October (14 page)

"That?" she said dismissively. "The goddamned
Reileys
next door complained again. Said Jack wasn't taking care of the lawn. Property values. You think this was goddamned Society Hill."

"That was all?"

Her face showed surprise. "Why?" Her dim eyes held focus. "Have you done something?"

"No," he said quickly. "I was just wondering."

She rubbed a final time at a scratch under his eye, tossed the washcloth in the sink. "Come on," she said.

She unlocked the bathroom door, opened it to look out. Tentatively, she went out into the hall and approached Davey's bedroom.

Ole Jack was sprawled on Davey's bed, asleep. One hand lay protectively over his nose; a few spots of blood dotted the top sheet.

"He'll be out all night," The Mouth said. "We'll be okay."

Davey looked at ole Jack's prone form, said, "Bastard."

After a dinner of Spaghetti-Os, with Ring-Dings for dessert, a glass of water for Davey, a half bottle of red table wine for The Mouth, she told him to go to sleep. She climbed the stairs to her bedroom, leaving Davey the couch in the living room and a frayed, dusty-blue afghan. He stripped to his shorts, left the television on, dozed off in front of it.

Soon after, he was awakened. He tensed, thinking it was ole Jack descending.

"
Shhhh
," The Mouth said. She knelt beside the couch. "It's uncomfortable down here. Come up to the big bed.”

“No."

"Fine," she said.

She lifted the afghan, snuggled her small body up against his, groped into his shorts.

"No!" Davey said. He pushed against her, dropped her off the couch.

"It's okay, Davey," she whimpered. "It's okay." She tried to climb back next to him.

He lashed out at her with his arm.

"Stay away!"

She sat back on the floor, looked helplessly around. "Davey—"

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Davey shouted. He got up, moved away from her, around the couch. "This isn't the way it's supposed to be! You people are sick!"

He grabbed his clothes, clutched them to his chest, stumbled from the room. He saw her get up and follow him.

"Stay away from me!"

She stopped. He mounted the stairs two at a time, went into the bathroom, locked the door.

He sat on the toilet seat cover, hands balled into his eyes, rocking. Finally, he let big, long sobs rise from inside, burst out.

Later, when he had stopped crying, he dressed and went out into the hallway. The door to The Mouth's bedroom was closed.

He went into his room, past the snoring form of ole Jack. There was an envelope in the back of his desk drawer, and he pulled it out, jamming it into his back pocket.

He dismounted the stairs, found his jacket, put it on, and left the house.

He walked through his old neighborhood, collar up, jacket zipped to his throat. After a while, he began to feel the chill of the night.

There were fallen leaves pooled under the streetlights. His feet made them jump away as he walked through them. Many of the houses had Halloween decorations up,
uncarved
pumpkins on their stoops and porches.

He remembered this street on Halloween when he was five years old. His mother had dressed him like a clown. They walked from house to house. He vaguely remembered the feel of his mother's hand covering his, keeping his hand warm. He remembered feeling vaguely cold through the clown costume.

He remembered the porch lights. Every house had a carved pumpkin. One was so big it needed a table to rest on. Its eyes were cut like diamonds, its nose a triangle. Another pumpkin had a large O for a mouth, with teeth on the bottom, candle fire dancing inside.

He remembered crying.

"Davey, you okay?"

He remembered his mother's face, brushing her combed hair back when she bent down to him. She smelled like perfume water. He remembered the yellow boxes of perfume water on her dressing table.

He pointed at the O mouth of the pumpkin.

"Oh, Davey," she said, hugging him.

He shivered through his costume. "Like the fire burning up the children."

"Who told you that story?" she asked.

He began to cry.

"The big kids?" she asked. "Did they tell you that?" He nodded against her.

"Davey, that happened a long, long time ago. There's nothing for you to be afraid of."

"They'll burn you up."

"Oh, Davey!" She hugged him, held him away, looked into his eyes solemnly. "Nothing's going to happen to me."

He looked at her, lip quivering.

"Davey," she said, pulling him close to her again. "I promise, I'll always be here."

"You promise?"

"Yes, I promise . . ."

But six years later she broke her promise, his mother and father were dead, and it was all gone, his childhood, his father, his mother, the fall of her hair, the smell of perfume water . . .

He began to cry again. When he cleared his eyes, he found he had stopped in front of the house he had lived in. The shutters were no longer red, but in the dark, the house looked the same.

His house.

He tried to make himself stop crying. He wasn't supposed to act like this. He was sixteen, he was tough. But he couldn't stop. He felt himself bisected, an earlier self stuck here in this place, in this house, in happiness, faraway reality. If he had never had it, he knew he would not be missing it. He would get along, had learned to be tough. But he had had that other life, had known what it was like to be happy, and he wanted it back.

Perfume water, her hand covering his, the long fingers cold . . .

"It's not supposed to be like this!"

He began to sob again. Only when the porch light went on in the house where he had lived, illuminating a door that had been painted red but was now a dull green, a different door to a different world—only when that light went on, throwing light on the new real world, a circle of light on a pumpkin, drawn face, a round O with teeth for a mouth, did he wipe his palms into his eyes and run on.

Deep in the night, he watched the moon swim up over him for company. On the edge of the park, where he thought he might sleep on one of the benches, he saw the outline of a patrol car just before he would have been seen. The lit end of a cigarette flared like a coal; he heard the cop cough and then spit.

