John Saul (23 page)

Joey moved along the hall to the head of the stairs, then down to the first floor. Another scent caught his attention, and he followed it into the kitchen.

With no light to guide him except the dim glow of the waning moon shining through the scudding clouds, Joey went to the sink and knelt down by the door of the cupboard below it. As he opened the cabinet, the scent grew stronger. Joey reached into the wastebasket, his fingers closing on a piece of butcher’s paper.

Clutching the paper in both his hands, he held it to his nose.

The tangy scent of fresh blood filled his nostrils now, and he felt saliva begin to run in his mouth.

His tongue flicked out, tasting the drying blood left on the paper, which only a few hours ago had wrapped the steaks his godmother had fixed for dinner that evening.

His tongue worked faster, licking the blood up, his mouth filling with pungent flavor.

Finally, when the paper was licked clean, he dropped it back into the wastebasket and moved to the refrigerator.

Opening it, he blinked in the glare of the refrigerator’s
light, but his eyes quickly adjusted to the brilliance, and he found what he was looking for.

On the lowest shelf were half a dozen more steaks, each of them wrapped in transparent plastic, stacked neatly on a large plate.

His stomach screaming with hunger now, he snatched up one of the steaks and began ripping the plastic away, the odor of raw meat nearly overwhelming him. He held the meat close to his mouth, then sank his teeth into it, tearing away a piece, swallowing it almost before he’d had a chance to chew it.

“Joey? What are you doing?”

The voice startled Joey. He spun around, the raw steak still clutched in one hand, the torn plastic in the other. Instinctively, he wiped the blood from his lips with one of his pajama sleeves. As the kitchen lights came on, he blinked, then recognized Logan standing just inside the kitchen door, staring curiously at him.

“You can’t eat that!” Logan exclaimed. “It’s not even cooked!”

“I’m not doing anything,” Joey replied, thrusting his hands behind his back in a quick, guilty motion. “What are you doing down here, anyway? If Aunt MaryAnne catches you—”

But before he could complete the sentence, MaryAnne herself appeared behind Joey in the doorway. “Joey? Logan? Why aren’t you two in bed?”

Logan’s arm came up and he pointed accusingly at Joey. “He’s got a steak, and he’s eating it. It’s not even cooked, Mom! He’s eating it raw!”

Her eyes widening in shock, MaryAnne stared at Joey, until he finally pulled his hands from behind his back. “I-I wasn’t eating it,” he stammered. “I was hungry, and I found it in the refrigerator.” He looked up despairingly at MaryAnne. “I thought—I was going to cook it, but—I’m not sure how.”

The misery on the boy’s face wrenched at MaryAnne, her annoyance that once again he’d gotten up in the middle of the night tempered by the knowledge that, having skipped dinner, he must be ravenously hungry. “Okay,” she
sighed. “Let me get Logan back in bed, then I’ll fry it up for you. But then it’s right back to bed for you, too, and no arguments. All right?”

Joey nodded silently, and MaryAnne spun Logan around, aimed him toward the stairs, then swatted him affectionately on the bottom. “Upstairs,” she ordered. “Go on! Scoot!” Herding him ahead of her, she followed the little boy up the stairs.

The second she was gone, Joey’s attention returned to the raw meat in his hand. Tearing at it with both his fingers and his teeth, he began cramming it into his mouth, swallowing all of it in less than a minute.

By the time MaryAnne had gotten Logan settled back in bed, Joey had thrown away the plastic the meat had been wrapped in, shoving it deep down to the bottom of the wastebasket.

He’d washed the blood from his hands and face and was wiping them dry as MaryAnne stepped into the kitchen. “I changed my mind,” he said. “I just drank some milk.”

MaryAnne frowned uncertainly. “You’re sure that’s all you want?”

Joey nodded, started toward the kitchen door, then impulsively hugged her. “I’m really sorry I messed up,” he said. “I’ll try not to do it again.”

MaryAnne wrapped her arms around him, held him close for a moment, then released him. “Well, one of the things you can do is stay in bed all night for once.” Tempering her words with a smile, she shooed him toward the stairs. “Now go on—scat! I’ll shut off the light.” Joey darted up the stairs, and MaryAnne reached for the light switch, then paused, her eyes on the refrigerator.

