Stranglehold (3 page)

"Ruth, do you know what you're doing? You're threatening an officer of the law."

"You want to arrest me, fine. You go right ahead.
After
we find Arthur."

"Boys forget. They get to doing things."

He could hear the policeman shift uneasily on the stairs.

"And I got a
fire
to fight!"

"So how do you know he's not in it?"

"What?"

"
In
your damn fire, Ralph. How do you know he's not lying out there hurt, right in the path of the damn thing? My Arthur had asthma when he was three. Had fainting spells. What if he's had a relapse or something?"

"Jesus, Ruth."

The boy smiled. His mother was going to win.

His mother always won.

Best of all she was using the same explanation he'd intended to use anyway—the fainting spells. And now he knew it was going to wash with them. It'd scare them. He didn't know why he wanted to scare them but he did. His mother would make a whole big thing out of it and he'd stay out of school tomorrow and maybe even the next day or the day after that. There might even be a doctor.

"All right, Ruth," Duggan said. "You win. You and Harry climb in back. I guess what we'll do is start behind the fire, close as we can, and then work back toward the house. Not a lot of light left, though."

"And you call it in."

"All
right
, Ruth. I'll call it in."

He heard them go down the stairs and heard car doors open and then slam shut and the police car starting up and pulling away and then there was just the familiar silence, crickets and frogs way down the road at the beaver pond across the hill.

He crawled out from under the stairs and sat down on the grass with his arms folded over his legs. Nobody was going to see him sitting there. He felt invisible, like he wasn't in the same world as everybody else, like he wasn't even there.

He sniffed his shirt.

The shirt still smelled of smoke. So did his jeans. Smoke and dirt.

He wondered if they would still smell like smoke when they got back later and if his mom would notice.

It was possible he'd get caught.

He felt a bright rush of fear at the thought. At the knowing that there was danger. It was very nearly the same thing he'd felt using matches on the pile of brush and then crouching there watching the fire crawl from brush to trees to more brush, smelling the smoke and listening to the crackling sounds.

Eventually the feeling had overpowered him and made him want to run and hide.

It felt very much like joy.

He was bad.

And now he was invisible
.

And no one would ever know either of these things. He'd sit here until his senses told him to hide again and then he'd crawl back into the crawl space and listen to his mother's worry and his father's silence inside the house until he was good and ready to come out and no one would ever know.

Wolfeboro, New Hampshire

May 1971

"Come on,
Lyd
. You know you want to."

"I
don't
want to."

"Sure you do."

"I
don't
. Don't touch me."

"Look, you just wrap your hands around it. Hold it like this. Then you
squeeze
..."

The sound was deafening. The Budweiser can seemed to leap off the stump.

"
God
, Martin!"

"Is that something? Is that cool or what? As soon as my dad saw this movie he had to have one. Bet it could stop an elephant.
Here.
Try it."

"I don't
want
to stop an elephant."

"My dad wouldn't mind."

"Your dad
would
mind. And you know it."

"So? Who's gonna tell?"

"Couldn't we just go inside? I'm cold."

It wasn't true. The wind was blowing hard off the field but it wasn't a cold wind. In fact it was the first sunny day they'd had after a winter that seemed to go on and on, simply devouring the spring.

"Not till you try."

She didn't like the gun.
Dirty Harry
gun, he said. It was smooth and beautiful in the way that bright new polished silver was beautiful but she didn't like the smell of it or the enormous sound it made or the way it had bucked in his hands like something alive over which you could have only a limited, conditional control.

She didn't trust the gun.

He fired again. Missed this time. There was an explosion of sawdust at the base of the stump and the impact of the bullet toppled two cans and rattled all the rest. Not even the protective gear could keep her ears from ringing.

"I'm telling you. You'll love it."

She doubted that.

He handed it over.

She held it and admitted its attractions. Balance, substance, smoothness, weight.

"Hold it like this. Both hands. You gotta spread your legs wide and balance your weight, okay?"

He was standing in back of her now, his arms around her, his hands cupped firmly over her hands.

That part at least felt nice.

