On the Loose (13 page)

"We'll see."

In the warmth of the large kitchen the twins
snacked on graham crackers and peanut butter.
Belle sorted the mail. Ben subscribed to several
magazines, which she put to one side, along with
bank statements, one of them hers. Household
bills she kept for herself to pay. The bigger bills
were for Ben, whose secretary would tend to them.
Advertisements and flyers she threw away.

"Nothing," she said.

Jennifer made a face. "You sure?"

"Positive."

"He never answers our letters."

Sammantha, refilling her milk glass, said, "I bet
he gets lots of letters from people he doesn't even
know."

Belle shuddered inside. She didn't want them
thinking of him as some sort of celebrity, a special
being, though she knew that among their classmates they now possessed an aura. "Bobby's sick,"
she said forcefully.

"I bet he didn't mean to kill that woman," Jennifer said.

"But he did. And that's why they put him away.
To make him better."

"Maybe the woman was bad," Jennifer said.

Sammantha smiled mischievously. "Maybe she
was trying to seduce Bobby."

Belle arched her spine. "What kind of talk is
that? Nobody deserves to be killed. And the
woman was a very good woman."

They lowered their heads, and she watched
them crunch on their crackers and remembered
them of an age when she still had milk in her
breasts. Now they were ten, and their breasts were
beginning to stand out like forced blooms. Too
soon, too quick. It didn't seem fair.

"Her name was Charlotte," Jennifer whispered
to her sister.

"No, it wasn't," Sammantha said. "It was Claudia."

Belle wished they were still toddlers chatting away in unformed language, in the private syncopated talk of twins. When one had a cold, the
other felt she should have one too.

Jennifer, her voice breaking, said, "He'll be all
grown up when we see him again."

"We'll be older too," Sammantha said.

Jennifer looked at her mother. "Will he still be
sick?"

Belle did tricks with her mind, worked it backwards, and said, "Remember when you two cut
each other's hair? My God, you looked funny!"

Chief Morgan visited Mrs. Perrault. Guilt drove
him to it. Mrs. Perrault's surprise was obvious and
her pleasure genuine. "I've been thinking about
you," she said, showing him into the overheated
front room and seating him in a chair that seemed
his now, or could be. "I was at the hairdresser's
this morning. How do l look?"

Tinted, permed, and teased, her hair was a velvety mist, the hue reflected in her eyeglasses. "You
look great."

"You never did come to dinner."

"I'm sorry, no excuse," he said and suddenly was
back on his feet.

Mrs. Perrault's elder sister was in the doorway.
Though it was midafternoon she was in a flannel
nightgown, nothing under it, as if at her age she
had nothing to hide. She swayed into the room and
came close to him, her bust nearly in his arms. Her
voice gusted.

You have more bad news for us?"

Mrs. Perrault spoke sharply. "He's come to see
me, Ida. Why don't you put a robe on?"

"I'm fine the way I am. I don't put on airs, and I
don't need to impress the police chief." She stared
into Morgan's eyes. "There's just the two of us
now, her and me, two old widows hanging on."

He had heard that the younger sister had taken a
spill on ice and broken her hip. From the hospital
she had gone into a nursing home in Andover. "I'm
sorry about your sister."

"She's gone loony on us."

"She's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's," Mrs.
Perrault explained quietly.

"As if enough hasn't happened to us."

"Please, Ida. James is my visitor. Why don't you
leave us alone."

"This is my house too, I pay my way," Ida said,
but she left, indignantly, and clumped up the
stairs, a relief to Mrs. Perrault, whose eyes had
gone old inside her spectacles.

"Let's go in the kitchen, James. More privacy."

In the kitchen she served him hot chocolate,
which he didn't think he wanted but found himself
enjoying. He used a spoon to eat the dab of marshmallow floating on the surface.

"All this snow, James, I can't go to the cemetery.
Do you go?"

"Whenever I can. My wife's there. Now Claudia."

They were sitting across from each other, Mrs.
Perrault with both elbows planted on the table.
She said, "None of my business, but were you and
Claudia good lovers?"

"I like to think so," he said, taken aback only for
an instant.

