Wanted . . . Mud Blossom (5 page)

Junior paused. He felt like a real estate agent showing off a particularly fine property.

“I don't know whether to put you in the dining room or the bedroom.” He looked intently into Scooty's little beadlike eyes. “Are you hungry or sleepy?”

Junior opened the cage, reached in, and took Scooty in his hand. He loved the way Scooty felt, soft and small. It made Junior feel strong and protective.

He remained on his knees with Scooty against his chest. Then he bent forward and put Scooty in the bedroom. He covered him with the board.

“There.”

Junior wished he had used see-through boards.

It would give him a lot of pleasure to watch Scooty in bed, in his dining room, running through the tunnel, discovering the little cubbyholes.

Maybe he could get some plastic and …

No, Junior told himself forcefully, he hadn't made this tunnel for his own pleasure. He had made it for Scooty, and Scooty needed privacy.

Junior stretched out on his stomach and placed his ear against the board. He could hear nothing, but he still enjoyed lying with his cheek against the warm board.

It was so pleasant, Junior felt he could spend all afternoon like this. He might even bring out a blanket tonight and—

Suddenly Junior lifted his head.

Mary.

He got to his knees.

Pap had to be home by now. Pap would have news. And the news was going to be good. Junior could almost hear Pap's cheerful “False alarm.”

Junior got up and ran for the house.

“False alarm?” Junior cried as he entered the kitchen.

Pap didn't turn around. He was standing by the table, talking to Vern and Michael.

“So what were you doing in her cave?” Pap was asking.

Junior put the hamster cage on the table and took a seat. Vern shot him a look of hatred.

“And I know you both were there because I saw your backpacks.”

Vern knew he had to answer, just as Michael would have had to answer if his mother were asking the question.

“Well …”

“Spit it out.”

“Michael wanted to see Mary's cave. And I said that I'd show it to him. We were just going to look at it from the outside.”

Vern swallowed aloud.

“So we got there, and we couldn't see good because it's all overgrown, so we went up on the porch. And I knocked.”

“He did knock,” Michael said. “He did it with a rock.”

“But she didn't answer, so we decided to step inside. And we did. And, gradually, we walked inside a little bit. It was dark and we couldn't see. And we walked in a little bit more. Then we took off our backpacks and we were just standing there—we didn't touch anything! Not one single thing, did we, Michael?”

“No!”

“And then we, we heard s-something behind us …”

Vern took a deep breath. As long as he lived he would remember turning around in that dark, dank cave and seeing Mad Mary framed in the entrance.

With the light behind her and the wind blowing her skirts, she looked ten feet tall. Her feet were apart and her hands were braced on either side of the entrance as if to block them from leaving.

“What do you want?” she had asked in a voice made of gravel.

“Nothing, we don't want anything.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Looking.”

She stepped toward them.

Michael put his hands over his eyes.

“Don't you know what I do with kids that trespass in my cave?”

“No.”

“I cook them and eat them.”

“You're just saying that to scare us.”

“And I did scare you, didn't I?”

“Yes.”

“Enough so you'll leave me alone?”

“Yes.”

“Then get going! Shoo!”

She stepped aside and Michael and Vern ran for the outside and life. Not until they were safely at Vern's house, collapsed on the porch, did they realize they'd left their backpacks behind.

“Mr. Blossom,” Michael asked, “did you say you saw our backpacks there?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do with them?”

“They're right over yonder on the counter.”

“Can we have them?”

“You can have them when you give me your word you ain't going to bother Mary again.”

“We promise.”

“She's got enough problems without you boys harassing her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, get your backpacks and get out of here. I got to call the police.” The boys got up, grabbed the backpacks, and ran for the front door.

“On Mary?” Junior asked.

“Yes.”

“I don't think Mary would want you to call the police.”

“I got to. I'm about the only person there is that's interested enough.”

“You didn't see her?”

“Nope, not a trace.”

“I shouldn't have let myself get happy about the surprise,” Junior said woefully. “I wouldn't have if I'd known Mary was still missing.”

He looked so miserable that Pap pulled him against him and ran one hand through his hair.

“I got time to hear about the surprise, I reckon.”

“No, you better go ahead and call the police. I'll get the phone book.”

“Go on about the surprise, Junior, while I'm dialing.”

“Well, this is it.” Junior put one hand on the hamster cage. The exercise wheel spun a little.

Pap glanced at the cage as he reached for the phone book.

“The emergency numbers are on the first page,” Junior commented. He began to play with the cage, opening and shutting the door, turning it around on the table, opening the door again.

“Seems like that's the only numbers we ever need around here.”

Pap dialed, then hung up in disgust. “Busy. Lord knows how many crimes go unreported because some cop's wife is calling him to bring home a loaf of bread.”

In the pause that followed Junior said, “Pap.” He moved his fingers back and forth across the wire of the cage, making a musical sound.

“That is the surprise you've been talking about all week—an empty cage?”

Junior was so eager to clear up the misunderstanding that he began sputtering. “No, no, there was something in the cage, but I took it out. See, we have this hamster in our room. His name is Scooty. We voted on the name. Some of the other nominations were Blackie and Fuzzy, but Scooty won. Anyway, every weekend somebody gets to take Scooty home …”

Junior attempted to swallow his excitement.

“Slow down, Junior,” Pap said.

“I can't. I'm trying to. So this weekend was my weekend. That's what I was doing all day yesterday—I was making a tunnel for Scooty. See, Scooty never gets to have any fun—he spends all his time in a cage, going round and round—so I thought this weekend I'd give Scooty the best time of his life. It would be like going to vacation Bible school or day camp or—”

Pap held up one hand for silence while he dialed the phone number again.