"Okay, now line up the target to the sight and squeeze the trigger. Don't jerk it. And keep your elbows bent. She recoils like hell."

"
She?
"

He laughed. "Yeah. Kicks back at you. Like you do."

She did as she was told, aimed and squeezed. The gun was heavy for her and hard to hold steady. The trigger seemed to melt steadily, slowly toward her. Then the blast and the shock that traveled up her arms all the way to her shoulders.

On the stump nothing moved.

"High," he said. "You shot high."

How high? she wondered. She imagined the bullet traversing some infinite distance, going on forever across the field and the forest to the road and whatever was beyond it. She could not imagine so much power simply dropping from the sky out of sheer inertia.

Her bullet could kill someone the next town over.

She really didn't care for this at all.
He
wanted it. And here she was again, going along.

He stepped up behind her again, took both her hands in his and extended her arms.

"Take it farther out,
Lyd
," he said. "Just a slight bend to the elbows. You'll steady her better."

He pressed her tight. She could feel his penis against her buttocks.

It made her a little uncomfortable. So that she was sort of glad when he moved away. She knew he didn't particularly
want
to move away but it was part of the game, making her aware of him yet going no further. Not quite yet.

She knew
that
game.

And knowing it made her feel scared and suddenly a little angry.

She aimed the gun, squeezed and fired. A beer can danced and tumbled sparkling in the sunshine.

"Hey! I
knew
you could do it! Terrific!"

She turned and smiled for him.

"Can we quit now?"

He laughed. "Sure. Come on inside."

They walked up the hill and through the glassed-in porch, down the hall to the living room. She thought again how the house was not at all the kind of place you'd expect from the president of a bank. Its furnishings were Spartan and inexpensive.
Cheap
, to be truthful. They made her aware of her mother's quiet good taste in these things, which had continued even after her father's death—when many women, she guessed, would have just stopped caring. It was clear that Martin's mother, who
had
a husband, a live one, had no interest.

"You want a beer?"

He was across the room putting on a record—the Beatles'
Rubber Soul
. Music-wise it was as adventurous as Martin got.

"A
beer
?"

"Sure. They're not gonna miss a couple."

"Uh-uh. No thanks."

First we have guns and now we have beer.

As far as she was concerned, this wasn't going well at all. She wondered how well she really knew this boy.

She'd only been dating him for about three and a half months, though she'd known him for years through his family. Her
father'd
worked for his father. Martin's little brother was in the same class as Lydia's sister Barbara.

They had all come to her father's funeral.

In fact it was at Russell McCloud's funeral that Martin first seemed to notice her. At the reception afterwards they'd talked and talked. She did most of the talking and he seemed willing to let her. He seemed like a pretty good listener. She'd vented like crazy.

Though she hadn't told him everything.

"You sure you don't want one? Absolutely positively sure?"

"I hate beer. A Pepsi, though."

"
Comin
'
atcha
." He went to the kitchen.

Paul was singing "I've Just Seen a Face."
The music is up too loud
, she thought.
Or else my ears are still sensitive from the gunfire
.

She got up off the couch and walked over to turn the music down. They had a brand-new, state-of-the-art Magnavox amplifier/receiver and she couldn't find the volume at first amid all these other dials so Paul continued to blare sweetly at her. She found it just as the song ended and John started on "Norwegian Wood."

She turned and there was Martin right in front of her. Beer in one hand and Pepsi in the other. She came to a quick decision.

"I'll make you a deal," she said.

"What's that?"

She put her arms around his waist and hugged him. "You forget about the beer and we can ... um, you know."

"Oh yeah? What's
you know
?" He was laughing.

She slapped his shoulder. "Don't be a smartass."

It was easy to make a deal like that. It was natural. There were girls her age who smoked dope and girls who drank and girls who had sex with their boyfriends. She had interest in only one of these.

She loved the feel of his body. And she hated beer. There had always been beer on her father's breath at night when he came to her.

When he came to her he had always been drinking.

And it was drinking—that and being dumb enough to be driving too fast on a dark country road that had killed him—and left her alone with her nasty little secret.

"You got it," he said. "Whatever you say. No beer."