Chapter 15: The Finger
That evening, perhaps weakened by my hangover, I set out to tell Abby everything—that I’d been fired, that I’d been lying, that I had no prospects for another job. That I was a loser, basically.
I decided on this course of action while in the basement attempting to open that damn pentagram box. I poked it with a screwdriver, trying to find a hinge. I banged it with a hammer. I tossed it onto the cement floor and stomped on it. If I’d had a saw, I’d have cut it in half. I resolved to buy one next time I went into town.
Meanwhile, Abby remained upstairs with Daisy, playing games and reading books. Earlier, while the baby slept, and fed up with the woodpecker, she’d gone out into the yard.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
“Taking care of that damn bird,” she said as she twisted the outdoor spigot.
“Frannie said to use tin foil.”
“Screw that.” She dragged the green hose around the corner of the house and took aim. She pressed the handle on the hose gun and water splashed against the clapboards. The woodpecker squawked and flew into the upper reaches of a tall maple.
“He’ll be back,” Abby said. “We just need to keep spraying him till he gets the message.” Then she turned off the hose and marched back into the house.
As I banged once more on the pentagram box in the basement I still didn’t know what to make of her claim that she’d never seen the box before. I supposed Monica could have left it under the crib, but she’d half convinced me about the doll and I couldn’t come up with any logical reason why she’d leave these things in our home. Which meant that either Abby was lying or someone else had gotten into the house without our knowledge.
I set the box down and held onto the edge of the workbench. All afternoon I’d been suffering from dizzy spells—part hangover, part lack of food. I had no appetite and the thought of water still sickened me. The sweat on my face felt sooty in the dark basement.
Perhaps it would be best, I thought, if I just left. Abby could keep the house, find a job at a local law firm. I’d rent an apartment nearby, work at a bookstore. Everyone would be better off.
I went upstairs, resolved to tell her the truth. She sat on the sofa with Daisy, reading.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, closing the book.
“What do you mean?” For some reason I thought she wanted to sell the house, leave town. I was ready to say, Yes!
“Let’s go for a walk or something,” she said. “I’m going stir crazy.”
By the time she fed Daisy and got her settled into the stroller, with her doll nestled in her arms, the sun had descended to just above the far hills. At some point along this walk, I told myself, I would spill the beans. Perhaps it would be better this way—outdoors, in semi-public, where she couldn’t throw a lamp at my head.
We walked down the hill toward the lake. The sun seemed to be melting, like molten steel, across the top of the hills. Directly overhead one dark cloud swam slowly across the sky like a whale.
“The weather’s nice, anyway,” Abby said.
What did that mean—“anyway”? Was everything else about the day a disaster? Just wait, I wanted to say. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
We turned right at the bottom of the hill. The algae sat thick and greenish brown on top of the lake water. Abby tisked, as usual. I waited for the complaint, the curse directed at the realtor—or at me, for bringing her up here. But she said nothing. I had to skip to keep up with her, she was moving so quickly. The wheels on the stroller squeaked.
We walked like this for a while, with me hustling to stay abreast, Abby silent, Daisy gurgling in her stroller. By the time we reached the other side of the lake, the sky had purpled, and lights were switching on inside houses along the road.
Music blared from Charlie’s place. Lights flashed through drawn curtains, and cars jammed the driveway and lined the road.. Abby slowed as we passed, as if tempted to stop and go inside. I smiled, thinking of it: Abby chatting away with Charlie, the two of them sharing a bong. I considered telling her that Arnie’s pot dealer lived here, but I didn’t want to antagonize her—not when I was poised to reveal something that would really make her angry. So I said nothing, and we continued on.
We came to an especially murky stretch of road, flanked on one side by a field of huge, old maples that blocked out the sky, and on the other side an expansive lawn leading up to a dark, empty house. I rehearsed, in my mind, what I planned to say: Abby, there’s something I have to tell you. This would stop her in her tracks. She’d expect another confession of infidelity. I’d have to move on from there quickly. It’s about my job, I’d say, and she would be relieved that this was not about another woman.
As we approached the bend in the road—a sharp left beneath the canopy of trees—I could hear the rapid approach of a vehicle, its stereo turned up loud. Headlights pierced the trees. It looked like a pick-up, moving fast. Abby pushed the stroller to the side of the narrow road, which was lined by a three-foot high stone wall.
I coughed, like I always do when I’m preparing to say something, my throat tightening.
