Monstrous Affections (26 page)

He reached around them, arm seeming to bend in two spots to
do it, and lifted swamp witch’s wine glass. Unkindly, he hawked a
big purple loogie the size of a river slug, let it ooze into the glass and
down the side. It fizzed poisonously.

“This is who you gave me up for,” said swamp witch. Albert’s
shoulders slumped.

“’Twas only a matter of time before they saw what happened
here,” said Albert.

Swamp witch sighed. She snaked her hand underneath Albert’s
arm. They stood there at the end now — seconds before it would
occur, she could see it clear as headlights, clear as anything. She
brought her lips to his, and said: “Goodbye,” then added, fondly: “Go
to Hell.”

And with that, Albert stepped away and smiled his sweet smile,
and in a whiff of volcanic flatulence, did as he was told and stepped
to the back of the store.

And it was just her and the tea-drinking man.

“Why di’ —
did
you ever want this place?” asked the tea-drinking
man. “I’s a rat hole.”

“A snake pit,” agreed swamp witch. “I agree with your sentiment
some days. I wanted it because it was rightfully mine. Why’d
you
play Albert for it?”

“Symmetry,” said the tea-drinking man.

“That explains not a thing,” said swamp witch.

“All right.” The tea-drinking man took a ragged breath. “You took this place off — ” he looked into the air for the word and found it
in the old dangling light fixture over the cash register “ — off the
grid. The world ran its course, my dear — ran to dark and to light and
good and evil. Why, those of us on the outside took the time we had
and made things. There are towers, dear swamp witch — towers that
extend to heaven and back. Great wide highways, so far across you
can only see the oncoming autos as star-flecks in the mist. We’ve
built rockets. Rockets! We’ve gone higher than God. And yet this
place? Stayed put. All those years. Why?” He gave a drooling little
sneer. “Because it’s rightfully yours?”

“That’s right,” said swamp witch. “And whatever you say, it’s
better for it.”

Tea-drinking man shrugged. And although he never seemed too
inflated, he seemed to deflate then. He slumped a little, in fact.

“What did you think you would accomplish?”

Swamp witch shrugged now. What did it need to accomplish? She
wondered. What was the point of this accomplishment anyhow —
of taking your powers and making the world into a place of your
dreams? Why look ahead — when all that was there were endings
and misery? Why not make a pleasant place now?

“And you fester in your swamp,” said tea-drinking man,
“wallowing in the muck with your insects and rodents and frogs. I’d
drain that swamp, I was you.”

Swamp witch looked at him, and as she did, she saw another
ending: one in which all of Okehole County was nothing but an
embodiment of tea-drinking man’s hopes and dreams — victim of
his regrets.

It was an end, all right — a point too long before she buried her
own children and faced her own end. Swamp witch did not like to
look upon ends long, but she couldn’t look away from this one: it
filled up the horizon like a great big sunset.

“You have got the sickness,” she said. “The dreaming sick. You
won’t now give it to me. And you won’t give it to our town. You won’t
give it to this county.”

“I already done that,” he said simply, sadly almost.

— No he hasn’t, said dragonfly, buzzing up from the back of the
shop. Hop on.

The tea-drinking man tried to grab her, but he was sore and half-paralyzed now from the Reverend’s bite, and he just knocked over a
box of chewing tobacco and mumbled swearwords. Swamp witch felt
her middle contract and the smoke and book get big and she flung
her leg over the back of dragonfly. Tea-drinking man called after
her: “You shouldn’t have!” but swamp witch already had, and she
wouldn’t let the itchy virus of regret get at her now.

Swamp witch soared. She climbed again to the very top of her
domain — the place where the dome of stars turned solid and fruit-drunk swallows’d stun themselves dead. Dragonfly set up there,
buzzing beneath the sallow light of Sirius, and swamp witch leaned
over to him and asked him what he’d meant by that.

