She had many such secrets, and kept them all for the same reason: in a war, you held onto every advantage. Some nights she would come home and there might be an hour or even two hours of skirmishing before she was finally able to prod Peter into a fullscale retreat, replacing his white pins on her interior battle-map with her red ones. Tonight the engagement had been won less than two minutes after she stepped inside the door, and that was just fine with Wilma.
She believed in her heart that marriage was a lifetime adventure in aggression, and in such a long campaign, where ultimately no prisoners could be taken, no quarter given, no patch of marital landscape left unscorched, such easy victories might eventually lose their savor. But that time had not yet come, and so she went out to the clotheslines with the basket under her left arm and her heart light beneath the swell of her bosom.
She was halfway across the yard before coming to a puzzled stop.
Where in the hell were the sheets?
She should have seen them easily, big rectangular white shapes floating in the dark, but they weren't there. Had they blown away?
Ridiculous! There had been a breeze that afternoon, but hardly a gale. Had someone stolen them?
Then a gust of wind kicked through the air and she heard a large, lazy flapping sound. Okay, they were there... somewhere.
When you were the oldest daughter in a sprawling Catholic clan of thirteen children, you knew what a sheet sounded like when it flapped on the line. But it still wasn't right, that sound. It was too heavy.
Wilma took another step forward. Her face, which always wore the faintly shadowed look of a woman who expects trouble, grew darker. Now she could see the sheets... or shapes that should have been the sheets. But they were dark.
She took another, smaller step forward, and the breeze whisked through the yard again. The shapes flapped toward her this time, belling out, and before she could get her hand up, something heavy and slimy struck her. Something gooey splattered her cheeks; something thick and soggy pressed against her. It was almost as if a cold, sticky hand were trying to grasp her.
She was not a woman who cried out easily or often, but she cried out now, and dropped the laundry-basket. That sloppy flapping sound came again and she tried to twist away from the shape looming before her. Her left ankle struck the wicker laundry-basket and she stumbled to one knee, missing a full-length tumble only by a combination of luck and quick reflexes.
A heavy, wet thing slobbered its way up her back; thick wetness drooled down the sides of her neck. Wilma cried out again and crawled away from the lines on her hands and knees. Some of her hair had escaped the kerchief she wore and hung against her cheeks, tickling. She hated that feeling... but she hated that drooling, clammy caress from the dark shape hung on her clothesline even more.
The kitchen door banged open, and Pete's alarmed voice carried across the yard: "Wilma? Wilma, are you all right?"
Flapping from behind her-a nasty sound, like a chuckle from vocal cords clotted with dirt. In the next yard the Haverhills' mutt began to bellow hysterically in its high, unpleasant voice-yark! yark! yark!-and this did nothing to improve Wilma's state of mind.
She got to her feet and saw Pete cautiously descending the back steps.
"Wilma? Did you fall down? Are you okay?"
"Yes!" she shouted furiously. "Yes, I fell down! Yes, I'm okay! Turn on the goddam light!"
"Did you hurt yourself-"
"Just turn on the goddam LIGHT!" she screamed at him, and rubbed a hand across the front of her coat. It came away covered with cold goo. She was now so angry she could see her own pulse as bright points of light before her eyes... and angriest of all at herself, for being scared. Even for a second.
Yark! Yark! Yark!
The goddam mutt in the next yard was going ape. Christ, she hated dogs, especially the mouthy ones.
Pete's shape retreated to the top of the kitchen steps. The door opened, his hand snaked inside, and then the floodlight came on, bathing the rear yard with bright light.
Wilma looked down at herself and saw a wide swath of dark brown across the front of her new fall coat. She wiped furiously at her face, held out her hand, and saw it had also turned brown. She could feel a slow, syrupy trickle running down the middle of her back.
"Mud!" She was stupefied with disbelief-so much so that she was unaware she had spoken aloud. Who could have done this to her? Who would have dared?
"What did you say, honey?" Pete asked. He had been coming toward her; now he stopped a prudent distance away. Wilma's face was working in a way Pete jerzyck found extremely alarming: it was as if a nest of baby snakes had hatched just beneath her skin.
"Mud!" she screamed, holding her hands out toward him... at him. Flecks of brown flew from her fingertips. "Mud, I say!
Mud!"
Pete looked past her, finally understanding. His mouth dropped open. Wilma whirled in the direction of his gaze. The floodlight mounted above the kitchen door lit the clotheslines and the garden with merciless clarity, revealing everything that needed to be revealed.