The Town (19 page)

The front door of the house was wide open, and he knew flies were getting inside, but he wasn’t about to go back and shut the door. He thought of leaving, walking over to Scott’s or something, but he was supposed to stay home, and his parents would be ticked if he left. He’d probably be grounded for a week. So he sat down on a large rock, facing the house so he could watch it, prepared to haul ass at the slightest hint of anything strange.

He still desperately had to take a leak, and after a few minutes passed and there was no sign of movement, he stood, glanced around to make sure there was no one coming, and moved behind a paloverde tree to relieve himself.

He’d just zipped up when he heard the sound of an engine on the road behind him. He turned as a car pulled into the drive. A dusty old Plymouth rattled down the gravel trail, and he saw Babunya in the passenger seat and another old lady driving. The car braked to a stop next to him, and Babunya got out. She closed the car door, waved to the other woman, said something in Russian, and the old lady said something in reply before backing up.

Babunya’s smile disappeared as soon as the car hit the road. “Why you outside?” she asked, and something in the set of her face told him that she suspected what was wrong.

He told her.

He described his strange feeling, the fear he’d felt being alone in the house, the sounds he’d heard, the shadow he thought he’d seen.

She nodded, seemingly unsurprised.

“What are we going to do?” Adam asked. He looked back toward the house, shivered as he saw the open door. “Should we wait for Mom and Dad?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Don’t tell parents. Better they not know for now.”

“But they have to know!”

She shook her head. “I take care of it.”

She grabbed his hand, and he was grateful for her strength, reassured by both her attitude and her apparent conviction.

“I already bless house,” she said. “No evil spirit here. This only minor thing.”

They walked up to the house, and Babunya continued to hold his hand as she stood in the open doorway, bowed her head, and said a quick Russian prayer.

He didn’t know if it was the prayer that did it or if whatever had been in the house had already left, but he felt no trepidation as he looked into the house now. For the first time since his parents had left to go shopping, he was able to breathe easy.

“It gone,” Babunya told him. She smiled at him as she squeezed his hand. “Close door,” she said. “We go inside.”

Gregory sorted through the screws and bolts in the metal bin at the rear of the hardware store, feeling better than he had in weeks. He’d just dropped his mother off at Onya Rogoff’s, and while she wasn’t quite her old hardheaded, judgmental, opinionated self, at least she had finally snapped out of her funk and was resuming some semblance of her normal life. She had not yet gone back to church, but she was meeting once again with other Molokan women, planning times to get together to make bread and borscht, and Gregory was grateful that the rather frightening apathy into which she had fallen had somewhat dissipated.

Somewhat.

She was still far more listless and uninvolved than usual.

He wondered what the Molokans were planning to do about Jim Ivanovitch’s murder. His mother had not mentioned the minister since the funeral, but his death had been an unspoken subtext in her words and attitude ever since, and he knew that those old women were discussing a lot more than food preparation when they got together. It was clear that they believed some sort of demon or evil spirit had killed the minister and that his mother, at least, was staying away from the church for that reason. She was not avoiding the building because she did not want to be reminded of Jim—she thought that the building was cursed or haunted, and she would not set foot in it until it was cleansed and she was sure it was free from evil influences.

He was not able to be as sarcastic and skeptical about that as he wished.

Nikolai Michikoff had apparently taken over the reins of the ministry—he had both wanted to do so and Vera Afonin had had a dream that he should, which cemented it—but Gregory was not even sure that
he
had returned to the church since the funeral. Every time he walked or drove past it, the building looked empty, deserted, and he had to admit that the church looked a little creepy even to him.

The other woman who had been killed last week bothered him as well. The barmaid. Her murder seemed to bother a lot of other people, too, and the concern now was that there was a serial killer in McGuane. The prospect had everyone nervous. In a town where the crime rate was perpetually low and most arrests were for disorderly conduct and drunk driving, violent crime and the potential for repeat violence set everyone on edge.

He just hoped that it
was
a killer.

Killers could be caught.

But the things his mother worried about . . .

Gregory pushed the thought out of his mind.

He finally found the size of bolt that he was looking for, put six of them into one of the tiny paper bags provided, and walked up to the front counter to pay for his purchase.

Teo sat in the
banya
and cried.

Today, once again, she’d been pushed down by Mary Kay and Kim at morning recess and this time she’d had to go to the nurse’s office and get a Band-Aid for her scraped elbow. Later, as usual, she’d had to eat lunch all by herself because no one would sit with her. She hadn’t even
gone
to afternoon recess but had asked Mrs. Collins if she could stay in the classroom and read, and her teacher had let her.

Another typical school day.

She hadn’t said anything to Adam or Sasha about any of this—and definitely not to her parents—but she’d considered talking to Babunya about her troubles. She needed to talk to
someone
.

She was miserable.

She hated school. All of the kids were dumb and mean, and none of them liked her. She knew her parents wouldn’t understand, though. They would pat her on the head, tell her everything was going to be all right, and suggest that she make an effort to talk to other kids and make friends. Adam and Sasha would just make fun of her.

She wasn’t like the rest of them, though. She didn’t know how to make friends, and no matter what she did, the kids in her class would continue to make fun of her.

Babunya might understand, but Babunya had been acting weird lately, and Teo figured it would be better just to wait and talk to her later.

She rubbed her eyes with a finger, wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. She’d been forbidden to go to the
banya
by herself, but she felt like being alone today and the bathhouse was the only place she could be sure of not being bothered. So she told her mom that she was going to play in the backyard and immediately headed over to the far side of their property, to the
banya
.

