Hush (19 page)

for Davy. Stevie was ten years old with frizzy red hair and more than one

hundred seventy pounds of weight burdening his young body. The poor boy's face

was a buckshot of freckles, and except for this frenzy of orange he was as white

as a sack of flour. He was obese, bossy, and terrorized the other children. Not

surprisingly, he was also friendless, which he rued loudly and daily.
"Hey, you," he shouted as he shoved Davy, who was sitting at the table eating a

sandwich while a crowd of children on either side of him scrambled to trade

doughnuts for cupcakes, peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for tuna, "shut up.

Don't say a word." Stevie turned to his classmates. "See, he does what I tell

him to!"
He shoved Davy again, hard enough to drive his chest into the table, "Hey,

you're dumb. You know what dumb is? You! It means you can't talk, dumbbell."
Stevie thought this was hilarious, and so did pixie-headed Anna, who quickly

concluded that it was open season on the new kid.
"Stay, boy, stay," she giggled as she held up both hands, "and no biting!"
She squealed with laughter, which enraged Stevie.
"Anna banana, shut up or I'll—"
The steadily rising noise level made Celia realize that something must be amiss

down in the kitchen. She hurried from her office and found that the children had

been left unsupervised in the most dangerous room in the Center— appliances, gas

stove, knives. Allison was supposed to be here. Where the devil was she?
"Stevie, take your lunch and get over there." Celia knew she had to assume

command quickly and decisively. She figured the children were only one insult

shy of a food fight, which could turn into a mini-riot with this crew. "I'm

giving you a time-out."
She pointed to a smaller table in an alcove where children who misbehaved were

banished for varying periods of time.
"Why me? I didn't do a f— a thing, I mean."
"Thank you for catching your tongue, Stevie, or you'd be catching more than a

time out. Now move."
Stevie slumped his shoulders and shuffled off to the Center's version of

Siberia.
Davy was glaring at his tormentor, so Celia walked over and gave him a warning:

"Don't get any ideas about getting even. We don't do that around here. Do you

understand? Good."
She continued to ask Davy questions and speak to him as though he were not a

mute because she wanted to create the expectation of conversation without

pressuring him too much. Sooner or later he would probably talk. Almost all

elective mutes did. She remembered an old joke a psych professor had told them

about mutism. It was a late spring day and at least half the class were having a

hard time staying awake, so he told them to perk up.
"Joke time," he announced, which surprised most of them because he'd never told

a joke before. "Okay? Everybody awake? You'll be tested on this." The few

remaining sets of droopy eyes snapped open. "All right, there's a boy, actually

he's not a boy, really, he's twenty-one years old, and he's never said a word.

His parents have taken him to all kinds of specialists— hearing doctors, throat

doctors, witch doctors, you name it— but no one can find anything wrong with

him. Well, one day they're all sitting around eating dinner and the young man

looks up and says, 'This tastes like shit.' "
A few students laughed.
"His mother, she's so amazed she's not insulted. She says, 'Bobby, that's

wonderful, you're talking. Oh, thank God, you can talk. Look, Harry, he's

talking.' The father, he's sitting there dumbstruck, he says to the kid, 'Jesus,

Bobby, what's up? How come you've been so quiet?' And Bobby just shrugs and

says, 'Hey, everything's been fine up till now.' "
They had all laughed, some more dutifully than others. The point, her professor

had said, is that you can make too much of mutism. Some children will talk when

they're good and ready and not before.
"So let them be. Life's not always complicated." He'd smiled. "Lots of times

it's very simple. Remember, even Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a

cigar."
Celia thought that might be true in some cases, but she worried about Davy. His

stepfather linked the boy's refusal to speak to the death of his mother, yet

thousands of children lost their parents each year and that didn't stop them

from talking. She was beginning to wonder if Davy's silence said more about the

parent who survived than the one who had died, especially after the picture he'd

just drawn showing where he felt safest. Not to mention her encounter with Mr.