"I wanted so much for her to be happy. Her husband's death did terrible things to her. Now her
death is doing terrible things to me." She produced a tissue, which she didn't use, simply
clutched for the ready. "She has a shoebox of his
letters from Vietnam. Should I keep them or burn
them?"

"I don't know."

"I don't either." The tissue was crushed in her
fist, an indication she was not going to use it. "Do
you have a life, James?"

"M~ : h."

"I ha'c only memories. God gave us memories
to taunt us when we're old. Old and ugly, but I
was a pretty child. Grown-ups oohed and aahed
over me."

"I can believe that. And you're not ugly."

"I never knew my real father, did you know
that?"

Morgan said nothing. When he was a child he
had overheard his mother repeating the gossip,
which made his father chuckle, the sort of chuckle
he knew was naughty. Perhaps that was why he remembered it.

"My mother had a fling," Mrs. Perrault said.
"I'm the result. That's why I'm different from my
sisters. They have the family face, I don't. I'm the
oddball. My sisters have always known, but we've
never talked about it."

Morgan said, "Did you ever tell Claudia?"

"No, but telling you is like telling her."

Morgan reached across the table and wrapped
his hand over her fist. He had no words.

She said, "The dead don't grieve. They leave that
for the living."

Moments later she walked him to the door, the
tissue left behind on the table, next to the hot
chocolate she had poured for herself but hadn't
touched. When he opened the door the cold
rushed in.

"You should wear a hat," she said.

He agreed with a smile. When he kissed her
cheek her tears came.

"That boy, James. Don't let him come back."

A youth with dreadlocks and tan skin said, "Did
you hear about Duck? He's a fuckin' hero."

Dibble, strengthening his arms in the exercise
room, nodded. Everyone had heard about the outburst in Dormitory A, which housed boys fifteen
and younger. A white twelve-year-old had tried to
slash his own throat with jagged glass.

"Grissom was ripshit," the youth said with a
laugh, "till he heard what Duck did."

While others were egging the boy on, Duck
dived in and knocked the glass from the boy's
hand but not before he suffered a slash across the
cheek, the wound a flame shooting from his face.

"Grissom's giving him extra privileges and says
he don't have to work the toilets for a month. It's
all free time."

"He deserves it," Dibble said.

"You ain't heard the best part." The youth gave
out another laugh. "He don't wanna leave the toilets."

Later Dibble and Bobby Sawhill visited Duck in
the dorm. Duck was sitting up on his cot and reading a funny book, which he lowered at once, revealing a heavy bandage on the left side of his face.
"Didja hear?"

"Yeah, we heard," Dibble said. "You're a hero."

"Am I really, Dibs?"

"You bet your Polish ass you are. Isn't he,
Sawhill?"

Bobby said, "I wouldn't have done what you did.
I'd have been afraid."

"I get extra dessert, didja hear that?"

"We got the picture," Dibble said. "Don't touch
your bandage. Does it hurt?"

"Burns. They gave me shots."

"You're lucky you didn't get hurt worse. Why'd
you do it, Duck?"

He looked stymied for a moment. "I don't know
for sure. I think I didn't want to see the boy bleed.
I hate blood."

Dibble looked at him sternly. "Stay away from
the toilets for a while. Give yourself a rest."

"I can't, Dibs. That's my job."

He was back in the toilets within the week, restocking dispensers with paper towels and replacing rolls of tissue. At times he muttered aloud over
the poor job done by the boy who had filled in for
him. Mirrors were scummed. He was examining buckets and scrub brushes and lining up jugs of
disinfectant when Ernest sidled in and leaned
against a sink.

"What's a hero still doing in the shithouse?"

Duck neither responded nor looked at him. He
screwed the tops tighter on the disinfectant jugs.

"Heard about whatcha did. Real brave, Duck.
What's your full name? I wanna put it on a
plaque."

"Stanley A. Chmielnicki."

"You're shittin' me. What's the A stand forAsshole?"

Duck drew a labored breath. He wished Dibble
were with him, Bobby too. He wished his grandmother was still alive, her head kerchief-bound,
her eyes loving him. Ernest edged nearer.

"Take the bandage off. Let's see if you really got
a cut there."

He jerked back as if from a torch. "Don't touch
me."