“Abby,” I said, just as the truck roared around the bend, nearly running us over. In the split second during which the truck passed by, a mere foot or two away, I saw into the cab, where two young men flanked a pretty girl with red hair. There was something especially infuriating about this trio, above and beyond their carelessness and lousy driving, and before I could think about what I was doing, I lifted my middle finger. Even within that crowded fraction of a second, I could tell that my gesture had registered. Then the truck was past us.
“Jesus!” Abby cried, leaning on the stone wall. The stroller had nearly tipped over. Inside, Daisy wailed.
I took hold of Abby’s arm. “Are you okay?”
“They could’ve killed us!”
She righted the stroller and dusted herself off. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she said, leaning into the stroller and stroking the baby’s hair.
I looked back to see the pick-up slow to a crawl, then stop, about fifty yards behind us. The stereo had been turned off.
“Idiots,” Abby said as she pushed the stroller around the bend. She didn’t seem to notice that the truck had stopped. I glanced back again. The brake lights glowed red in the darkness. What if the driver backed up, or turned around? They were probably headed to Charlie’s house. Maybe they were drunk and looking for a fight. They might even have a gun in that truck.
Daisy was still crying. “Shhh,” Abby said, rocking the stroller as she pushed. I could still hear the growl of the idling truck. I considered telling Abby that we may be in some danger, but then I’d have to tell her about my obscene gesture, and she would berate me for being so immature.
“So, what were you going to say?” she asked as we rounded the bend.
“Hmm?”
The truck rumbled, but it seemed quieter. Had they moved on, or was it just that there was now more distance between us?
“Before that asshole drove by,” she said. “You were about to say something.”
What little courage I’d possessed earlier had left me. All I could think about was the truck. I could still hear the engine. I decided they had not moved on.
“Carl?”
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what?”
She stopped and cocked her head. “I hear a car.”
What were they doing back there in the truck? Were they debating their course of action—one boy wanting to go back and kick some ass, the other anxious to get to the party, with the girl torn between the two?
The engine roared.
“Must be another truck,” Abby said.
“Quiet!” I held up the palm of my hand. The truck, still back behind the bend, was moving toward us. The headlights shone through the trees.
“Carl? What is it?”
In the dark I could make out a long driveway stretching toward a house in the woods.
“Go up that driveway there,” I said.
“What? Why?”
“Just do it, Abby.”
The truck came around the bend in the road. In a second or two the headlights would shine in our eyes.
“Please,” I said. “Just go up there and wait.”
She could see the truck now. From her eyes I could tell she’d made the connection.
“What about you?” she asked.
“Just go. Now!”
As if propelled by the force of my voice, Abby pushed the stroller up the driveway. Within a few seconds they were swallowed by the darkness.
The truck had reached the straightaway now, its bright beams illuminating the space between us. It was too late now to follow Abby.
I stood by the side of the road, shading my eyes against the headlights. All the effects of my hangover were now gone. The truck slowed, then braked to a stop ten yards away. The driver turned off the engine, leaving the lights on. The night sounds fell into place as if into perfectly carved slots: crickets, rustling leaves, the far-off barking of a dog.
I could not see inside the truck. The occupants remained perfectly quiet. The tip of a cigarette glowed.
From behind me came the sound of Daisy crying. Could the kids in the truck hear her? Shut up, I muttered under my breath. Shut up. It sounded so loud, the baby’s howls and gulps of air ricocheting off the trees. Tell her to stop, I wanted to yell at Abby. Put your fucking hand over her mouth.
Then, silence.
I’ve read stories by people who have been in dangerous situations—mountain climbers, police officers, combat veterans—and they speak of a sharp clarity that came to them in the midst of crisis. Their lives came into focus, their priorities re-arranged themselves logically, they were suddenly wiser. But for me, while that truck sat there, its headlights blinding me, my thoughts scrambled so that I hardly knew which way was up. I did not think of my job, my house, my family. My future did not lay itself out for me like a clearly marked road. My mind went blank, as if whited out by the glare of the headlights. I thought of nothing.
After a while—a minute? An hour?—the girl in the truck giggled. Then a male voice said, “I’m bored.”
The engine bellowed to life, gears screeched as the truck rolled backwards. The driver angled it sideways, then turned around. Still blinded by the glare, I could barely make out the three passengers. A beer bottle shattered at my feet. The girl laughed again and the truck tore off, blue exhaust clouding the retreating red taillights.
Abby appeared beside me. “Are you alright?”
I watched the truck’s tail lights round the bend and fade into the woods, the engine now a far-off purr.
