Summer Of Fear (6 page)

“What’s Peter doing these days?” he asked me. “He graduated, didn’t he? I hope he’s planning on college.”

“He is,” I said. “He’s planning to major in music. You know Peter; what other direction would he go?”

We chatted a few minutes about colleges—and summertime—and the growing habits of petunias. Then the professor got to his feet and gathered up the cartons the plants had come in and carried them into the garage, and I strolled on past the Gallaghers’ toward my own house.

I was just turning into the front yard when I heard it—a low rumbling sound, followed by a yelp and a stifled shriek. Then a woman’s voice rose in a cry of rage:

“You vigrous, rat-fanged varmant! I’ll warp you good for that!”

It was a moment before I realized that the words had come from Julia.

“What on earth!” I exclaimed and broke into a run across the lawn to the porch steps. Julia was down on one knee, her hands clasped tightly around her left ankle. Carolyn was bent over her, and when she straightened and turned to me her face was white with shock.

“What got into him? I’ve never seen him do a thing like that!”

“What is it?” I demanded. “What happened?”

“It’s that dawg of yourn!” Julia cried in a voice so choked with anger that it was all I could do to understand the words. “He flang hisself out and bit me!”

“Trickle bit you?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “He couldn’t have! I don’t believe it!”

“Take a gander at thet and see if you believe it or not!” Julia lifted her hands, and I caught my breath as I saw the blood gushing from the deep tooth marks in the flesh just above the anklebone.

“He was lying on the porch,” Carolyn told me shakily, “over there in that patch of sunlight. We started up the steps and he began to wag his tail like he always does. Then suddenly he growled—I’ve never heard Trickle growl in all the time I’ve known him! He got up and stood there all stiff with his ears back against his head, and the next moment he jumped right at Julia and bit her! Then he ran off around the side of the house, headed for the back.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said again. But this was not true. Into my mind leapt the picture of Trickle as he had been the night before, his head lowered, his teeth bared. He had growled at Julia then, a low, menacing growl of pure hatred. Was it any more incredible that he had bitten her now?

“Take her into the house,” I told Carolyn, “and tell Mother what happened. She’ll know how to treat the bite and stop the bleeding. I’m going to find Trickle.”

I left the girls there on the steps and went around to the backyard to look in the hollow behind the hydrangea bush. It was the place Trickle always ran when he knew he had done something wrong and was going to be scolded. But he wasn’t there.

I searched the yard and went up and down the street calling him, but he didn’t come.

Julia sat in silence while Mother cleansed her wound and bandaged it. Then she went upstairs to our room and closed the door.

“She’s upset, and no wonder,” Mother said. “What an awful thing to have happen on her second day here! Thank goodness I took that dog for his rabies shot only a couple of months ago. What on earth could be wrong with him?”

“I don’t know,” I said miserably. “I guess he just hates Julia.”

“But dogs don’t do that,” Carolyn said. “Just take a hatred to someone, I mean, without any reason. Could she have mistreated him somehow?”

“She only arrived yesterday,” I said. “And it was like this the first time they saw each other. There’s just something about her that Trickle doesn’t like and he’s reacting to it.”

“Well, he had better stop reacting,” Mother said shortly. “A dog that turns vicious does not belong in a home like ours.”

“You don’t mean you’d—you’d get rid of him!” I exclaimed in horror. “Trickle’s mine! He’s one of the family!”

“It would break my heart,” Mother said. “He is like one of the family. But he’s a dog, and if we have to make a choice between a dog and people, people come first. My sister’s only child means a great deal more to me than any animal, even Trickle. So let’s just hope nothing like this occurs again.”

There was an awkward silence while we all stood around and looked at each other. Then Carolyn said tentatively, “Well, I guess I’d better be going. I’ve got some stuff to do at home and some books to take to the library and things like that.”

She didn’t really, I could tell. She was uncomfortable with the friction between Mother and me, and I could not blame her.

“Why don’t we get together tonight?” I suggested. “I could come over to your house and we could play records or something.”

“All right,” Carolyn started to say, but Mother broke in before she could form the words.

