The Winslow Incident (9 page)

“Don’t do it!” Patience reached
for his arm. “It’s bad luck!”

“Bawk, bawk,” Sean made like a
chicken.

Tanner swiveled away from
Patience, pulled back, and flung the wood hard. They all watched the clouded
mirror crack, hold for a split second, then shatter into scores of pieces that
plinked noisily to the wood floor.

Sensing Patience’s distress, Hazel
put a hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“Oh . . . ,” Patience whispered.
“Oh, no.”

“What?” Tanner raised his hands in
mock innocence.

Patience placed her fingers over
her lips and slowly shook her head.

“Don’t tell us,” Sean said,
flicking his lighter on and off. “Three years’ bad luck.”

“Seven,” Hazel corrected, desiring
to lighten the mood. “But is that seven for Tanner or seven divided by the four
of us?”

Patience stared, unblinking, at
the dark rectangle of wallpaper where the mirror had hung.

“Guess those ghosts’ll be haunting
me now,” Tanner tried to joke with Patience and when that didn’t work, he
looked at Hazel with
whoops
written all over his face.

“There’ll be no hiding from them,”
Hazel confirmed. Thanks to recent reminders of horrors past, she feared those
words just might be true.

Patience spun to face Tanner. “You
should’ve listened to me. It’ll be worse than that.”

Accustomed as Hazel was to the
dire predictions of Winslow’s rodeo queen, she still felt bees in her stomach. Hazel
looked behind the bar at the fragments of mirror still clinging to soiled
wallpaper, alive with the light of the lantern, and heard Patience add, “For
all of us.”

Day Three of
the Heat Wave

F
retful, Hazel had hardly slept the night before.
And two restless nights in a row had left her feeling dazed and disoriented, as
if she were lost at sea.

Strolling along in the early
sunlight, she tried to convince herself that it was quite simple, really. Vet
Simmons would figure out what was wrong, give the cattle medicine, and
everything would go back to normal. Simple.

She popped into the Mercantile to
pick up groceries for her grandmother and boxes of Lemonheads and jawbreakers
for herself. She had it bad for candy—the harder the better—and her
dad kept warning her that she was bound to crack a tooth. Walking down the
humming, refrigerated aisle, she placed milk, eggs and ice cream into her
basket. Her grandmother loved dairy, which maybe explained how she’d managed to
get so old without ever breaking a hip.

After Hazel made her way to the
front of the store, she spotted Aaron Adair and his buddy Tim Hotchkiss. Both
stood staring into the big freezer next to the cash register, paralyzed, it
seemed, by the enormity of the decision at hand. Sundae cup or ice cream
sandwich? Drumstick or Rocket Pop? The wrong choice certain to lead to a
torment of unfulfilled desire. She noticed that Aaron was also holding a
half-eaten glazed donut, which she suspected he’d procured from Sean at the
bakery.

“Gonna give yourself a bellyache,”
Hazel said, walking up to the boy.

Aaron glanced at the donut in his
hand as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. Then he announced to no one in
particular: “I’m going home.”

Timmy tore his eyes away from the
freezer treats. “Why?”

Alarmed, Hazel took a step closer
to Aaron. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t feel so good.” He dropped
the donut to the floor. “I see floaty things.”

“Okay—hold on a sec.” Hazel
reached for his hand. “I’m going to The Winslow too.”

But Aaron was already rushing for
the store entrance with Timmy calling after him, “Are we still goin’ fishing
later?”

Anxious to follow Aaron so that
she could make sure he made it home all right, Hazel hurried her purchases up
to Tiny Clemshaw at the cash register.

Tiny Clemshaw was a rangy,
middle-aged man with a cotton ball of a face: no distinct features, everything just
melded together in confusing white fuzz. “That it?” he asked.

No “Good morning,” no “How are you
today, Hazel Winslow,” just “That it?” And she noticed he looked extra pasty
today. But his was the only store in town so there was no avoiding him. “That’s
it,” she said and dug into her pocket for yesterday’s tip money and pulled out
a handful of crumpled singles.