“What were they doing?” Abby asked. “Why did they come back like that?”
“I don’t know.”
She grabbed my arm. “Well, why would they do that? They must have had a reason.”
“I don’t know, Abby.”
“I mean, who does that?”
“They were probably drunk.”
The night was quiet again. She moved closer and put an arm around me. I could barely see her.
“You should’ve hidden, too. They could’ve hurt you.”
She was right, of course. I suddenly felt very stupid for standing there like that, an easy target. They might have tried to run me down. Or shoot me.
“Let’s go home,” I said.
*
Later, lying in bed alone while Abby brushed her hair in the bathroom, I still considered telling her about my job. Maybe if I told her now, I reasoned, she would put the news into a larger context—what was losing a job, after all, compared to the possibility of getting killed or maimed by some drunk redneck punks?
Then she flounced into the room wearing nothing but panties and crawled across the bed.
“Hey,” she said, pausing in front of me, on hands and knees.
“Hello.”
“You like?”
Her breasts, plump with milk, dangled between her arms. I remembered how I used to enjoy touching them, kissing them, rolling my tongue across the tough little nipples. Since Daisy’s birth, however, they had transformed from erotic stimulants to a pair of practical glands designed for the dispensation of nutrients to our infant.
“I like.”
A cool breeze blew in through the windows, fluffing the thin cotton sheet. Abby reached underneath and rubbed the front of my boxers.
“You were very brave tonight,” she said, peeling off her panties with her other hand.
So much for confessing my bad news to her tonight.
“Shut out the light,” I said, nodding toward the lamp on her bedside table.
“Uh-uh.”
“Abby.”
“I want to see everything.”
I glanced over at the window. We still had not bought shades, one of many purchases we’d decided to put off until the paychecks started arriving. The night was black, but I knew that anyone who happened to be out in the yard next door—Frannie, Arnie, Monica, Ellis—could easily see into the lit bedroom.
“Let them watch if they want to,” Abby said, leaning in to nibble on my ear. She pushed her hand under the elastic of my shorts. “Mmmm. The dragon wakes from its slumber.”
She yanked the sheet off and straddled me. All I could think about was how Monica Johnston, perhaps out in her darkened yard to smoke an illicit cigarette, could now be watching my wife’s bony ass as she ground her crotch against me.
With this image in mind, I pulled Abby’s face down to meet mine. “C’mere,” I said.
I let her do all the work that night. I just lay back and watched her ride me—frontways, backwards, even sideways—as her face grew more pink and sweaty, listening to her soft moans intensify into sharp grunts, culminating with her new favorite: loud, authoritative cries of “Oh God!” And all through this my mind flashed from Monica Johnston to Okay Peterson to Frannie and back again—everyone but my wife.
Afterward, she collapsed on top of me, her skin wet and clammy, her breasts hard against my chest, and fell asleep. I lay there for a long time, staring at the wall. The bloodstain was back, dark red, almost black, seeping from behind the portrait of Abby’s parents. Maybe it’s a shadow, I thought, but shadows don’t grow like that. I resisted the impulse to shut my eyes. If the stain was to disappear, I wanted to see it disappear. I didn’t even blink. I remembered what Harper had told me, how the original blood stain had been small. This was not small. It was like the house itself was bleeding. Maybe the woodpecker had penetrated the clapboards, and the wood was now leaking sap through the hole.
Daisy cried from her crib. Had she been crying this whole time, while Abby and I were having sex? Abby’s weight, as thin as she was, pressed down on me. Keeping my eye on the stain, I said, “Wake up.” I nudged her. She groaned. “It’s Daisy,” I said. “She’s crying.”
I pushed Abby off of me, feeling my half-erect cock flop out of her. She groaned again and rolled onto her side. I stood and looked closely at the wall. The blood was real—wet, reflecting the lamp light. I wanted to touch it, but—
Daisy cried. I backed out of the room, still eyeing the stain. One thin line broke off and rolled down the wall.
By the time I was half way through the living room, the crying had ceased. In Daisy’s bedroom I stood beside the crib in the dark. I heard her calm, steady breathing. She hadn’t been crying at all.
The room was cold. I shut the window. Outside, the grass blades twinkled in the moonlight. At the edge of the lawn a large buck stood gazing back at me with red eyes. I waited several minutes for it to turn away, but it just kept watching me. Finally, I walked back to the bedroom. The bloodstain was gone.
16. Star
“Carl!”
