Authors: James P. Blaylock
But at the rear of the yard, just at where Klein’s wrought iron tied into the redwood corner post of Beth’s fence, there was
a huge avocado tree. A heavy limb reached over the fence boards there, arching down nearly to shoulder level. The fence had
been built with the rails facing out; that was a mistake. A fence like that was easy to climb, an invitation to any passing
burglar or child. Pomeroy stepped onto the bottom rail and peered over.
Nothing. No sign of anyone home. He could see straight across her yard to where the driveway ran into the detached garage.
If she had gotten home, she’d parked the bus near the street instead of pulling it up. Only she hadn’t gotten
home. He could feel it. The house was quiet and closed up tight.
He grabbed the big limb with both hands, pulling and kicking his way into the foliage until he stepped onto the top of the
fence. Crouching, he looked out along the side of the Kleins’ house. There was the tail end of Lorna’s Jaguar in the drive.
Klein’s truck was still gone.
Without waiting another moment he dropped to the ground and straightened his clothes, then tried to brush off the dust and
foxtails he’d picked up crawling around out in the field. With a shaking hand he smoothed his hair, abruptly wishing he had
his toiletries bag with him. He wanted to look his best in a situation like this, not disheveled like some kind of tramp.
Keeping low, he loped across to the back of the house. Without giving an instant’s thought to what he was doing, he pulled
his shirt out of his pants, wrapped his hand in it, and grasped the doorknob. The knob turned. He pushed on it, but the door
held fast. Bolted! One good kick … He rejected the idea, letting go of the knob and turning away, heading toward a pair of
windows that looked out onto the backyard. Beyond them was a rectangular bay, probably a bedroom closet, and beyond that lay
the window he’d peered into last night. There was no way he was going around the corner of the house, not in broad daylight.
He had three shots at it, and that’s all. There would be no breaking windows, no evidence that anyone had been there. The
lawn ran all the way up to the foundation of the house, so he wouldn’t leave footprints, and he was careful this time to keep
his hands off the dusty siding. The first window was clearly latched. He didn’t bother to touch it, but moved on quickly to
the second window. It didn’t have any latch at all.
He looked through it, into what must have been the living room or dining room. A door on the left led into Beth’s bedroom.
Hesitating for one last moment, he let his mind
spin, waiting for something to appear—some warning, some sign, some reminder of the absolute desperation of what he was doing.
Instead he pictured what lay on the other side of that inner door—things that were a part of Beth’s secret world, things that
Lance Klein could only imagine. Real intimacy, that was what he and Beth would share….
Quickly he thrust the palm of his hand against the top of the lower half of the window. It slid open easily. He pulled off
his shirt, laid it across the sill, and boosted himself through, careful of his bandaged hand. He lowered himself to the floor
on the other side, touching nothing but the carpet. It was then that he saw the power screwdriver lying on a small table that
someone had graciously pulled out of the way for him.
Klein again. It had to be him. He had been there tinkering around, trying to make sure that the house was safe from prowlers.
Pomeroy smiled. “Thanks, Lance,” he said out loud, but the sound of his own voice in the empty house startled him.
He pushed the window closed with his shirt, and then put the shirt back on, tucking it in haphazardly. Forcing himself to
breathe evenly and deeply, he stepped across the carpet and shouldered open the door to Beth’s bedroom.
B
OBBY WHEELED AROUND, READY TO RUN BACK INTO THE
front room.
“Wait,” the boy said. “I want to show you a thing that I have.”
Bobby stared at him. He wasn’t very big. His clothes were weird, as if he was poor and couldn’t afford anything better, or
maybe was religious. Leaves swirled up around his black leather shoes, which looked tight and uncomfortable, and he wore suspenders
and a shirt with sleeves like a pirate might wear. His voice was thin and frail, sounding almost as if he’d been hurt or had
been sick for a long time.
“I saw you in the woods,” Bobby said to him. “I thought maybe you wanted to have an acorn fight.”
“I saw you, too.”
“My friend Peter’s coming in a couple of minutes. I’ve only got till two.” He checked his watch.
