Spit Delaney's Island (10 page)

A sudden image of herself, this morning, standing over that trapped
calf with Mr. Porter's axe raised to smash in its brains, scared up the fear
again that lay waiting in her chest. What had happened to her? What kind
of person was she turning into? She loved her cattle; they surrounded her
like a living wall and she loved them singly and together. What had she
let herself become when her feelings could go so badly out of control that
she was capable of a thing like that?

Lying on that bed, she wished her husband were here just long enough
to help her out. Come back, she thought. You were a miserable rotten little man. I was glad when they phoned and told me you had died in that
hospital but you could
act
. You could make decisions and act on them. No
one would ever find Roydon Starbuck lying on a bed waiting for something to happen, just waiting.

He was rotten, she thought. But right now she wouldn't even mind if
he came back and went upstairs and cut that boy's throat and took him
away. It would be a solution and no one would know.

Mrs. Starbuck put her hand over her mouth at the thought. She opened
her eyes. The room was nearly dark, dark furniture had blended into its
own shadow so she couldn't distinguish one from the other. They had always moved at night.

She ran both hands down her body. Mr. Starbuck's plaid shirt, worn
thin from a year's washings, was stretched tight across her chest. His pants
were still strong and smelled of grease. She had had to take the seams
apart and sew in an extra ten inches down either side to fit them around
her hips and thighs.

Suddenly Mrs. Starbuck sat up. My God, had she worn these things
over to Mrs. Wright's? No wonder the woman thought she was mad. Had
she gone into that house and sat down and drunk coffee looking like this?
Her face burned. Thank goodness Mr. Wright hadn't been home. He
would have been sure she was crazy.

They had always moved at night. She could feel it now, the gentle rocking of the car under her, the cool night breeze across her face as they drove
slowly and quietly down a new driveway. She could hear the night calls of
unseen birds and the squeak of a bottom step welcoming them home. She
could taste the salt taste of tears as she picked up the sleeping boy from the
back seat and carried him inside, following the flashlight beam of her husband who led them silently to his newest prison.

Richard Starbuck, famous actor, famous inventor.

Mrs. Starbuck got off the bed and removed her clothes. Then, in the
dark, she took a dress from the closet and slipped it on over her head. She
was going for help. She gave the telephone only a glance as she passed; she
hated it and used it only for long-distance calls that couldn't be avoided.

She didn't realize she was barefoot until she was in the car but had no
intention of going back for shoes. While the movement was in her she was
going to use it before it died out. She backed the car around and drove up
the driveway to the gate. Just being behind the wheel of this old car could
make her feel better. It was a battered old sedan as plain and bulky as herself, and responded as if it could read her thoughts. How many times, she
wondered, had it helped them out of trouble?

At the fork in the road she hesitated. Since Charlene Porter was the
one who had discovered the boy in the first place maybe she should go
there first. Charlene liked her. They were steady people. Their religion or
whatever it was had got them through a lot of rough spots. But they would
want to pray or something, probably, and that was one thing Mrs. Starbuck was not prepared to do.

Besides, hadn't the girl herself, that Charlene, told her once that prayer
doesn't change the truth? She said it just puts your thinking more in line
with it or something like that. Mrs. Starbuck didn't want to be put in line
with what seemed to her right now to be the truth.

Going to the Larkins' place passed through her thoughts. She saw herself knocking on their door and going into the shack and asking for someone to help (How? How? How help?) But she saw their faces, three blank
stupid faces showing her only their contempt. Shelley would show pity
too, of course, but like the boys she would feel disgust at the sight of a
woman as solid as Mrs. Starbuck going to pieces. They expected her to be
a rock, it must seem to them that anyone with more intelligence than their
own should be able to solve any problems the world was capable of serving up.

Probably they wouldn't even feel
that
much. She could see them watching her like a cluster of vacant indifferent cows, three stupid Holsteins
with no more feeling for her or anyone else than Mr. Porter's bull. There
was no point in looking for any kind of aid in that direction.

And that left only the Wrights.