Boyce out in the woods. That had left her with serious questions, as well as

profoundly shaken. If he could be so casually brutal around her, how did he

behave when he was alone with the boy? Celia also wondered how many other

elective mutes had been ignored and forced to suffer, thanks to the glib

opinions of professors and other so-called experts. Probably a bunch.
Besides, she thought, I hate cigars.
*
Allison rushed back into the noisy kitchen full of whispered apologies. "I'm so

sorry, Mrs. Griswold, but my period started right after I got them seated, and

I—"
"That's okay. It's really not your fault anyway. This is much too much work for

one person. Either we get you some help or we cut out their allotment of white

sugar."
Allison laughed quietly. "I'd go for that, the help, I mean."
Celia looked toward the doorway. "Where is everyone? I heard the racket all the

way down the hallway."
"I just saw Ethan and Dr. Weston coming out of his office. Please don't mention

this to him. He said the other day that—"
"Don't worry about it." Celia could see that Tony had the youngest member of the

staff cowed. "Just let me bring you up to speed." She looked over at Stevie.

"He's in a time-out. I'd give him another five minutes. Davy was giving him

stink-eye, so I warned him, but you definitely want to keep an eye on him too.

You'd want to anyway. The rest of them are no worse than usual." That included

Harold Matley, who sat stone-still now that he'd finished eating, as if any

movement at all might stir up his scary hallucinations.
Allison started thanking Celia but stopped short as Tony and Ethan walked in the

kitchen.
"Celia." Tony stepped forward. "I understand we had a serious problem after I

left this morning."
"Yes, Davy acted up. How's Mrs. Tucker doing?"
Tony held up his hand and spread his fingers. "Five stitches in her arm and a

tetanus shot. I've had happier staff." He looked past her and frowned. "Do you

really think it's safe to have him in here eating with the others?"
"I don't think it's a problem." She hoped that Davy would not choose this moment

to cause a disruption.
Tony shook his head in obvious disagreement. "So what did you do with him after

containment?"
Celia explained that she had him draw a picture of the place where he felt

safest.
"You had him draw a picture after he bit Mrs. Tucker?" Tony said with mock

amazement, which Celia found offensive. "Really," he went on, "I think we must

come up with ways of disciplining him."
"Right," Ethan chimed in, "it's about time we started kicking some ass around

here. Let's requisition a rack from the district office. I'll bet we can get

that kid talking real fast. It's time we put our big foot down, right,

Sasquatch?" Ethan made a show of staring at Tony's huge feet, while the director

looked at him with open incredulity. He started to say something, but managed

only to part his lips before stomping away.
"I guess I'm a real disappointment to him," Ethan said with a smile.
"Jesus, don't you worry about offending him?" Celia's hands had turned clammy as

soon as he'd started in about the rack.
"Not in the least. Besides, I've about had it with him. He just made me sit in

his office for fifteen minutes while he lectured me about respect, my lack of it

for him, to be specific. Anyway, what's Sasquatch going to do, send me to

Vietnam? Too late, buddy, I've already been there."
"I didn't know that." The news shocked Celia; she'd worked with Ethan for years.
"That's because I don't like to talk about it. It's a time I'd just as soon

forget, okay?"
"Sure."
"Now, Miss G, on to more important things because inquiring minds want to know:

Did Davy actually draw a picture of where he feels safest?"
She nodded. "He sure did. He drew—"
Stevie picked that moment to start pounding the table in the alcove, and Anna

screeched "No!" at dark-haired Robby, who was sitting next to her. Robby sniffed

loudly and flipped her Twinkie back onto the table. It broke in half, and she

started to cry. Allison, trim and nimble, moved around the kitchen like a hot

footed waiter.
Celia turned to Ethan. "Does this place ever get to you?"
"Every day. I wasn't kidding about the rack."
"Yes, you were. Anyway, there's something about Davy's picture that really

