Lost (12 page)

Leaving the lawn, he jumped into the rough grass.

In the dark room, he had thought she was a nurse. Since she was dressed in pale going-home clothes, he'd thought she was coming in to say good night to his sister. As soon as she left, he'd planned to help Mamie finish dressing in the clothes he'd stolen from clotheslines; then he'd lower her out the window and escape into the night. But his plan, like all the others, had backfired. Only worse this time, much worse.

Even when the woman backed up against the curtains, practically touching him, he hadn't guessed what she was up to, afraid himself of being discovered and taken away by the police. That was why he hadn't moved, hadn't done anything to stop her. And then it was too late to do anything. It was like watching a ball of kite string unwind faster and faster in his hands until it was out of control and burning his fingers. The effect of what that woman had done went on hovering beyond his consuming rage and his ability to understand it. With Sherman, everything was quickly reduced to its simplest terms: if he caught that bitch tonight, he would kill her. You've really done it, he thought. Now you're dead.

He thrashed through the back edge of the rough and came out on an old cowpath fronting the woods. Grasping his knees, he stopped in the barren path, his breath loud and ragged, his head throbbing. Long needles of pain stitched up his arm from his bandaged, burned hand. In the east, the quarter-moon showed a rust-colored curl of light like the rim of a partly buried paint bucket. The Chinaman trotted up to him, panting, his dark eyes quizzical and his tail rolled back into a dense ball of fur. “Good boy,” Sherman said between breaths. “You did your part.” As if obeying just the sound of Sherman's voice, the big dog promptly sat down. But Sherman hardly paused before he was off again, turning and jogging away. The Chinaman ran along after him.

The creaking woods closed over them. Running parallel with Sherman, but straying from his side, the Chinaman loped through the underbrush. On the other side of the woods, Sherman heard the whine of a car on the highway, saw its moving headlights glittering through the trees. It was traveling in the same direction the woman had gone—into town, on the road to Scranton. Absorbed in that thought, he nearly collided with the iron palisades surrounding the cemetery; the toe of his shoe struck the stone base, a seam ripped, and the sole began to flap. Through the fence, the monuments and statues glinted feebly, catching grains of distant streetlight.

Another car passed, its engine throbbing, then fading away; in succession, headlights filtered through the obstructions and blinked along the fence. When the light was gone, Sherman stepped through the breach in the iron palings onto the soft rolling terrain of the graveyard. He moved from stone to stone, on familiar ground now. He had taken this route other times when he'd followed her home. While the road emptied of traffic, he stood beside a white obelisk, then raced down the sidewalk toward Sand Creek Bridge and the downtown lights of Main Street. The Chinaman ran ahead of him and plunged from sight. When the next cars passed on the bridge, the headlights fanned much too high to reach them as they scrambled along the slippery creek bank, going downstream.

Five minutes later, on the far corner of Battery Street and Columbia Avenue, Sherman came to a halt, studying the white frame house in the dim row of houses before him. He ran forward a few steps, then slowed to walk across the intersection. In his approach, he stayed across the street from the house, walking very fast on lawn after dingy lawn to silence his footsteps. He could see that a light was on downstairs. At first he thought it was the man's television set, but the light didn't bounce or flicker; it was a faint, steady light, coming from the hall or kitchen. When he passed the house, the living room was quite dark, except for the beam of light from the other room.

Beside the house, the driveway was empty, the garage closed up. The woman's blue car hadn't come back here; he was too late. Without uttering a sound, he slumped where he stood. The Chinaman came to him from across the street, his tongue dangling from the side of his mouth and his big grisly face masked behind the white steam of his breath. Unless the car was hidden in the garage, she'd done it; she'd grabbed Mamie, and nobody knew.

But me, Sherman thought. Nobody but me.

