The Witch of the Wood (8 page)

“Daddy?”

There was a sudden shriek, and she burst through the shaft of window-light.

Rudy recoiled, dropping the bags on the floor.

What came through the light and the dust rising in it was a child-monster, face bruised purple and blue, mouth torn open and smeared bright red.

She crashed into him, and he crumpled to the floor with her, heart pounding, and she looked up at him there in his lap.

Her face wasn’t bruised or smeared; she’d been playing “makeup” with someone’s Revlon and Maybelline. He breathed a sigh of relief and she squeezed shut her eyes, as if Rudy’s image was too beautiful to bear.

“She loves you unconditionally,” Wolfie said from the archway, “and I didn’t find her by accident.” He was a boy of six or seven now, at least physically, standing there under the hall arch wearing Rudy’s old black and gray flannel shirt coming down to his knees.

“Her name is Brianna Rivera,” Wolfie continued. “She’s five—”

“Five and a half!” Brianna wailed. Rudy coo-cooed a bit of soothing down without looking at her, and Wolfie continued with a bit of a laugh. “See, Dad, her father left when she was a month in front of two. She refuses to eat anything but fried chicken skin, chopped-up hot dogs, and Fruity Pebbles. She’s good at hopscotch and remedial ceramics, but still has difficulty making friends in pre-school. She writes poems, likes drawing pictures in the dirt under the tire swing in the back yard, and once had a pet hamster. She also likes chewing things because they make juice, like her hair and the strings on her Flyers sweatshirt.”

“What’s that to do with me?” Rudy said defensively.

“You’re a match,” Wolfie said, coming close now. “People are linked psychologically and physiologically. They are cross-wired; biologically drawn to each other, and they spend most of their lives denying it. So sad.”

“She’s five,” Rudy said, teeth gritted down.

Wolfie sat cross-legged next to his father, and Brianna reached to touch his hair.

“So pretty,” she said.

“You are,” Wolfie teased back, much to her delight. He looked back to his father. “And I’m joking with you just a bit. You and the girl are only linked because it’s passed down. Present’s in the bedroom. Check it out.”

Rudy handed over the girl, her feet pigeon-toed and dragging a bit on the floor, and he barely noticed that Wolfie already possessed the strength to bear her weight straight-armed before hugging her in. He popped a knee on the way pushing up and his walk had a bit of a disoriented sway, but he pretty much knew what was waiting for him in the bedroom.

He turned the corner and she was sitting at the edge of his bed, face flushed and long black curly hair tangled almost as badly as was her daughter’s.

“I . . . I . . . want to . . .” she said. She touched her face, smoothed her skirt. She looked up at Rudy with guilt and wanting, face shiny with nervous anticipation. She had charcoal eyes, dark skin, a studded sliver cross resting on the left breast, and a red sash pulled tight around her waist. She was a Puerto Rican beauty named Ann-Marie, and her breath was high. She’d been a good girl all her life, hating the clichés about women of Spanish descent having big asses, fake fingernails, and the desire to pop babies out as if they were peanuts in a vending machine, but she loved flashy colors and she was going to flaunt them. Little Brianna was her sweet mistake, but the two of them were facing the world together. Ann-Marie worked as a hostess at the Howard Johnson’s on West Chester Pike by the motor parts store, and she was going to community college for business management. She was poor, but generally happy.

“Cease,” Rudy muttered into his collar, and Wolfie’s sticky little bio of Ann-Marie stopped rubbing and droning on in his head. Ann-Marie folded her hands, sat up straight, and tried to explain.

“We were taking a walk. My Brianna likes the way the sun sparkles off the reservoir, and he, your son, called to us. We came in. He promised . . . you.”

She looked up at Rudy, eyes half-lidded.

“I don’t know why, but I’ve dreamed of you, or a man like you.”

