She does. She does see. She imagines the postman came up that road once in awhile, and of course "Sparky" Landon would drive down it in order to get to (U.S. Gyppum) work, but that would have been pretty much it. No school busses, because me'n Paul, we 'us home-schooled. The school busses went to the Donkey Corral.
"Snow made it worse, and cold made it worse still - the cold kept us inside. Still, that year wasn't so bad at first. We had a Christmas tree, at least. There were years when Daddy would get in the bad-gunky...or just plain broody...and there wouldn't be any tree or any presents." He gives out a short, humorless laugh. "One Christmas he must have kept us up until three in the morning, reading from the Book of Revelation, about jars being opened, and plagues, and riders on horses of various shades, and he finally threw the Bible into the kitchen and roared, 'Who writes this smogging bullshit? And who are the morons who believe it?' When he was in a roaring mood, Lisey, he could roar like Ahab during the last days of the Pequod. But this particular Christmas seemed nice enough. Know what we did? We all went up to Pittsburgh together for the shopping, and Daddy even took us to a movie - Clint Eastwood playing a cop and shooting up some city. It gave me a headache, and the popcorn gave me a bellyache, but I thought it was the most wonderful goddam thing I'd ever seen. I went home and started writing a story just like it and read it to Paul that night. It probably stank to high heaven, but he said it was good."
"He sounds like a great brother," Lisey says carefully. Her care is wasted. He hasn't even heard her. "What I'm telling you is that we were all getting along, had been for months, almost like a normal family. If there is such a thing, which I doubt. But...but."
He stops, thinking. At last, he begins again.
"Then one day not long before Christmas, I was upstairs in my room. It was cold - colder than a witch's tit - and getting ready to snow. I was on my bed, reading my history lesson, when I looked out my window and saw Daddy coming across the yard with an armload of wood. I went down the back stairs to help him stack it in the woodbox so the stovelengths wouldn't get bark all over the floor - that always made him mad. And Paul was 10
Paul is sitting at the kitchen table when his kid brother, just ten years old and needing a haircut, comes down the back stairs with the laces of his sneakers flapping. Scott thinks he'll ask if Paul wants to go out sledding on the hill behind the barn once the wood's in. If Daddy doesn't have any more chores, that is.
Paul Landon, slim and tall and already handsome at thirteen, has a book open in front of him. The book is Introduction to Algebra, and Scott has no reason to believe Paul is doing anything other than solving for x until Paul turns his head to look at him. Scott is still three steps from the bottom of the stairs when Paul does that. It is only an instant before Paul lunges at his younger brother, to whom he has never so much as raised a hand in their lives together, but it is long enough to see that no, Paul wasn't just sitting there. No, Paul wasn't just reading. No, Paul wasn't studying.
Paul was lying in wait.
It isn't blankness he sees in his brother's eyes when Paul comes surging out of his chair hard enough to knock it skittering back against the wall, but pure bad-gunky. Those eyes are blue no more. Something has burst in the brain behind them and filled them with blood. Scarlet seeds stand in the corners.
Another child might have frozen to the spot and been killed by the monster who an hour before had been an ordinary brother with nothing on his mind but homework or perhaps what he and Scott could get Daddy for Christmas if they pooled their money. Scott, however, is no more ordinary than Paul. Ordinary children could never have survived Sparky Landon, and it's almost certainly the experience of living with his father's madness that saves Scott now. He knows the bad-gunky when he sees it, and wastes no time on disbelief. He turns instantly and tries to flee back up the stairs. He makes only three steps before Paul grabs him by the legs.
Snarling like a dog whose yard has been invaded, Paul curls his arms around Scott's shins and yanks the younger boy's legs out from under him. Scott grabs the banister and holds on. He gives a single two-word yell - "Daddy, help!" - and then is quiet.
Yelling wastes energy. He needs all of his to hold on.
He doesn't have enough strength to do so, of course. Paul is three years older, fifty pounds heavier, and much stronger. In addition to these things, he has run mad. If Paul pulls him free of the banister then, Scott will be badly hurt or killed in spite of his quick reaction, but instead of getting Scott, what Paul gets are Scott's corduroy pants and both sneakers, which he forgot to tie when he jumped down off his bed.