Lost (4 page)

A week passed. It was noon on Saturday. Sherman cut through the alley and stooped below the top ridge of the picket fence for the third day in a row. Through the crevices, he watched the woman in her bathing suit sunning herself. She was lying propped up on her lawn chair. She wore sunglasses, and the book she had been reading had tumbled to the ground. He thought she was asleep. He slipped through the gate and was inches from her, coming toward her from the side, when she sat up, the black ovals of her sequined sunglasses fixed upon him. “What do you want?” she asked him. She started to stand up. But he was there and she was there, and he kissed her as she tried to get to her feet. At least, he almost kissed her. They tumbled over, fell, the top of her bathing suit sliding down like a candy wrapper, her breasts bobbing against him. That was his story. Sherman never admitted, even to Mamie, that he pulled down her top. He said that when she cursed him and called him by name it made him nervous, and that's when he pinned her to the ground and said if she told anybody, he'd come back and shut her up good. She claimed he tore her swimsuit and struck her repeatedly.

The woman, named Sarah Coveleski, called their father and their father notified the police. “This is the last damned straw,” he told Sherman in front of the other two children. “You're nothing but trouble. I've tried to be good to you but nothing gets through. And I won't put up with this any longer. It's just the last God-damned straw.” And he slapped Sherman's face with the flat of his hand so hard that it made a loud pop and Sherman stumbled and fell. He drove Sherman to the police station and turned him over to the officer in charge. Sherman was identified by the two women, Stiles and Coveleski, and was detained for questioning for nine hours. It was nearly eleven-thirty at night before he was released into the custody of his father. More to preserve the reputation of the women than anything else, the matter was kept out of the Graylie newspaper. And yet the word got around. Sherman wouldn't talk about his detainment, but he was properly chastised and seething.

Later, his mother had tried to explain that they only meant to teach him a lesson, but Sherman had never trusted them again. He was convinced his father would betray him with any chance he had, and he hated his mother for letting his father get away with it. Sherman already had the gun when he wrote the note.…

It was not yet five-thirty that early August morning when Mamie left the house by the back-porch steps. In her dress pocket she carried two lumps of brown sugar; in her right arm she carried the sack of Sherman's loot. The severe change in light from the interior of the house to the brilliant glare of the yard blinded her. Hugging the paper bag, she shielded her eyes, stepping into the cooler house shadow.

She followed the walk parallel to the house until it ended, then hurried across the wet grass. At the hedge, she ducked into the tunnel made by the thick branches of the privet hedge and the adjoining iron fence. All but hidden from view, she crawled down the length of the iron fence, dragging the sack with her to the end of the yard, where she emerged in the thicket of ragweed and goldenrod and wild crape myrtle. She stood and dusted her knees.

She crossed the weedy right-of-way.

She could hear the Chinaman before she saw him—a low, throbbing, nerve-numbing growl. The pen was constructed with two high fences, one set inside the other, because when he was mad enough to break his chain, the Chinaman could chew through one layer of fence in nothing flat. The back of the pen faced the right-of-way; its front and the gate were flush with the Ambroses' back yard, which meant she would have to skirt the fence and enter their yard in order to reach the gate. Picking her way carefully, she started down the sloping embankment alongside the fence. The low throb of the dog's growling neither quickened nor faltered.

More than halfway down the side of the pen, the weeds gapped and she saw him: the ruff of his black hair framing his pug face, the slanting Chinese eyes with no irises, just black holes to see through, the muzzle of his black mouth drawn back on long slashing teeth, saliva hanging from his jowls. It was the face of absolute rage and, as always, for a moment she found herself mesmerized by it, unable to move. He must have sensed her fear—the low, guttural growl rose an octave. Slowly he came to his feet, the chain attached to his collar clinking as he stood. His matted tail curled up and back on his hindquarters. His dust-mottled coat fell at odds with itself along his shabby length, clotted with chunks of dirt. He was no longer growling; his black lips were stretched thin, his nose ridged. Then he sprang, hurtling through the air, his growl twice as loud as it had been, teeth snapping, cracking together on empty air, till the chain caught, whipping him backward. He hardly touched the ground before he flew at Mamie again, his massive black muzzle ripping through the air only two feet away.