“Me, too,” the boy said. “I’ve only got till two.” He smiled, showing uneven teeth. There was something in his voice, almost
a buzzing sound like a voice out of a machine or as if he were talking through a swarm of bees.
“So you threw the acorns?”
“I threw the acorns,” the boy said.
“Don’t copy me. I don’t like copying.”
The boy said nothing, so Bobby said, “You were the one at the day-care center yesterday, weren’t you? The one that threw the
deer head over the fence.” He suddenly
knew it was true, even though he hadn’t been there at the time.
He shook his head slowly. “That was my brother. I didn’t throw dead things.”
“You’ve got a brother?”
“Sometimes I pretend to be him.”
“Where is he now?” Bobby asked, looking past him into the kitchen. This sounded like a lie.
“He’s lost. He can’t play. Ever.”
“Then how did he throw the deer head over the fence if he’s lost?”
“He threw a deer head over the fence.”
“I guess I better go,” Bobby said. “Peter and my mom will be out looking for me. Probably they’re right outside now.”
For a moment the boy said nothing, and then, as if he suddenly remembered to speak, he asked, “Do you want some Oreos and
Kool-Aid?”
“Sure,” Bobby said. “If you really
have
any.”
“It’s what I always have. Do you want to see my treasure?” He turned around without waiting for an answer and headed back
into the kitchen. Bobby followed him out through the back door and into the windy sunlight.
“It’s down here,” the boy said, leading him around the side of the house where it was partly sheltered from the wind. A profusion
of wild grape grew against the wall, the vines curling into the eaves of the house and spreading out along the ground, half
covering the plank door of a storm cellar that sat in a raised frame of rotten-looking boards. A rusty hasp and stick held
the door shut, and the boy tugged the stick out and dropped it into the weeds alongside the frame. Bobby helped him pull the
door back to where it leaned open, resting against the mass of vines.
A shower of yellow grape leaves drifted down onto a set of wooden stairs illuminated by a rectangle of sunlight. There was
a room beyond the bottom of the stairs, and a cool wind drifted up out of it, carrying on it the earthy,
musty smell of closed-up places. Bobby could just make out dusty wooden shelves against a far wall. Beneath them on the dirt
floor lay a scattering of broken glass and a couple of rusty lids, as if long ago someone had stored food down there.
“I’ll go first,” the boy said, almost eagerly, and stepping down the wooden stairs, he disappeared into the shadows toward
the far end of the room.
Bobby hesitated before following. He waited on the second step, trying to see. If he had a flashlight it wouldn’t be so bad.
“Just bring the Oreos up here,” he called down into the room, but there was no answer. He heard a scraping then, as if the
boy were pulling a box across the floor, and he stepped onto the next stair and bent down to see. There was just enough sunlight
so that he could make out shapes—the boy at the far end of the room and a box of some sort at his feet.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see that the opposite side of the small room opened onto a low crawl space
under the rest of the house. He could make out the exposed wooden substructure of the house itself, sitting on concrete piers
in the dirt, and a couple of little patches of sunlight shining in the distance, maybe through broken places where the old
front porch had fallen.
Just then someone called outside, a woman’s voice from some distance away, barely audible above the wind. The wind stirred
the chalky dust beneath the house, moving strings of cobwebs that drooped from the floor joists.
“Hurry,” the boy said. “This is only one of my treasures. I’ve got them hidden around. Sometime I’ll show you the rest.”
“Where’s the Oreos?” Bobby asked, stepping down to the floor, but for some reason still not eager to look into the box. He
was almost certain the kid was lying.
There was the sound of the woman calling again, closer now. It might be his mother, although she didn’t usually sound as creepy
as that. He looked at his watch. He was
only late by a couple of minutes….
“I’ll only show you if you promise you won’t tell,” the boy said.
“Course I promise,” Bobby said, just as the calling started up again, the voice closer now. She was hollering somebody’s name,
half moaning and half crying. It
sure
wasn’t his mother.
“Don’t take anything,” the boy said suddenly, pulling open two of the flaps of the cardboard box.
“I wouldn’t,” Bobby said. “I don’t steal things. I thought you said there was Oreos and Kool-Aid.”