Feeling faintly silly, knowing the thought that had flicked through her mind was ridiculous, she nevertheless found herself crossing the kitchen and opening the refrigerator door.

She counted the steaks on the plate on the bottom shelf.

Earlier, there had been six.

She was certain of it.

Now, there were only five.

When she finally turned off the lights and started back
up the stairs, her mind was spinning and her stomach felt nauseous.

She would get no more sleep tonight.

She was living with a boy she didn’t know.

“G
oing to be an early winter,” Bill Sikes commented, glancing up at the sky. It was much colder this morning, and though the rain clouds from the day before were gone, the first wisps of a new front were already visible. “See those?” he asked, pointing up to the streamers of white that were drifting out of the north. “Coming down from the Arctic. Be surprised if we don’t get snow before the week’s out.”

“Snow?” MaryAnne asked. “But it’s barely the beginning of September!”

The hired man shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time it happened. Didn’t hardly have any snow at all last winter.” A cynical grin twisted his lips. “Damn near wrecked the ski season. Another winter like that one, and the developer fellas are gonna be real unhappy!”

“It doesn’t sound like that bothers you even a little bit,” MaryAnne observed. As a gust of wind blew down from the mountains, she turned up the collar of the heavy shearling jacket she’d found in the coat closet that morning. “Don’t you think we’d better get the horses back in the barn?”

“They’ll be spending enough time inside once the weather hits,” Sikes replied, pivoting to watch the three horses he’d turned out of the barn two hours earlier. “It’s good for them to be outside—it’s where they belong. Not right, keeping them cooped up all the time. Ever wonder what they think about, just standin’ in a stall all day?”

“I’m not sure they think at all,” MaryAnne replied.

The weathered caretaker shook his head. “That’s what lotsa people say, but don’t you believe it Just makes them
feel better about how they treat the animals. They figure if the animals don’t think, they don’t suffer. But you just look at ’em!”

MaryAnne’s gaze shifted to the field, where Sheika was cantering along the far fence, her head high, her tail streaming behind her. The other two horses—the dappled gelding that had been Audrey’s, and the bay that was Joey’s own—were standing together, head to tail, grazing contentedly. “Have you thought about what we were talking about the other day? Are you still thinking of leaving?”

“Well, now, I’ll tell you,” Sikes drawled, reaching down to pick up a piece of straw which he clamped between his teeth. “I
have
been thinkin’, and it seems to me like it wouldn’t be right for me to up and take off, if you’re planning to stick with it.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “That’s what you’re planning, isn’t it?”

“I think so,” MaryAnne replied. Then: “Bill, what can you tell me about Joey?”

The caretaker’s eyes darkened slightly. “What about him?”

MaryAnne hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Well, he doesn’t seem to have many friends. I mean, the Stiffle twins live right down the road, and it seems like they’d all play together, doesn’t it?”

“Joey’s a loner,” Sikes replied, his eyes still fixed on the horses in the field. “Nothin’ wrong with that.”

“But why?” MaryAnne pressed. “Did something happen between them? Alison says the other kids at school don’t seem to like Joey.”

Bill Sikes spat the remains of the straw he’d been chewing to the ground, and finally turned to face MaryAnne. “Far’s I can see, there’s two kinds of people in the world. The ones that get along with other people, and the ones that don’t. Mostly, the ones that don’t get along with people, get along with animals. Seems like Joey’s one of the ones who gets along with animals. Nothin’ wrong with
that
.”

An hour later, as she headed down the road toward town, MaryAnne’s thoughts circled over and around what Bill Sikes had told her. Could that really be all there was to Joey’s lack of friendships with other children? Could it really
be as simple as his preferring the company of animals? Certainly, that would explain his going out to sleep in the barn the night before last. And yet he seemed to get along just fine with Alison and Logan. By the time she pulled up to the building that housed all twelve grades of the Sugarloaf school district, MaryAnne was wondering if she really needed to talk to anyone at the school at all. When she’d called and made the appointment at eight o’clock this morning, it had seemed the logical thing to do, yet after her brief conversation with Bill Sikes, she was no longer sure. Sikes, after all, had known Joey practically all his life. Surely, if the boy had a problem, the caretaker would have known about it.