“Thirteen sixty then,” Tiny said,
tossing her items into a paper sack with uncharacteristic carelessness. Eggs on
bottom, milk on top.

She noticed then that skinny streams
of sweat were running down from his forehead, tracing the blue veins in his
temples. “Are you all right, Tiny?”

“Thirteen sixty,” he repeated and
a fat drop of sweat plipped into her grocery sack.

As she opened her mouth to protest,
Tiny said, “And ask your father to come round next time you see him. Somebody’s
been busting into my cooler and stealing my beer.”

Oops,
Hazel thought. Maybe she’d just forget to mention that to
her dad.

As it turned out, she never did
get a chance to not mention it.

T
he trouble Aaron was having keeping the
handlebars of his bike straight was only one of his problems. His stomach was
churning and he was determined to make it home before he threw up. When they
were in the first grade, Timmy barfed in Prospect Park after too many spins on
the merry-go-round, and the other kids had never let him live it down: “Look
out—he’s gonna blow!” Aaron didn’t want to be teased like that too.

Peddling like mad up Fortune Way,
he spotted his Uncle Jim heading into the Buckhorn Tavern. Uncle Jim always
used to let Aaron ride on his shoulders, making the boy feel tall too, and Aaron
was just about to call out to his uncle when he caught himself . . . because
Uncle Jim didn’t belong here anymore.

Just keep quiet.
Aaron broke out in a sweat.
Just get home.

He pedaled faster, panting and sweating
like crazy, trying not to crash his bike; he could barely see straight, let
alone steer. Suddenly Uncle Jim appeared in the middle of the road, gesturing at
Aaron to slow down. Instead, Aaron sped up, swerving at the last moment to
dodge his uncle’s spectral grasp.

Speeding recklessly, he carved the
street corner and raced up Civic Street. Up ahead, the gurgling lady with the
blood gushing out of her neck was slowly making her way up the walkway to the
library. Just as he feared, she stopped to stare straight at him as he
approached. He could turn around—but Uncle Jim was back there. So he rode
faster, racing past the lady before she could sprint down the walkway and
embrace him in her bloody arms.

What are they doing out here?
Aaron wondered, both amazed and horrified.
How’d they
get loose?
Then, an even more disturbing thought:
Did someone let them
out on purpose?

At least he was almost home. But when
he popped onto Ruby Road, his relief gave way to terror. He turned his bike
sideways, nearly laying it down, and skidded to a stop.

Less than ten feet away, a red-haired
wolf blocked the road. The creature lowered his huge head and started for Aaron,
orange eyes glowering at the boy, big paws slapping the street.

Aaron glanced over his shoulder,
desperate for an escape route.

His heart froze midbeat.

Not only was the gurgling lady
coming up fast behind him, so was Uncle Jim’s ghost. Worse still, the other
lady had joined them, the one who looked like Patience Mathers except her white
skin was wrinkled and her dark hair and long dress were sopping wet.

Aaron did the only thing he could
do. He closed his eyes. He closed his eyes and willed them all to go away.

It didn’t work; he could still
hear them, growing louder, getting closer: the wolf’s claws scraping loose
blacktop, the bloody lady gurgling, the drowning woman dripping, and his Uncle
Jim asking, “Whatsamatter, boy? Don’t you wanna ride?”

W
hen Hazel arrived at The Winslow, she was
relieved to spot Aaron’s bike at the base of the porch steps, carelessly pitched
on its side, handlebars askew. Apparently Aaron had made it home safe, if not
entirely sound.

Jinx bounded down the steps from
the porch to join her. The red dog looked guilty somehow, his eyes a little too
gleeful, his tail wagging a bit too hard.

“What have you been up to?” Hazel
asked.

Jinx kept mum, choosing instead to
sniff at Aaron’s front bike tire.

“I better not find out you were
chasing Aaron on his bike,” Hazel warned the Irish setter. “Or terrorizing Ajax
or Boo or any other cat.”