Down the long wintry street, a car turned toward him and he crouched back against spindly hedges and dropped to his haunches to wait while it passed. He called the Chinaman to him by puckering and smooching his lips, and the dog lay over on his back to have his stomach scratched. His muzzle had been bloodied when he attacked the car; his whiskers were now frosted with blood. Still he lolled on his back as Sherman stroked his furry chest. The run had not depleted Sherman's anger, but now his body tensed with an even deeper knowledge. It's over, he thought, nothing left to lose now, and he began to shake so hard he had to sit on the damp grass and chew on the bandage on his hand to stop. As soon as the fan of light sped past them, he stood and nodded for the Chinaman to come. He looked up and down the street.

He went to the corner and down the side street, and turned abruptly in to the alley, left unpaved and unattended between the various back-yard demarcations. Against his sweaty skin, the wind was biting cold. He chose his steps carefully through the weeds, keenly aware of the noise he made. Always before, he had entered the alley from the other end. On the back side of a shed, he paused to slow his breath and wipe his brow. When he stepped away, a high-backed cat hissed at him through the dark, leaping from the woodpile to the roof of the shed where it crouched like a gargoyle. Growling and snapping, the Chinaman tried to climb the wall after it and Sherman had to drag him away. But up and down the alley, then all over the neighborhood, a chorus of mimicking howls erupted. After a few more steps, he turned the Chinaman loose and they hurdled the low iron railing behind the Mattingly house, then crossed into the rough earth of the garden, and stood erect and silent behind the ornamental birdbath.

An upstairs window glowed with pinkish light, not in the woman's room but another bedroom. The glass in the back door shone dimly with the same shade of light he'd seen through the large front window. Somewhere in the middle of the house, then—the dining room or the hall—a light had been left on. The garage was empty. So the woman who'd taken Mamie was gone, completely gone. His last spark of hope withered, and the necessity of what had to be done settled over him with a weight like iron. Somebody had to know where she was, somebody close to her … and somebody was home.

Near the concrete urns, he stood in the darkened arch of the rose trellis, watching the upstairs light, collecting himself. When the moon drifted free of clouds, it cast him in a pattern of drab, gnarled checkers. He breathed into his hand to trap the white fog spewing from his mouth. Freezing in his jacket, he stamped his feet slowly on the packed leaves. There was no movement or change in the upstairs room. The barking dogs dwindled to one lonely howler.

As he stood there, he knew he would go after Mamie and the woman and find them and bring Mamie back. He would go as far and as long as it took. He would need only a few things. A picture of the woman would help, and he knew where one was—on the mantel. A letter to her from somebody might give him a clue about where she was headed. And money; he'd have to try to find some money.

The house would be easy to get into. He had been in it before. Sherman checked his jacket pocket, and felt reassuringly the weight of the old leather-covered blackjack he'd found and taken one night from a desk drawer; and, in the other jacket pocket, the flashlight disguised as a pencil. In his pants pocket he felt the ridge of the folded knife with one of its two blades broken off. The Chinaman whimpered and stood, and sat down again. “You stay here,” Sherman said. “Don't let anybody in. Don't let
anybody
.” The Chinaman squinted his slanted eyes and licked his muzzle.

Waiting for the light to go out, Sherman scooped two of the pain pills from his coat pocket and ate them dry from the gauze on his hand. He knew where the fuse box was, if it came to that. The medicine nibbled along his nerves and flared in his brain, numbing the throbbing ache in his hand and behind his eyes. He waited for his head to clear. Then he entered the house.

Emma opened her eyes and the room was dark. For a moment, only her eyes moved, skimming the night in the room for some half-remembered disturbance. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. Of the little she could see, nothing appeared to be out of place, and yet she felt nervous. She couldn't recall turning off the bedside lamp, nor did she remember falling asleep, but what she did remember was far more troubling and vivid. As she slept, only brief moments ago, she'd had the distinct sensation of something very close to her, like a cat come to steal her breath away. The blind memory of it knotted in her nerves.

The old sayings and superstitions of her childhood had been stirred up. For a terrifying instant, she thought, Oh, my God, it's Leona. She's been killed and she came to me. Then she scolded herself for letting such heresy affect her reason. But nothing appeased her. She still couldn't reconcile the gnawing fear she'd experienced just as she awoke.

