Scowler (21 page)

Less than ten feet from the shed, for no reason that was apparent, Sniggety stopped. The red drama of dusk felt sudden, and all three of the watchers leaned forward and squinted. Sniggety lowered an investigative muzzle and nosed something on the ground. He pawed. His tail swayed in uncertain patterns. Then his tongue emerged to lap.

Marvin turned away first.

“He’s hmmmm. He’s hmmmm.”

Jo Beth was the next to turn away, averting her eyes to Ry, and when that proved too disgraceful she lowered them to the incinerated dirt at her feet. Ry squinted at the front
lawn for another moment. Sniggety’s loins were braced, his teeth low and busy. A primordial part of Ry recognized what was happening and his stomach contracted. The old dog had always had a taste for dead flesh.

“Hold the line.” Marvin’s voice was unsteady. Through his shirt pocket he drew strength from the hidden object. He pointed to where the rope angled over the edge of the crater. “I’m going to rock the car. Don’t let that rope go slack. You do
not
let it go slack.”

Ry nodded and kneeled. Even through gloves the rope felt alive. He longed to somehow avert Sarah’s eyes from the sight of Phinny’s desecration, just as he had done during the man’s final moments of life. Sarah, though, was nothing if not a starer and would undoubtedly get her fill.

Marvin got into the car and Jo Beth lost control. Her hips made weak ovals and her eyes cast high over Ry’s head and into the wilds of Black Glade. She concentrated in the opposite direction of Sarah’s path and that took strength. Ry, prisoner to his heart, could only look to the toolshed, where Sarah resumed picking her way across the lawn.

The car horn honked, and instinctively Ry took the rope with both hands. The tenor of the engine changed and he felt in his palms the backward sway of the car as it tried to rock from the pit. But it was Sarah he watched. She approached the downed telephone wires like the pythons they were, her nightgowned arms stretched like sails, her body displaying unexpected acrobatic prowess. Errant electric sparks drew yellow lines across blue air; it was nearly evening, a perfect though dangerous time for escape.

The rope slithered through his gloves and the heat of the meteorite doubled. Ry blinked—Marvin had done it, had
maneuvered the car from its pit. The rope creaked as it adjusted to the car’s new direction. This was not good. Ry looked at the car and saw that it now directly faced Sarah, who was making a spectacle of herself by hopping around. Marvin would see her. Ry panicked and turned to Furrington for guidance, because he had just had the most dangerous idea of his life.

He set his boot alongside the hook latched to the rock’s guts.

“Furrington? Furrington!”

“Quiet,” Jo Beth pleaded.

The bear, meanwhile, tilted toward silos.

“Heading back, methinks.” He was far away now. “Not feeling tip-top.”

The car chewed dirt. The line snaked. The meteorite, huge and bleeding mud, propped upon the lip of the crater. In the car, Marvin turned to face forward, aiming himself right at Sarah. No time, no time—Ry’s toe dug at the hook.

“What do I do?” he cried. “Please! Furrington!”

“Shut up!” Jo Beth hissed.

The bear’s bowler hat moved across the dying sun and his voice dwindled to nothing.

Ry could wait no longer. He kicked at the rock and his aim was true. The hook fired from the meteorite with a glassy shatter. A foot-long ebony shard spun through the air like a vampire bat, and the rope flung back at the car with such force that it blasted the field with a cough of gray. The Beetle, suddenly lighter, spun out and ended crooked with a startled Marvin punching the brakes. Almost playfully, the meteorite tumbled down the crater and seconds later splashed back home in the puddle of mud. Ry did not see it, though,
because he was staring at his sister as she reached the road. A second later she turned right and disappeared.

Marvin opened the car door and considered the spilled rope.

Ry found himself laughing—great big wheezes. Jo Beth looked at her son, her lips twitching with a silent question. Ry nodded through his convulsions. She lifted a hand to touch her lips, and when she confirmed to herself that she was still there, she accepted the truth: Her youngest child was free. She sobbed once, hard. Ry saw daylight sparkling through the old holes of her ears and between her fingers, and he could see every other tiny scar on her body—an illusion brought on by squinting, but one he liked.