He circled out of the park, found himself eventually at the outskirts of town. If he reversed and walked east, he would come to the university. The grounds were patrolled by security, making it impossible for sleep.

He walked on, grew tired, cut up away from the well-traveled road, crested the top of a hill, looking for a good place to rest. He followed the line of the ridge.

A trim line of trees appeared in the moonlight before him. He was in one of the apple orchards that encircled New Polk like beads. He thought he knew this one. He climbed a low rock wall and suddenly was in the midst of trees. The tart-sweet smell of apples filled his nostrils. He could not walk without stepping on fruit. He searched for and finally found a relatively intact apple, eating it as he walked.

As he reached the heart of the orchard, the moon was shadowed by a tree limb.

Davey heard a sound.

He stood still, listened.

There it was—a low growl in the back of an animal's throat.

The sound went away, then came again, close by—a throaty growl with an undercurrent of fright.

Davey eyed the nearby ranks of trees, saw nothing. Slowly, Davey lowered himself to one knee. He clicked his tongue. "Here, boy. Come on, let's have a look." The growl came, followed by a tentative, hoarse bark. "Come on, boy."

To Davey's right, the form of a large red setter walked out of tree shadow into moonlight. Davey let the dog study him, sniffing, moving its head from side to side.

The dog huffed, more robustly.

"Come here," Davey urged.

The dog advanced. Davey cupped his hand. The dog nuzzled into it, sniffing and then licking, making a whining sound deep in its throat.

"What's the matter? Somebody beat you?"

Slowly, Davey went over the dog. He found no bruises, but discovered that the dog loved to be scratched behind the ears, deep into his coat.

"You lost? Run away?"

The dog had no collar or tags.

"Road dog, right? Want to stick with me?"

The dog huffed, nuzzled into his hand, up his arm. "Just one thing I've got to check."

Davey continued through the trees. The dog lingered, made a mournful sound. Davey stopped, urged the dog forward, waited till it was at his side.

Davey made his way through the last block of trees to the edge of the orchard.

Where the trees ended, he stopped and looked down the hillside. The moon was high up, perfectly placed for seeing.

The lights in the farmhouse below were lit. Davey was sure of his location now—Ben Meyer's orchard. He and Buddy had picked apples for Meyer once. The old man had a reputation as a loner and a grouch, but they had been treated just fine, and the old woman had doted on them.

But this was not Ben Meyer in the yard. A tall man in shirt and suspenders was cleaning something in front of the porch. He was down on his hands and knees in the dirt. When he was finished, he went to the porch and began to scrub it. Then he brought his cleaning utensils into the house. Davey could make out the tall man's form moving around inside the screen door.

"You're afraid of him?" Davey asked the dog.

The dog whined, gave a low bark.

Davey watched the man continue his work. After a while, the man came out of the house, went to the barn, then returned to the house. All the lights stayed on.

"Okay, boy, let's go."

Davey retreated deep into the orchard. He found a flat area, covered with leaves and grass, under a tree that filtered the moonlight. He cleared it of fallen apples. The dog sat on its haunches, tongue lolling, and watched him.

He lay down, hands behind his head.

"Come here, boy," he said.

The dog growled.

"What's the matter? Don't want to stay here?" In answer, the dog whined.

Davey held his hand out. After a moment, the dog let him scratch it behind the ears, settling close by. "Tomorrow we'll go. Okay?"

The dog let out a long breath that sounded like a sigh.

As the lowering moon winked at Davey from behind a breeze-blown leaf, he went to dreams and was a boy again in his mother's perfumed embrace.

Kevin was still amazed that things had worked out the way Sidney Weiss had promised. It had taken a bit longer than Weiss said it would—three weeks—but here he was back in his new office, waiting for his very first class to begin, with most of his books packed out of their boxes onto their shelves, and his cassette player unreeling a Brahms trio. Raymond Fillet had even come to apologize to him for what had happened—not graciously, but with enough humility to tell Kevin that college president John
Groteman
had, at least for the moment, put him in his place. Kevin would treasure the memory of Fillet's mock contrition.

There was another memory he would not treasure, however. Several times he had tried to call Lydia to explain his behavior. Each time she had hung up on him. He thought of going back to Eileen Connel's house, but what would he do when he got there? In Lydia's eyes, there was no redemption possible; and to Eileen
Connel
, adrift in her own poor, diseased mind, what could he say? She did not even know him.

Still, she knows.

Guilt assaulted him, because, he knew, he would act just as he had, given the chance again.

Was she really in love with me?

As incredible as it might be, he was willing to believe it; but again, he knew that he would only use it against her if he saw her again.

She knows, and she might remember.

The thought tortured him, but he pushed it aside.

There was only one way to redeem the guilt he felt over Eileen
Connel
, and that was to try to secure her place in American literature. Despite what she knew, despite the reasons for his obsession with her work, she deserved the recognition he was trying to gain her.

The class bell rang, a loud, hollow ding!

My God, already?

He looked at his watch, discovered that it was time to teach his first class.

Time for redemption
, he thought, bringing a single book with him, held almost reverently.

They were the usual allotment of students. There were seventeen of them, freshmen, mostly arts majors with a scattering of truly interested science and engineering students, as well as the one or two business-
schoolers
looking for an easy grade.

Kevin entered purposefully. Someone had put a large, carved jack-o'-lantern on his desk, lit, facing him with its crooked, demonic grin.