The Better to Hold You (16 page)

“Um …”

“Soy burgers, what ever.” He sounded exasperated.

I glanced at the bearded man, who was inhaling his beer. A barmaid worked the taps under the sad-eyed aegis of a decapitated deer. “I don’t think they serve soy here. It doesn’t bleed enough.”

But Hunter was already walking over to the bar. The barmaid, the bearded man, and about a dozen shadowy shapes watched him as he sat down on a stool by the counter with the studied unself-consciousness of a journalist on location.

The barmaid, a strawberry blond in her twenties, continued filling a mug of beer. “Drinking or eating?”

Hunter looked at me, pointedly. I walked over to him, feeling like an obedient dog—heel, girl—and he turned back to the barmaid.

“Both.”

She handed us menus. “Don’t worry, ma’am. We have veggie burgers. Right here.” One sharp pink fingernail pointed it out. I blushed a little, realizing she’d been listening in on our disagreement.

Hunter smiled at her, and then at me. I could tell he thought she was attractive. She had the bright, hard prettiness of a beauty contestant. “See, Abs, what’d I tell you. Now, uh—What’s your name?”

“Kayla.”

“Well, Kayla, we’d like two beers. Was that a Guinness you were pouring? A Guinness, then. And something light for her.”

Kayla slanted a look at me, thinking things over. “Amstel okay?”

I agreed that it was. She served it with an afterthought of lemon. Hunter’s Guinness was much more of a production and involved a lot of angling of the mug beneath the tap, bringing the foaming head to the point of disaster, letting it settle, bringing it back to the tap again. In order to serve it without spilling, Kayla leaned way over, her breasts brushing the counter.

Hunter ordered a bacon burger, “so rare it’s still got some moo,” and I ordered a veggie burger and fries. We looked around us before settling on watching the fire in the elaborately casual way of couples who have nothing to say to each other that will not start an argument. The bearded man beside me hunched himself over a little clay bowl and spooned chili into the general vicinity of his mouth.

“Dr. Barrow? Abra?”

I turned, so surprised at hearing my name spoken that I forgot the usual reflexive smile you give to people you’re not sure you know.

It was Red the Wildlife Removal Operator, standing in what appeared to be the same dingy white T-shirt and jeans, holding a bottle of Budweiser by the neck and looking at me with more open warmth than I would have expected from a good old boy in a bar.

“What’re you doing here? Hold on, now, you remember Jackie. Jackie, this here’s the doctor that helped me out with Pia.” He indicated the frowsy dyed blonde just behind him. I did not really remember her and understood from her smile that the feeling was mutual. She was wearing a pink airbrushed deer sweatshirt and smoking a cigarette between stiff fingers.

“Hi, Jackie.”

“Hi.”

“I’m Hunter. Abra’s husband.”

“Glad to meet you.” We all shook hands with extreme awkwardness. Hunter and Red looked at each other, smiling in a way that didn’t reach their eyes. I felt a prickle of tension at the back of my neck, the way I sometimes did when I put the wrong two dogs together at work.

“So, what’re you doing in Northside?” Handshake over, Red hooked his left thumb into his belt loop. He was still facing Hunter, but I got the feeling he was speaking to me.

“Actually, what we’re doing here is moving—we’ve just moved into Hunter’s family’s house.”

“No kidding. Whereabouts?”

“It’s the old farm house set back on Skunk’s Misery Road.”

“That so?” Red shook his head in a very cowboy way, and if he’d had a hat, I got the feeling he would have tipped it back. “Well, small world. That just about makes us neighbors.”

Kayla arrived with Hunter’s food and I tried not to watch her serve him, breasts flat against the counter. She handed Hunter his bacon cheeseburger, which was dripping blood onto his plate just as he had ordered.

“Ketchup?”

“Nah, just hides the flavor.” He smiled at her. She smiled back.

“I’ll get your veggie burger right away,” she reassured me. I didn’t ask why it had taken longer to cook than meat. Of course, Hunter’s meat was almost raw.

Red put a hand on his girlfriend’s shoulder. “Come on, Jackie,” he said. “We should leave these nice folks to eat in peace.”

“Hang on a second. Didn’t you just say you’re my neighbor?” Hunter sounded casual as he took a bite of his hamburger, but his eyes narrowed. “As far as I’m aware, though, there aren’t any houses near ours.”

