He let go of my arm, but not without tossing me up against the window of the café at the same time. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.” And with that he walked off in the same direction that his daughter had gone.
Lana stepped outside. “What the hell was that all about?”
“Nothing,” I said, and headed back to Dad’s truck.
I was shaken. My legs felt wobbly, my heart was pounding, things seemed to be spinning around me. I paused by the phone booth, put my hand up against the glass, but it felt papery under my hand. It was another flyer for the fall fair, taped to the glass. And below it, another one of those flyers, plastered on with duct tape, that said “Keep Our Parade Straight.”
My only purpose in coming up here had been to make sure Dad was okay. Aside from a twisted ankle, he was okay. But now I felt held here, as stuck to Braynor as those flyers were to the phone booth. Bad things had already happened up here. A man ripped to shreds in the woods. Another man fatally stabbed. A lawyer’s house burned to the ground.
A farmhouse full of nutjobs.
And a young woman and her son trying to escape.
I got to the truck without even glancing at Dad, turned the ignition, threw the gearshift into drive, and shot out of Braynor like the entire town was rigged to explode at any moment.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Dad said. “You took long enough. Where’s Leonard the Diaper King when you need him? I’m about to wet my pants.”
“I think I beat you to it,” I said.
16
THERE WERE CHORES TO BE DONE when we got back to Denny’s Cabins. Given how rattled I was, it was good to have something to do. I emptied cans of garbage, hauled a pail full of fish guts up to the pit in the woods and buried it, cut some grass on Dad’s racing tractor, taking care to go easy on the throttle. Sitting on the mower, the vibrations from the engine and the three rapidly rotating blades in the housing below my feet had a calming effect on me that was not unlike a massage. The constant buzz from the steering wheel traveled up my arms and into my shoulders like magic fingers.
I said barely a word to Dad on the drive back from town. Sometimes, I think, when I’m scared—and I’ll be totally honest with you here and tell you I was plenty scared—the things I’m afraid of seem more real if I start talking about them. I ground my teeth until we got back to the camp, bolted from the truck, forgetting to go around the other side to help Dad get out, and went about my duties.
There’d been plenty to unnerve me since arriving here earlier in the week. The shredded body of Morton Dewart. The bizarre dinner at the Wickenses. Those dogs. The murder of Tiff at the co-op, which might or might not have anything whatsoever to do with the events of the last few days.
But nothing had shaken me as much as my run-in with Timmy Wickens on the main drag of Braynor. There’d been menace in the air before, but now I felt it directed at me personally. And I am not, as you may have gathered by now, what you might call a heroic figure.
I believe the term I used in my conversation with Trixie Snelling was “weenie-like.”
It’s a terrible thing to be weenie-like and still have, at some level, some commitment to do the right thing. A moral conscience matched with physical cowardice is not a winning combination.
“How’s it going?” Bob Spooner asked, poking his head into the storeroom, where I was checking to see how the worm supply was going. Betty and Hank Wrigley had helped themselves to a couple dozen that morning while Dad and I were in town, and left a note to that effect so that we could add it to their bill.
I jumped. “Jesus, Bob, you scared me half to death.”
“What’s with you? You seem a bit on edge.”
I just waved my hand in the air in frustration. “Long story, Bob.”
“Hey,” he said. “You’ll never guess who I had on my line this morning.”
“What?” I said. “Who?”
“She took another run at me. Audrey. Saw her break the surface, knew it was her. Almost had her in the boat this time before she spit the plug out.” He rubbed his hands together.
“One of these days, Bob,” I said.
“You know what I think?” Bob said, leaning in the doorway. “I think she knows. I think she knows it’s me. She’s a smart fish, and she’s a mean fish, and she’s playing with me. I can feel it.”
“Maybe,” I said. I dug my fingers through the dirt, drew them up. Still lots of little wiggly guys in there.
“You ever have a goal like that? Something you’ve waited years to achieve? That’s what Audrey is to me. Hauling her into the boat, that’s my ultimate dream. I get her, I could give up fishing after that. It wouldn’t matter anymore. They could put me in a box, drop me six feet into ground, toss the dirt in.”
“My goals these days are rather short-term, Bob,” I said. “I want to see Dad get back on his two feet and me get the hell out of here.”
Bob cocked his head curiously. “What’s up?”