And dragonfly whispered his answer with his wings, buzzing
against the hard shell of the world so they echoed down to earth.
Swamp witch peered down there — at her town, her people, who
from this place seemed even tinier than she was now. She smiled
and squinted: could almost make them out. There was little Linda
Farley, her eyes dried up and a big old garden hoe in her hands; Jack
Irving, with a red plastic gas can, riding shotgun in Harry Oates’
pickup; Bess Overland with a flensing knife and Tommy Balchy,
beautiful young Tommy, with a big old two-by-four that’d had a nail
driven through it. He was leading the senior class from the Okehole
County High School, and a bunch of straggling ninth-graders, down
Brevener Street, toward the front of old Albert Farmer’s smoke and
book.

Swamp witch smiled a little, with sudden nostalgia. The last time
she’d seen her folk like that had been before she’d met Albert — just
before, when she’d been invited to leave her home town — on pain of
death pretty well. She saw that so clearly, she knew, because it was
so similar to her recollection of what was about to happen.

Tea-drinking man was going to pick up the telephone in Albert
Farmer’s shop, dial a long-distance operator who hadn’t heard from
Okehole County in Lord knew how long, and tell the others that he’d
done it. “Symme’ry,” he’d say, then repeat slowly, “
sym-met-tree.
Is
restored. We got it.”

And at the other end, a voice that ululated like wind chimes
would laugh and thank him and tell him that his cheque was in the
mail, the board of directors was pleased, there was a new office with
a window waiting for him, see you later and stop by the club when
you get back. And tea-drinking man would with shaking hand hang
up the phone, and step outside to survey his new town.

And then — like before, when swamp witch had come out of the
pharmacy, the glamour fresh upon her, two smooth pebbles in her
pocket and the knowledge that she could do anything —
anything!
—
then, the town would set upon him.

Swamp witch had been faster than tea-drinking man would be.
Swamp witch had also known the town, known it like her own soul
practically, and she’d cut down the alleyway between Bill’s and the
Household Hardware and muttered “glycol,” and vanished from
their sight, leaving them all hopped up and pissed off with nothing
they could do.

Slow, sick old tea-drinking man, who’d swapped his dreaming
sickness for snake sick, wouldn’t have the same advantage.

They’d do to him what they couldn’t ever do to her.

And that would be the end.

— Think, she asked dragonfly, once they got that out of their
system, tearin’ themselves up a witch, actually beatin’ one — think
it’d cure them of all the regret that fellow’d stoked ’em with?

Dragonfly pondered the question and finally said:

— You don’t ask a question like that unless you know the
answer.

— You are a wise bug, said swamp witch.

— Not wise enough to know where you want to go next.

— Hmm.

Last time this had happened, swamp witch had figured she’d
head straight for the wetlands and wait it out. Then, she’d been
sidetracked by a game of checkers and the promise of certainty.
This time, as she directed dragonfly down toward the mist of the
wetland and past that to her tiny hutch, swamp witch vowed that
she would not pause on her way there. She would spend the next six
days in the swamp, thinking about what she’d do on the seventh. It
would take a lot of careful thinking leading up to Saturday, because
for the first time in her life, she’d be free that night.

Mitchell Owens spent much of his seventeen years a quiet boy,
sitting very still in the darkest part of a very dark room. Most people
could not figure him out, and as far as Mitchell was concerned, the
feeling was mutual.

But his older friend Stefan wasn’t most people. He picked up on
Mitchell’s vibe right away, as Mitchell was still squeezing into the
back of Stef and Trudy’s Explorer in the parking lot of the Becker’s
convenience store where they had met three times now. Stefan looked
over his shoulder, looked again with his eyes a little narrower, then
turned around so his knees were on the seat and his skinny chest
was pressed against the headrest.

“Looks like you ate a bug, Mitch,” he said.

“Didn’t eat a bug,” said Mitchell.

“Just an expression,” said Trudy, eyeing him herself in the rearview mirror. She was haloed in the light of the Becker’s sign
so from behind her blonde hair looked like the discharge off a
Van de Graaff generator — black as midnight in the middle of her
skull, leaping bolts of yellow on the rim. The rearview mirror told a
different story: her eyes were in full illumination, a blazing rectangle
of light.

Mitchell stammered when he spoke up:

“Th-they took away my laptop.”

“I see you don’t have it with you,” said Stefan. “By
they
I assume you mean the police.”

“Yuh.”

“Bummer,” said Stefan.

“You’ll get it back,” said Trudy.

“Did they follow you?” asked Stefan.

