4

Over the next few nights and days several events of varying immediate importance took place in Milburn. Some of these events seemed trivial to the people involved, some were confusing or annoying, yet others were commanding and significant: but all were part of the pattern which would eventually bring so many changes to Milburn, and as a part of the pattern, all were important.

Freddy Robinson's wife learned that her husband had carried only the skimpiest life insurance coverage on himself, and that Humdinger Fred, the prospective member of the Million Dollar Roundtable, was worth only fifteen thousand dollars dead. She made a tearful long-distance call to her unmarried sister in Aspen, Colorado, who said, "I always told you he was a cheap so and so. Why not sell your house and come out here where it's healthy? And what kind of accident was that anyhow, honey?"

Which was the question that Broome County deputy coroner was asking himself, faced with the corpse of a thirty-four-year-old man from which most of the internal organs and all the blood had been removed. For a moment he considered writing under CAUSE OF DEATH the word "Exsanguination," but instead wrote "Massive internal insult," with a long appended note ending with the speculation that the "insult" had been caused by a marauding animal.

And Elmer Scales sat up every night with the shotgun across his lap, not knowing that the last cow had been killed and that the figure he had tauntingly half-seen was looking for bigger game;

and Walt Hardesty bought Omar Norris a drink in the back room at Humphrey's Place and heard Omar say that now that he had time to think about it, maybe he did hear a car or two that night, and it seemed to him that wasn't all, it seemed to him there was some kind of noise and some kind of light. "Noise? Light? Get the hell out of here, Omar," Hardesty said, but stayed nursing his beer after Omar left, wondering just what the hell was going on;

and the excellent young woman Hawthorne, James had hired told her employers that she wanted to leave the Archer Hotel and had heard in town that Mrs. Robinson was putting her house up for sale, and could they talk to their friend at the bank and set up the financing? She had, it turned out, a healthy account at a savings and loan in San Francisco;

and Sears and Ricky looked at one another with something surprisingly close to relief, as if they hadn't liked the thought of that house sitting empty, and said they could probably arrange something with Mr. Barnes;

and Lewis Benedikt promised himself he'd call his friend Otto Gruebe to make a date to go out with the dogs for a day's coon hunting;

and Larry Mulligan, laying out Freddy Robinson's body for burial, looked at the corpse's face and thought he must have seen the devil coming to carry him off;

and Nettie Dedham, penned in her wheelchair as she was penned within her paralyzed body, sat looking out of the dining-room window as she liked to do while Rea busied herself with the horses' evening feed and tilted her head so that she could see the evening light on the field. Then she saw a figure moving around out there and Nettie, who understood more than even her sister credited, fearfully watched it approach the house and barn. She uttered a few choked sounds, but knew that Rea would never hear them. The figure came nearer, hauntingly familiar. Nettie was afraid it was the boy from town Rea talked about-that wild boy in a rage that Rea had named him to the police. She trembled, watching the figure come nearer across the field, imagining what life would be like if the boy did anything to Rea; and then squawked in terror and nearly tipped over the wheelchair. The man walking toward the barn was her brother Stringer, wearing the brown shirt he'd had on the day he died: it was covered with blood, just as it had been when they'd put him on the table and wrapped him in blankets, but his arms were whole. Stringer looked across the small yard to her window, then held the strands of barbed wire with his hands, stepped through the fence and came toward the window. He smiled in at her, Nettie with her head rolling back on her shoulders, and then turned again toward the stable.

And Peter Barnes came down to the kitchen for his usual rushed breakfast, even more rushed these days when his mother had turned so introspective, and found his father, who should have left the house fifteen minutes earlier, sitting at the table before a cold cup of coffee. "Hey, dad," he said, "you're late for the bank."

"I know," his father said. "I wanted to talk to you about something. We haven't talked much lately, Pete."

"Yeah, I guess. But can't it wait? I have to get to school."

"You'll get there, but no, I don't think it can wait. I've been thinking about this for a couple of days."

"Oh?" Peter poured milk into a glass, knowing that it was likely to be serious. His father never came out with the serious things right away: he brooded about them as if they were bank loans, and then hit you with them when he had a plan all worked out.

"I think you've been seeing too much of Jim Hardie," his father said. "He's no good, and he's teaching you bad habits."

"I don't think that's true," Peter said, stung. "I'm old enough to have my own habits. Besides, Jim's not half as bad as people say-he just gets wild sometimes."

"Did he get wild Saturday night?"

Peter set down the glass and looked with feigned calm at his father. "No, weren't we quiet enough?"

Walter Barnes took off his glasses and polished them on his vest. "You're still trying to tell me you were here that night?"

Peter knew better than to stick to the lie. He shook his head.