The dog’s expression changed to
one of such profound innocence it was impossible to argue with him. “Okay, I
believe you,” Hazel said, quickly adding, “this time.”

Since she needed to unload the
groceries, Hazel walked through the side yard and then directly into the
kitchen, where she found her grandmother at the big stove working over her cast
iron Dutch oven, pulverizing apples into applesauce. Sarah Winslow glanced up
wearing the same look of delight she always donned to greet her only
grandchild.

“Aaron’s not feeling well,” Hazel
said, feeling uneasy herself because she’d rather be any kind of sick than sick
to her stomach. She plopped the grocery sack onto the butcher-block countertop
before remembering that Tiny had packed the eggs on the bottom.

“I know,” Sarah made a sympathetic
face. “He barely made it through the front door before he got sick in the
lobby. Didn’t you see Honey cleaning it up?”

“Luckily, no.”

“Honey’s under the weather too.
Maybe the entire Adair family ate something off.” Sarah glanced around the
kitchen as if the guilty dish might reveal itself.

“I don’t know about Honey,” Hazel
said, “but it wouldn’t surprise me if Aaron got sick from eating one too many
treats this morning.”

“That boy’s sweet tooth
is
out of control.” Her grandmother spied the box of candy peeking out from the
front pocket of Hazel’s shorts. “Like somebody else we know.”

“
Please
,” Hazel said. “Lemonheads
are practically fruit.” She stuffed the carton of ice cream into the freezer of
the large fridge, shoving vegetables and fish to their proper place in the
unreachable back.

Her grandmother came over and
pulled the ice cream back out, squinting to read the label because she didn’t
have her glasses on. “Why’d you buy me this?”

“Because you love rocky road.”
Hazel took the carton from her and pushed it back in.

“
You
love rocky road.”
Whenever Sarah smiled, her bright blue eyes disappeared.

Hazel placed her hands on her hips.
“What are you implying?”

But Sarah looked concerned now.
“Your father told me he’s having trouble with Pard Holloway again.”

Hazel’s stomach dropped. Had her father
found out what happened at the ranch between her and her uncle? How much did
her grandmother know? She decided to test the waters before giving her
grandmother any information that could make her victim to the same blackmail.
“True. Dad didn’t want the carnies at the rodeo this year. Said he’s had it
with their rusty rides and rigged games, that they’re not in the best interests
of our town. And Uncle Pard said, ‘You’ve got it exactly wrong, as usual,
Winslow.’ ” Hazel deepened her voice in imitation of her uncle: “ ‘Anything that
brings in tourist dollars is in the best interests of this town.’ ”

Sarah shook her head, clearly
distressed. “I’m telling you, dear girl, this business at the ranch bodes ill.”
She took Hazel’s right hand and turned it up to inspect the red marks left on
her palm post splinter surgery, seeming to sense that there was a connection. Then
Sarah raised her eyes to Hazel’s: “Tell me what happened at the rodeo.”

“I saw Ben Mathers,” Hazel replied
matter-of-factly. “Eating a hot dog.”

“And?” Sarah asked as though she
didn’t have all day.

Hazel hesitated, then said, “And something
went wrong with Indigo. They had to put him down.”

“The bull, I know about. What I want
to know is what, exactly, all of this has to do with
you.
”

The look on her grandmother’s face
told her that she was giving her a chance to come clean. And since everyone in
town already seemed to know about the cattle crisis—thanks to Tanner’s
gigantic mouth, she strongly suspected—was there any point in continuing
to lie? She just had to leave out a few key details. Like her Uncle Pard’s
threat. Like what really happened that day five years ago at Three Fools Creek.
Like why Hazel was so terrified, deep down, that the incident was rising to the
surface like a long-dead catfish: spectral, slippery and foul.

T
hey sat in the shade of the granite wall,
sweating into crisp yellow weeds. No one in town could recall who built the
long squat wall around Matherston Cemetery, or why. It resisted memory; its
white face wiped clean each time the snow came. There were no messages written
on the wall that afternoon.