Cage Of Night Part 34

"G.o.d, that's really nice of you."

"And inside the refrigerator's a couple of bologna sandwiches. With mustard and mayo. That's how I fix 'em. Take them, too. I can make more for myself."

"That's d.a.m.ned nice of you."

And for the very first time, I saw her smile, and it took forty years from her face. "Yeah, it is, isn't it?" Then, the smile quickly gone: "You better hit the timber fast."

I got the bullets and the sandwiches and went to the door.

"Sorry for hitting you with the mug."

Another long look from her. "Take care of yourself, kid. I guess now I really don't think you did kill Mae."

I felt good about having her blessing as I closed her door behind me, and started running for the timberline.

CHAPTER FOUR.

I spent the afternoon backtracking.

It was still my intention to get back to the line shack and the well. There was a pay phone on the northernmost edge of the nearby state park. After dark, I could call Mom and Dad and let them know that I was all right.

Late in the afternoon, a soft snow fell, giving the grim gray day a needed grace note.

A few times, cold snowflakes touching my nose and cheeks, I was even able to forget about Mae Swenson. I was a kid again, sledding or making snowmen or tucked into the corner of my bed with a Werewolf At Night comic.

But then I'd hear the distant drum of semis on the road that ran parallel to my course, and I'd be reminded again of reality.

Darkness came by five that afternoon. By now, the snowfall had lost its allure. There was enough of it to make walking difficult.

Far, far away, I saw the lights of the town, my town, and for a moment it had the quality of a nightmare. I'd always had dreams of being driven out of society, seeing people whom I cared for wanting nothing to do with me, pa.s.sing me by on the street with only scorn and malice in their gazes. In these nightmares, I'd never known what my sin was, only that people no longer deemed me worthy of their friendship. And eventually, I began to believe them, to feel that I was unworthy, and so, much as I was doing now, I fled into a dark forest where I hid from the disapproving stare of society.

A couple of times, I was tempted to eat the sandwiches the old woman had given me but I stopped myself.

I envisioned a feast tonight. On the one hand, it was almost laughable. Bologna sandwiches and the leaky roof of a line shack do not a feast make. On the other hand, it made sense. I'd been on the run for the better part of a night and day now. I needed to stop, rest. The line shack was a good place because the posse had probably covered it several times already, different groups crisscrossing it at different points in the search, and so I'd probably be safe.

Safea"and with two bologna sandwiches, complete with mustard and mayo, to complete my feast.

An hour later, the sky cleared.

There was an icy quarter moon. I reached the top of a hill and looked down on the town again.

This time, the haze having lifted, it was postcard pretty, all church steeples and smoking chimneys and the first bright decorations for Christmas. The sentimental quality of the scene only made my sense of loss cut deeper.

I reached the line shack just as two racc.o.o.ns were leaving it. They watched me for a moment, seeming neither particularly interested in me or afraid, and then waddled away into the snow and the night.

I found a nice dry corner in the shack and sat down. All I did for the first half hour was let myself drift in and out of a frenzied sleep.

I am running down a long endless blacktop road and right behind me are four cop cars with screaming sirens and men leaning out the windows with shotguns.

I am up in my room and I am ten years old and I'm reading my first Leigh Brackett paperback and I doze off and I have this real weird dream about being twenty-one and being accused of murder.

I am dancing across a gla.s.s floor sparkling as black diamonds and in my arms is gorgeous, tender, vulnerable Cindy Brasher. Her hair is wind-caught, drifting like golden seaweed in this ocean of perfect night. She wears a gown of impossible glowing ivory, a gown that flatters her soft white skin and lovely face. The music is beautiful but it is the kind of beauty that is not without the price of melancholya"and so I watch Cindy's face as every few minutes sadness touches then flees her eyes. And then we're one again, and dancing on.

I am twenty-four years old and I am being strapped to a gurney. This is an execution chamber. There are three men in there with me. They don't seem to notice me. They simply go about their business. I scream but it is a silent scream. I pray but there is no G.o.d to hear me. The needle, sharp and silver and shining, descends.

I ama"

I am twenty-one years and sitting in a line shack and freezing my a.s.s off.

I possess a bladder that needs emptying, a belly that needs food, and a soul that needs peace.

I get up and take care of my bladder first, just outside the empty doorway. I wash my hands in the snow and then I come back in and take care of my belly.

The bologna sandwiches turn out to be a feast. No steak, no lobster, no fancy French gourmet meal ever tasted better.

I am so happy to be eating that even the occasional piece of gristle in the meat has a certain sumptuousness to it.

When I am finished, after having licked every crumb from the waxed paper, I put my head back and doze off again.

And then it happens. Very quickly, really.

The noise from the well that I heard that first night, the noise that is probably a voice whose words I can't quite make out, a rumbling ominous frightening voice that seems somehow both ancient and unworldly.

I am on my feeta"

I am moving toward the doora"

I am walking out into the freezing winter nighta"

The voice is clearer now, rumbling, rumbling just below my hearinga"

I am moving inexorably to the wella"

a"the well a"and what waits for me in the wella"

The dream scared the s.h.i.t out of me.

I wasn't hearing voices.

I wasn't up on my feet.

In the tumbledown silence of the line shack, I sat huddled and trembling, frozen and fearful.

No voice. No well.

But I knew then that I would have to make my peace with the well, that I would have to see what lurked down there.

And I knew how I was going to find out.

"Mom."

"Oh, honey."

She started crying right away, sobbing.

"Honey, we've been so worried about you."

"I know, Mom. I'm sorry. I didn't kill Mae Swenson, Mom. I really didn't."

"We know that, son."

Then Dad came on the line. "The best thing you can do, Spence, is call the Chief and have him come and get you."

"I didn't do it, Dad."

"That isn't the point, honey."

He hadn't called me honey since I was eight or so. It felt right, though, in a corny endearing sort of way. I was his little boy again and he was scared as h.e.l.l for me.

"Dad, is Josh there?"

"Sitting right here."

"I need to talk to him."

"Are you all right?"

"Pretty much. A little cold, I guess."

"You're not going to call the Chief are you?"

"Dad, if I call the Chief, he won't do any more investigating. He'll just a.s.sume I killed her. I've got an idea that might work. I at least need to try it."

"We're worried about you, Spence."

"I know, Dad. I love you and Mom very much but I really have to do this."

"It's your decision."

"Thanks, Dad."

He gave the phone to Josh.

"You think you could meet me at the line shack?"

"Sure."

I told him what to bring.

"All right," he said.

"You know what I can't figure out?"

"What?"

"Why Cindy hasn't talked to the Chief yet and told him that Garrett killed Mae Swenson."

There was a long silence. "Yeah, I guess it is kind of strange." He sounded a little funny when he said that but I thought it was the strain of the moment.

"You leaving now?" I said.

"Few minutes. But it'll take me a while to get there."

"How come?"

"Garrett follows me everywhere I go. I guess he thinks I'll lead him to you."

"That sonofab.i.t.c.h."

"So I'm going to take the old road, out past the saw mill, and get him good and lost, and then double back up to the line shack."

"Great."

"It'll take me a while, though."

"I know."

"I love you, Spence."

He'd never said that to me before; nor had I ever said that to him. Being on the run this way, so scared and confused all the time, had left me vulnerable. Soon as he said that, I had tears in my eyes.

"I love you, too, Josh."

"You want to talk to Mom and Dad again?"

"No, I'm standing in a spot where somebody could see me pretty easily. I'd better hang up."

"See you soon," he said.

"Thanks, Josh. Just be careful."