“And I you,” Rudy said softly. And it was true. He’d always had a thing for the Spanish flair, but more importantly, he’d always possessed somewhat of a specific picture, partly in the back of his mind, somewhat in the forefront, of an “Ann-Marie,” personal and unique, sometimes with a little nick on one knee from when she must have fallen off a bike or a skateboard, or possibly some soft dark hair on her forearms that embarrassed her as a child yet she managed as an adult . . . some flaw that had made her human, and not some two-dimensional Macy’s advertisement. And even though it was probable that this Ann-Marie didn’t have a nick on her knee, it was clear as day she’d look sexy standing in a doorway, or lying back on his bed with all that hair fanned out behind her. It was as if he knew her and he didn’t, and it was rather exciting to fathom that for whatever reason, he fit her sexual profile as well.

Rudy paused. Ordinarily, he would never talk to the hostess at Ho-Jo’s. Stare at her, yes. Fantasize about running his hands along the small of her back, the swell of her bosom, sure. But asking her out? Meeting her parents? Dealing with her crazy brother? Babysitting her kid while she went off to class? Driving out to the Interstate where her used clunker had broken down again? The thought would just never advance like that, not for most of us anyway, as we sat there “making appropriate plans” in the Ho-Jo’s booths we were anxious to vacate.

So sad.

We let our ideal partners wander off into the shadows of their cultures. Then we both disappeared. It was a class thing, and it was stupid.

Rudy moved closer and knelt on the floor. He delicately pushed the hem of her dress up and almost gasped when he saw a small nick in the skin, left knee, a tiny indentation, long healed.

“I’m a professor,” he whispered, looking up into her eyes. She moaned, and when he bent and kissed the imperfection she came right there on his bed. At the same moment, Wolfie made a playful whooping sound on the other side of the door to mask the sounds of it.

For the sake of the daughter.

And it was the second best sex Rudy Barnes had ever had in his life.

Ann-Marie came out of the bedroom adjusting her dress, Rudy right behind her, running his hands through his thinning hair. She gathered up Brianna and turned back to Rudy, looking at him and the floor at the same time.

“I don’t usually . . .”

“I know,” Rudy said.

Wolfie was sitting Indian style and he caught Ann-Marie’s eye.

“Sweet maiden,” he said. She smiled back, and Wolfie waved his hand across their shared plane of vision like a windshield wiper. Her expression went blank for a second, and then she switched Brianna to the crook of the other arm, smartly tossing her hair back over her shoulder in Rudy’s direction.

“Thank you for the tutoring session, Professor. I’ll work on that pronoun antecedent issue. And I’ll pay you next time, I promise.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Rudy said. “Good luck with your business writing course at community.”

She flashed a last smile and walked out, oblivious, shutting the door carefully.

“It’s better this way,” Wolfie said. “No expectations, no social obligations.”

“Right,” Rudy said, feeling sad about it, but only philosophically really. He moved past toward the door. “There are a lot of items I need to return—”

“I read your books.”

“Really?” he said, turning.

“Every one. I liked Hemingway’s
For Whom the Bell Tolls
best. Great scene by the gorge. I also liked
Macbeth,
but the wrong side won and Shakespeare’s portrayal of witches is insulting. But you know that already, now don’t you?”

Before Rudy could laugh along, Wolfie did the “blink” and reappeared in front of him, blocking the exit. Rudy almost pulled a muscle in his neck snapping his head around.

“Father . . .” Wolfie sing-songed. He came forward slowly, backing Rudy away from the door a step or two. “My patriarch.
Daddy . . .”
He stopped, and then, to Rudy’s wonder, he started to levitate. When he came eye to eye with his father, he leaned in close nose to nose, breath smelling like honeysuckle.

“Your books are interesting,” he said, “but they are rather one-dimensional. Like your mind.” He leaned in and kissed his father’s forehead, slowly, deeply. Despite himself, Rudy bent in to the warmth of it and had his eyes closed even after the release. Wolfie patted his crown. “I need for you to bring me to the library, Dad, where I will spend a day and a night. Not the public library on Sproul Road, but rather the one at the University of Pennsylvania. While I realize that history texts are your most dangerous examples of fiction, I must see with my own eyes the patterns through which you prefer to be lied to. I need to study your philosophy, your most intricate rationalizations, and your science . . .”

He trailed off and lowered himself to the floor, absently taking hold of Rudy’s hand on the way down.

“Your science . . .”

Rudy squatted down to his level.

“What about it?”