bothers me. You know how most kids draw a picture of where they live, no matter

how bad things are at home? Not Davy. He drew a picture of this place, only he

had it surrounded by a moat with sharks, and barbed wire, and he had guards in

towers with big guns protecting him."
"A little concerned with personal security, are we?"
"Just a little. Then I ran into his charming stepfather yesterday,"— she paused

to nod portentously—"and I can understand why. I was hiking up by my place, and

that asshole scared me half to death. He just showed up out of nowhere, and then

almost cut the head off a snake while—"
"Wait a second, where'd the snake come from? Did he bring—"
"No, I was going down a trail and it came crawling out of an old dead tree

trunk. I got spooked, I shouldn't have but I did, and I ran into Mr. Boyce,

literally. I was looking back and ran right into him. He grabbed ahold of me and

wouldn't let go, and then he started dragging me back to where the snake was.

Thank God a logging truck came by because he saw the driver and let me go, and I

took off for the road. Now here's the creepy part." She reached out and touched

Ethan's arm briefly, as if to steady herself. "I turned around and he had that

snake—"
"The same snake?"
"Ethan," she said in a trying voice, "who knows? It's not like it had a bunch of

tattoos and a nose ring. He said there was a nest of them. I don't know. All I

know is he started to cut off its head with a razor blade. I freaked out, I was

yelling at him to stop, so he did. He just dropped it on the ground and walked

away, and I had to beat it to death with a rock so it wouldn't just lie there in

pain. It was like it was being tortured."
"You? You beat a snake to death with a rock?"
"What else could I have done? I couldn't just leave it there."
"No, of course not. I—"
"You should have seen it. It was one of the most horrible things I've ever

seen."
"I just didn't think you had it in you."
"Neither did I. Anyway, I can understand why Davy didn't draw a picture of home

sweet home, not when he's got to live there with Attila the Hun."
"Watch your step."
"I am, but I'm not going to let him intimidate me. That kid deserves a lot

better."
Their eyes met and lingered for a moment longer than Celia found comfortable.

She looked away as Stevie, once again, began to beat the table with his fist.
28
Chet wiped his hands and tossed the oily rag onto the worktable he'd set up

outside the trailer. He groaned as he lifted the chain saw. He'd been bending

over for half an hour sharpening and cleaning it, and now his back burned with a

familiar pain. He tried to stand up straight but that didn't do any good at all.

It had been eating away at him for days and made every move a misery.
The video played in the trailer, and he knew the boy was sitting there staring

at it like a zombie while he ate dinner. He was starting to hate that kid. No

matter what he did for him, nothing. And when he took him to bed, nothing. He

had to make him do everything and the little bastard did nothing. Give him a

home and you get nothing.
He laid the chain saw in the back of the pickup and looked up at the sky. A

sharp pain shot down his leg and he swore at the stars as if they were to blame.

He started back to the trailer.
*
Davy sat hunched over his bowl of chocolate-flavored cereal and watched Batman.

Black wings, black mask, black as night. Fly so good. And the Penguin.

Somebody's got to die. Got to. His sketchbook and pencils lay on the floor

beside him.
His stepfather threw open the door and the night rushed in, the darkness that

crowded the world outside. Davy felt it harsh against his skin and wanted it to

go away, for everything to disappear.
His stepfather edged around the kitchen table and moaned when he poured coffee

into his cup. Davy saw him hold his back like he was pressing on an open wound.

When he turned to him, the boy fixed his eyes on the video and clenched his

spoon.
Chet inched back past the table, feeling the tightness of the trailer as he

never had before. Everything about it felt tight, made for fucking midgets or

something. Even the air felt close, pressing in on him like all those molecules

were heating up right in his face. Sweat ran down his spine in a filthy itchy

stream. It made him want to rub up against something hard and pointy. But when

he moved he caught his jeans on the corner of the table. Some fucking finishing

nail that hadn't been finished. He had no patience for this shit and yanked it