The dog barked again and promptly rolled over on his back, all four paws splayed out limply.
"Say, that's cute!" Hugh said. Raider's stub of a tail thumped against the wooden floor, presumably in agreement. Hugh shut the door and squatted beside the dog. With one hand he scratched the right side of the dog's chest in that magic place that is somehow connected to the right rear paw, making it flail rapidly at the air.
With his other he drew a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket.
"Aw, ain't you a good fella?" Hugh crooned. "Ain't you a one?"
He left off scratching and took a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket. Written on it in his labored schoolboy script was the message the fox-tail had given him-Hugh had sat down at his kitchen table and written it even before he got dressed, so he wouldn't forget a single word.
He pulled out the corkscrew hidden in one of the fat knife's slots and stuck the note on it. Then he turned the body of the knife sideways and closed his fist over it so the corkscrew protruded between the second and third fingers of his powerful right hand.
He went back to scratching Raider, who had been lying on his back through all of this, eyeing Hugh cheerfully. He was cute as a bug, Hugh thought.
"Yes! Ain't you just the best old fella? Ain't you just the best old one?" Hugh asked, scratching. Now both rear legs were flailing.
Raider looked like a dog pedaling an invisible bike. "Yes you are!
Yes you are! And do you know what I've got? I've got a fox-tail!
Yes I do!"
Hugh held the corkscrew with the note pinned to it over the white bib on Raider's breast.
"And do you know what else? I'm gonna keep it!"
He brought his right hand down hard. The left, which had been scratching Raider, now pinned the dog as he gave the corkscrew three hard twists. Warm blood jetted up, dousing both of his hands.
The dog rattled briefly on the floor and then lay still. He would utter his stern and harmless bark no more.
Hugh stood up, his heart thumping heavily. He suddenly felt very bad about what he had done-almost ill. Maybe she was crazy, maybe not, but she was alone in the world, and he had killed what was probably her only goddam friend.
He wiped his bloody hand across his shirt. The stain hardly showed at all on the dark wool. He couldn't take his eyes off the dog.
He had done that. Yes, he had done it and he knew it, but he could hardly believe it. It was as if he had been in a trance, or something.
The inner voice, the one that sometimes talked to him about the A-A. meetings, spoke up suddenly. Yes-and I suppose you'll even be able to make yourself believe it, given time. But you weren't in any f**king trance; you knew just what you were doing.
And why, Panic began to race through him. He had to get out of here.
He backed slowly down the hall, then uttered a hoarse cry as he ran into the closed front door. He fumbled behind him for the knob, and at last found it. He turned it, opened the door, and slid out of Crazy Nettle's house. He looked around wildly, somehow expecting to see half the town gathered here, watching him with solemn, judicial eyes. He saw no one but a kid pedaling up the street. There was a Playmate picnic cooler propped at an odd angle in the basket of the kid's bike. The kid spared Hugh Priest not so much as a glance as he went by, and when he was gone there were only the church-bells... this time they were calling the Methodists.
Hugh hurried down the walk. He told himself not to run, but he was trotting by the time he reached his truck, just the same. He fumbled the door open, slid in behind the wheel, and stabbed the ignition key at the slot. He did this three or four times, and the f**king key kept going astray. He had to steady his right hand with his left before he could finally get it to go where it belonged. His brow was dotted with fine beads of sweat. He had suffered through many hangovers, but he had never felt like this-this was like coming down with malaria, or something.
The truck started with a roar and a belch of blue smoke. Hugh's foot slipped off the clutch. The truck took two large, snapping jerks away from the curb and stalled. Breathing harshly through his mouth, Hugh got it started again and drove away fast.
By the time he got to the motor pool (it was still as deserted as the mountains of the moon) and exchanged the town truck for his old dented Buick, he had forgotten all about Raider and the horrible thing he had done with the corkscrew. He had something else, something much more important, to think about. During the drive back to the motor pool he had been gripped with a feverish certainty: someone had been in his house while he was gone, and that someone had stolen his fox-tail.