Wolfie smiled, and it was the first time Rudy had ever seen him appear wistful. The boy removed his hand gently.

“Ancient puzzles.”

“To aid with the destruction?”

Wolfie laughed outright, gazing up and off to the complicated future he was planning to unveil.

“No, of course not, Dad. We really only need psychology for Armageddon. Science is for the aftermath.” He looked at his father directly then, with a mixture of affection and pity. “You will better understand when there is a context, Rudy Barnes. For now, you need to return all the items you bought this morning and take me on this university field trip Monday. You’ll need to either cancel your classes or bring the students along. Computers from here even with a passcode are only useful for searching out scholarly journals, and I need access to the shelf texts as well.”

“Won’t the pages affect you . . . the wood, the pulp?”

Wolfie’s eyes blazed.

“Of course they will. Every book is haunted by the soul of a dead witch, just like the ones on your shelves in the bedroom. But I can’t cry over paper and shadows, now can I?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Return the baby products,” Wolfie said, walking past Rudy toward the light of the window. “And find a way to get me into that library quietly.”

“Couldn’t you just insert mental pictures into a couple of security guards?”

Wolfie turned, then lowered his eyes in what actually looked like shame.

“What I did was infantile and crude. Forgive me.”

“It was just one man,” Rudy said softly.

“You misunderstand. My actions left trails.”

“Oh.”

“There are better ways.”

“Of course.”

Wolfie padded across to the kitchen and put his palm on the face of the refrigerator.

“And your food disgusts me. Bring me iodine. A gallon or two if you can. That will keep me nourished. And I will use your laptop and call you on your cell phone to indicate the clothing I will require.”

“I think I can handle—”

“No, you can’t. Soon I will be a teenager of eighteen. I will stagnate at that growth level for one month, and it is imperative that I blend culturally.”

“Why?”

“I need to study the psychological infrastructure of your institutions first hand. High school is the most convenient replica of the mother-port and will provide ideal, low-risk simulation.”

“Mother-port?” Rudy said to his son’s back. “What on earth is that?”

Wolfie twisted his head around slowly.

“Prison, of course. Where I can amass an army.”

It rang out dully and sat there between them for a moment before Rudy politely excused himself and left the apartment.

An army. Of course. Wolfie couldn’t singlehandedly murder every man in the world; it was physically impossible. He was a trigger, and they would all annihilate themselves.

Rudy got into his car for the umpteenth time that day and drove out to St. Mary’s Cemetery, the place where he’d gone all his life when he wanted to think.

A good question, and Rudy made the turn through the black gate off Sproul Road, heading in toward the cathedral, a scatter of tiny American flags whipping before the headstones in the entrance grove.

You there, Wolfie?
he thought hard, feeling instantly ridiculous.

No answer; no sticky silk. He drove past the gravedigger’s shed and two filler-mounds covered with tarps. Could it be that Wolfie’s “radar” had a range? A limitation? The Super Fresh was literally three streets from the house, and even though it was similar to St. Mary’s in terms of the “time to get there,” it wasn’t really the same distance. The grocery store took about five minutes with the lights. Once off Maple Grove, you got to St. Mary’s by the highway. It was farther, certainly.

Rudy eased the car into his favorite curve, down by some border oaks and mausoleums at the east edge of the property. He put it in park, and a sudden sweat broke out on his forehead. He was sitting here, working out this juvenile math while his son could read his entire collection of literature in one sitting. Who was he fooling? What would stop Wolfie from playing possum right here and now and sitting in Rudy’s mind as a quiet spectator to see what he was
really
thinking? Rudy smiled hard and played with the rearview for no reason. What if he said to himself, “Fuck you, Wolfie. I’m going to wait until you’re asleep tonight and stick a knife in your chest,” but then beneath it, thought,
Just kidding. Don’t be so sensitive, kid.
Could Wolfie read the levels? And if he
was
playing possum right now, would he be able to go this one
more
rung deeper (the one that Rudy had just constructed, of course) and know that Rudy wasn’t at all sure as to whether he was simply inventing the scenario of joking to Wolfie just now for shits and giggles . . . sort of doing the math for the sport of it, or really testing the idea of murdering his son?