The Winslow Incident (16 page)

Tanner wondered if the vet was always
this nervous or just when he had to deliver bad news to Pard Holloway. “I was
wondering if—”

“Look, kid, I’m busy here!” Doc
Simmons plunged both hands into the head cavity, twisted, and pulled out the
brain with a loud
schloopp
.

“Fine, take it easy . . .” Tanner
had wanted to ask if the animals being sick had anything to do with Patience
puking at the rodeo and Sean and his family getting sick too. Clearly now
wasn’t the time.

So he left Doc Simmons in the barn
and turned his attention to the troublesome question of why his left leg hurt
so much. Plus he felt extra, miserably hot today. Walking back toward the
house, he scanned the acre after acre of pasture surrounded by split-rail
fencing. The boonies. No DQ, no cell phone reception, no signs of civilization
whatsoever. He may as well have been on the fucking moon.

In the empty kitchen of the empty
house, he ate some cereal and then felt seriously bored and decided to take the
dirt bike into town and try to scare up some action. The Kawasaki was the only
good thing on the ranch. It was Kenny Clark’s but Maggie said he’d outgrown the
bike and Tanner could use it if he wanted. That was before Maggie got all
pissed off at him.

Whatever. It never took long.

D
owntown Winslow was as lame as ever until he
spotted Patience Mathers all by her lonesome in Prospect Park, sitting on one
of the swings, not swinging but spinning lazily using one foot as a pivot. Tanner
rode his bike right into the park, tearing up grass, and parked it next to the
kiddie-go-round.

The park felt desolate with the
rodeo attractions and carnival rides packed up and gone. And after cutting his
engine, it was quiet except for a duck quacking and flapping along the wall
surrounding the pond as though it wanted to take off but couldn’t get up the
momentum.

Patience watched him approach with
a tight look on her face, as if she might jump up and bolt out of the park at
any second.

“Want a push?” he asked when he
reached her.

He could tell she didn’t trust
him; why should she?

“Okay. But not too high.” She
pulled up her feet.

After untangling the chains to get
her headed straight, he came around behind her. She wore a strapless pink top
and he thought how easy it would be to hook his thumb on it and—oops—pull
it down. But he thought better of it when he saw that her back was covered in
scratch marks: stark red against her alabaster skin. So instead he pulled up
the swing by the chains and let her go. When she swung back to him he placed
his palms beneath her shoulders and pushed.

“Not too high,” she repeated.

Her skin was cold to his touch.
Zombie
,
he thought. Here he was, sweating it out in the midday swelter, and she felt
kinda . . . dead. That made him want to push her hard. And when she yelled at
him to stop, he pushed even harder. But then she was screaming at him so he
grabbed one side of the swing and yanked her to a sideways stop. “Sorry,” he
said.

She sniffed hard. “You shouldn’t’ve
broken that mirror.”

“Sorry,” he lied again. He stood
above her, holding onto one chain.

She looked not so good: holding
fast to the swing with both hands, tilted forward in the seat, staring straight
ahead.

“You looked hot in that cowgirl
getup at the rodeo.”

Her face was really white. She
scratched at her cheek, creating red welts there too.

“That vest, especially. You looked
damn good in that.”

No response.

He stared down at her,
calculating, then: “You’re the most beautiful girl in Winslow.”

She raised her head to look at
him.

“You know that, right?” he said.
Her pupils were huge: Raggedy Ann eyes. “You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve
ever seen.” He squatted down in front of Patience, grabbed both chains of the
swing, and pulled her toward him. “Anywhere. Ever.”

She stared at him, black-eyed, for
a long time, until finally: “Really?”

“Without a doubt.” Their faces
were close now.

“You liked my outfit?” Her breath
was on his face.

“You looked amazing.”

But then something skittered
behind her dark eyes and she said, “You’re just after country pie.”

“What are you talking about?”

She tried to pull away from him by
backing up with both feet. “I know you said you were gonna get a piece of me.”

“Who told you that?” he asked
through gritted teeth, holding tight to the swing.

“I’m going home now.” She tried to
twist out of his grasp.

He could feel her panic rising.
“Who told you? Hazel?”

“Maybe.” She strained against his
grip.

“Fine.” He released the chains and
stood but didn’t step back. “Hazel told me something about you.”

She pushed the swing aside and
backed away from him. “What?”

“That you’re easy.”

“She didn’t say that.”

“Easy pickins were her exact
words. Low-hanging fruit.”

“Hazel would never say that.” She
spun around and ran.

“Skate punk? Backseat of his
Nova?” he yelled. “Ask her if you don’t believe me. And while you’re at it,
tell her Sean isn’t putting up with any more of her two-faced bullshit either.”

“You never should’ve broken that
mirror,” she cried without looking back. “Nothing good will come to you!”

“Obviously.” Tanner watched Patience and his only
chance for getting some tail in this backwoods race out of the park, and
wondered how he was going to make Hazel Winslow pay.

T
anner had been back for a while by the time
Pard returned. From the kitchen where Tanner sat eating more cereal, he heard
his uncle plod up the front steps and tear open the door. His nerves twitched
as he waited for Pard to find him, which took all of three seconds.

“Did you see Doc Simmons?” Pard
sounded out of breath.

“Yup,” he answered without looking
up from his bowl.

“
And
?”

He glanced up then to see his
uncle looking as if he might smack him. “And Simmons doesn’t look so good
himself,” Tanner replied. “Nobody does.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Everyone in town is sick as
hell.”

“What kind of sick?”

“The puking kind.”

Tanner saw alarm register on his
uncle’s face for a split second. But then Pard seemed to catch himself. “That’s
got
nothing
to do with us. Do I make myself clear?”

