Five
Lori leaped over Leslie lying before the television,
pushed the dining room table askew on her way through, and shoved the
kitchen table halfway across the tiled floor to break her momentum.
Sixteen-year-old Ronnie Bates stood just inside the rear entrance with a
sack of groceries in each arm. Sorrel had but one grocery store, Carl
Adler's dingy little store and meat market on Main Street. Lori often
ordered by phone and paid Ronnie fifty cents a bag to bring her order to
the house. Lori knew little about the mentally-handicapped boy aside from
the fact that he lived with the grocer and worked in the store.
The problem this hectic evening was Ronnie's pale
blue eyes. They were focused with innocent surprise on Wendy, and Wendy's
hands were working overtime in a frenzied attempt to block from view large
areas of olive-toned flesh not covered by bikini underwear. She threw her
mother a pleading look, aware that the damage had already been done.
"Wendy," Lori said mildly, "I've told you not to run
around the house half naked."
"But he didn't knock! He was just standing there!" Wendy burst into tears and retreated into her
bedroom. The door slammed closed behind her.
Lori turned to Ronnie. Her mood chilled to the
temperature of dry ice. "Knock before entering," she said.
Ronnie nodded, eager to comply.
"Read my lips and repeat after me. Knock before
entering."
He mumbled, only marginally articulate, forming each
word with his lips as if unfamiliar with the language. He understood the
spoken language well enough, but his ability to communicate was something
of a one-way street.
Lori's anger melted away. She turned away to fetch a
dollar bill from her purse on the dining room table. Ronnie took the bill
and fumbled his way back out into the twilight.
"Boy, is he dumb," Leslie said lamely from the
shadows.
"Handicapped is the word I expect to hear you using,
young man. Ronnie is mentally handicapped."
"Why?"
"Something went wrong before he was born, and he's
not as smart as he should have been. Count yourself fortunate and go find
some wood to knock on."
Leslie smiled, knowing he was being teased. They had
discussed in detail the foolishness of superstition the day neighborhood
kids had stranded him on the sidewalk out front, convinced that the next
crack he crossed would break his mother's back.
Leslie went back to his television. Lori put the
groceries away, then tapped at Wendy's bedroom door before peeking
inside. The bedroom had been a utility room at one time. In Wendy's
desperate bid for privacy, the washer and dried had been moved to the
cellar.
Wendy sat cross-legged on her bed, clutching an
oversized teddy bear and trembling uncontrollably.
"He didn't do it intentionally, Princess."
Wendy looked quickly away, and Lori sighed in
despair, aware that the upset had triggered another issue altogether. The
territory was old and well-traveled for the both of them.
"It's Gloria again."
Wendy burst into heart-felt sobbing. Lori sat at her
side and cradled the girl until the worst of it subsided. She figured
that more than just Ronnie had triggered this evening’s panic attack.
"You heard what happened to Virginia Cornell."
Wendy gave a stiff nod.
She hadn't anticipated Wendy's reaction to Virginia's
death. She should have known that it would evoke memory of Gloria's
disappearance and unearth old terrors.
Lori tried to sound stern. "You know perfectly well
that what happened to Virginia Cornell had nothing to do with Gloria's
disappearance. As for Ronnie Bates, I've heard some of the awful stories
Karen has spread around town, but do you really think he's capable of
hurting anyone?"
Wendy sniffed back tears, but refused to nibble at
the bait to open a dialogue on the subject.
"People are sometimes afraid of handicapped people,"
Lori added for good measure. "I guess they're afraid it's catching."
Wendy remained stubbornly silent.
"The authorities are still looking for Gloria," she
concluded. "You'll only frighten yourself by assuming the worst."
Wendy turned in upon herself, preferring the horror
of her own imaginings to the prim and useless logic of a calculating
adult. Lori had little choice but to leave her tormented daughter to her
own resources. Pushing too hard would only make things worse.
She closed the door gently on the way out. Leslie
looked up as he rummaged through the refrigerator for a snack and selected
a plum. He bore a wicked grin. "Ronnie saw Wendy naked," he said,
capitalizing on the opportunity to retaliate for Wendy's generally
cavalier treatment of her younger brother.
"The flat of my hand will paddle your naked little
butt if you don't go find something useful for your prepubescent self to
do."
"My pre-what?" he shrieked, but whirled about
and ran giggling through the house before trying her patience to the
breaking point.
Lori paced the kitchen, trying to keep her crises in
order. She snatched the wall phone from its mount and pecked out a
familiar number.
"Radcliff residence," rang an authoritative voice
that sounded almost masculine in intensity, a voice and an attitude that
had driven away a passive husband and possibly Karen’s missing daughter.
Hopefully, it wasn't the voice of a murderess.
"It's me," Lori said. "Ralph McBride got fired from
his job. He's probably out getting drunk. If he causes Amy trouble, can
you take the twins for the night?"