“No.”

“Why would they follow Mitch?” Trudy put the Explorer into gear, and tapped the gas so that Stefan lurched against the seat. “Fuck,
woman!” he said, and Trudy said, “I’ve got a name. Sit forward. It’s
more comfortable.”

“Fuck,” said Stefan again, and he winked at Mitchell. “Do up your
seatbelt, Mitch. Woman — Trudy’s — in a mood.”

“Fuck you,” said Trudy as they pulled out of the parking lot, and
at that, Mitchell felt himself smile. He would get the laptop back. Of
course he would.

The Explorer pulled right onto Starling with only a little room
to spare before it joined the early evening traffic and subsumed
itself to its pattern: drive a bit and stop awhile. Watch the light from
red to green, red to flashing green, red to red while the other side
got flashing green. Wait and go. Go and wait. Mitchell was feeling
better and better. The laptop would be his again. It was part of the
pattern.

“So they treat you okay?” said Trudy.

“Why wouldn’t they?” said Stefan.

“Cops are fucking fascists. They get a kid like Mitch here and
they’ll just be pricks to him.”

“They got your laptop,” said Stefan. “You have anything on the
hard drive?”

Mitchell didn’t know what he meant and said so. Stefan and
Trudy shared a glance, and Trudy pulled into the left lane so she
could turn onto Bern Street when her turn came.

“We’ve got some friends coming over,” said Stefan conversationally. “From the news group. I think you’ve met some of them.
Remember Mrs. Woolfe?”

Mitchell thought about that. He put the name to a tall woman
with glasses and a dark tattoo that crept over the edge of her
turtleneck sweater like foliage. “Was she the one who was always
sad?”

“Lesley?” said Trudy. “She wasn’t sad.”

“She just wasn’t smiling,” said Stefan. “But that doesn’t mean she
was sad.”

Mitchell nodded. Those were two expressions that Mitchell was
always mixing up. “Not sad. Just concentrating.”

“Right.”

The Explorer swung vertiginously through the intersection
about a second after the light switched to amber. Mitchell glanced
back sceptically. Sure enough, it was red before they’d cleared it. He
was sure someone was going to honk.

“So what did they ask you?”

Stefan was half turned around in his seat, so only one eye looked
back at Mitchell. The skin of his forehead was puckered up over his
raised eyebrow. He was either being worried or casual.

Mitchell said: “They asked me how well I knew Delilah. They
wanted to know if I ever emailed her or knew her in this chat room
that I guess she went to.”

“Our chat room?”

Mitchell shook his head. “Another one. Not like the one we have.
Hers was for wrestling. They asked if I had any pictures of her on my
computer or anything.”

“Which you don’t.”

“Pardon?”

“You don’t have any pictures of her on your computer,” said
Trudy. “Right?”

“Oh. Right. I don’t.”

“And you didn’t bookmark the chatroom.”

“I use the computer at the library for that.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about.”

“Why would I be worried?”

“No reason,” said Trudy, and Stefan said, “You might have
something to worry about if you did something. I mean — ”

“No reason,” said Trudy again.

“Okay.”

Mitchell leaned back in the Explorer’s seat so that Trudy’s eyes
were gone from the rear view mirror and all he could see was the
dark roof of the Explorer. He unzipped his jacket because the heat of
the car was getting to him. The Explorer turned right at Sparroway
Circle, and then turned right again at the entrance to Number Five
Sparroway Circle’s parking garage. Mitchell did a little cha-cha
thing on his left thigh with the first two fingers of his right hand as
the Explorer made its way through Level One of the garage, which
included most of the guest parking, then his fingers made their way
to the lock switch as they prowled across the slightly better-lit Level
Two. He locked and unlocked the door three times then made himself
stop when they pulled into Space 152. Trudy and Stefan pretended
not to notice — just locked up the car for good using a button on
Trudy’s keychain, took him to the elevator which they opened using
a card on Stefan’s keychain, and got on board. The door closed on
them and the elevator started going up.

“School was bad today,” said Mitchell.

Stefan pushed his hands into the pockets of his dark leather
coat. Trudy bent her head forward like she was looking at her feet,
then suddenly turned her eyes to the side so they were looking at
Mitchell.