Frightened, she fumbled in her pocket for the sugar. The first lump crumbled to powder in her hand, and she quickly pulled out the second one. She reached through the outer fence and tossed the lump into the pen, underhanded. As often as she'd come here with Sherman to bring the dog some sugar, these first minutes never became any less terrifying. “Chinaman,” she said, but her voice sounded shaky. She tried again, forcing a firmer voice. “Chinaman, you stop.” He stepped over his chain and backed away, eyeing her. “There's your sugar. There it
is
.” Mamie pointed to where it had disintegrated on the ground. His pug face came up tilted and quizzical. “There,” she said, and pointed again. “You know me. You remember me, doncha? I'm going to come see you now. You be a good boy. Don't you bite me.” His growls were mellowing to short, snorty grumps and groans. He barked at her once, ran sideways a few steps, dragging his chain, and barked again; then he ambled toward the sugar, sniffing the ground.

The Chinaman was nearly as tall as she was, and she was as tall as a regular doorknob. His enormous tufted paws were as big as fists. Their father had told them to stay away from him. He said the Chinaman was half chow, and for all he knew the other half was timber wolf. When Sherman asked how he knew, he said the face and the black tongue came from the chow and the size and the coat came from a big breed, a German shepherd or a wolf; but he wasn't muscular like a shepherd, more lanky and lean like a wolf. And he told them there was no meaner breed alive than a chow that had been mixed. Sherman said it was no wonder he was mean, because Mr. Ambrose beat him, and their father said that was his privilege, it was his dog. But Sherman pitied him enough to start taking him sugar. He said they understood each other.

When Mamie opened the gate to his pen, she stepped directly into the bare circumference of his chain length and allowed the Chinaman to sniff at her from top to bottom. After his inspection, he nuzzled her and licked her with his black tongue. First he licked her face, then he licked her sugar-dusted palm, and finally, while she held it open, he licked the inside of her sugary pocket. She petted him and hugged his face and told him Sherman was hurt. The rolled-back tail twitched. She talked to him. She told him he was a good boy. Along his back she could feel hard welts under his fur. Then, while he watched, she went into the doghouse.

Inside, the air smelled heavily of damp dog. She lifted the straw mat in the far corner and hid the paper bag under it. Outside, the gate squeaked open and closed. Mr. Ambrose's house slippers walked past the square doghouse doorway, and his hand and sleeve set down a tin basin of water. She huddled in the darkest corner, careful not to shift in the straw. “Scat,” he said. He stamped his foot and the Chinaman backed from him. With the side of his slipper, he scraped something shiny along the ground. His hand came down and he picked it up. “Well, I'll be,” he said. With her heart pounding, Mamie looked down her front and at her arms and hands, trying to determine what she might have dropped. Had she torn a hole in the sack and lost something? She wanted to dig the sack out of the straw and check it, but she was afraid to move. “Biggest damned shell I ever saw,” he said. Her hand searched the front of her dress, and it was gone—the bronze-colored locust shell she had saved, gone. His slippers came toward the doghouse door. Her mind raced. He's gonna find me, find the sack, know what we did, tell … But the footsteps turned away. The gate clapped shut. The Chinaman sat, then lay down, wary and alert, peering at Mamie from the swelter of his domain. His eerie eyes squinted to slits as he yawned.

She crawled out and peeked above the low roof in time to see Mr. Ambrose go into his house. She patted the Chinaman's ruff, slipped from the pen, and went home the way she had come, down the tunnel of hedges to the walk and into the kitchen, catching the screen door. Without hesitation, she crossed through the dining room, where the table gleamed like a mirror. The doors to the living room holding Sherman and her mother were closed. She thought she heard her mother softly weeping. Carefully, Mamie moved toward the doors, but the sound, whatever it was, had stopped. When she heard nothing more, she backed away on tiptoe and climbed the stairs to her room. Then she changed into her pajamas and climbed back into her bed.

2

After the night she pulled Mamie down across the wicker lounger, her mother never again spoke of Sherman's injury. She treated him like a revered guest. To her, it was no longer a question of whether he would live or die, but when he would get well, as if his condition were a disease they could conquer together.

As the days turned to weeks, she established a regime by which she read to him from the Bible every hour on the hour as long as she was awake. This practice never varied.