Now she sat on one of the broken bench boards and looked up at the stick ceiling. She liked the bathhouse; she enjoyed coming here for some reason. Babunya, she knew, didn’t like it at all, but she felt relaxed in the
banya
, at home. It was cool inside, and there was an aura of peace and tranquillity that made her feel cozy and comfortable despite the run-down condition of the place.

She wiped away one last tear. She could cry in here and no one would hear, she could talk to herself and no one would know. The
banya
was a place where she could escape from the problems of the world outside and just be by herself. It was nice to be alone sometimes, and this was the perfect place to do it. No parents around, no brother, no sister, no other kids, no other adults.

Just her.

She looked around the bathhouse—at the rubble strewn all over the floor, at the picture of the Molokan man on the far wall. If this place was fixed up, it could be like a little fort or a playhouse. If she had friends, she could bring them here and they could pretend this was a home or a castle or a secret hideout or . . . anything. They could clean up this junk and bring in some toys and make this place decent.

If
she had friends.

That was the problem.

She heard the voice, a whisper, coming from somewhere within the bathhouse. The sun was going down, and the room was filled with more shadows than light, but it was still too small to hide another person, even a child, and she was getting ready to dismiss the voice, to assume she’d imagined it, when it came again.

The shadows shifted, moved. Nothing passed in front of the door, nothing moved outside, but the darkness within the bathhouse flowed clockwise, like a scene in a film using time-lapse photography, and shadows swirled slowly over the rubble in the center of the room before dispersing and once again flattening out on the walls and ceiling.

There seemed something different about the picture of the Molokan man on the far wall, but Teo couldn’t quite figure out what it was. She knew she should probably be scared, but for some reason she wasn’t, and she adjusted her butt on the board but did not stand up. This was weird, but it was not frightening, and the
banya
still felt friendly to her.

It was the bathhouse itself that was talking to her, she realized now, and, hesitantly, tentatively, she said,

“Yes?”

“I’m hungry,”
the
banya
whispered.

Into her mind popped the image of a dead animal. A small dead animal, a rat or a hamster. She didn’t know what made her think of such a thing, but she knew with a certainty she could not explain that that was what the bathhouse craved. It
was
hungry, and it had not been fed in a long time, and it had somehow recognized in her a kindred spirit. It wanted to be her friend.

“Friend,”
the
banya
whispered, agreeing.

And again:
“I’m hungry.”

There was the slightest hint of desperation in the voice, and Teo thought for a moment. She’d seen a dead rat somewhere recently. Somewhere nearby.

No. A bird. It was a bird she’d seen, on the side of the path on her way over here, and she stood up and hurried out of the bathhouse and back down the path the way she’d come. Sure enough, there it was, lying in a small tuft of dried brown weeds, several dead cottonwood leaves having blown against its unmoving form, one covering its feet like a blanket, one next to its head like a pulled-over pillow.

She crouched down next to the weeds and examined the bird. It looked like a baby. It was small, and there was something innocent and delicate about its little body. Usually, things like this grossed her out. Adam was always pushing dead bugs on her, holding up worms and dried beetles in front of her face, forcing her to look at flattened frogs in the road. And she supposed that was why she had passed it by on her way to the
banya
.

But it did not gross her out now, and while she felt sorry for the little birdie, she realized that it still had a function to perform, that even though it was dead it was still useful. Everything had more than one purpose, and it made the birdie’s death seem not so sad when she understood that it could help maintain the life of the
banya
.

She wished she had a shovel, but it was getting late and even if she ran all the way back to the house to get one, it would be too dark for her to find this spot again. Already the light was fading and the bird’s body had started to blend in with the weeds and leaves on the ground. She reached out and picked up the bird, scooping it up using both hands. The lifeless body felt surprisingly stiff and cold, and instinctively she curled her hands around it, trying to warm it up. It was not disgusting to her at all, and she wondered why she had once been afraid of things like this. Death was perfectly natural, and there was nothing scary about it. After creatures lived, they died. That was the way it was supposed to be.

She carried the dead bird back to the
banya
and placed its body on the pile of small bones in the center of the room. Immediately, she felt the play of cool wind on her face, light, soft breezes that came in from all directions, caressing her skin with a feathery touch and then disappearing into the dark. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before, the most sublime form of thank-you she had ever known.

There was a pause. A hush.

She sensed that the
banya
was grateful, that it was anxious to satisfy its hunger. But it did not want her here while it ate—she sensed that as well—and so she retreated, walking back outside.

She turned, once she was through the doorway, but the body of the bird was already gone, swallowed by shadows.

From inside the building came the whisper of air against her face:
“Thank you.”

She smiled back into the darkness. “You’re welcome.”

Julia and Deanna sat at the small table on Deanna’s back porch, sipping iced tea.

“I love what you’ve done here,” Julia said.

Her friend smiled. “Thank you.”

Julia really was impressed. The yard looked like something out of
Country Living
or one of those kinds of magazines. A rustic birdhouse emerged from an overgrown patch of pink Mexican primrose, and a narrow dirt path wound between purple-blooming sage and a host of wildly growing desert plants. She and Gregory hadn’t had time to get their yard in shape—they’d cleaned it up a bit, but they hadn’t started planting—and looking at Deanna’s backyard gave her quite a few ideas, making her eager to start working on her own garden. Maybe this weekend, they’d go over to the nursery and buy some seedlings.

“Paul told me that Gregory had a run-in with our old pal Marge.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a run-in. He went in the library to use their computer and she put on a big fake smile and told him that they all missed me.”