Relentless (28 page)

While I struggle with the sweater, Clapper finishes searching purses and wallets. Fists full of money, he goes to the living room.

He and the man with the cold sore are talking, but I am not interested in what they have to say to each other.

In the last chair, I find my mother.

I very much want to do some small thing for her.

After a moment, I see what it must be. She is proud of her dark glossy hair, but now it is tangled and disarranged, as if someone has seized it and twisted it to force her into the chair.

Among the purses on the table, I recognize hers. I take from it a comb, and I return to her.

Her face is lowered, chin on chest. As I am deciding how to hold
her head to raise it, the more easily to comb her hair, Tray returns to the room from his search of the second floor.

He has his gun, which no longer seems magical, and I wait to see what he will do.

As he crosses the room toward me, I know that I should be afraid, but I am not.

He passes me, proceeds to Nicola, picks up her bra from the floor, and works it in his hand. Frowning, he stares down at her covered breasts.

Shreds of skin hang from his chapped lips, and he chews on them absentmindedly.

After a moment, he throws the bra aside and calls out “Clapper,” as he goes into the living room.

I wait with my mother and the comb.

All three men return to stare at Nicola, at her sweater as it should be.

Raising his gun, warily but with some urgency, Clapper pushes through the swinging door into the kitchen.

The man with the cold sore disappears into the hall, and Tray into the living room.

I wait with my mother and the comb.

From overhead comes the sound of hurried footsteps. In the cellar, a door crashes open. For a minute or so, every corner of the house produces noises.

The three meet in the hall. I cannot hear what they are saying, or I choose not to hear, but judging by the tone of each voice, Tray is angry and the other two are alarmed.

Their voices and footsteps recede. A door opens, slams shut, and I am pretty sure it is the door with the frosted-glass clouds and the clear-glass moon through which Tray’s eye once winked at me.

The house is quiet.

Outside, a car starts. I listen to the engine noise as it fades down the driveway.

I put a hand under my mother’s chin and lift her head. I comb her beautiful hair.

When her hair is as it should be, I kiss her cheek. Every night, she tucks me into bed and kisses my cheek. Every night until now.

“Good-bye.”

I ease her head down as it was. She appears to be slumped in sleep. She has gone to another place but still loves me, and though I am staying here, I still love her.

After returning the comb to her purse, I cannot imagine what comes next. I have done what I could to spare the dead embarrassment, and I am no longer needed.

Suddenly I am more exhausted than I have ever been. Climbing the stairs in search of a bed, I almost stop to sleep on the landing.

I forge on, however, and choose the bed in Colleen’s room, onto which I climb without remembering to take off my shoes. Head on the pillow, I am too tired to worry about being scolded.

I wake during the night and see a frosted moon in the window. But it is far beyond the window, and it is real.

After using the bathroom across the hall, I return to Colleen’s room and stand staring at her telephone. I have the feeling that I should call someone, but I do not know whom.

A few months earlier, my mother helped me to memorize our home-phone number, all ten digits, in case I am ever lost.

I am in Uncle Ewen’s new house, so I am not lost. Strangely, however, I feel I am somewhere I do not belong, and I feel alone.

Deciding to call home, I pick up the phone. No dial tone.

I am not afraid. I am calm. I go to Uncle Ewen and Aunt Nora’s bedroom. I try their phone, but it does not work, either.

Descending the stairs, I am overcome by an expectation of a big discovery, whether good or bad I do not know, but something
huge
. I hesitate on the landing, but then continue to descend.

The house is as silent as a soundless dream. Never before in the waking world have I encountered such stillness.

When I try the phone in the living room, it proves to be out of order, like the others.

Standing before the grandfather clock, I decide the monkey is not time, as Uncle Ewen said. Instead, the monkey is stealing time.

Previously, the creature’s face was impish, its expression playful. Now it is a monkey from a different jungle. It seems to sneer, and in its eyes I see a threat that I cannot name.

Backing away from the clock, I think I hear a woman laughing in the dining room. Indeed, this is my mother’s contagious laughter, but for once it does not inspire as much as a smile from me.

In the dining room, I do not hear the laughter anymore, and there is no phone to try.

The brass griffins still fly in the fireplace, but the logs they carried on their backs are ashes now, and embers.

Silence settles once more, and I am unable to hear the hinges on the swinging door or even my footsteps as I go into the kitchen.

The telephone on the wall beside the refrigerator is as useless as the previous three.

At a kitchen window, I stare into the moonlit night. No one is in the backyard, either.

They have all gone away.

I wander through the house, downstairs and upstairs, and down again, feeling lost and alone. Twice, I think I hear footsteps in the distance, but when I stand quite still and listen, I hear nothing.

Eventually, I am in Uncle Ewen’s study for the third or fourth time. Previously, I did not notice the telephone.

Putting the receiver to my ear, I am surprised by a dial tone.

As I will later learn, the phone-service cable was cut outside the house. But in the interest of business security, because of his sensitive financial discussions conducted by phone, my uncle Ewen required an entirely separate, dedicated private line to serve his study, and that one was overlooked.

Using the keypad, I enter 1 plus the ten digits of our home number that I have memorized. It rings until the answering machine picks up. I hear Mother’s recorded voice.

Following the beep, I can think of no message to leave. Although I have said nothing else, I say “Good-bye” before I hang up.

After further thought, I dial 911.

When the sheriffs-department operator answers, I say, “They all went away, and I’m alone here.”

