she head south?”
“Not a chance. Her mother’s completely insane, according to her. She came up here to get away, she said. Doesn’t talk about her family much.” What Francy had told me of her family had given me bad dreams for weeks. I wasn’t going to get into it with Becker.
“Well, tell her, if you see her, that we just want to talk to her, okay? No big deal. Just some questions. I know she’s grieving. Well, I’ve got a killer to find.”
“And you don’t think it’s her?”
“I don’t know what to think, Polly. Not yet, anyway.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“You’re going to be okay up here by yourself?”
“I’ve lived up here by myself for three years. Of course I’ll be fine,” I said.
“Well, lock your door, okay?”
“Yes, officer.”
“I mean it,” he said. “Someone was murdered last night, in case you’d forgotten.” I wasn’t likely to forget John’s dead eyes, like scummy boiled eggs, and the cavity of his ruined chest.
“I’ll lock my door,” I said.
“Good.” I watched his flashlight beam disappear back down the path to George’s, swinging from side to side. He was checking the bushes as he passed, still convinced that Francy was crouched somewhere, waiting. Cops. They never trust you.
When he was gone I went outside and spent an hour scouting around and calling her name, but I knew she was gone. Where, I didn’t know.
Later, I discovered that she’d taken off with half my stash. I didn’t begrudge it. There was a note. “Pay you back” it said, with a little happy face, so I knew she was feeling better.
I smoked a baby spliff and cracked open an Algonquin. The sweet smoke filled me, as it always does, with the urge to create. I picked up the arm limb I was working on and opened up a jar of modelling compound. The puppet I was building had not been commissioned. I was simply making it for my own pleasure, although I would probably take it in to the Artists’ Consignment Depot in Laingford when it was finished. My stuff usually sold reasonably quickly, and money was always tight.
I was sculpting this particular puppet, a marionette-to-be, using the kind of clay which air dries and takes paint beautifully. I was taking my time. The head was to be molded with clay on a base. The shell was ready, but the face had not yet come to me, and I didn’t want to push it.
I began absently layering dabs of clay onto the mâché arm-shape, not really thinking about what I was doing. An hour later, I gazed at a little clay arm with interesting, ropy muscles and Becker’s capable, slightly ugly hands. Then I looked at the unfinished head staring blankly from its stand and knew that I would model Becker’s face there.
If I had been a witch, I would have cackled, looked up a spell and searched the floor for one of his hairs. I’m no witch, but I cackled anyway.
Eleven
Tonight thinking about you
I gave birth to a goat-kid
tremble-shanked and shivering in the dark.
—Shepherd’s Pie
I am homeless and hungry, sifting through the garbage in an alleyway slick with rain and unmentionable filth. Strangely, the sounds I hear are not city sounds; I am surrounded by the secret, waiting stillness of the deep bush. A bird calls, and I hear the wind sighing through pine boughs, although there is not a tree in sight. I do not find this surprising, however, because I know I am mad. Homeless and mad.
Behind me there is movement and I turn to find a large, red-furred bear looking over my shoulder. I am not afraid, for once. The bear speaks with a cockney accent.
“You lookin’ for ’Enry?” it says. The bear’s teeth are very white, and its breath is curiously sweet.
“Yes,” I say, as if the bear has stated the obvious.
“’Ere’ ’e is.” The bear hands me a golden salmon, which I take solemnly but with some difficulty, as it is impaled on his claws.
“Thanks, mate,” I say, and then notice that his other paw holds Francy’s baby, impaled also and squirming like a hooked worm. I am instantly on the ground, curled up in a ball and gibbering with horror.
I woke drenched in sweat, my heart hammering. My dreams about bears usually ended up like that, but I never managed to get used to it. It took me a while to shake the fear, and eventually I got out of bed and lit the Coleman stove to boil water for coffee. It was five in the morning, but I was not going to risk going back to the alley for the sequel.
So much for my real-life, “everything’s okay now” bearexperience. My monster was back, and if anything, bigger than ever. Why couldn’t I dream about hamsters?
After a couple of cups of coffee and a cigarette to jump start my blood and bludgeon the last traces of nightmare induced adrenaline, I pulled on my overalls and headed down to the barn. The goats awaited, and I would surprise George by being early on the job for once.
George’s goats are delightful animals. Don’t believe that stuff you’ve heard about goats eating tin cans and butting humans in the bum. It’s all hokum. They are affectionate, intelligent creatures, and very picky when it comes to their food.
There were fourteen goats in George’s herd—there had been fifteen, but now Dweezil was frolicking about somewhere in heaven’s clover patch. Maybe Dweezil and John Travers would get together up there and chat about what it was like to end up in the wood-only pile of the Cedar Falls dump.
Most of the goats were females, “does” in goat speak, never nanny-goats. A goat farmer would no more call a doe a nanny than a pig farmer would call the sows “mummy piggies”. George kept two males, or bucks, for breeding purposes, and now that Dweezil was gone, he would have to choose one of the latest batch of kids to rear up to adulthood.
The male kids are normally sold for meat when they reach a certain size, as are all but the very best of the females. This is a part of goat farming that I find difficult to deal with, but if you’re going to eat meat, I figure it’s better to know where it comes from.
Adult goats aren’t terribly cute, but the babies are adorable, like rabbits with long legs and floppy ears. George’s herd is Nubian—the breed with ears like Basset hounds and liquid, loving eyes. Once you’ve fed a Nubian goat-kid from a bottle, you’ll never think of the animals as smelly garburators again.
George runs a modest dairy operation, hence the preference for females, and each one is milked twice a day by hand, despite the fact that he could easily afford milking machines. It’s my job to do the morning shift, and George milks the herd in the evening.
As usual, the goats heard my approach long before I reached the barn, and they started yelling as if their pens were on fire. A goat bleat is an odd sound, very human sometimes, especially when they’re giving birth.
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