“Edna Starbuck, you're barefoot,” Mrs. Wright said. “Have you been
drinking? And this is your third visit today.”

Mrs. Starbuck went up the steps and into Mrs. Wright's house. It was
cool inside, and very light. She had to squint to see and couldn't seem to
find a place to sit down.

“For heaven's sake, woman, what's the matter with you?” Mrs. Wright
said. “Can I get you something?” She pushed papers into a neat pile on the
table. “I was just writing up my column. You look as if you've stepped right
out of a coffin.”

“Your husband. Is Mr. Wright home yet?”

“Good heavens no. They stay after the game for a few drinks in the clubhouse. Edna, if you could only see yourself.”

Mrs. Starbuck sat down on something. “Then I'll wait,” she said. “He's
got to come some time.”

Mrs. Wright looked as if she were going to explode. Her rooster-leg
arms were folded tightly across her little chest. Her lips were pressed together. “I've never been one for judging others,” she said. “But when I do
I always judge only by what I see. I believe that's only fair. And today I
think I've seen a lot more than I should've.”

“It's nothing to do with you,” Mrs. Starbuck said, waving one hand as
if that were enough to make Mrs. Wright disappear. “This is business.”

“Business?”

“Yes. Business. Lawyer business.”

Mrs. Wright whirled around twice, as if she were looking for something to hit Mrs. Starbuck with. “You don't know any lawyer business.
You've never even talked to a lawyer before. What kind of business?”

Mrs. Starbuck was tired. She felt as if a terrible weight were sitting on
her head, pushing her down. She expected to collapse like a telescope, head
inside her shoulders, chest inside her hips. “This will be strictly between
me and him,” she said.

“What you should be looking up at this time of night is not a lawyer at
all but a psychiatrist.” Mrs. Wright stepped back after those words and
watched Mrs. Starbuck's face, waiting to see if this time she had gone too
far.

Mrs. Starbuck shook her head. “Maybe I've been crazy all my life,” she
said. “Maybe I've been asleep and just dreaming my life. But right now I
think I am saner and more clear-sighted even than you are.” She paused for
a moment, then added, “If that's possible.”

Mrs. Wright pushed her face in very close and spoke softly. “In that case,
Mrs. Starbuck, Mrs. Level-headed and Clear-sighted Starbuck, you just
may understand what I'm going to say. Mr. Wright does not come home
on Friday nights. After he's played his golf he does I-don't-know-what
and gets home just in time for breakfast.”

Mrs. Starbuck's eyes opened wide and watched Mrs. Wright step back.
She stood up. “Oh my God,” she said. She got out of the house as fast as
she could and dropped her heavy body onto the front seat of the car.

Mrs. Wright called from the bottom step. “Wait. Can't you tell me?
Can't I help?”

But Mrs. Starbuck backed out onto the highway and drove halfway
home before she remembered to change out of low gear. The car, which
she was sure had caught some of the panic she felt, trembled and sputtered
and coughed. When she stopped in front of her own house she put her
forehead down on the steering wheel and waited. She didn't know what
she was waiting for but she listened hard, breathing silently, as if she
expected a bolt of lightning to zig-zag down the sky and strike the whole
lot of them at once.

Strike Mrs. Wright, she thought. Wipe that white-haired little scrunch
right off the earth and do everyone a favour. Nobody'd miss her. And
Charlene too, wipe that mind of hers so clean she can't remember a thing,
or recall betrayal. Then come over here and get us both, that boy, that shell
of a boy, then me.

When she looked up she was surprised to see that her headlights were
still on, that they cut a piece out of the night, a long rectangular room between her and a wall of trees, silver-leafed and still. A cat slunk through
the grass, paused to turn headlights of his own back on her, then moved on
out of sight. She strained her eyes to see into the space behind the trees but
there was nothing. It was as if any light that passed through gaps in the
leaves uncaught had abandoned the effort and died out without reaching
any goal. This wall, this blank unfeeling wall of trees, was wrapped like a
stockade fence around them all: the Porters, the Wrights, herself.

