers from the rez. Merle. And two buddies of his.”
“I don’t remember her having any friends on the rez.”
“He’s a new friend.”
“But not a friend of yours?” When he didn’t reply at once, she said, “I’m sorry. It’s no business of mine.”
When he still said nothing and started to cry, she said, “Something is wrong, isn’t it? Not just watching those pigs get killed.”
He blew his nose into one of the napkins that came with the sandwich, then wiped at his tears with another. But the tears wouldn’t stop.
“Alan, what is it?”
“It’s something I can’t discuss. I promised Diana.”
“Is it the thing with the police and your mother? Diana told me that was all cleared up.”
“It is. They never booked me, after the one night I spent in jail. And I was never all that worried, really. All they had was their suspicions. And I was the only one they could suspect.”
“But it must have been upsetting. Jesus, I remember what it was like when they came and arrested me.”
“Yeah, but—” He didn’t know how to say it politely.
“But I was guilty as charged. Yeah, that would make a difference.”
“It was upsetting to see her so smashed up. Nobody knows how it happened, or even what happened. It looks like she was hit by a car and then crows and rats got at her, so it might have been just an accident on the highway at night. Except she didn’t have any clothes on, and they can’t figure how she ended up at the landfill. Someone must have brought her there.”
“Then what is this deep dark secret? What does Diana have to do with it? You’re in love with her, aren’t you? That was pretty obvious last time you came here with Kelly. So, did you have a falling-out?”
“No. Just the opposite. We got married.” The moment he said it, the tears stopped and he felt one hundred percent better.
“I don’t believe it,” Janet said. “You and Diana?”
“Yeah. Beauty and the Beast, huh?”
“Well, I might agree with that, except I think you mean Diana to be the Beauty.”
“Oh, you haven’t seen her lately. She is gorgeous.”
“And she made you promise not to tell me? Why?”
“We haven’t told anyone. We went to Brainerd, to the justice of the peace. That was back in June. And everything was fine till then. We had problems, but we were in love. Now… there’s just the problems.”
“Problems with sex?” Janet wanted to know.
Alan nodded.
“She’s frigid, isn’t she?”
Alan smiled ruefully. “No, the problem was never hers. It’s me. I can’t do it. I’m… impotent.”
“No, you’re not,” said Janet confidently. She opened up one of the packs of Kents, took out a cigarette, lit it, and filled her lungs with smoke. “No,” she said, exhaling, “the problem is her. She has that effect on men. She did in high school, and she did with Carl when she came to live at the farm. I don’t know for certain if they had sex after she moved in, but I know that when he came here last winter to visit he couldn’t get his engine going, and that was the only time he ever had that problem. There are women like that. They may seem real sexy—‘gorgeous,’ I think you said—but the bottom line is, they will break your balls. Why do you think she’s never been married, or even had a steady boyfriend?”
“Boy, you really don’t have much use for your sister, do you?”
“No more than I would for a pet snake.” She finished her can of Budweiser, pitched the empty in the direction of the trash can, missing it, and popped open a second.
“Hey, maybe you should slow down. You don’t want to be drunk when we go back to get Kelly.”
“Do I seem drunk to you?”
&
nbsp; “Kind of, yeah. You’re out of practice. And there’s a lot of bad feelings stored up. So it’s understandable.”
“Okay, you’re right.” Janet aimed the full can at the trash can, and this time she scored. “I’ll hold off till we’re out of Mankato. I might explode. But if I do that, let me ask a favor in return.”
“Sure, whatever.”
“I’m not up to facing my sister tonight. And I don’t want to arrive while those people are there doing the butchering. So let’s spend the night in a motel somewhere outside the Cities. Have a nice dinner at a restaurant. Bring a bottle back to the room. And get to know each other. Okay?”
“Hey, I’d like that.”
“Diana will be pissed off, but Kelly’s disappearing act is a perfect excuse.”
It was then, as though by magic, that Kelly woke up in the backseat of the car, where she’d gone to sleep on the floor, unnoticed under Alan’s nylon windbreaker.
After the explanations and a good laugh all round, Janet suggested not calling the prison right off the bat with the good news but making Officer Lincoln and everyone else go on looking for Kelly the rest of the afternoon. Alan persuaded her that that would be unkind, and she agreed to let him phone right then.
She even agreed to throw away the two packs of Kents. It didn’t make sense to take up smoking again after she’d kicked the habit for more than six months.
“I can’t tell you,” she said, once they hit Route 169, “how beautiful this is.”
“This? The highway?”
“No. The freedom.” She leaned sideways and kissed him on the cheek.
He blushed, and smiled, and stepped on the gas until they were doing seventy.
45
This was the third day of Jim’s fast, and it was hard to think of anything but food. Food remembered, food imagined. The meat people eat, the carrion of crows. How leather is chewed to soften it. Clay had told him once that in times of famine books were boiled for the glue in their bindings and wallpaper was stripped from walls for the same purpose. His mother had told him of winter famines in her childhood, snowbound in the cabin and half starved.
THE SUB A Study In Witchcraft Page 24