THE TRAP

by Tabitha King

  “I’ll be right back,” he would promise, and then he would go out and smoke a cigarette, and come back.

  Travis would be waiting for him, tense and wide-eyed.

  Then Pat would sit with him and they might talk or not, and Pat might hold him a little. And Travis would stroke the beard that Pat was growing to hide the scars of frostbite.

  After a while, Pat would say, “I’ll be right back,” and he would go out for a few minutes, and come back.

  It would go on like that for a minimum of two hours. Then Travis would go to sleep. And often as not wake in the night screaming.

  Pat had to do it, because Liv was a long time in the hospital, trying to get her knee fixed. He thought Travis was getting better.

  Sarah experienced a quiet hellish period of depression and free-floating guilt. She quit the basketball team, and threw herself into a flurry of housework and cooking, trying to replace her mother.

  Marguerite discovered her weeping over sheets she had accidentally dyed denim blue by washing them with new blue jeans, and put an end to it. She bribed Sarah to rejoin the basketball team and let Mrs. Fuller do her job. The bribe was a promise of private driving lessons that would enable Sarah to obtain a license at fifteen.

  Without saying anything to anyone, Pat went to a theater by himself and sat in the back to watch the movie.

  FIREFIGHT

  Strung up on a crude cross in a swamp, Denny Corriveau's face is streaked with blood and sweat.

  "How did you know it was me?" he asks Court.

  "Rat told me," Court says.

  Denny laughs incredulously. "Come on, Rat's dead."

  "And when you killed him, you admitted it," Court says.

  Denny Corriveau's smile fades. "But I didn't. It was just self-protection."

  "It was you and Jackson and Taurus and Rat," Court says. "But you did the killing."

  "What about you?" Denny shouts, straining at the ropes that bind his wrists to the cross. "You killed Jackson, you might 's well a killed Taurus and Rat."

  "They all deserved to die for what you done to May," Court answers.

  "What about what she done to us?" Denny howls. "She set us up. She knew where we were going to be, because it was her village and you told her so she could save her family."

  "She didn't," Court says.

  "Then how'd they know we was coming?" Denny demands.

  "They just did," Court says simply. "It was their village. Their home."

  "And we're still killing each other over it," Denny says.

  "Yeah," says Court. "Still dying over it, anyway."

  "Your problem is you don't know how to live anymore. All you know is blowing people away," Denny says. It's a long shot, but this new tack, playing on Court's own guilt, looks like his only chance.

  Court stands at the foot of the cross, his brow wrinkled, his eyes like pieces of coal shiny with trouble and vexation. How many people have died in the name of justice for May? How many is enough?

  He draws a Bowie knife from its sheath on his belt and slashes the ropes that tie Denny Corriveau's ankles. Denny smiles gratefully.

  "Good man," Denny encourages him. "I knew you were a good man at heart."

  Court casts a cold glance at Denny, but Denny misses it in his ecstatic relief.

  Court raises the knife and slashes the binding on the left wrist. It lets go, and Denny cries out with pain as he dangles by his right wrist.

  "Easy, man," Denny begs.

  "Yeah," says Court, raising the knife. He holds it ceremonially next to the bindings on Denny's right wrist, and then slashes them. Denny falls catlike to the ground, recovers, and stands rubbing his wrists.

  "Thanks, man," Denny says.

  "Thank May," Court says.

  Denny holds out his hand. Court stares at it and then turns wearily away. Denny watches him, picking his way through the swamp. Denny, smiling, gathers up his knapsack, takes out a gun, and fires it into Court's back.

  Court turns around, holds out his hand, and falls face forward into the swamp.

  While the theater emptied, Pat sat in the shadows and wept.

  Liv’s light was still on when he came home, so he went in to see her.

  “How was it?” she asked, though he had not told her he was going to see the movie.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed. “I wish I could say it was great. It isn’t. It’s not even very good.”

  She took his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said and he knew she meant it. She snuggled up to him and kissed him. “The next one will be better.”

  Eighteen months later, Pat drove Liv and the kids to Nodd’s Ridge. He had stopped saying out loud he never wanted to go back, on the advice of the family counselor, who thought Liv and Travis had to go back, to make some kind of peace. But he didn’t have anything to say on the long drive, and he thought several times he might have to stop the car and throw up. Nobody else had anything to say, either. But in the mirror, he could see Sarah was holding Travis’ hand. Her right foot was in a cast, the ankle sprained at basketball practice. She had left her Walkman at home. She had already announced she was staying in the car. The Poor turned restlessly in her carrier.

  Liv got out of the car without help. She used Miss Alden’s cane to keep her footing as she walked around the ruins of their summer house. The doctors’ consensus seemed to be that her knee wasn’t ever going to be just right again, and that someday, sooner or later, she would have to have a new one. Her mouth was always going to be crooked, too, because somehow a nerve had been destroyed.

  The cat bounded into the woods, reveling in freedom. Travis dangled his legs out of the car, watching his mother anxiously.

  Abruptly, Liv came back. “Let’s go over to Miss Alden’s,” she said.

  Pat glanced at Travis. The counselor had said not to push him. Travis nodded.

  So he drove them to Miss Alden’s. The cat was there before them, picking her way daintily through the mess. More of the house still stood, but it was worse to look at. Liv limped around a bit, and took deep breaths of the fresh sweet air and then climbed back in the car. Travis found a G.I. Joe, deteriorated from another year’s weather, in the yard, and hooted with joy. Pat gathered up The Poor.

  They were in the village before anybody spoke.

  “It would be a good site to build on,” Liv said. “Miss Alden’s. Better than our lot. I know just what I’d like to do.”

  Pat was flabbergasted.

  She smiled at him, and patted Travis’ hand on the back of the seat. “A big fat woodstove with a cement block chimney,” she told him.

  “We need a place to hide out,” she said and looked away, at the view of the lake, gleaming gorgeously at the foot of the Ridge under a sapphire sky. From here, there was no telling where their house or Miss Alden’s had been, or that anything had ever happened. It was like a walled garden in the wilderness, you had to know about it to gain admission. You had to pass some kind of test.

  “Don’t you see?” Liv said.

  She turned back to Pat, his hands tense upon the wheel.

  “I fought for it. It’s safe now. It’s mine.”

  She looked back to the lake. “There’s no place like home,” she said, and smiled her crooked smile.