Mrs. Starbuck sighed. There was to be no lightning then and sitting
here accomplished nothing. She found herself wishing again for the mean
little man who had always packed them all off in the middle of the night
to some place where they would be safe again for a while. At least he could
act, move, while she felt as if she could sit here until she starved to death
or died of fright.

At last, though, she stirred. She got out of the car and walked to the
house, her bare feet slapping on the narrow concrete walk, then went inside and climbed the stairs to the second floor. She turned on every light
switch she passed. At the top of the stairs she stopped to catch her breath,
her heavy body aching from the effort, both hands on her knees and head
bent right over as if she'd lost something on the floor.

Then she moved forward with a deliberateness that surprised herself.
She couldn't have stopped. She opened the door to the storage room, went
in, and slid her hand up and down the wall until it bumped into the light
switch and turned it on. Then she set up the ladder and climbed it, puffing, both feet on each rung, and pushed her head up through the door in
the ceiling.

The boy was asleep and too heavy for her to carry this time so she shook
him awake. “We're moving again,” she whispered to him over and over
until she was sure it connected somewhere inside that head with other
memories and made sense. “We're moving again, going some place nicer
this time.”

She went ahead of him into each room to turn out the light, then came
back and guided him forward. “This time it will be different,” she promised him. “This time it will be nicer.” And she helped him down the steps
as if they were both blind, both unsure, both frightened. Telling herself: it
will soon be all over, we'll be able to relax, the nightmare will end.

When he was in the car she slammed the door and went around to her
own side to get in. “I still don't have any shoes on,” she said, swallowing a
giggle. And remembered too, that she hadn't packed a suitcase for either
of them. “I'll come back and move the rest,” she said.

Again the headlights hit the wall of trees. “We'll find another place,
nicer than this,” she said. “A little farmhouse somewhere, surrounded by
apple trees, a little house covered with cedar shakes.”

She started the engine and backed the car around. She patted the dashboard gently: Help me once more, she told it, just one more time. Then
said, “This time we'll never have to move again,” and put her hand on the
boy's knee. His head rested against the window on his side. He looked as
if he had gone back to sleep.

I won't turn the headlights out, she thought. This time I won't sneak
away. She drove slowly up her driveway, feeling the car vibrate beneath her
like a purring cat. Don't stop, she thought, don't stop for anything until
you've got us somewhere safe. “And something else, Richard,” she said,
trying his name aloud for the first time in fourteen years. “There won't be
any prison in this next house, no locked doors. You'll live with me the way
a son should.”

For a moment she thought that somehow the door on his side of the car
had fallen open and she slammed on the brakes. But he wasn't falling, he
was leaping free of the car, squealing; he landed on one foot, rolled, then
leapt to both feet again and started running, ahead of her, down the road.

She didn't get out to catch him, she drove behind, her front bumper
inches from his legs. He's never run before, she thought, he's never even
done much walking. Sooner or later he will tire or fall or forget how to
move his legs, or realize he doesn't know how to run. Then I'll stop and
pick him up and take him away. Just take it easy, she whispered to the car.
And felt something of herself drain down through her fingers and into the
wheel.

His figure in the light ahead of the car was like a puppet dangling, his
legs and arms all uncoordinated and loose. And yet he kept on, slowly, and
did not duck off to the side to escape or fall to his knees to be caught. He
fled before her as human as a shadow, down the darkened tunnel of road
beneath the trees.

But as Mrs. Starbuck was approaching the bridge another pair of headlights came around the corner and bore down on her, coming too fast.

“You'll hit my son!” she screamed, and jammed one foot down on the
brake pedal. Without taking the time to pull on the handbrake or turn off
the engine or even change out of gear she pushed open the door and leapt
out (commanding “Wait here” as if to a servant or child), then ran ahead
to catch the boy before those other headlights could hit him. In front of her
own still moving car her hand touched him, just brushed him, a split-second before she stumbled and fell to her knees. The other car squealed,
sprayed gravel, stopped only a few feet away from her.