"I don't know where you were, and I'm not going to ask. You're eighteen, and you have a right to your privacy. But I want you to know that at three o'clock your mother thought she heard a noise and I got up and walked all through the house. You weren't downstairs in the family room with Jim Hardie. In fact you weren't anywhere in the house." Walter put his glasses back on and looked seriously at his son, and Peter knew that now he was going to produce whatever plan he'd thought up.

"I haven't told your mother because I didn't want her to worry about you. She's been tense lately."

"Yeah, what's she so angry about, anyhow?"

"I don't know," said his father, who had an approximate idea. "I think she's lonely."

"But she's got a lot of friends, there's Mrs. Venuti, she sees her every day almost-"

"Don't try to get me off the track. I'm going to ask you a few questions, Pete. You didn't have anything to do with the Dedham girls' horse being killed, did you?"

"No," Peter uttered, shocked.

"And I don't really suppose you know anything about Rea Dedham being murdered."

To Peter, the Dedham girls were illustrations from a history book. "Murdered? God, I-" He looked wildly around the kitchen. "I didn't even know."

"I thought so. I just heard about it myself yesterday. The boy who cleans their stables found her yesterday afternoon. It'll be on the news today. And in tonight's paper."

"But why ask me?"

"Because people are going to think that Jim Hardie might possibly be involved."

"That's crazy!"

"I hope for Eleanor Hardie's sake that it is. And to tell you the truth, I can't see her son doing anything like that."

"No, he couldn't, he's just sort of wild, he doesn't stop when the ordinary guy would…" Peter shut up, hearing his own words.

His father sighed. "I was worried… people knew that Jim has something against those poor old women. Well. I'm sure that he had nothing to do with it, but Hardesty will undoubtedly be asking him questions." He put a cigarette in his mouth, but did not light it. "Okay. Scout, I think we have to be closer. You're going to college next year, and this is probably our last year together as a family. We're going to give a party weekend after next, and I'd like you to loosen up and come and be a part of it. Will you do that?"

So that was the plan. "Sure," he said, relieved.

"And you'll stay for the entire party? I'd like it if you could really get in the swing of things."

"Sure." Looking at his father, Peter saw him for a moment as already surprisingly old. His face was lined and pouchy, marked by a lifetime of worry.

"And we'll have more talks in the mornings?"

"Yes. Whatever you say. Sure."

"And there'll be less hanging around in beer joints with Jim Hardie." This was a command, not a question, and Peter nodded. "He could get you in real trouble."

"He's not as bad as everyone thinks," Peter said. "He just won't stop, you know, he keeps on going and-"

"That's enough. Better get to school. Can I give you a lift?"

"I'd like to walk. I get there too early otherwise."

"Okay, scout."

Five minutes later, books under his arm, Peter left the house; his viscera still retained the imprint of the fear he had felt when he thought his father would ask about Saturday night-that was an episode he planned to put out of his mind as completely as possible-but the fear was only a trembling area surrounded by a sea of relief. His father was far more concerned about being closer to him than about whatever he got up to with Jim Hardie: Saturday night would slip backward into time and become as remote as the Dedham girls.

He rounded the corner. His father's tact lay between him and whatever mysterious thing had happened out there two nights ago. In some way, his father was a protection against it; the terrible things would not happen; he was protected even by his immaturity. If he did not do anything bad, the terrors wouldn't get him.

By the time he reached the top of the square, the fear had almost entirely vanished. His normal route to school would have taken him past the hotel, but he did not want to take the slightest chance of seeing that woman again, and he turned off into Wheat Row. The cool air clipped against his face; sparrows thronged and cheeped across the snowy square, moving in quick zigs and zags. A long black Buick passed him, and he looked in the windows to see the two older lawyers, his father's friends, in the car's front seat. They both looked gray and tired. He waved, and Ricky Hawthorne lifted a hand in a returned greeting.

He was nearly at the bottom of Wheat Row and walking past the parked Buick when a commotion in the square took his attention. A muscular man in sunglasses, a stranger, wandered over the snow. He wore a pea jacket and a knit watch cap, but Peter saw from the white skin around his ears that his head was shaven. The stranger was clapping his hands together, making the sparrows scatter like spray from a shotgun: he looked irrational as a beast. Nobody else, neither the businessmen going up the pretty eighteenth-century steps of Wheat Row nor the secretaries following in short coats and long legs, saw him. The man clapped his hands again, and Peter realized that the man was looking directly at him. He was grinning like a hungry leopard. He started to lope toward Peter: Peter, frozen, sensed that the man was moving more rapidly than his steps could explain. He turned to run and saw, seated on one of the tilting tombstones before St. Michael's, a little boy with ragged hair and a slack grinning face. The boy, less fierce, was of the same substance as the man. He too was staring at Peter, who remembered what Jim Hardie had seen at the abandoned station. The stupid face twisted into a giggle. Peter nearly dropped his books, ran, kept running without looking back.