Karen groaned in misery. "Oh, Lori! Not again!"
"I know, but if I take them, they'll keep Wendy and
Leslie awake to all hours, and I doubt if they slept well stranded in
Clayton last night."
Karen sighed heavily. "Yes, of course, I'll be more
than glad to help, if it comes to that. I'll not have that weasel
pounding on that poor woman, not that she isn't in need of therapy
herself."
"Thanks. I'll call if there's a problem."
Karen's heavy breathing persisted. "Has Sheriff
Danielson spoken with you yet?"
"He stopped by last night," Lori said carefully.
"And?"
Experience had taught her that Karen's belligerence
needed a firm hand. "And nothing. He asked a few harmless questions and
I haven't heard back from him yet."
"Sheriff Danielson is a fair man. He doesn't jump to
conclusions like some people."
"Granted."
"Sheriff Danielson says it was probably just a
horrible accident." Karen's voice was taut with tension. "I can't
imagine who would want to harm the poor woman. He said that such
incidents are more common than we might think. When I was a child, my
mother was all the time threatening to throttle me and throw me to the
pigs."
"Mine, too," Lori said hurriedly.
But it was too late for Karen to claim innocence.
“Oh, my God, not again!”
Karen's terrible cry still echoed in Lori's memory.
She’d be forever unwilling to ask what it may have meant, forever hoping
it meant nothing at all of any consequence.
"Honest, Karen,” she said to break the uncomfortable
silence. “It's just a figure of speech. We all understand."
Karen blew her nose with a snort. "Lori, you're a
true friend. My only friend. Call me if I'm needed."
Lori hung up, closed her eyes, and basked in the
blissful silence that followed.
She wandered the house for the balance of the
evening, battling to keep her mind a calm void. Wendy fell asleep without
venturing from her room. Leslie lost consciousness in the middle of an
old Batman movie and was unceremoniously dumped into bed and stripped to
his underwear.
Lori was sitting at the kitchen table at midnight
when Dave's pickup pulled up alongside the house. Dave seemed reasonably
well-coordinated letting himself in through the unlocked screen door. He
switched on the light and stood glaring at her with an expression
calculated to hold criticism at bay, swaying to and for and filling the
kitchen with the sweat-contaminated aroma of alcohol. Lori resisted the
temptation to suggest he extinguish the pilot light in the stove rather
than risk self-immolation.
"What the hell's with you always sitting around in
the dark?" he muttered grumpily.
"It's Saturday night, Dave. I'm waiting for Amy to
call for help, as usual."
"Playing nursemaid to that foolish woman again?"
Dave rummaged through the refrigerator and took out a
can of beer and what remained of the turkey-ham. He turned the kitchen
light back off and sat at the dining room table to eat in the dark.
"Why didn't you just stay in town?" The intensity of
the anger seeping past her self-control alarmed her. "Why do you even
bother driving home anymore?"
"This is a hell of an hour of the day to be nagging."
Dave lit and smoked a cigarette. Lori watched his
agitation intensify. He wanted to talk. They had been able to talk
freely early in their marriage, but this night fifteen years down the
road, he snuffed out the cigarette and tramped off to bed in grim
silence. A half hour later his snoring filled the house from one end to
the other.
The phone rang at two in the morning. Lori snatched
the living room extension from its cradle on the second ring.
"Lori, he's drunk! Please, help me!"
Amy screamed. Lori heard Ralph's drunken grunt in
the background. The phone made a crackling noise and went dead.
Lori thumbed the disconnect and tapped out the number
of the Teller County Sheriff's Department stationed outside Clayton thirty
miles away. She didn't know the switchboard operator by name, but she
recognized the woman's voice. "Ralph McBride is drunk and beating on his
wife and kids again. Can you have a car here as soon as possible?"
"One should be on its way immediately," came the
smooth reply.
Immediately wouldn't be soon enough. She phoned
Karen for back-up, and then left the house and started down the sidewalk
toward Amy's house two blocks away. Karen's stocky figure emerged from
the darkness between two neighboring houses. They crossed a street like a
marching army of two and ducked through swarming mayflies beneath the
subdued glow of a street lamp.
From the opposite direction, Amy emerged from the
night like a wraith with three-year-old Timothy tucked beneath one arm and
her free hand held against her bleeding face. The second of the set of
twins, Gertie, the better walker of the two, stumbled along behind her
mother, wailing at the top of her lungs. Ralph emerged from the house
behind his battle-scarred family, bellowing obscenities and staggering
heavily from side to side.
Lori scooped up Gertie smelling of stale diapers and
sour milk and hurried Amy to safety. Karen lifted Timothy into her arms
and blocked Ralph's path with her heavy legs spread wide and her free fist
resting on a broad hip. Confronted by the formidable mass of angered
womanhood, Ralph muttering a belligerent, but impotent protest, and turned
away.
