Crawlers (7 page)

“What the heck, Larry?”

“Dad.” Panting. Trying to speak. “The . . . in the cemetery . . . people. Things. Crawling. Chased me.”

“What?”

Then the cop was there, coming up the walk. A tall, blue-eyed white guy with a lazy, unconcerned manner as he took out his report book. A name tag on his uniform shirt said J. WHARTON, QPD. “Evening. Had a call about people running through the park? Vandalism, something like that?”

“You saw them?” Larry asked, peering past him at the street. He saw no one back there except Mrs. Solwiez, in her nightgown, gaping out her front door across the street. The police car’s lights were flashing silently.

“I saw you, in the cemetery, is what I saw, son.”

“Well, something—someone was chasing me.”

He rattled out a version of what he’d seen—he found himself toning it down from what he remembered, afraid it would sound like he was lying—and the cop and his dad exchanged looks. Especially at the naked-girl part. The cop skeptical and amused; Dad puzzled, annoyed.

“That your story?” the cop asked.

“Yes. It’s what happened. You could go see the hole in the ground yourself.”

“I’ll go take a look. But you know they were replacing some stones in the cemetery earlier this week. That might’ve made the hole.”

Larry’s dad turned to him with a suddenness that made him jump. “Son, where’s the dog?”

Larry blinked. He looked at the broken leash still clutched in his hand. “The dog? He . . . got loose. Oh, no. Oh, God, Buddy.”

The cop shook his head sadly. “Have you ever searched your son’s room, sir? I have to say that we’re having a real problem with teen drug use here in town.”

Dad scowled. “Not Larry. Uh-uh. He’s got his vices, but potato chips don’t make you hallucinate. I mean, I’ll look, but . . . I have to assume there was something out there, Officer Wharton. I’m going to go take a look.”

Suddenly Larry felt a flush of love for his dad, a feeling he hadn’t had for ten years or so. The old man was okay.

Wharton shook his head ruefully. “Well, I don’t think you should walk around in the cemetery without permission after dark, sir, especially if they’ve been digging the place up. You might step in a hole. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll look for you. We’ll swing by and see what we see and I’ll come back later. But in the meantime, why don’t you come with me to the station, to make a report, and the boy here—I think we should have him looked at. There’s a doctor at the hospital, on call, for psychiatric issues.”

Larry was outraged, but all he could do was gape and say, “Oh, Jesus, I mean—I’m not—I mean, jeez—”

It took Officer Wharton a few minutes, but he talked Larry’s dad into it. They got in the patrol car—which made Larry feel kind of important, though he knew that it was stupid to feel that way, considering the cop was assuming he was stoned or crazy—and they drove around the cemetery. Saw no one. Not the dog either. They stopped at the front gate and called to Buddy a few times. No response.

“I’ll find him later,” Dad mumbled.

Then they drove to the hospital. Wharton went in with Larry, spoke to some nurses in hushed tones, signed some papers. Larry found himself alone in the emergency room, watching late-night TV on the set in the waiting area.

Eventually he told his story to a lady psychiatrist the cop seemed to have dated or something—she nodded when Larry told her the cop’s name—and the doctor decided Larry needed some kind of anti-anxiety drug for now. Maybe he’d had an epileptic seizure of some kind, so they might have to change his meds later. Larry felt as if he was being treated like a complete lunatic. They acted as if his feelings about the whole thing were off the map and meaningless.

While Larry was at the hospital, his dad went off with the cop to make some kind of statement. Why that was necessary, Larry couldn’t understand. His dad hadn’t seen anything. Just him. Normally they’d just write a report in their little book.

But, hey,
Larry decided.
You have to trust someone. You could trust
the cops, after all. Couldn’t you?

They never found the dog.

4

November 25, night

“Why’s she coming here on a train?” Cal asked, staring dully down the tracks into the thin fog. They could just make out the headlight of the oncoming train and the big blunt steely outline of the engine.

“Sometimes,” Adair said, “you can seem so smart and sometimes you’re just, like, retarded. Why does anybody come on a train?”