In response to her questions, I tell her my name, that I am six years old, that I am at Ewen Durant’s house, and that I have been alone since before eight o’clock the previous evening.

According to Ewen’s desk clock, it is now 4:32 in the morning.

Also on the desk is a framed photo of Aunt Nora, Cousin Colleen.

“I slept some, like two hours,” I tell the operator, “but since before midnight, I been looking, nobody’s here. I didn’t take off my shoes before getting on Colleen’s bed, so I’m probably in trouble.”

She asks me if I know where they have gone, and I say no, and she tells me a deputy will come to help me, and I say thank you, and she says not to be afraid, and I say I am not afraid, just alone.

Leaving the house through the front door, I am surprised to see all the cars along the driveway. It leads down to the state highway, and a dozen vehicles stand one behind the other on the shoulder.

The night is mild and full of stars, with a smell of mown grass.

I watch moths gliding under the soft light in the porch ceiling, where one of the two bulbs is burned out. They make no sound.

I sit on the top porch step to wait.

I hear the approaching engine before I see the sheriffs-department cruiser far down on the highway. No siren, no flashing lights. It slows, turns onto the driveway, and comes to the head of the line of parked vehicles.

The deputy who gets out of the cruiser reminds me of the tall motorcycle cop on that TV show,
CHiPS
, and I know he will help me as soon as I see him.

I stand up as he approaches, and he says, “You must be Cubby,” and I say, “Yes, sir,” and he says, “So you’re alone here,” and I say, “Yes, sir,” and he asks who all the vehicles belong to, and I say, “To my aunts and uncles and cousins. That one there is my dad’s.” He looks at all the house’s lighted windows and asks where my folks are, and I say, “They’re gone, sir,” and he asks if I know where they’ve gone, and I say, “No, sir.”

He follows me to the open front door, where he rings the bell, and when no one answers, he calls, “Anybody home?”

I figure policemen have to do things their way, by the rules, so I do not remind him that I am alone.

He asks me to show him the way, and I lead him through the open door with the clouds and the moon.

Just across the threshold, in the front hall, the deputy says, “Son? Cubby? Wait a minute.”

I turn to look up at him. His face has changed, and not just because the light is brighter here.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Your shoes.”

My sneakers are more red than white, and dark, and wet with blood. On the wood floor around me are bloody footprints.

With his right hand, the deputy draws his revolver, and with his left, he pulls me to his side and half behind him.

In three steps, he reaches the archway between the hall and the living room, and he says, “Oh, my God.”

Looking past him, I see everyone dead, and now I remember what happened before I went to sleep in Colleen’s room.

Soon many deputies and the sheriff himself are at the house, plus other people not in uniform, who seem as busy as the police.

The sheriff is a nice man, tall and older and with a belly, but he does not listen well.

I tell him that because I was not afraid, Tray and his friends could not see me. The sheriff says I must have found a hiding place.

I tell him that after I woke up in Colleen’s room, I forgot what happened for a while. But because I was not afraid and because the dead people did not want to frighten me, I could not see them, just like Tray could not see me.

The authorities conclude I combed my mother’s hair and restored the dignity of other victims
after
Tray and his buddies left.

But I know the truth. Most memories from early childhood fade or vanish altogether, but my memories of that night are as clear as if the event were only a week in the past.

I know how I survived. I do not know why.

That night and the next day, I do not cry. They say I am brave, but I am not. I am instead the recipient of a great mercy, because upon me was conferred a power of endurance, emotional and mental, that is far beyond my six years. It will remain with me until my name is changed, and will for the rest of my life seem unearned.

Months later, a court rules behind closed doors, and thereafter I am Cubby Greenwich, living with Aunt Edith in a new city.

That evening, at long last, the grief comes and the tears. The murderers are in their cells, the murdered in their graves. Tears can wash away all that has obstructed hope, and grief that does not break us will only make us stronger.

What psychological problems I experience for a couple of years are all related to these facts: I am the one who heard Tray knock; I am the first to see him on the front porch; I am the one at whom he winked through the clear moon, as if we were conspirators; I am the one who opened the door to him; I am the sole survivor.

I feel to a degree responsible and believe illogically that no one else would have opened the door to Tray.

Furthermore, for a long time I will not answer a door because of the irrational fear that others like Tray and his two friends will be drawn to me because they know I will always grant them entrance.

Sessions with a psychologist are unproductive.

Although she has little experience of children, my aunt Edith possesses the wisdom and patience to show me that guilt requires fault and that fault requires intention. She works, as well, on my irrational fear and convinces me in time that I have no reason to be afraid of a knock or a doorbell:
I am not a magnet for monsters
.

Like her sister, my mother, Edith loves to laugh, and from her I learn that laughter is our armor and our sword.

Years later, when I am twenty and Edith is on her deathbed, I tell her that I believe I was spared that night in September for a reason, for something of importance that I will one day be called upon to do. And Providence put me in her care because she was kind and wise enough to heal me and therefore prepare me for whatever task will be required of me. I tell her she is as good a soul as I have ever met or hope to meet, that she is an angel in the flesh, and that I will speak her name to God every night of my life before I go to sleep.

   Penny slept, Milo slept, and the dog sat looking out a window and sighing periodically as I drove north on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Halfway across the bay, the rain abruptly diminished, and by the time we reached the northern shore, I was able to turn off the windshield wipers.