Water Dogs (27 page)

Martha told them about a day she’d had with Ray in the fall; they’d met up in the afternoon when neither of them had anything to do. Martha was looking after her neighbor’s dog, Cleo, and they decided to take her out behind the house, across the fields toward the power lines, to see if they could make their way through the woods to her cousin’s property by the west branch of the Hollis River. It was October, but there was still a little warmth in the air, and the ground was solid and the wind smelled like beech leaves. Martha told them that crossing a few of the fields they held hands, but most of the time they were just walking side by side. Her legs felt strong and limber; she felt as though she could have walked across the state. Cleo was finding the swamps along the way, dashing through the thickets, popping up in unexpected places. And all along, Ray was keeping up, though she knew it was her job to navigate. She knew the acres behind her house, she’d walked to the West Branch as a kid maybe ten years earlier. They hadn’t checked the time before they left, but as they came down off the hill, the woods were thicker and they were losing daylight. They were no longer in the part of Tavis Falls where you could walk from field to field; the woods they passed through were old. She could tell Ray wanted to keep a good pace, but she also felt he trusted her judgment and wasn’t worried. They
picked up a deer trail and followed it for a while, and when they stopped at a granite boulder beside a dense stand of pine trees, she stood, thinking, and when she started walking at a new angle, following a dried-up creek, Ray asked her if she was sure she knew where she was headed, and she said no, but he followed her.

It was nearly dark when they heard water. At the first sounds, they stopped walking, held hands, and listened, and it was hard to tell how far away the roaring was, but they headed toward it. After ten minutes more of walking down into the valley they listened again, and the sound was the same, so Martha wondered if the sound was just wind in the trees, and she knew Ray was thinking the same thing, so she said it aloud, and he said, no, I think we’re close, but she could tell he was unsure. After another ten minutes the sound was louder, and then it was right in front of them, glinting rapids in the darkness, the wind still surprisingly warm, the moon giving them just enough light to see the rocks along the edge. They needed to cross the river, so they took off their clothes quickly and stepped into the cold water, Cleo right behind them. Ray held Martha’s hand at first but the water in the middle of the West Branch was deep enough for them not to touch bottom, so he let go and held their clothes above his head. As they swam, the currents pulled them downstream but they made it across. After getting dressed, they still had a few miles to walk but she could see a stone wall that she suspected was at the edge of the McCollough farm. It could have been any stone wall, of course, but she sensed they were close.

It wasn’t a miracle that they’d made it through the dense woods in the dark, following the deer trail and the dried-up creek and the West Branch itself and the stone wall, but it felt great to be with him then, that whole afternoon and evening, safe.

Whenever Martha stopped talking, they were all quiet. Gwen was not only silent but perfectly still, with her hands in her lap and her legs stretched out to the end of the couch. After Martha finished the story
about her trip across the West Branch, Bennie took Helen’s hand and squeezed it. That’s when Gwen said, “I’ve never had a good boyfriend.”

This felt like an odd thing to say—Ray was probably dead—but somehow Gwen could pull it off. She and Martha were old friends.

There was a knock at the door. Bennie got up. On the front steps, Sergeant Lynne Pettigrew was knocking the snow off her boots; her cruiser was parked in the driveway, still running.

“Sorry to bother you, Bennie. I know it’s late. I’m wondering if your brother is here.”

“He’s not, Lynne,” he said.

“You should know, Bennie—we need to talk with him.” When she stepped through the doorway, her glasses fogged.

“I haven’t even seen him for a few days.” He wondered if by saying this he had already revealed too much. He even wondered, momentarily, if Lynne Pettigrew might be a good person to confide in. Maybe she could help his brother. She seemed reasonable, in her sharply pressed uniform. He could picture her talking to her hockey team before a big game. But all he said was “I don’t usually keep track of his comings and goings.”

“We’ve gotten some new statements,” she said. “I spoke with Sherry Callahan at Rosie’s pub, who had plenty to say about your brother’s visits there. He paid calls on a regular basis to Ms. Martha Doyle—Mr. LaBrecque’s girlfriend. This mean anything to you?”

“They’re old friends, he and Martha,” Bennie said, not wanting to speak too loudly. “That doesn’t seem like too much to go on.”