Shrugging higher on the pillows, she reached for the base of the lamp and slipped her fingers up on the celluloid switch. It clicked; she blinked, but the darkness remained intact. Quickly she turned the switch two more times. Again nothing happened. She stared toward the fluted lampshade with disbelief.

Watching the dark, she debated whether or not she had left an emergency candle in the bathroom the last time she'd cleaned. She decided she hadn't, which meant she'd have to go all the way downstairs to get one. She hesitated. She was afraid to go downstairs and she was ashamed to admit it. She drew her legs up in her nightgown and hugged them. As the quilts slipped, her library book fell shut, tumbling from her lap. On the nightstand, on Frank's side of the bed, the luminous dial of the alarm clock showed twenty to eleven. Frank should be home by now, she thought.

She remembered leaving the light on for him in the dining-room hallway and coming upstairs. It had been shortly after ten o'clock. In the bathroom medicine cabinet, she had found the bottle of nerve pills Leona had given her. (“They're mild,” Leona had said. “You might need something for a rainy day.” How obvious her scheming appeared, now that she was gone.) Tonight, worried and jittery about how to tell Frank her bad news, Emma had taken two of the pills. Then, routinely, she'd changed into her nightgown, plumped both the pillows behind her head, and settled back with
The Fountainhead
open against her drawn-up knees. The lamp had been on.

She wondered if the bulb had burned out as she slept—if, in fact, the quiet pop and sizzle of it going out hadn't been what had awakened her. She was thinking about how long it had been since she'd changed the light bulb when she glimpsed a faint movement in the darkened doorway across the room. Her head had been turned toward the lamp and she saw the shape wrinkle and fluctuate on the outer edge of her eye. Twisting toward it, straining to see the doorway clearly, she heard the unmistakable slap of a shoe.

Her heart was pounding and the night solidified before her staring eyes—it was like peering through a tight black mesh. It's Frank, she thought, trying to relax. But she hadn't heard his car in the drive. As she struggled to grasp what was happening, she suddenly realized who it was and why the noises had been so hesitant and perplexing. Leona's come back, she thought, and her spirits lifted. Something went wrong; she'd lost her nerve, or at the last minute she'd just changed her mind and called it off. And come home. In all likelihood, she was going to her room right now, defeated and downhearted.

Emma leaned forward on the bed to listen more carefully, and the house became a vast jar of stillness. Rising from its depths came the noises, tiny wisps and spots of sound: the grind and clicking rotation of a doorknob turned, followed by the muted yawn of a door opened, and, under all the noises, the sound of that one faulty shoe. It's Leona, she concluded, nodding thoughtfully. That would explain everything.

Peeling back the covers, she stood up from the bed, shrugged into her flannel robe, and cinched the sash. She poked her toes under the side of the bed for her slippers and her foot came down hard on something ice cold and slimy and wet. She gasped and lunged from it, but it stuck to the bottom of her foot. Moaning, she caught her foot in both hands. She could feel the thing stuck to her skin. Bracing herself, she cupped her fingers and scraped it from the rigid ball of her foot. It gathered in a wad on her fingers. She could smell it in the room now, the remarkably clean odor of rotted wood and rain. The texture in her hand was webbed and veined and she held it up closer. It was wet, a crumpled leaf.
Oh, God
. She eased back against the quilts; a babble of relieved breaths interspersed her soft, embarrassed laughter. A leaf. After all, just a leaf. Lord have mercy.

It took a few seconds for her to resolve to put an end to her foolishness, once and for all. She stood up from the bed again, rearranging her robe and sash. Halfway across the room, she stepped on another leaf. Again it surprised her, the old fear trickling along her spine. She turned to look at the drawn shades on her two windows, both scarcely glowing with dull moonlight. Surely by lifting the shades she could let in enough light to see where she was going. She went immediately to the windows and pulled the shades up. Gazing out at the thin rind of the moon, she was surprised at how little light there actually was.

A trail of leaves led from the bed, through the door, and out to the staircase landing. Black, glistening leaves. Her pulse thumped in her temples. Neither Frank or Leona would have tracked filth like that into the house. She reached out blindly for something to hold, caught the bedpost, and clung to the acorn finial.