The three women and two shrieking toddlers took a
short cut through dark yards to Karen's house situated on the block behind
Lori's property. The twins already knew Karen as a major source of
security in their young lives and latched themselves tightly to the cooing
woman.
Lori left Amy seated on Karen’s couch with a cool
washcloth held to her bruised face. She went back out into the night
alone, their respective roles in the two-year-old routine well-rehearsed.
She paced the curb in front of the McBride house, alone in the dark and
the isolation with a peculiar, but not entirely unpleasant tension
mounting inside her.
A Teller County Sheriff's patrol car pulled quietly
to the curb at her side. The driver restrained his partner and climbed
alone from the car. Lori’s heart pounded.
Trent Scarelli stood Dave's height, although far
better proportioned and a decade younger to boot, a year or two older than
herself, perhaps. He was classically dark and handsome with eyes like
midnight and a shock of black hair that kept itself in place in thick
waves. He approached with his thumbs stuck in his belt, Lori’s knees
weakening with each step that diminished the distance between them.
"I understand that I missed you at the Cornell farm
last night," he said.
She sighed to calm the shudder in her breathing.
"Karen sent me home before you arrived."
"I'm glad you went willingly. It was a bad evening
for us."
"It was awful."
He gazed down at her without a smile. "We're going
to have to quit meeting like this, ma'am. The sheriff's getting
suspicious."
"It's really not funny, Trent. Amy and the kids are
at Karen's."
The deputy sighed in exasperation. "Look, if he's
going to sleep it off..."
"Amy's hurt and the children are hysterical. They
can’t go home with him there.”
He shrugged. “Tell Amy we're going to have to charge
a laundry bill if this keeps up. Ralph gets car sick, you know."
"Spin him in circles before you put him in the car.
Let him barf on his own property."
He chuckled finally, showing dazzling white teeth
contrasting so nicely against his weathered tan. She quipped with him
just to coax that magnificent smile out into the open, even from the
depths of frustration. She couldn’t help herself.
His smile faded, but he continued to gaze at her
unselfconsciously. "I heard about the plant closing. You and the kids
are going to have a rough time of it."
She felt a chill of both delicious excitement and
alarm. Did he really care, or would he try to take advantage of her,
given the opportunity? After all, what did she know about this beautiful
man except for his strange reputation as a recluse without a mate?
Now wasn't the time to be entertaining idle
fantasies. It was too easy to talk to Trent, and she didn't like the
knowing smile on the lips of his partner. What in the name of God would
happen if Dave saw her chatting so amiably, or if word got back to him
through less reliable channels?
She mumbled some feeble excuse about getting back to
the twins and turned away. The weight of his stare was upon her as she
hurried back down the sidewalk.
A thought struck at her and turned her about with an
almost physical force. "Was it an accident? About Virginia, I mean.”
He gave her a pained look. "I'm not supposed to talk
about it. The coroner and the sheriff make those kinds of
determinations."
"Okay, but Sheriff Danielson doesn't think Karen had
anything to do with it, does he?"
Trent gave a reluctant shrug of indecision on the
matter. "The sheriff keeps an open mind during these kinds of
investigations. He's good at what he does."
She nodded agreement. "He does. He's a good man."
"Lori, we don't know what happened for sure."
"Let me know when you find out for certain?"
"I'll let you know. I promise."
She hurried away and sought the protection of the
shadows, stopping in the dark alongside her own house to let a wave of
panic burn itself out. Her entire life had come unglued. Their flirting
had been an innocent pastime for years. Without her marriage standing as
a shield between them as it had in the past, there was no longer anything
innocent about it.
She went into the dark house to check on Leslie and
Wendy. She paused, listening to the steady rhythm of Dave's snoring, then
picked up the kitchen extension to phone Karen.
"They took Ralph in for the night," she said. "How
is Amy doing?"
"Shaken is all," Karen said gruffly. "She'll be
fine."
"Did you talk to her about filing charges?"
"I have. As usual. She refuses."
Lori leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.
Maybe things were under control for the moment. "Okay. Don't be too hard
on her. Thanks for helping."
The phone clicked dead. Lori set it back in place.
"Mom?"
Leslie's sleepy call from his bedroom evaporated her
self-pity in the heat of a fierce maternal protectiveness. "I'm here,"
she called back to him. "Go to sleep, Tiger."
"Is everything okay?"
"Everything's fine."
Which couldn't have been further from the truth.
Worrying about the facts of the matter would keep her awake for half the
night. And then she'd have the dream of the glass eye to contend with.
In the morning, she would have to find out once and for all how and where
Dave spent his afternoons after work. She had a plan, and the outcome
would steer the course of her life to come.
A stray line from a childhood poem drifted through
her troubled thoughts.
And miles to go before I sleep…