Marvin approached until he was close enough to read the relief on their faces, which told him everything he needed to know. They had conspired against him. His
family
. He faced south and perhaps for a moment entertained the fantasy of a pursuit complete with bullets blazing from the window of the Beetle. But there were a dozen reasons why the idea was worthless—Sarah’s head start; which way she went; the way tires caught in ditches. This fight was lost.

Marvin nudged his shoe at the single dagger of meteorite remaining topside.

Verse: “Hmmmm.”

“That’s right,” Ry laughed.

Chorus: “Hm hm.”

Verse again, though this time Ry took it: “Hmmmmmmmm.”

He did not witness any impact; the man had speed. Air left Ry’s body in a crush, and the sweat, dirt, and blood he tasted was from his father’s shirt, wadded against his tongue as the two of them twisted through the first embrace of
their life—kind of euphoric, really—until Ry recognized that they were airborne, then rolling down an embankment, then crashing alongside the meteorite in a single package of noisy bones. The shotgun made a chintzy chime as it glanced off the top of the rock. Marvin dropped a fist into Ry, twice, in no particular location. Ry coughed and saw another blow coming, and though he braced against it, it landed with much more success, a brick to his cheekbone. His hair was sopping, not with blood as he first feared but with the greasy mud of the meteorite’s pool. There were hands around his throat now, but they were slippery, and Ry wiggled, believing that his father could not maintain that kind of grip for long.

The grip, however, changed. Marvin’s fingers laced through his son’s hair and drove his skull into the meteorite. Ry heard a crystalline crunch. For an instant his eyes were pressed to the rock’s labyrinth and he was lost in its folds, then Marvin’s arms plunged Ry’s head underwater. His entry into liquid was like a slap to naked baby flesh; his eyes, already open, adjusted to the dim brown world. Each time he whipped his head to find air it struck the rock, expelling a glittering fog of sediment. He was total, pure awareness, especially in those seconds before blackout: Marvin’s screams, smeared by fluid; the noise melody of his mother wailing and making her way down the bank; and a third voice right there in his head, deep and steady, having been fed on the vitamins of stars.

“—WORTHLESS—”

(rarer than gold, frankincense, myrrh)

“—BETRAYED—”

(beloved)

“—SEND YOU TO HELL—”

(heaven awaits)

“—FOREVER—”

(and ever, amen)

N
ight crept across her skin like wet cement. It was pleasantly cold, pleasantly heavy, even as it threatened to fix both legs into a statue position. Sarah kept her legs turning, though, because those were her brother’s instructions. She hugged her elbows, being careful of her throbbing palm, and wished that she were wearing her long underwear instead of her nightgown. Long undies made her look like a baby, but they were a heck of a lot warmer.

It was scary how darkness bore down from all sides, but also electrifying. If only she felt better so that she could fully appreciate it. She thought, as she often did, of Ry’s journey through Black Glade, accomplished when he had been but a year younger than she was now, and as usual she felt two burns: one of pride, and one of fear that she would never measure up to such greatness. Every year at school kids came up to her and asked if Ry Burke was her brother. She used to relish the attention, but now she dodged it. At some point in her life, she would have to take the risks that would define her.

Sarah peered across the field to the north. Far away was Black Glade’s grasping horizon. Maybe she wouldn’t cut through those particular woods, but why not another shortcut? Rescuing her brother and mother was a lot more helpful than pretending to see imaginary bears, and it would reap
a greater reward than any tooth-fairy payout. Future schoolmates, when whispering about brave deeds, might mention Sarah Burke, too.

She stopped walking. Her defenseless soles stung from the gravel. Dead ahead—west—was the way to the Stricklands’. Technically, though, the Crowleys were closer. Ry had sent her along the simplest—not the quickest—route, and she felt a little affronted. Especially after the way she’d dodged those power lines and dealt with what was happening between Sniggety and Phinny. She’d earned the right to make her own decisions.

Sarah aligned herself with the waning moon. If she was right, the Crowley farm was a straight trip through this cornfield, over a hill of soy, and down into a dandelion-filled valley that Sarah had always envied. There were scads of Crowleys, seven or eight of them, including daughters older than Ry and younger than Sarah, and as she took her first step into the ditch she imagined being in their company, not the littlest or the biggest but just one of the gang, with fine and varied examples of womanhood everywhere she looked.