But would he have told her?

She slid the Range Rover into an empty slot in the parking lot and found her way to the principal’s office, where Florence Wickman was waiting for her.

“I’m glad you called this morning.” The principal was a heavyset woman with prematurely gray hair. She ushered MaryAnne into her office, closed the door, and indicated a worn leather chair in front of her desk. “As it happens, I was going to call you this afternoon.”

MaryAnne lowered herself onto the chair, perching nervously on its edge. “You were going to call me?” she repeated. “Is there a problem with one of my children?”

Florence Wickman leaned back in her own chair. “Not at all. But I wondered how much you might know about Joey’s …” She paused, as if looking for the right word, then sighed heavily. “Well, I suppose ‘problems’ is the best way to put it.”

MaryAnne’s heart sank. So there
was
more to it than Joey’s simply being a loner. “I guess that’s why I’m here. A couple of things have happened, and my daughter tells me that a lot of the children don’t seem to like Joey. I guess I’m feeling as though I need some information.”

Mrs. Wickman picked up a folder, opened it, and handed it to MaryAnne. “I think it’s all in there. When Joey first came to kindergarten, he was the shyest little boy you ever saw. He hardly spoke to anyone—kept to himself. Nothing unusual about that—especially with only children. But as
he started growing up, he didn’t seem to become as well-socialized as the rest of the children. He never had a best friend, and never seemed interested in making one.” She nodded toward the folder. “He also had a lot of trouble paying attention in classes,” she went on. “Practically all his teachers have said he tends to daydream a lot. He often just sits staring out the window, as if he’s seeing things nobody else sees.” She paused, then spoke again. “And there were the fights.”

“Fights?” MaryAnne echoed.

“Not terrible ones,” the principal replied, her brows knitting into a thoughtful frown. “But strange ones. When he was in fifth—maybe sixth—grade, it seemed to be worst, and they never really started out as fights. It was almost as if it was no more than roughhousing that got out of hand. And the boys he fought with were always both older and bigger than Joey.” She hesitated again, then seemed to make up her mind to go on. “I always wondered if perhaps it didn’t have something to do with Ted.”

“Ted?” MaryAnne asked, baffled now. “What on earth could it have to do with Ted?”

Mrs. Wickman spread her hands, a gesture meant to placate. “I’m not saying it did. But I always wondered if the fact that Joey invariably wound up fighting against bigger, older boys, wasn’t some way of striking out at his father.”

“I can’t believe—”

“Again, Mrs. Carpenter, I’m not saying I understand it all. But if Ted was a strong disciplinarian, it would make sense, wouldn’t it? If there was no way Joey felt he could win against his father, mightn’t he try to win a fight with someone else—bigger and stronger than he—as a way of validating his own personality?”

MaryAnne’s nerves began to tingle. Here it was again—the intimation that Ted and Joey had had frightening problems. “Are you saying that Ted was an abusive father?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice neutral.

“I’m not sure I’m saying anything at all,” Florence Wickman quickly assured her. “I’m just searching for an explanation. At any rate,” she went on, settling back in her
chair once again, “it’s all been much better, the last year or so. Joey was in counseling for awhile—”

“Counseling?” MaryAnne broke in. “Was it that bad?”

“I’m afraid it was, for a while. For a year or two, Audrey was quite worried about Joey. And although he’s been much better lately, I can’t help but think the loss of his parents might be a setback for him. It also occurred to me that you might not be aware of everything that’s happened.” She smiled. “You know what they say: ‘forewarned is forearmed.’ And it just seemed best that I have a talk with you.”

“I see.” MaryAnne let out the breath she’d been holding. “But you said things have been better?”

“Much,” Florence Wickman told her. “I suspect that simply having two more children in the house will help him a great deal.” She glanced up at the clock. “I hope all this hasn’t upset you too much, but I did feel you ought to know about it. And if there’s anything I can do to help …” She let the words hang in the air. MaryAnne rose to her feet.

“Thank you,” she said automatically, still trying to sort out all the information the principal had given her.

As she stepped out of the office, the noon bell went off and the wide corridor began filling with children pouring out of the classrooms. Threading her way among them, MaryAnne didn’t notice Joey standing at the end of the hall.