Jackie cleared her throat, her eyes darting back and forth between the two men. “Red’s been building a house up in the woods by your house. Been working on it all summer.”

“You’re building your own house?” I suppose it made sense: Red had the look of the kind of man who wouldn’t be able to tell you what the House Judiciary Committee was or who wrote The Portrait of a Lady, but who knew how to build a house from scratch, wire it for electricity, and install a septic system.

“Just a bit of a cabin.”

Kayla the barmaid finally brought me my veggie burger, which was cold. She asked Hunter how he liked his hamburger and he gave her a thumbs-up. Then he turned back to Red, all trace of friendliness gone. “And just exactly where is your land?”

Red sketched a map with his finger in the air. “Here’s you, here’s Old Scolder Mountain. Up to the north here, behind your barn—”

“There isn’t any barn.”

“Yes there is, it’s just gotten a bit swallowed up by the woods back there. You walk due north up your hill and back beyond the barbed wire, you’ll see it—too run-down to fix now, though. Anyway, you go on up the hill—”

“In the forest?”

“Yup, you can walk it or if you’ve got a four-wheel drive you can use the road I’ve been clearing up till about here.” Red wiggled a finger and then walked his pointer and index past the point of no return. “From there, you walk about a half a mile to the building site.”

Hunter pushed his plate away and leaned back on his stool. “I thought that was still our land, all the way to the Murdock farm over on Oak Ridge.”

“Well, now, when old man Murdock died last winter his kids sold me a parcel. Here, you got a pen? I’ll show you on a napkin.”

“You don’t happen to have a survey map showing exactly what bit?”

I put my hand on my husband’s shoulder. “Hunter—”

“I’m just curious. I thought there was three-acre zoning around here.”

Red looked up from his napkin. “There is.”

“Then I don’t exactly understand where my land ends and yours begins.”

I laughed, weakly. “God, Hunter, we’ve only just arrived here. There’s no need to get so—so—”

“Territorial?” Hunter gave me a very unfriendly smile. An I’m-going-to-yell-at-you-in-private smile.

“Man’s got a right to know which side of the fence to piss on.” Red gestured with his chin, something between a nod and a bow. “I’ll get you a map. I’ll even walk you around the boundaries.” He paused. “Tell you a little about the town, if you like. Some interesting folklore about Northside.” This last seemed directed at me, but Hunter intercepted it.

“I’m not exactly a stranger, you know. My family and I spent summers here while I was growing up.”

Red hooked his fingers into his belt loops. “Know where it got its name?”

Hunter made a dismissive gesture. “It was the north side of some settler’s property, I guess.”

“Nope.” Red was clearly enjoying himself. “You know the old stone church at the edge of town? Well, the graveyard out back was getting awful crowded, ‘cause all the townsfolk wanted to be buried out front, where the sun kept things bright. The poor and the evildoers got stuck on the north side—that used to be called the devil’s side, you know. In fact, the church even has a door in the north wall, and they open it at baptisms and communions, to get rid of troublesome spirits.”

Was I ever a long way out of Manhattan. “So you’re saying that the town got named after the bad end of the graveyard?”

“I guess it was kind of a bad town to begin with. I know for a fact that a bunch of so-called witches escaped here during the ruckus in Salem. Seems Northside has a long history of being desirable to the undesirables.”

“It’s true, you know,” said Jackie. “My great-great-great-grandmother was accused in Ipswich, and she managed to get herself here.” She smiled a little crookedly. “Seems the Ipswich witches never got quite the reputation the Salem ones did.”

“Probably too hard to pronounce,” I said, and Jackie laughed, an attractive, deep, smoky sound.

“Funny I never heard about all this before,” said Hunter, patting his breast pocket for cigarettes.

“Well,” said Red equably, “even some full-time residents don’t know the history. But even nowadays, the town gets its share of unusual characters. Take the sheriff, for example—”

“Actually, I’d rather not.” Hunter shook a cigarette out of its pack. “Small-town gossip doesn’t interest me.”

Red’s mouth tightened fractionally, but he nodded with better grace than I could have mustered. “Sorry, friend, but you can’t smoke in here. Used to be we got away with it, but nowadays we’re health-code-compliant.”

Jackie started to say something, but Hunter wasn’t paying attention, and he spoke over her. “You sure do volunteer a lot of information—friend.” He stuck his cigarette behind one ear, but his tone was borderline offensive.