"I'll do what I want to you." Ernest hooked a
thumb in the waist of his sweatpants. The hood of
his sweatshirt framed his face. "Nothin' to lose,
Duck. Another coupla weeks I'm goin' to the
joint."

Duck's eyes burned with sudden tears. "I hate
you."

"Hey, I want you to love me."

Tears brimmed, toppled, shaming him, but he
found a voice. "I'm boss here. Get out!"

"You're nothin'." Ernest sneered, hovered,
"You're just a fuckin' little Polack."

"Nigger," Duck said.

It was the worst thing he could have said, and he
knew it. He wanted to reach out and pull the word
back. He wanted to dig it out of Ernest's ear. Too
late. Too late.

Ernest came at him.

Dibble came upon Duck an hour later. Duck stood
unsteadily near the urinals, his eyes twitching, as if
his mind were pitching and rolling. There was
blood on the floor and some on his clothes.

"Jesus Christ," Dibble said, "what happened?"

Duck put a hand to his head. His legs buckled.
He went down before Dibble could grab him. His
head on the floor, he tried to smile as Dibble
crouched over him.

"I fucked up, didn't I, Dibs?"

"I don't know. What did you do?"

"Ernest called me a Polack. I called him a nigger.
I shouldn't have done it, huh?"

Dibble took a hard breath. "There's a difference,
Duck. A big difference. You said the magic word."
Dibble looked him over. "Where are you bleeding?
I can't tell."

"I don't know. It came out of my mouth. I'm
glad you're here, Dibs. Wish Bobby was too."

"What did Ernest do to you?"

"Everything." He reached for Dibble's hand.
"Am I going to be all right?"

Dibble held him in his arms while he hemorrhaged. Dibble patted his head, nothing else he
could do.

Harry Sawhill's face worked its way out of waves
of sleep, out of other worlds in which dreams were
only half remembered. Eyes forced open, he managed to smile up at his wife, who held a glass of orange juice, which he didn't want. His head stayed
in the pillow.

"What time is it?"

"Nearly noon," Trish said. "Are you getting up?"

"In a while."

She placed the juice glass on the bedside table
and noted his color, amber creeping into the gray.
She raised a window to get the stuffiness out of the
room. Mild spring air poured in. Turning, she said,
"What am I going to do with you, Harry?"

"What will you do without me?" he said, producing a smile that surprised her. "Will you get
along?"

"Depends. What do you plan to leave me? Your
second-best bed?"

He closed his eyes. Drinking had gored his liver,
but it was his heart that concerned his attending
physician at Lahey Clinic, a woman named Feldman, youngish, bright, caring. Dr. Feldman referred him to a cardiologist, whose examinations
resulted in warnings.

"Come down in an hour," Trish said. "I'll have
breakfast ready."

"Just coffee, Trish. OK?"

Downstairs she phoned the Lahey, got through
to Dr. Feldman after a short wait, and said, "I'm
worried. I don't like his color."

"Is he taking his medication?"'

"Far as I can tell."

"Is he still drinking?"

"Off and on. More on than off."

"Then he's killing himself. Tell him I said that.
Tell him I'm angry." Dr. Feldman went off the line
for a moment. "I'm putting him down for next
Thursday, three o'clock. Is that all right?"

"Thank you, Doctor. I guess you know he thinks
the world of you."

"But not enough to do as I say."

Trish plugged in a fresh pot of coffee and stared
through the kitchen's large bow window. Trees
were swelling, leaves stretching out on buds like
hands grabbing life. She felt none of the excitement of spring. Too long she'd been operating in a
medium of vague fears, fears that were now gaining shape.

Back on the telephone, she rang up Ben
Sawhill's private office number. When she heard his voice, she said, "We're going to lose him, Ben.
He's not taking care of himself."

"When has he ever?" Ben said.

"I'm scared, scared."

"Well you should be. Longevity's a genetic gift,
and Sawhills don't have it."

"Good God, why did I call you?" She paused to
get a hold on her emotions. A bluejay lit on the
windowsill and peeked in on her. The crest told
her it was a male. "Ben, can't we do something for
him? He's your brother."

"Tell me what I haven't done already and I'll do
it."

"Damn you," she said. "What about me?"

"You'll go on."