“He wasn’t killed by the rain. Someone surprised him and shoved him down the stairs, and he got his neck broken. You hear anything?”
“Sure I have. People have been screaming and crying and carrying on all day. Jill and John Porter walked up the street this morning, each one of them carrying one of their shredded ten-year-old twins. The Por ters were out looking for their girls all night. I prayed they’d find them, but maybe I should’ve prayed they didn’t, considering the condition the children were in. The two little girls had hidden together under an overturned wheelbarrow, but it was too rusted out to stop the nails. Their mother, Jill, was sobbing and shouting that her babies were dead until John gave her the back of his hand and shut her up. After that I decided I’d heard all the awfulness I wanted to hear, and I haven’t paid attention to any shouting or screaming ever since.” He took a lazy, disinterested look at the back of his wrist, then shifted his gaze to me once again. “It was a judgment, of course. I’m lucky my own daughter was spared. Everyone on this street let your girlfriend look after our children.”
I felt a clammy, cool feeling spread out from the nape of my neck, down my spine. “You want to elaborate on that?”
“What happened yesterday has happened before—to Sodom and Gomorrah,” he informed me. “We let your sort mingle with our sort, as if we didn’t know there would be a price to be paid. As if we hadn’t been warned. He claimed to be a man of God, that one.” Nodding to the house. “He should’ve known.”
“Dad,” said the teenage girl in a quavering, frightened voice. She’d seen the look on my face.
“Keep talking, buddy,” I said. “And you won’t have to worry about celestial retribution. You’ll get some right here on earth.”
He turned and took his daughter by the elbow and steered her away into the garage, past a gray Mercedes with a sticker saying that somewhere in Kenya a village was missing its idiot. He was walking his daughter up the step, toward the door into the house, when I called out to him again.
“Hey, sport, you got the time?”
He took another look at his naked wrist, then caught himself and shoved the hand into his pocket. He swatted his girl on the bum and urged her ahead of him into the house. Then he hesitated, glaring back at me, searching for one last insult to put me away. Nothing came to him. Quivering now, he took two last brisk steps up into his house and slammed the door behind him.
I WENT BACK INTO THE Rusteds’ house. The stillness could be felt almost like a shift in barometric pressure, as if the interior of the brick Tudor existed at a different altitude, had a unique climate of its own. Maybe Teasdale was right and henceforth emotions would register as weather, as atmospheric change. The light was silver and gray, and so was the mood. The temperature hovered a little below lonesome.
I curled up on the big king in the master bedroom, under Yolanda’s throw, holding the photo of us all together in Estes Park. I would’ve cried if I could’ve—but as I’ve said before, I’ve never been what you would call a crying woman. When my mother wept, it was a manipulation. When my father cried, it was because he was drunk and feeling sorry for himself. I never felt anything except contempt when confronted with someone in tears, until the first time I saw Yolanda weeping, and it twisted my heart. Maybe if we’d had more time, she would’ve taught me to cry. Maybe if we’d had more time together, I would’ve learned how to wash my infected parts clean in a good, healthy flow of tears.
As it was, I only curled up and dozed for a bit, and when I woke, it was raining again.
It was a soft tick-tick against the roof, not like drops of water but crisper, sharper, a kind of crackling. I left the bedroom and wandered to the open front door and peered out into it. The rain came down in a steady drizzle of shining needles, no bigger than what a tailor might use to pin up a sleeve. They bounced where they struck the flagstones and made a pretty tinkling. It was such a sweet sound that I stuck my hand out, palm up, as if to sample a warm summer shower. Youch! In an instant my palm was a flesh cactus. I admit the rain didn’t sound so pretty after that.
I plucked the quills out one at a time, over a burrito of eggs, cheese, and black beans. The Rusteds had natural gas, and the stove could be lit. It was a comfort to have a belly full of hot food. I ate in the master bedroom, right out of the cast-iron pan.
After I was done, I got some packing blankets from the garage. I carried Dr. Rusted into the bedroom and stretched him out and covered him up. I set the picture of all of us together in his arms. I thanked him then for sharing his daughter and his home with me and kissed him good night and went to sleep myself.
THE RAIN STOPPED AT ABOUT two in the morning, and when Gumby from across the street slipped into the master bedroom, I was already awake and listening for him. I didn’t move while he stepped around the body on the floor, under the packing blankets, and crept to the side of the bed. He reached for a pillow and put a knee on the edge of the mattress. He was wired, quivering with tension, legs shaking, when he drew down the blanket and pressed the pillow over the face of the sleeper.
His back was to me when I pushed aside the packing blankets and got up off the floor. But by the time I reached for the cast-iron frying pan, Gumby had realized that the person under the pillow wasn’t struggling. He yanked the pillow back and gazed raptly and blankly into Dr. Rusted’s calm, still face. Gumby had time to issue a little shriek and turn halfway around when I swung.
I was jittery and amped up myself and hit him harder than I meant to. The pan connected with a resounding bong. He went boneless, limbs flying in four different directions, head whopped to the side. It felt like I’d struck a tree trunk. I smashed his glasses, his nose, and several teeth. He went down as if he were standing on the gallows and the hangman had opened the trap.
I grabbed him by one foot and dragged him into the hall. I pulled him through the door at the end of the corridor, into the two-car garage. It was three steps down, and his head struck every one. I didn’t even wince for him. Dr. Rusted’s big black Crown Vic sat in the nearest bay. I popped the trunk, scooped Gumby up, and dumped him in. I slammed the trunk on him.
It took me about ten minutes, hunting around by candlelight, to find Dr. Rusted’s battery-powered hand drill. I squeezed the trigger and punched a dozen breathing holes in the trunk. If it didn’t get too hot tomorrow, Gumby’d be all right till at least noon.