“This is an unusual situation, Bennie. I was very interested in what Sherry Callahan had to say. Sergeant Thibideaux was, too. I know you’re not in charge of your brother’s comings and goings, but if you happen to see him, please let him know that we’d like to talk with him. We’ve made inquiries elsewhere.” She looked down at her spiral notebook. “We haven’t yet spoken to anyone who’s seen him in the last few days. You know of anyone I might contact concerning his whereabouts?”

“Why didn’t you come here first?”

“Sergeant Thibideaux has been coming around. He said no one appeared to be home.”

“Who have you talked to, besides Sherry?”

She glanced down at her notebook. “No one else who helped any.”

“Skunk Gould still hasn’t seen him?” asked Bennie.

“No, Bennie. Now, who do you think we should be talking to? We’re hoping to find your brother before he gets himself in any trouble.”

“If anyone would know, it’d be Skunk,” he said. He was sure they were looking for Martha, but without being asked directly about her, he decided it was best that he not mention that she was sitting in the rocking chair, about twenty feet away.

She closed her notebook. “Good night, Bennie. We’ll be in touch.”

As soon as he shut the door behind her, he felt ashamed. Why hadn’t he said anything else? Lynne Pettigrew could help. He wasn’t sure that he wanted the cops to find Littlefield before he did, but Lynne Pettigrew was someone he could talk honestly with, wasn’t she? She would understand that if something had gone wrong, Littlefield hadn’t done it intentionally.

When he returned to the living room, Bennie could tell Martha had stopped telling stories; they were all waiting to hear why Lynne Pettigrew had come to the house.

“They’re looking for my brother,” said Bennie. “I guess that’s not a surprise.”

No one responded. Bennie expected Martha to say something, but even she kept quiet.

They went to bed a few minutes later—Martha said she was exhausted. Gwen gave her the purple couch to sleep on and moved down to the rug by the fire. She could have braved the mouse smell and gone up to her own room, but Bennie guessed that she didn’t want to leave Martha alone.

From the bedroom Helen and Bennie could hear the clink of empty beer bottles—someone was dismantling the line and bringing them to the kitchen.

Before they climbed into bed, again Bennie thought that if Littlefield had really taken off, he would have left a note. Helen stood in the doorway as Bennie searched his room; he moved the bureau and his trunk and hiked the end of his bed far off the ground, thinking that maybe Littlefield had written it on a small piece of paper and it had slipped underneath. Finally, he tore through all his clothes, unloading the drawers of his bureau, jamming his hands into pocket after pocket, spilling shirts and pants onto the floor. Helen stood back. Where the fuck was he? Bennie could imagine his brother sneaking into the room in the middle of the night, taking money from his wallet and leaving a note underneath the bowl of coins on his bedside table or in the front pocket of his jeans. It had to be there somewhere. He pulled out all of the drawers, rifling through the pants and shirts, anything with a pocket. He found nothing. How could Littlefield have done this? Nothing anywhere—no sign of him. Bennie wanted to bellow like Coach would have, but he just sat at the end of his bed, out of breath, surrounded by clothes. Helen started to calmly refold a pair of pants.

“Go to sleep,” he said. “I’ll do this.”

“Screw you,” she said, continuing to fold. They spent the next fifteen minutes putting the clothes back in the bureau.

Some time after they’d fallen asleep, he heard Gwen cry out—a yelp of fear—which he recognized immediately, even in his disoriented state of semisleep, as one of the sounds she made when she was having a nightmare. Afterward he heard Martha consoling her, and then all was quiet again. As he tried to go back to sleep, he thought about when Coach was alive and they all lived in the Manse together: Bennie would wake up in the middle of the night often, not only because of Gwen’s nightmare yelps but also because he would have these large, windy thoughts about dying. He would think about the Pharaohs, how long they’d been dead, and he thought about the people who would be living on earth in thousands of years, and what he, Bennie Littlefield, would mean to them. Coach would welcome him into their bedroom
at any hour of the night and let Bennie sleep beside him, and in the morning Bennie would try to sneak out before his parents woke up.