“What if it does?”

“We’re not sick, are we?”

Tanner thought for an instant
about his aching leg. “No.”

“Then if people in town are
ailing, it must be
from
something in town,” he reasoned.

Tanner suspected he was trying to
convince himself more than anyone else. “Like what?”

“Could be anything. Bad fish from
the Mercantile, spoiled coleslaw at the Crock.”

“Cows don’t eat coleslaw.” Tanner
couldn’t help himself.

His uncle’s eyes took on a queer
look and Tanner was sure he would get a smack after all. So he was surprised
when instead Pard agreed, “No, they sure as hell don’t.” But then he grimaced
at his nephew. “Are you hurt, kid?”

Tanner realized he was rubbing his
leg. “You care? Why’d you make me ride Blackjack?”

Bootsteps pounded the porch,
followed by somebody banging on the front door.

As Pard strode out of the kitchen
he muttered, “Better be that scrawny-assed vet.”

But after Tanner heard his uncle
wrench open the door, he recognized Kenny Clark’s voice: “We found Simmons’
truck wrecked in a ditch off Loop-Loop Road. But no Simmons.”

H
azel was desperate to leave the Crock so she
could race to The Winslow where she hoped she would find Sean, but Owen begged
her to stay and help him since Rose refused to come out of the restroom. After
Sean had walked away from her, she’d felt like her heart had been ripped out
and she knew she wouldn’t feel better until she saw him again, until she made
things right with him.

When Owen finally evicted everyone
from the dining room around three, Hazel tore off her yellow Crock apron and
dashed out.

Cutting through the park, she
popped a few Lemonheads into her mouth. In an effort to avoid the food poisoning,
she’d been eating nothing but candy. In fact, the last real food she’d consumed
was cereal yesterday morning. She felt starved but figured that was better than
getting sick and acting like a freak.

The whole thing reminded her of when
she was nine years old and had mononucleosis—the sore throat and nausea
so severe she barely ate for a week.

“Who have you been kissing?” Dr.
Foster had teased. He passed away two years ago after falling off a ladder onto
his brick patio, and there hadn’t been another doctor in town since.

With the mono, she had been stuck
in bed forever and would have gone crazy with boredom were it not for Sean, who
bought a new comic book for her every day at the Mercantile, using up his entire
allowance.

Now that he was sick, she owed him.
Maybe not comic books, but at least the comfort of her promise that no matter
what, they could work this out.

As she left the park, Hazel
glanced up at the water tower on top of Silver Hill. She’d had no water since
Owen claimed there was something wrong with it. Of course, thinking she mustn’t
drink it made her insanely thirsty. Owen could be wrong, but why chance it?

When she reached The Winslow, she
grabbed a can of orange soda from the fridge and chugged down the whole thing
in five long gulps. Stomach sloshing, she then headed up the servants’ staircase.

Nobody was around in the Adair’s quarters
. . . and alarm rose as she searched the empty rooms on the second floor.
Things were so off kilter she wouldn’t have been surprised if everyone simply
vanished off the side of the mountain, or if skeletons popped out of the closets
like in the House of Horrors.

She finally gave up and started
down the formal stairway, where she met Sean’s mom walking up. Honey Adair
looked as if she’d just gotten out of bed: mascara smudged, brown hair tangled,
sundress wrinkled.

Hazel stopped. “I’m glad to see
you.”

Without so much as a glance, Honey
continued past her up the staircase.

Did Sean talk to her?
Hazel wondered.
Is she mad at me?
She headed back
up the stairs behind her and tried again: “I wanted to see how Sean is
feeling.”

“Sean?” Honey asked with a dazed
look on her face.

“Your son.”

“He’s a good boy.”

“Well, yes, but how is he
feeling?”

Honey paused near the head of the
staircase—hand resting on the banister, one foot on the upper stair, the
other hanging back yet—and appeared to consider the question.

Impatience nudged Hazel. “Have you
seen him?”

“I can’t see him anywhere, can
you? I think he’s invisible now.” Honey turned to look at Hazel. “Thank you for
asking, Anabel.”

Honey completed her ascent and
headed down the hallway, leaving Hazel to stand there dumbfounded for the
second time that day by a member of the Adair family.

But Hazel knew Sean wasn’t in the
hotel; invisible or not, she would sense him. She descended the wide,
red-carpeted steps, skirted past the ballroom, and went out through the
leaded-glass back door, where she found her grandmother on the porch that ran
the entire length of the rear of The Winslow. In the shade of an ancient oak,
Sarah sat facing the woods with a shotgun lying across her lap.

Ordinarily Hazel would have found
that strange.

She plopped down beside her
grandmother with an exhalation that belied her age. Then she stared at the
gazebo planted in the corner of the yard like some oversized, over-decorated
birthday cake. The structure always annoyed her. Too fussy. She longed to take
an ax to all of its gingerbread details.

Instead, she asked her
grandmother, “What are you doing with that gun?”

“Your father says there are wolves
about,” she replied. “Never saw a wolf in Winslow myself, but he seems sure.”

“You saw him today?” Hazel still
hadn’t seen him since last night. That, she did find exceedingly strange.

“He visited earlier.” Sarah peered
into the woods. “But I haven’t seen him since. I never was able to keep track
of that boy. He’d hide in the woods for hours on end even when no one was playing
seek.”

“That’s funny . . .” Hazel felt
distracted, wondering where her dad was now. And what about Sean? To where had
he disappeared?

“Guess he felt safe out there.”

Hazel turned to look at her
grandmother. “Safe from what?”