“Which is just what we need,” I cut in. “I feel completely at sea here, and I, for one, know nothing about the town.” I gave Hunter a warning look. He was acting so boorish that I felt implicated: Oh, look, there’s one of those wives who get browbeaten by their overbearing husbands. On an impulse, I turned back to Red and said, “Why don’t we make it dinner. You can both come over”—I dipped my head to include Jackie—”and, uh, fill us in on the neighborhood.” I didn’t expect them to accept, but I figured the offer might make up for Hunter’s belligerence.

There was a half-beat of silence. “Well,” Jackie said. “That’s nice of you to say, but …” She looked at Red for guidance. Red looked at Hunter.

“How’s Friday sit with you?”

Hunter, who hated it when I invited people over without checking with him first, smiled with all his teeth. “Friday’s fine by me. Abra’s going to be doing all the work, anyway.” He finished his Guinness and instantly Kayla was there, asking what else he needed. “Thanks, honey. Can I get another? Great.”

I looked up and Red glanced away from me, as if he hadn’t meant to be caught looking. “So it’s a date? Friday?”

Again, his gaze danced away from mine. “If it’s all right with Jackie.”

“Fine by me.” She sounded miserable. “But it really should be me inviting you. I sure owe you one. Seeing as how you helped sneak Pia out and all.”

“How is she doing?” I thought about my glimpse of Malachy’s laboratory, and my crazy dream of a wolf girl.

“She’s acting kind of funny, actually. Scratching at herself. Her fur’s coming off in clumps.”

“I’d be happy to take a look at her,” I offered, thinking with relief that it sounded like something I could treat with a shot of cortisone. “Just bring her over. I’m not working yet.”

Red put his hand on my shoulder. “Now we’re going to owe you two favors, Doc.”

To my surprise, I didn’t want to shrug off his hand. “Well, given the state of our house, I may just call on your ser vices.”

“Hey, Texas,” said Hunter, abruptly shifting to a falsely hearty tone. “Quit flirting with my wife and have a beer.” Hunter handed a bottle over to Red.

“Well, thanks.” Red drank his beer as a bright tide of color washed over his cheeks and neck.

“Tell me something, Texas.” Hunter took another swallow of beer, making Red wait. “Do I know you from someplace?” I wondered if my husband might be getting drunk, or if something else might account for this sudden shift in mood.

“Don’t think so. No.”

“Your eyes—there’s something familiar about you. Hey, you don’t have any relatives in Romania, by any chance?” Hunter took another bite of his burger, a thin trickle of juice escaping from the corner of his mouth. “I was just in Romania for three months, and you remind me of someone I met there.”

“Family’s pretty much all Irish, with a bit of Mohican and Mohawk thrown in on my mother’s side.” Those were New York tribes; I wondered how he’d come by his Texas accent.

Hunter shook his head. “It’s the damnedest thing. You just remind me so strongly of—” He inhaled once, sharply. “Maybe it’s just your cologne.”

Red took a swallow of beer, set the bottle down. “Or maybe I just stink. You said you been in Romania lately?”

“Yes.”

“Studying wolves?”

Now it was Hunter’s turn to frown. “How’d you know that?”

Red tipped his head back to give Hunter a considering look. “Let’s just say you have a certain—air about you. And what else is there to do in Romania? Adopt orphans or study wolves.”

A little of the tension left Hunter’s shoulders. “I guess.”

“Not so many wolves around these parts. Coyotes, though. And bear.”

“Do you trap them?”

Red nodded. “Sometimes.”

“Kill them?” There was something aggressive in the question. I watched Jackie regarding my husband with trepidation.

“If I have to. Listen, Jackie, I think maybe you and I should be moving on.” Red put his arm around Jackie’s shoulders, and I felt an odd twinge of jealousy. It wasn’t that I was jealous of Jackie for having Red, but rather that I wished I were the one whose man was being reasonable and protective.

“When do you have to kill wild animals, Red? When they wander into someone’s backyard?”

“Hunter!”

My husband didn’t look at me. “You ever kill a wolf, Red?”

“Once. Up in Canada.”

“For any particular reason?”

“Yes, he was fixing to attack me.” Red dropped his hand from Jackie’s back and addressed Hunter in a flat, reasonable voice. “Listen, I understand that you being a wolf … researcher and all, you might have some prejudices against my profession. But I am not some deranged old Wild West trapper. My grandfather taught me the Mohawk way. I respect the wolf. I respect nature.”