The yellow stalks lapped her skin like cold, dry tongues. Even in their post-harvest state the plants outstretched her, and within seconds she lost her sense of direction. That was okay—just follow the row. For a time the only sounds were the rustling of leaves and her whispered counting of paces, but after a while she noticed the stray chirping of one or two birds. That was a good sign and she brightened her step. This trip should take no more than half an hour.

Soon she came to an area where a number of stalks had been flattened. Her pause was brief. Someone had been here before her and that was another good sign, because if it had
been one of the Crowleys then she must be close to their farm. Sarah smiled. She couldn’t wait to see their faces when she showed up at their door. Those Burke kids, they were capable of anything.

Mostly she wondered if Esther Crowley would be there. She liked Esther, not because Esther had ever been especially nice to her but because she was dauntless and quick-tongued and big-breasted and made up her eyes with unparalleled artistry—and best of all she was still young enough for Sarah to exercise her own aspirations. Ry hated when Sarah teased him about Esther, and Sarah felt bad about that. But she knew—she
knew
—that Esther was exactly what her brother needed. Ry was not a normal boy. Sarah would know that even if kids at school weren’t constantly saying it. But a girlfriend, a bold one, who’d show him that there was more to life than the mazes he’d made in his mind, would work magic.

The row she was following got uglier. Stalks were smashed in great volume and furrows had been kicked through the dirt. Goose bumps erupted across her arms and neck but she told herself it was just a nighttime chill. Esther—she concentrated on Esther.

They had nearly had sex, Ry and Esther. Everyone knew this. Sarah herself had found out from Tina, one of Esther’s little sisters, who relayed the whole upsetting tale one morning on the bus. Tina’s references to anatomy and maneuvers were cryptic to Sarah, but one thing was for sure: Ry had failed tragically in his quest for romance. Sarah had sat silent for the rest of the bus ride, hands folded atop her Holly Hobbie lunch box, knowing that she should think less of Esther for spreading this story but instead resolving to redouble her efforts in bringing the two teens together. One day Ry, too,
would have the confidence to gossip about sex like it was no big deal. If that meant he had to become a little meaner, a little shallower, well, then—

Sarah stopped with such abruptness that her torso pitched. She grasped a cornstalk for stabilization, but it had no weight and snapped in two. One of her knees hit the dirt and her lips curled in disgust because she had almost touched it, this dead animal strewn across the path in front of her. It was probably a squirrel, though the pulped mass of fur and skin rendered it beyond identification. A much larger animal had been here and done this. In fact the bigger animal probably beat down this very path. Sarah told herself to keep moving and sidestepped the carnage.

Her courageous mood was spoiled. She was frightened now and that was unfair; tears welled and she tried to outrun them. Her arms were spread wide to help with balance and all at once she became aware of a slickness across her fingers. Without stopping she checked her palm and discovered a dark splotch, and she wondered if her burn had blistered. But there, on the stalks, was more of it.

The moonlight was sheepish but Sarah knew blood when she saw it. Now it wasn’t Esther that she wanted, it was Mr. Crowley, any adult. For a crazed second she even wished to see her father with that rusty old shotgun. More than anything she wanted to turn back without looking at what came next, but she knew very well that she didn’t possess that kind of discipline.

Blood was everywhere—sparkling from corn silk, winking from purple mud, gleaming in beads strung across spider-webs. Crumpled in the center of it all was a corpse, the body
heaped like bonfire wood awaiting the match. Next thing Sarah knew, she was inching closer, her naked toes picking through the surrounding viscera as if they were every bit as dangerous as live wires, until she was at an angle where she could see the man’s face. Even before that moment details were sinking in, items of clothing she recognized. Those shoes that belonged to her brother, how unspeakably horrible to find them, of all places, here.

It was Jeremiah. He was dead; she’d never seen anything deader. She made the positive ID from the clothes Jo Beth had gifted him and from those malformed hands, not from his face, because his face was only partially there, having been ripped off along with the uppermost part of his head. Sarah realized with a sick, cold sensation that the twist of flesh she had encountered earlier in the corn had not been a squirrel at all.