For the next eight months, she rarely left his side. She bathed him, gently turned him first on one side, then the other, to prevent bedsores; she learned to administer his injections and the intravenous-feeding device. Talking to herself, she kept up a conversation about everyday matters—the weather, the little gossip she'd heard, events Toddy and Mamie reported from their play outside—because, she told anyone who'd listen, she believed that his subconscious mind heard everything she said and stored it, so that eventually he would remember what he had missed. And, besides reading the Bible, she prayed. On the hour.

With the passage of time, the neighbors came by less and less frequently. Only Mrs. Jackson continued to show up every so often with a covered dish. The two younger children had gone back to school—Toddy went to Mrs. Shaw's third grade and Mamie was in the first grade with Miss Durbin—and their father was back at work full time. After the first two months, the nurse limited her visits to once a week to help their mother change the bedclothes. Their father explained they couldn't afford her any more than that. In early October, the doctor talked about surgery to remove a blood clot and, perhaps, the bullet. He described Sherman's condition as stable but unchanged, and stressed that the present situation might continue indefinitely. Her mother took the report in stride, but about the operation she said, “Maybe in a few weeks, we'll see. If there's no immediate danger, I can't bear to think about having him cut right now.” Before the doctor could go on, she returned to the sickroom, shutting the doors.

The desolation hung over them all; it went to school with the children and came home with them. They often walked home alone. The other kids shied away, whispered behind their backs. Just when the worst effects of the family crisis seemed to be lessening, trouble would unexpectedly crop up again. One bright, chilly morning, during recess, word reached Mamie that Toddy was in the principal's office, crying. She thought he'd been spanked. It seemed impossible—he always behaved himself. She ran down the corridor to the office. Sitting on the edge of a chair, Toddy was weeping convulsively. His teacher was there, trying to talk to him. “It'll be all right,” Mrs. Shaw said. “We've called your father.”

“What'd you do?” Mamie asked, bending to him very close. “What's the matter, Toddy?”

“He started to cry uncontrollably during class,” Mrs. Shaw said to the school nurse, who had come in. “It's …” She motioned the nurse aside, speaking quietly.

It took Toddy a little while to sob himself back to silence, and then their father arrived and Mrs. Shaw and the nurse met him with explanations. Toddy looked at Mamie as if pleading. “Sherman never liked me,” he whispered to her. “He never, never did. Ever since I wouldn't do what he wanted. You know”—his voice grew even softer and quieter—“go and take things. Sherman never liked me after that. He was mean to me. And now he's hurt, and he's never gonna get well. I just keep thinking about it. I can't stop. I don't think he ever will like me.” He began to sob again.

“Oh, Toddy,” Mamie whispered, “I like you.”

Then their father lifted him up in his arms, and Mrs. Shaw said, “It's a shame. Toddy's really a good boy, Mr. Abbott. He works so hard. You should be proud of him. None of us knew he was so deeply troubled by—by—well, you understand, your other son's injury.”

“Daddy,” Mamie said, “can I come home, too?” She didn't want to be left there in school by herself. But he said no, she ought to stay so he could spend some time alone with Toddy.

Fall was ending; the trees were suddenly bare, drifts of leaves knee-deep in the yards and gutters. On those dreary afternoons, after the children came home from school, their mother permitted Mamie to spread a quilt on the living-room floor and bring in her shoe boxes and paper dolls so she could keep an eye on her. Sometimes, without leaving Sherman's bedside, their mother helped Toddy with his arithmetic problems. And although Toddy always kept his distance, Mamie learned in time to speak to Sherman as casually as her mother did. Once, when no one else was in the room, she whispered to him where she had stashed his things.

But while their mother was absorbed with Sherman and, for the most part, neglected everyone else, their father intensified his watchfulness over Mamie, just as he had said he would do. Through that early winter, he talked to the neighbors, one by one. Mamie knew what he was doing, and her nerves twitched with the fear of what he might have discovered every evening that he was late coming home from work. And again, on Saturdays, when he left the house at midafternoon without telling them where he was going. She knew. He never let her put it out of her mind. With his accusing glances, with questions and hints, with quick descriptions of what he'd found out from Mrs. Graves or Mr. Mallory, he let her know that his pursuit of the truth about the gun had not slackened. When she was outside playing, it was not uncommon for her to glance up and see him watching her through one or another of the windows, or to see the curtains suddenly shifting. Once, when her mother had sent her to the corner grocery for a loaf of bread, she saw him leaving the Iverses' house. She remembered the marbleized fountain pen and a chill ran through her. She stood behind a tree until he had turned the corner.