They were on the tarmac near the tracks at the Emeryville train station. Across the tracks, past a chain-link fence torn up at the bottom by tramps, was a shopping center with a movie theater, a bookstore, even a jazz nightclub. Beyond that lay the freeway and the bay.

“She doesn’t like to fly,” Adair’s mom said. She had girl’s soccer league that afternoon, and she was already dressed in her white short-sleeve Quiebra High shirt, white shorts, and white sneakers, and her silver coach whistle was hanging around her neck. Adair wore a dress she called her gypsy dress under a jacket from American Eagle.

Adair noticed that Cal wore the same clothes as yesterday.

The train whistled. Getting that quirky look in his eye he got when something was bothering him he didn’t want to talk about, Cal said, “Whoo whoooooo! Hey, Mom, can we blow your coach whistle back at the train?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said vaguely, as she shaded her eyes against the sun breaking through the clouds and watched the train pulling up.

He grabbed her whistle, started blowing on it though it still hung around her neck.
Tweeeeeeee.

Mom only stared at him, as if she was some kind of cryptographer trying to decode what he was doing.

Seeing that he wasn’t going to get a rise from her, Cal dropped the whistle, shrugging.

The train clashed its wheels, squealed its brakes, and came to a grudging stop, reeking diesel. A chubby, blank-faced porter walked up to the first car with portable steps, put them down in front of the nearest door, and waited to help people off. An elderly white-haired woman got off, waving at Adair’s mom—and then looking away in embarrassment as she focused her weak eyes and realized that she wasn’t the daughter or niece she’d been expecting. Wearing a look of disappointed abandonment, the old woman walked past them toward the station.

Then Mom’s sister Lacey climbed down from the train. To Adair, she looked the same as she had three years ago. An attractive woman with long chestnut hair, bangs cut across her forehead, a Long Beach tan, a softer, more humorous face than Mom’s. But then, she wasn’t married with kids, and she was younger than Mom.

Lacey wore oxblood dress pants that looked like they might’ve come from Macy’s, a gold link belt, a white silk blouse, tennis shoes that didn’t quite go with the rest of it. Just a little makeup. Mom almost never wore any either.

Lacey’s nails were oxblood, too, but pretty short, because she typed a lot, Adair supposed. She was a journalist.

“Hi, you guys!” Lacey said, wheeling two hefty American Tourister bags up to them. “Thanks for picking me up.” She beamed at her sister. “Suze! You look great!”

Lacey embraced her sister, and after a moment Mom returned the embrace. Lacey stepped back as if to appraise her, looking a little puzzled by something.

“Glad you could come,” Mom said. She said it brightly, but with no real conviction.

“Well, I guess I’m committed, ’cause I put a lot of my stuff in storage. I’ve been sort of mulling moving out here. Into the city, probably, if I can get a job that’ll pay for the rents you guys put up with around here.”

“I can’t advise it,” Mom said. “The rents are . . . horrendous.”

Lacey’s eyebrows went up. “You were just saying what a good thing it was for me to come, just last night.” She chuckled, hiding her hurt behind a mask of amused indifference, and grinned at Adair. “Your mom has turned mercurial. Wait a minute, that can’t be Adair, not after just three years. Not this gorgeous babe. No way.” She turned a facetious scowl on her sister. “What’ve you done with my niece, and who is this imposter?”

Adair smiled at the joke, but Mom had a peculiar blandness in her face as she looked back at Lacey. “What do you mean?”

“Hello, Mom?” Adair said. “It’s a joke?”

Mom smiled. “Hello? I was joking, too.”

“And look at Cal!” Lacey went on. “All-star something or other. Damn, they grow kids big now. You helping your dad with the business still?”

Cal looked away. “Not lately.”

Mom turned to Cal. “Cal? Isn’t there something you’re supposed to do?”

“Uhhh . . . no?”

Adair turned him a look of slack disgust. “Get her bag, dumbass!”

“Oh, okay, I was going to, whatever,” Cal mumbled. He took the larger of the two bags, and they started toward the parking lot.

“There
are
wheels on those bags, Cal,” Lacey said, smiling, seeing Cal was carrying it by his side. “High technology. It’s the latest thing.”

“Oh, yeah, huh.”

“What a dumbass,” Adair said.

