him on because he was somehow very distantly related to Stu Sawyer’s wife Val, but nepotism wasn’t enough to forgive idiocy, in Arlene’s opinion.
Arlene ducked into a shadow between two scabby, silver street lamps and watched the squad car stop, its lights on that Sudek girl, the one Arlene had tried to make friendly conversation with years ago, only to be rebuffed, not that she actually held it against the child. Arlene Campbell had lived long enough in Ewerton to know how it could warp the perceptions of those less favored in the townspeople’s eyes. Faintly, from a distance, she heard garbled voices, and caught the word “Granny.”
That nonsense again. The Alvin Miner case had been the talk of Ewerton’s lowlife population for much too long—ever since Arlene could remember. The silly questions the other children had asked little Lucy ever since it happened (the questions little Arlene Weiss herself had asked, even though old Arlene Campbell conveniently forgot uttering them), and kept on asking long after Lucy wasn’t so little anymore.
“Where’s Granny?”
“What happened to Granny?”
“Seen Granny lately?”
“Find some more of Granny anywhere?”
Childish, spiteful questions that remained unanswered, and thus kept curiosity alive and thriving, especially among those who refused to give up puerile curiosity. Morbid curiosity, some might call it.
Not wanting to listen, even at a distance, to what that Von Kemp trash was saying to the Sudek girl, Arlene walked back Wisconsin Street and began peering in the piles of boxes behind the businesses there, in hopes of finding something as good as the cast-off boot trees she’d picked up behind Happy Step Shoes, or the big box of dress patterns she’d found behind the clothing and fabric store on Fourth Avenue East this past summer.
Nothing.
From its nest somewhere above the novelty secondhand store an owl hooted—a low, reverberating sound that almost always made Arlene lose control of her bladder for a few dribbling seconds. Silly, it’s only a bird—a dumb animal. How much harm is it going to do you? Have to watch out for the two-footed beasts, she thought, getting out of the alley and crossing over to Ewert Avenue.
Still no luck. Banging down lid after lid, Arlene found herself walking to the point where Seventh Avenue West and East met in one long, unbroken street, close to the new ugly law enforcement building and the rusted railroad tracks beyond. Past the abandoned Soo Line tracks (oh, North Central used them on occasion, but Arlene didn’t consider a train made up of an engine and two boxcars really using the tracks) was the Sash and Door to the west, and a smallish patch of woods bisected with the fairground road directly north.
Kids used those woods for drinking, and what came after. And that meant cans. Arlene usually left those to the Sudek girl (payment for letting Arlene have first pick of the bakery), but she knew for a fact that the Sudek girl never ventured into the woods, or anywhere beyond the railroad tracks, after daylight saving time ended. If I were her age, and had a bosom like hers, I wouldn’t go in the woods now, either. But who wants a flat old biddy—Don Campbell’s old biddy, at that?
There wasn’t much light out this way. The last street lamp was a block behind her, and even though the law enforcement building (police, sheriff, and jail) was lit in the front, the building was facing away from the woods, so Arlene fumbled the little flashlight scavenged last summer from behind Norm Hibbing’s novelty shop out of her jacket pocket and thumbed it on.
The small batteries inside offered only a rancid circle of light, but combined with the faint moonlight above, Arlene could see well enough to move forward without tripping. As she crossed the slanting railroad tracks, something emerged from the woods to her left—something dark and small and scissors-legged, with eyes that flared green-gold when it passed through her flashlight’s weak beam.
A cat, she began to think, until a minor but disturbing point crossed her mind. Eyes are in the wrong place—at least, one is. But by the time she’d realized what was wrong, the animal—cat, skunk, small dog, whatever—was gone, lost in the high grass near the abandoned depot to the northeast.
Arlene told herself she was too old, too tough, and too practical to be letting herself get all riled up over a silly animal, and kept on walking forward, into the woods, casting her flashlight about as she moved. The sallow beam picked up the glint of a Coors can—no, two Coors cans—and the shed skin of a rubber beneath. Arlene recoiled as her fingers brushed against the slightly sticky pinkish latex, still faintly body-moist. Through the twist-limbed trees, most still adorned with withered leaves, she could see the streetlights on Ewert Hill to the east, where all the fancy old houses were. Few people lived out that way anymore, but the fact that there were houses and lights beyond gave her a mild sense of security. And the law building behind her helped, too.
Aiming her light downward, reading the play of shadow and flickering light with all the intensity of a palmist studying a client’s hand, Arlene looked beyond the shadows cast by the fallen leaves, to the deeper places below—places where things dropped became things lost, waiting to be found.
The woods were only a couple of blocks long where they were bisected by the road, but to Arlene’s left they were much deeper, thicker, and noisier. She could hear subtle rustlings—snaps and low squelching sounds she hoped were animal in origin. She had no idea how some pair of lovebirds might react to being discovered out here, in mid-thrust, as it were. Maybe it’s some of those boors who drive up and down my street at midnight, waking me up when I’d rather sleep, she thought petulantly, like the Arlene Weiss of old. A deliciously nasty thought came to her, nurtured by too many years lived under Don’s callused thumb: Suppose she were to sneak up on a couple and shine them like a pair of deer?
Her ribbed rubbery soles searching out secure footing below, Arlene followed the direction of the almost inaudible squelching, taking care not to let her bags make too much noise as they grazed the lower branches of the trees that surrounded her. For a second, the thought that she was close to the place the where the strange animal had emerged from the woods made her pause, but the prospect of having some harmless fun, of turning the tables on at least two of those little shits who broke her sleep many a night, kept her going. And that cat, dog, or whatever had flitted by so quickly that the odd shine could have been anything—a tag—
(But I didn’t see any collar on it—)
She was sixty, after all, even if Dr. Isham said she didn’t need glasses. Old eyes play funny tricks, especially in the dark.
But it wasn’t quite as dark now. Even though the sun wasn’t due to come up for hours, there was a faint rim of half luminescence lying low across the horizon behind her, silhouetting the random trees and houses with cut-paper sharpness. Even the places where her flashlight beam didn’t touch, Arlene could half-see shapes, near-colors...and that soft, almost strangled little squelching sound was louder.
Much louder, as in almost on top of her, yet Arlene detected no movement, no breathing, heavy or otherwise. Running her pale tongue over her rough lips, she slowly panned her flashlight in a half-circle before her. Nothing but tree trunks, fallen branches, leaves, an old shoe...two shoes—filled with stockinged feet, toes up, but tilted away from each other in a bottomless “v”.
Gripping her bags in her left hand until her swollen knuckles protested, Arlene trained her right hand toward the legs attached to the feet. Tight jeans, the paint ’em on your body kind, with zippered ankles. Hands, resting on the thighs, dirt-rimmed nails peering out from chipped paint over the moons. Blackish streaks on the tops of the hands—a liquid shimmering black that turned another color altogether when Arlene’s light hit them.