I woke up from a thick, vivid dream. I’d been running down the lake road, chased by a truck. In the cab sat Monica Johnston and Okay Peterson, neither of them wearing any clothes. The trees, their limbs just inches above my head, dripped blood. From down the road, just beyond the sulfurous reach of the truck’s headlights, I could hear Daisy crying.
“Carl!”
Abby’s voice sounded strained, slightly panicked. Imagining that something was wrong with Daisy, I bolted from bed and ran into the living room. The baby, perfectly healthy, sat on the floor playing with wooden blocks. Abby stood with her back to me, facing the fireplace.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“How long has that been there?” She pointed to the stone masonry above the fireplace mantel.
The old stone fireplace had been one of the house’s more charming features. The rough, gray-brown stones rose from the floor, framing the fireplace opening, up to the vaulted ceiling. Ever since we moved in we’d discussed what would look best hanging above the varnished wood mantelpiece, something bright and cheerful to contrast with the stone.
“What’re you talking about?” I asked.
“I knew I smelled something rotten. Didn’t I tell you I smelled something rotten?”
I stood beside her and stared at the stones. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She stepped right up to the fireplace and pointed to a spot above the mantel, a little bulge in the stone. “There.”
“What is it?”
“Come closer.”
As I got nearer I could make out a small, grayish brown oval that blended with the stones but, once noticed, stood out. From one end of this oval extended a three-inch long tail.
I jumped back. “What the fuck?”
On the stones, as if glued there, was a dead, half-decomposed mouse.
“Isn’t that gross?” Abby said. “I bet it crawled behind a picture that was hanging there.”
I tried to remember what had been hanging over the mantel when we first looked at the house. The furniture had been sparse, half of it gone already.
“I think there was some sort of bad art hanging there,” Abby said.
I vaguely recalled a lake scene, with bright, unnatural colors.
Abby stepped closer to the dead mouse. “Get me a paper towel.”
Relieved that she was willing to handle this, I got a towel from the kitchen. She took it and reached up for the dead thing. I turned away. Daisy stacked her blocks, red on top of green on top of blue. Abby grunted and I heard a slight tearing sound. I imagined how it felt to pull the mouse’s stiff body from the stone, the tug, the bits of fur and hide.
“There,” Abby said, holding the paper towel in her palm, the mouse lying on its side, its tiny teeth bared, as if it had died angry, or in pain. “It must have eaten some poison and crawled behind the painting to die.”
“It’s been there this whole time?”
She held it up near the stone wall. “Look how well it blends in.”
I turned away, shivering in the heat.
“Watch Daisy while I throw this away,” she said. “Unless you want to.” She held the paper towel up toward my face.
“No, thanks.”
“I didn’t think so.”
I sat on the sofa and looked around the room. The house seemed unsafe to me. Dead mice, woodpeckers, walls that appeared to bleed. Daisy looked up at me with her big eyes, oblivious to the danger.
The pentagram box sat on the coffee table. I picked it up and hefted it. Whatever lay inside slid back and forth as I turned the box this way and that. I was looking for some sort of opening, a button or a spring.
Abby came back in and sat across from me.
“What’d you do with it?” I asked.
“I dug a hole.”
“That was decent of you.”
“I didn’t want to just toss him in the bushes.”
“That’s what I would have done.”
“Of course,” she sighed.
She moved to the floor next to Daisy, who had constructed a tall, wobbly tower of blocks. “We’ll have to get some traps,” Abby said.
I looked at the walls, imagining mice—dozens of them, hundreds—scrabbling around in there.
Daisy took up another block, red and shiny, to set on top of her tower, but she couldn’t quite reach.
“Can mommy do?” Abby asked.
Daisy pulled the block close and screwed up her face into an obvious No. She grabbed the edge of the coffee table and pulled herself to her feet. The tower swayed but did not topple. Daisy tenderly lay the red block on top and pulled her hand away. The tower tipped toward her, then in the other direction. She put out her free hand—the other one still clutched the coffee table—and appeared to will the tower to stand. It continued to wobble, as if held together by an interior wire, but did not fall. Daisy smiled, the triumphant builder.
Then, after looking first to mommy, then daddy, as if to say Look what I did, she reached out and, quickly, decisively, pushed the tower over, sending the red, blue, green blocks bouncing and rolling in all directions. She watched this happen with a look of great satisfaction, and laughed.