“That’s twice you called me that. Next time you want me to fix your computer you can just shit-can it.”

“Then you suck,” Adair said matter-of-factly.

“You suck.”

“You suck.” She dropped back to walk beside Lacey. “Hey, you’re gonna be here for Thanksgiving?”

“I will.”

“It’d be so cool if you moved out here, Lacey!” Knowing she was bubbling a bit but meaning it. There was something reassuring about Lacey, right now.

“You could help me pick out an apartment, if I decide to do it,” Lacey said. “I sold my car just to have enough cash to pay down on a nice place. You have to have big security deposits, I’ve heard. Key fees and all that.”

“It’s not so bad now, with the dot-com collapse,” Adair said. “Rents have gone down some.”

“I’ve got some applications in with the local papers, but I’m not even sure I want to work for them. To tell you the truth, I think I’m going to take a couple of college classes or something, till I figure out what else to do. I’ve already found a little local school to give me that ever-elusive sense of purpose.”

“I recommend the colleges in San Francisco,” Mom said, unlocking the car. “They’re much better.”

“Oh, no, Diablo is good. It’s one of the best ones!” Adair burst out. Wondering why Mom so obviously didn’t want her sister to go to school around here.
Is she trying to push Aunt Lacey away?

“Diablo is exactly the one I picked,” Lacey said, smiling at Adair. “Give me the school named after the devil, every time.”

Cal and Adair laughed. Mom just smiled faintly.

November 26, morning

Lacey opened her luggage on the single bed. They’d given her the room that doubled as Nick’s office.

She was puzzled by her sister—and she wasn’t sure what was puzzling her. It was partly what
wasn’t
happening. It’d be more like Suzanna to help her unpack, chattering the whole time about where she could put her things, asking if she needed anything, telling her about towels—but Suzanna had simply shown her in and silently left her here.

Normally when they saw one another, Suzanna would take her aside for a recital of complaints about her husband and the kids, and then, after getting it off her chest, following up with how great her husband and kids were, after all. That’s how she always was, and it was fine with Lacey. But nothing like that this time. Suze seemed distant the way people are when they’re angry but don’t want to talk about it.

But Suzanna appeared at the door with clean towels. “You can use that bathroom off the office, while you’re here. Before you go. Have it to yourself.”

Lacey looked at Suzanna, trying to find the right tone. “So, Suze. How’re things with the kids?”

“Fine.”

“Just fine? How’s Nick?” She lowered her voice. “You were worried about him?”

“Why would I be worried about him? He’s better than he’s ever been.” She seemed to mean that. She laid the towels on the bed and turned to go.

“On the phone you said—”

“Oh. I was wrong. You were right. It was just the meds. He’s back on them. We’re fine.”

She turned away again.

“Suze, wait. Seriously, are you mad at me for anything? I put my foot in it somehow?”

Suzanna paused at the door and looked mildly back at her. “Not at all. Why should I be angry?” She seemed truly in the dark.

“Okay, whatever. Never mind.” Lacey went back to unpacking, and Suze wandered off toward the garage.

Lacey was pretty much through when she heard the triple scream. The scream of tires, the scream of an animal, the scream of a girl.

She rushed out front and saw her niece, Adair, kneeling in the street; a dull-faced pale young man in a rather shabby military uniform stood by what appeared to be a brand-new Ford Expedition sport utility vehicle. It hadn’t any plates yet. And Lacey’s sister, Suzanna, was walking calmly over to the SUV.

“Adair, honey, come away from there,” Suzanna was saying.

“Suze? What happened?” Lacey asked, coming out into the cloud-filtered daylight.

Then she saw the red puddle spreading out from the small, crushed remains. The young marine—that was a marine uniform, wasn’t it?—was staring at the dead cat.

“Silkie!”
Adair sobbed.

The marine became aware of Lacey, glanced up at her as she approached, and it seemed to her that he adopted the appropriate expression of remorse at that moment.

“Oh, my God, Adair, that was your cat?” Lacey asked, squatting to put her hand on her niece’s shoulder. Adair turned away from the wreckage of Silkie and buried her face in Lacey’s shoulder. Her only reply was a nod and sobbing. “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry, hon. The poor thing.”