“Rachel, this is only Julia’s second day here.”

“I know,” I said, “but—”

“You were gone all yesterday evening. I think tonight it would be very nice if you stayed home and spent some time making your cousin feel welcome.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, okay, okay.”

“Rae, I don’t like that tone of voice.”

“I’ve got to be going,” Carolyn said hurriedly. “I’ve just got tons to do, really. Tell Julia good-bye for me. I really enjoyed meeting her.”

“Thank you, Carolyn,” Mother said. “I’ll tell her.”

The day that had begun so pleasantly seemed somehow to have fallen apart. I walked my friend to the door and watched her start off down the street and came back inside.

Mother had vanished. I opened the door that led from the kitchen into the garage and heard the clinking of bottles coming from the storeroom which Dad had converted for her into a darkroom. I knew she was mixing chemicals and was probably going to start an afternoon of printing. Any other time I would have rapped on the door and asked if I could join her; I enjoyed helping her in the darkroom.

At the moment, however, it was the last thing I wanted to do. I’d had enough of being lectured without deliberately letting myself in for another siege of it. I was sure that whatever I did would be wrong, and Mother would jump all over me, and I’d snap back at her.

The afternoon loomed long and empty with nothing to fill it. I wished now I had started earlier to look for a summer job so that I might have had a real chance of finding one. The places where I had left my name had all been discouraging; when they hired summer help it was usually students from the University. I would have liked to have gone to the pool, but there was no way to get there. I would have enjoyed playing records, but the stereo was upstairs in the bedroom which now was half Julia’s. She had gone into it and shut the door, and there was no way I could feel at ease with the idea of bursting in upon her.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was to be the first of many such afternoons during that long, strange summer.

I wound up at last in the backyard with a couple of Dad’s old issues of National Geographic. I leafed through them idly, looking at the pictures and pausing occasionally to read the captions. In one of them there was an article on Africa. It was illustrated by a photograph of a witch doctor involved in some sort of native ceremony. His face and body were painted in brilliant colors, his arms were raised, and his eyes were glaring straight at the camera.

The impact of those eyes was extraordinary, even in a picture. They seemed to exert a force so powerful that it could not be confined by the printed page. Was this, I wondered, the kind of thing Professor Jarvis gave his lectures about? Did people like this really perform magic?

The caption beneath the picture said that this man was practicing macumba, a form of sorcery which permitted its practitioners to kill at a distance with the concentrated power of their thoughts.

Ridiculous, I told myself, but could not help giving a little shudder as I turned the page.

I finished that magazine and laid it aside and picked up the other. The sun moved slowly down the curve of the sky and the shadow of the elm tree crept toward me until at last the leaf patterns sprinkled themselves across my lap. Eventually it was time to go in and scrub the potatoes and put them in the oven, and while I was doing that Bobby came in with a lump on his head from having been hit with a softball.

“That’s a dumb name for it,” lie told me. “There’s nothing soft about it.”

I helped him put ice on his forehead to diminish the swelling, and then Mother came in from the darkroom carrying her prints. She spread them out on the kitchen table to evaluate them, and while that was going on Dad got home from work, and Peter soon after him, and things seemed normal again.

Normal—and yet, not quite.

Julia came down to dinner dressed in a pair of her new jeans and the Indian blouse. Her face was pale, and she looked tired and drained of energy. Everyone pounced upon her as though she had been gone for years, and Peter even went so far as to pull out her chair.

“How are you, dear?” Mother asked anxiously. “Is your ankle feeling better?”

“Her ankle?” Dad said. “What happened to her ankle?”

“It was an unbelievable thing,” Mother said, and told him what had occurred that morning. Dad’s face darkened as he listened, and Peter looked so angry that I was afraid he was going to get up and go looking for Trickle that very moment.

“Wait till I get my hands on that dog,” he said grimly. “I’ll teach him to go around biting people. Where is he, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s gone.” I felt very much like crying.

“When he comes back,” Dad said, “I don’t want Mm in this house. We’re not going to risk this sort of thing happening again.”