He thought, too, about the bundle of raccoons he and Littlefield had left in the snow. Littlefield had assured him they were fine.

After Gwen’s yelp—as Bennie was trying to fall asleep again—Helen started talking about Martha, and while he did his best to listen to her, in the midst of one of her questions he fell back asleep again. This annoyed Helen, of course; she nudged him and he felt guilty. She shoved his shoulder. “Bennie, Bennie,” she said. “Please. Let’s talk.” She pulled in close and her T-shirt was hot against his skin. He could tell from the moonlight coming through the window that her eyes were open, shockingly wide, and this startled him.

“Jesus,” he said.

“Are you awake?” she asked.

“Okay, okay. Start talking. I’m listening,” he said. He closed his exhausted eyes again.

“Martha is strong as hell. I mean, Ray is dead … and she’s telling us these stories.”

“You’re right,” he said, and it was true: Martha was tough. He tried to imagine what he would do if Helen was missing. He wrapped his arms around her.

“Hey, Bennie?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I think I know what happened.” The sound of these words spread over him like hot, slick liquid. It wasn’t just because he was half asleep; there was something about how she kept waking him up that both annoyed him and made him ready to believe anything she said.

“You do?”

“I’ve been thinking all along that Littlefield did something horrible,” she whispered. “But I don’t think he did. He just wanted to scare Ray, and when he fell—there were lots of places to fall—Littlefield couldn’t carry him out, because of the storm.”

This seemed plausible, and it was certainly one of the scenarios that they’d all been turning over in their minds. As much as he wanted to, he just couldn’t believe it. Littlefield was strong. He would have found a way to get LaBrecque out of the woods.

She whispered, “We’ll all get through this.”

Bennie wasn’t sure this was true. “I hope so.”

She said, “You know, Bennie … there’s something else I wanted to tell you.” He could feel that her warm hands were shaking gently. “I love you, too.”

He felt a tug of resistance—
she couldn’t be serious
—but when she wrapped her arms around him, he felt her warmth, and he tried to ignore his doubts. He wondered if this was how it would always be, if he could really rely on her. He felt her chest rise and fall against his. He wouldn’t ever know what she was really thinking; he just had to believe her.

It was Helen who fell asleep, then—she began to snore, a light, pleasant purr—and while he considered waking her up with a nudge, he decided against it.

He dozed off and on for the next few hours. Clouds covered the moon and his room was now completely black. Then the rain came, faint against the shingles, then louder, hammering down, slapping the aluminum gutters. He couldn’t sleep. He realized that even though his leg continued to itch beneath the cast, somehow the leg muscles felt stronger. He crawled out of bed. He hopped quietly to the living room.

“Gwennie,” he whispered into the darkness.

“Hmmm,” she said.

“Will you help me cut open my cast?”

He knew the doctor wanted it on for at least a few more weeks, but he figured if he was careful, it would be good for the leg to finally get some air. She pulled herself out from under the blanket beside the fire. She plodded into the kitchen and turned on the overhead fluorescent
light. Bennie sat on the counter and was able to saw a seam with a steak knife from the top of the cast while Gwen—through tired, nearly closed eyes—started working on the bottom. It took a while, and Bennie couldn’t reach down below his calf on either side, so Gwen finished the job, all the way down to his foot. She only got through to the skin with the steak knife in a few places, and Bennie was impatient enough that the cuts were barely noticeable. When Gwen cracked the cast open, Bennie’s leg was white and thin and he pounced, eager to scratch it, but the skin felt weak and raw. He’d been dreaming of this moment since leaving the hospital, but once the leg met the world again, it didn’t itch at all. His knee ached. His limp was pronounced as they headed back to his bedroom, his arm around Gwen’s shoulder. Bennie thanked Gwen for the help, and she whispered, “Couldn’t this have waited until tomorrow?”

Bennie was lying on his back, wide awake, when Julian called. It was dawn. Not wanting to wake the whole house up, he started jogging to the kitchen to pick up the phone, but his knee ached too much, so he slowed to a walk. He picked up on the fourth ring, hoping it was Littlefield.

Julian was quiet on the other end. “Dude, you’ve got to help me.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, man. I fucked up. I really fucked up. I’m so sorry, man.”