“Yes, this is Alec Blossom,” Pap said in a loud, professional voice. “I was calling in regard to a woman named Mary Cantrell—Mad Mary some folks call her around here. Perhaps you've heard tell of her.”

Pap drew in a deep breath before he continued even more professionally.

“Sir, I have reason to believe that Mary Cantrell has met with an accident and that's why I'm calling you—to find out if that's true.”

There was another pause. Pap said, “No, she wouldn't claim me as family, but I'm as close a friend as she's got in the world. I live out her way.”

Again Pap listened. “Yes, I'll hold,” he said.

Then Pap put one hand over the receiver and turned to Junior. “They're checking for me.”

Junior said, “Can I go on about the surprise while we wait?”

“Yes, go on about the surprise.”

Mad Mary lay without moving. Her eyes were closed. Her breathing was shallow.

Her mind was a blank.

Then slowly there appeared on the blank screen of her mind a shape that had been on the ceiling of her bedroom when she was a girl. She hadn't seen that shape in sixty-five years, yet she knew it at once.

She had been afraid of that shape as a girl. That brown shape had been the first thing she had ever feared in her life.

“It's just a water stain,” her mother had told her.

“It's bled through the paint on the ceiling.”

“But it keeps coming back,” she'd said. “Why does it keep coming back? We've painted the ceiling and painted the ceiling. If it's just a stain, why does it keep coming back?”

“There's probably a leak in the attic roof. I'll have it patched.”

But even after the roof had been patched and the ceiling painted with two coats of indoor enamel, the stain was still there.

“It's in your mind,” her mother had said then.

“And you are not to mention it again.”

That's where it was now for sure—in Mary's mind. It had bled through sixty-five years of time and there it was.

It wasn't a bear or a witch. It was scarier than that. It was a—a shape, a shape with long hairy arms that stretched out and fingers—no, talons—that would reach for her if she closed her eyes. That was what she could never make her mother understand, that if she closed her eyes …

Now, as she lay old and still, too tired to open her eyes, the shape bled into her mind the way it had bled through two coats of paint on her ceiling.

The shape was becoming clearer now, taking on real form. The talons were growing longer, reaching out.

Mary drew in a ragged breath through her pale lips—she recognized the shape at last. At last it was clear.

The brown shape, the shape that wouldn't go away, the shape that was almost touching her with its cold talons, that shape was the angel of death.

Mud was on the front porch. From time to time he shook himself vigorously. That's what a morning in the basement did to him, left him with the need to shake it off.

There were only three things to do in the basement, and these all had to be done on the top step—howl, try to dig through the door, and smell the crack beneath the door to see if anybody had come home to let him out.

Mud shook again.

He scratched behind his left ear in a place that had been itching for twenty minutes. He shook himself again.

Moving across the porch, he flopped down in the patch of sunlight by the steps. He rolled over onto his back and twisted from side to side. A low moan of pleasure came from him as the rough boards scratched his back where it always itched.

He lay still for a moment, his body curled into a C, letting the sun warm his stomach. That done, he rolled over and dropped his head onto his paws. His long ears flowed like velvet over his legs.

A breeze blew from the pine trees. Mud inhaled the pleasant and familiar smells so different from the musty air of the basement—the earth still damp from yesterday's rain, the squirrels, the …

There was something new in the air.

Mud opened his eyes. He lifted his head, his long nose pointing toward the pines.

The look in Mud's yellow eyes sharpened. He got to his feet. His tail began to sweep the porch floor behind him like a broom.

He inhaled again and his tail stopped in midwag.

Mud stood at the edge of the steps for a moment, statue still. The breeze had died, but the scent lingered in the still October air.

This scent was strange, mysterious. It was animal and yet no animal that Mud knew of. The possibilities drew him forward.

But just as he was ready to go down the steps and investigate, he saw something happening in the pine trees.

This was something Mud did not understand.

Mud lowered himself to his haunches.

Mud watched with his brows drawn together, his ears pulled back, his golden eyes shining.

Pap was still waiting for the policeman to come back to the phone so Junior asked, “Do you want me to go on about the tunnel or be quiet?”

“What?”

“Pap! The tunnel! The tunnel!”

“Yes, Junior, tell me about the tunnel, but the minute the policeman comes back to the phone …”

“I'll shut up,” Junior promised. He leaned forward over his elbows.

“The tunnel's got rooms at each end—one's a dining room, one's a bedroom. The bedroom has soft grass in it for a bed and the dining room's got seeds for—”

Pap held up his hand for silence.

He listened. “Yes, sir, I'm still on the line.” Then Pap said, “No record of anything, huh?”

Pap's hand was up, forbidding speech, so Junior waited.

“Well, I appreciate your checking for me. And let me leave my name and number just in case.” Pap hung up the phone reluctantly.

“Pap, I think it's good news that they don't know anything. It's when they
do
know something, that it's bad. She hasn't been in a wreck. She's not dead. There are a lot of things to be grateful for.”

“I guess, but I sure will feel better when I know where she's at.”

“I will too.”

“Well, we haven't got anything to do but wait, so why don't you go on about your tunnel or surprise or whatever it is.”

Pap kept his hands on the phone, drumming his fingers as if he wanted it to ring.

“You're sure you want me to tell you?”

“Go on with it, Junior.”

“I'll stop the minute the phone rings.”

“I'd appreciate it.”

“Here goes,” Junior said.

Mud crossed the yard.

He stood looking curiously down at the boards that jagged across the pine needles. His ears pointed forward. His look sharpened.

He moved silently along the boards, sniffing. The scent was getting stronger now. It was animal.

Mud's nose was wet with excitement. Mud loved to hunt.

Mud scratched one board and it flipped over, revealing a small ditch. Mud put his nose into the excavation and inhaled. Mud smelled an unfamiliar smell. This caused his excitement to increase.