*
As I approached Main Street Hardware—one of those old-fashioned mom-and-pop stores that you hardly ever see anymore, with its charming neon OPEN sign in the window and a partial shingled roof over the entrance—a man wearing meticulously clean jeans came out of the store carrying a rake. He nodded as he passed by, as if he knew me. His wavy brown hair looked solid, all one piece, until a gust of wind picked up a few strands and, as if choreographed for a TV commercial, dropped them across one eye. I stood and watched him climb into a luxury SUV.
He rolled down his tinted driver’s side window. “The Pfister School.”
“Excuse me?”
He smiled, amused by my cluelessness. “Mr. Berk’s office.”
What was he talking about? How did he know about all that? He waved, and rolled the window back up. His face disappeared behind the dark glass. He pulled out of the parking space and drove down Main Street.
A bell tinkled when I opened the hardware store door. The cashier, an older lady with curly gray hair, turned and looked me over, perhaps checking for a tool belt or some other sign that I belonged. Apparently I didn’t, for she turned away with a grimace.
The wooden floor creaked beneath my shoes as I searched the aisles for handsaws and other cutting tools. I passed paints and brushes, nuts and bolts, doorknobs and light switch plates. Finally, in the far aisle, I found the saws. Pretending I knew what I was looking for, I picked up a 26-inch contractor-grade short cut handsaw, then a 15-inch saw with a molded grip, and then a tri-fold handsaw. I wondered if I should opt for a carbon steel blade or the three-sided tooth design.
I set the sharp-tooth saw against the edge of the pentagram box, and as I imagined cutting through the hard wood I heard a familiar voice from the next aisle.
“So when will that 150-pound seeder be in, Tom?”
He continued talking in a deep voice, the voice of a big man, but I couldn’t match it with a face or a name. I set down the saw and moved to the end of the aisle. There stood Anders Lehigh talking to a clerk with a red apron. Lehigh looked over and, not recognizing me, continued talking. The clerk—“Tom” was stitched over the chest of his apron—nodded at me, then took in the box in my hands. His eyes widened.
“You got one of them things, too?” he asked.
Lehigh stared at my face and I saw a spark of recognition. Then he noticed the box, too.
“Oh my Lord.”
“Do you know what this is?” I asked.
Lehigh moved toward me so fast I had to back up, afraid he might be about to strike me.
“Can I look at that?”
Before I could even hold it out to him he reached down and grabbed the box from my hand.
“Well, I’ll be.”
“What is it?” Tom asked.
“I made this thing.”
“You?” I said.
“Me and my friend Billy.” He looked at my face. “You live in that house, don’t you? That’s where I know you from.”
“We found it,” I said.
He held it up to the light. “I haven’t thought about this thing in ages.” He turned to Tom. “Billy and I made this in my old man’s workshop. Then we buried it in his yard.”
“Why’d you bury it?” Tom asked.
“It’s a coffin,” Lehigh said. “For Billy’s pet mouse.”
“Mouse?” I asked.
“Yeah. ‘Star.’ That’s why we carved the star here.” He held the box so that the star was right side up.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Hey, can I have this?” he asked. “I know you found it in your yard and all, but it kind of means a lot to me, Mister…uh…”
“Hammond.”
“Right. I mean, you don’t really have any use for it, do you?”
“I guess not.”
“Not unless he wants an old dead mouse,” Tom laughed.
“It would sure mean a lot to me.”
“Sure,” I said. “You can have it, I guess.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
He shook the box. Star’s bones rattled inside.
“I was trying to figure out how to open it,” I said.
“Oh, we glued it shut. We didn’t want any dogs or cats getting at Star.”
“That explains it,” Tom said.
“Have you seen this box before?” I asked the old man.
“A young woman brought it in not long ago. Or else one just like it.”
Lehigh laughed. “This is the only one of these suckers. Take it from me.”
“What did she look like?” I asked Tom. “Was she young? Blond?” I was thinking of Monica Johnston.
“No. More like 35, dark hair, slender. Had a little girl with her.”
Lehigh turned to me. “Sounds like your wife.”
“Yeah.” I must have looked as confused as I felt because the two of them became self-conscious, coughing and looking away toward the shovels and axes.
“Well, see ya, Tom,” Lehigh said. “And thanks again, Mr. Hammel.”
“Sure.”
Lehigh turned and headed for the exit.
“Anything I can help you find?” Tom asked.
Why did she lie about the box?
“That I can’t help you with,” Tom said.
Had I said it out loud?
“No,” I said. “Thank you.”
He nodded and shuffled toward the rear of the store.
Then I remembered who the man with the rake was: he’d been in Berk’s office when I got fired. He was my replacement at the Pfister School.
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