The boy started crying then. He stepped away from the box, brushing past Bobby to the base of the stairs where he stood for
a moment and listened. “Green Kool-Aid,” he said, trying to catch his breath and speaking out into the wind and sunlight.
“We call it bug juice.”
“Is that your mom out there?” Bobby asked. “Are you in trouble for being down here?”
Suddenly crying out loud, the boy stepped past Bobby and up the half dozen wooden stairs, stopping at the top and looking
back down into the room. He looked wildly around himself, as if he couldn’t make up his mind to stay or go, and then abruptly
turned and stepped completely outside, disappearing past the edge of the tilted-open door.
“Wait,” Bobby said. “I’m coming, too.” Hurriedly he took a step closer to the half-closed box, bending over to look inside,
just to get a glimpse of what was in there. The cardboard flaps hid most of the interior, and he could just make out a scattering
of things pushed against the far corner: a couple of glass things and a dog collar and what looked like some kind of weird
flute. A plastic-covered square of cardboard lay beneath the flute, and on the cardboard were the words “Spud Gun” and a picture
of three boys shooting at each other with red plastic guns just like the ones Peter had bought, just like the one stolen that
morning out of Peter’s car….
“Hey!” Bobby shouted. No wonder the kid didn’t want
his mother to find him down there. He’d been stealing stuff from people and hiding it under here. He pulled the flaps of
the box open all the way and reached for the potato gun, but then suddenly stopped and drew his hand back slowly.
A cat lay curled inside, up against the wall of the box. It might have been asleep, except that its head was pushed down at
a funny angle and its cream-colored fir was streaked with blood. A gust of wind blew down into the cellar, scattering dead
leaves across the packed earth. Just then the door swung inward, falling in a rush. Bobby turned and scrabbled toward the
wooden stairs as the sunlight blinked out and the door banged heavily into its frame. He threw himself against it, pushing
as hard as he could push and at the same time hearing the sound of the stick scraping into the iron ring of the hasp. Then
there was nothing but darkness around him and the sound of dry vines skittering and scraping across the wooden planks overhead.
K
LEIN LET HIMSELF INTO
B
ETH’S HOUSE AGAIN AT THE
back door without going home first to let Lorna know he was back. Probably she would have heard him pull in anyway, unless
she was still hiding out in the bedroom. He had decided to tell her the truth, or at least that part of it that she could
deal with: that he had made a mistake hiring a man like Pomeroy, and that he was going to let him go with some sort of commission
for the work he had already done—a one-time commission based on setting up the sales of five houses. That was it for now,
just what Klein owed
him. If everything clicked, and the cabins eventually resold at a good profit, and they all made their percentage, then there’d
be more in it for Pomeroy. But in the meantime, if there were any more phone calls, any harassment, any trouble at all, then
Klein would go to the police.
By God he would, too, if it came to that, if Pomeroy forced him to. But of course it wouldn’t come to that.
He put the bag of door and window hardware on the kitchen table. It had cost him nearly sixty bucks, but he would let that
slide. He could afford to chip in that much in recompense for bringing Pomeroy into the neighborhood. Except if Beth brought
it up, which she would, it would be tough to explain not taking her money. He pulled out a dozen cardboard-backed sets of
window latches and started peeling off the stiff plastic fronts. He’d have to go back into the garage for a couple of drill
bits and a hole saw before he could install the dead bolts, and when he did, then he’d set things straight with Lorna. One
thing about her, she usually didn’t bear a grudge. She got mad quickly enough, but her anger evaporated in a few hours. All
she needed was time.
The screw holes in the new window latches matched the old holes perfectly. Klein anchored them with slightly oversized screws,
then closed the window he’d left unlatched and tried it. It was solid, no movement at all. It would be easier for a burglar
to break the glass than to jimmy the thing open. Short of installing bars over the windows, that was the best he could do.
He shoved the little table back into place before replacing the hardware on the second window. Then he moved on to the service
porch and the kitchen, working quickly and methodically. He missed this part of the business—the handwork, the craft. Your
eyes and hands developed their own brains if you worked at it long enough, and you could tell the size of a screw at a glance
or cut a square edge with a handsaw or feel whether a tabletop was planed smooth.