“Not come in the house!” I exclaimed. “But he lives in this house! It’s his home!”

“It’s summer,” Dad said. “It’s beautiful weather. He can stay outside. And I don’t want him running loose either. One episode of this kind is enough.”

“You mean I’ll have to tie him?” I asked. The thought of poor Trickle staked out in the yard like a fierce beast was so absurd that I wanted to laugh, and I knew that if I started laughing I would never be able to stop. I could feel the laughter building up inside me, mixing with the tears. “I can’t tie him, I just can’t! He’d hate it so!”

“Not as much as he’ll hate what I’m going to do with him if he so much as growls at Julia another time.” It was Peter who said this, squaring his skinny shoulders and sticking out his jaw in a determined fashion as though he were offering to fight a lion single-handed to protect his beautiful lady. It was all so ridiculous and at the same time so awful. I looked up and down the table at the faces of my family, the people I loved most in the world, and except for Bobby who was too busy wrestling with the catsup bottle to take part in the conversation, they were regarding me as coldly as though I were an unpleasant stranger.

“I don’t want any more argument,” Dad said. “Either Trickle stays outside or we get rid of him altogether. An animal who begins to be—”

He was interrupted by the doorbell. Bobby got up to answer it and came back in with Mike.

“Hi,” he said. “I didn’t mean to break in on dinner. I’ll come back later.” It was like a burst of sunshine into a gloom-filled room, and we all relaxed a little.

“Don’t be silly,” Mother told him. “We’re always glad to see you. Have you eaten yet? There’s plenty if you’d like to join us.”

“No, thanks. Mom’s got things cooking at our house. I just ran over for a minute.”

Mike straddled the arm of the sofa and perched there, a little higher than the rest of us, looking down into all of our plates. Glancing up at him, I thought how handsome he was with his face already beginning to pick up its summer tan and his hair fluffed out in a sort of halo around his head from the day spent in the sun and water.

He grinned at me and winked in way of private greeting, and I felt better than I had all afternoon.

“How was work?” I asked. “Do you think you’re going to like it?”

“Great. Fantastic. Nothing to do but sit on my tower and watch the pretty girls in their new swimming suits.”

“I got a suit today,” Julia said. “Rae and Carolyn helped me pick it out. It’s awfully pretty.”

“Really? How nice.” Mother smiled across at her. “In all the excitement over the Trickle attack I never did get around to asking about the morning’s shopping. That’s a new blouse you’re wearing, isn’t it? Did you find some other things?”

“These jeans are new too,” Julia said, “and I bought some tops. Thank you so much for letting me get them. I hope we didn’t spend too much.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Dad said. “The important thing is that you got some things you’ll enjoy wearing. I guess styles vary in different parts of the country. You’ll feel more comfortable living here if you’re dressed like the rest of the girls.”

Picturing Julia in her new swimming suit, I almost choked. There was no way that Julia in a bikini was ever going to look like the rest of us. Thinking of the suit reminded me of Carolyn’s question while we were at Penney’s waiting for Julia to emerge from the dressing room, and I asked it now, more out of duty than because I really wanted to.

“Julia, do you think you’d like to go to the dance at the Coronado Club next week? A bunch of us will be going and Peter’s going to play.”

“Why—I don’t know,” Julia said hesitantly, “I don’t dance very well.”

“You don’t have to dance,” Peter said quickly. “You can just sit at a table and enjoy the music. I can come over and sit with you at intermissions. That’s a great idea!”

“I don’t know,” Julia said again. She glanced across at Mother. “Do you think it would be—all right?”

“I think it would, dear,” Mother said gently. “It would be a chance for you to meet Rae’s and Peter’s friends, people who will be your friends too in the time ahead. I know how you feel, but I’m sure your parents would want you to go out and be with young people as soon as possible. It’s a much healthier thing than staying alone and grieving.

“She could come with Rae and me,” Mike said. “Then Pete could join us later if he wanted to.”

“Sure,” Pete said. “And we could all go out some place for something to eat afterward. Come on, Julia—I want you to hear the band. We’ve worked up some good arrangements.”