Lacey glanced up at Suzanna and the young marine. They looked at each other, Suzanna and the soldier, and then at the cat.

His uniform was dirty, torn here and there. Buttons were missing. The knees were green. Very unusual for a marine. Near unthinkable. He must’ve been out drunk somewhere in a park, Lacey supposed.

“Corporal,” she said, noticing his stripes. “Were you driving drunk around here?”

“No, ma’am,” the marine said. “But I’m sure sorry about the cat. She just run out in front of me.”

“She does that,” Suzanna said. “It’s no fault of yours. You can go on now. I’ll clean this up.”

The marine nodded. “Thank you, ma’am. But I’m sure sorry about the cat. She just run out in front of me.”

“You said that,” Lacey muttered.
Exactly that,
she thought.

But the marine was already getting into his Ford Expedition. He backed it up and drove around them. And drove away.

“Suze,” Lacey asked, “do you want me to pick the kitty up and you can take Adair into the house?”

“No, I’ll do it. I’ll just get a shovel.”

Lacey drew Adair to her feet and put an arm around her to guide her into the house. “I hate those SUVs,” Adair said. “Big killing machines. People love to get in big killing machines. I
hate
them!”

An auspicious start for my visit,
Lacey thought.

Aloud she said, “I know how you feel. I’d have called a cop to check if that jarhead was drunk, but—” She broke off, not wanting to say anything about her sister’s odd indifference. “Anyway, sit down, honey.”

They sat on the sofa. Lacey saw her sister carrying a big shovel from the backyard toward the street, passing on the other side of the window, just two yards away, so that Lacey could just faintly make out the song that Suzanna was singing to herself as she went to pick up the dead cat.
“Time of the sea-ee-sonnnnn . . .”

Adair had her face in her hands. “Silkie was my friend since she was a kitten. We grew up together.”

“I know. It looked like she died instantly—but I don’t know if that’s much consolation.”

Adair looked up at the shadow passing over them, her mom striding by the window, carrying the cat on the shovel to the backyard. “Mom’s going to bury her back there where the gerbil’s buried, by the rosebushes. She used to say that if we bury pets under rosebushes, we see them again in the roses.”

“That’s kind of nice, really.”

Adair nodded, wiping her eyes, and got up. “I’m gonna find something to bury Silkie in.” She went dazedly into her bedroom.

Lacey went out back and saw Suzanna digging a hole, not under the rosebushes but on the side of the house near a can full of yard clippings. The cat was lying on the dirt beside her, its back broken, eyes open and staring, tongue sticking out.

“Suze? Don’t you want to put the kitty under the rosebushes?”

Suzanna continued digging, making a perfect little rectangular grave, as if she were born to miniature grave digging. “Why?”

“Because you told Adair it was nice to do that when she was little, I guess.”

Suzanna looked up at her. “I did? I guess I’d forgotten. Okay.”

She pushed the dirt back in the hole with the side of her tennis shoes and went briskly over to the roses and began to dig as Adair came out carrying an old, torn pink silk pillowcase.

Adair stopped, looking at the cat. “I can’t.”

Lacey took the pillowcase and knelt beside the dead cat. Trying not to look at it too closely, she eased its still warm body into the pillowcase. She got only a little blood on her thumb, but more blood began to soak through the pink pillowcase immediately. She carried the cat over to the new hole Suzanna was finishing—finishing with remarkable dispatch.

Once finished, Suzanna went to the garage with the shovel and didn’t come back. Lacey and Adair lowered the pillowcase gently into the hole, and Lacey filled it up, pushing the dirt in with her hands, as Adair tearfully said, “Good-bye, Silkie, you were a hella good cat.” She hugged Lacey quickly, once. “I’m sorry this had to happen as soon as you got here.”

“I’m sorry you had to lose your kitty at all. I had a little dog, and when it died from old age it was like my own child died. Some people say it’s silly, but . . .” She shrugged.

They stood there awhile, looking at the little grave together. After a while, Adair let out a long, slow breath and went back into the house.

Lacey found Suzanna in the garage, gazing placidly into the cryptic electronics inside the back of an old boom box.