“When I left, just Van Lampley and Millie Olson. Oh, and Blanche McIntyre might still be there, but she’s just Coatsie’s secretary, and she’s like a hundred and one.”
“Which leaves mighty few, even counting Hicks and Norcross. And you know something else? The sheriff is also a woman, and if she’s able to keep order another three hours, I’d be amazed. I’d be amazed if she’s even awake in another three hours.” Under sober circumstances, these were thoughts that Frank would have kept to himself—he certainly wouldn’t have shared them with an excitable twerp like Don Peters.
Don, computing, ran his tongue around his lips. This was another unattractive visual. “What are you thinking?”
“That Dooling is going to need a new sheriff soon. And the new sheriff would be perfectly within his rights to remove a prisoner from Correctional. Especially one that hasn’t been tried for anything, let alone convicted.”
“You think you might apply for the job?” Don asked.
As if to underline the question, a couple of gunshots went off somewhere in the night. And there was that pervasive smell of smoke. Who was seeing to that? Anyone?
“I’m pretty sure Terry Coombs is the senior man,” Frank said. The senior man currently so deep in his cups he was on the verge of getting underneath them, but Frank didn’t say that. He was exhausted and high, but he finally realized he needed to be careful what he let out.
“He’s going to need help picking up the slack, though. I’d certainly put my name forward if he needed a deputy.”
“I like that idea,” said Don. “Might throw my name in the hat, too. Looks like I’ll need a job. We should talk to him about going up there and getting that woman right away, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Frank said. In an ideal world, he didn’t think he’d let Don Peters wash out a dog cage, but because of his knowledge of the prison, they might need him. “Once we all get some sleep and sober up.”
“Well all right, let me give you my cell number,” Don said. “And let me know what you and Terry are thinking.” He took out the pen and notebook he used to write up cunts who gave him trouble and needed to go on Bad Report.
3
Not long after the first reports of Aurora, rates of male suicide ticked upward sharply, doubling, then later tripling and quadrupling. Men killed themselves loudly, jumping from the tops of buildings or putting guns into their mouths, and men killed themselves quietly, taking pills, closing garage doors and sitting in their running cars. A retired schoolteacher named Eliot Ainsley called a radio show in Sydney, Australia, to explain his intentions and his thinking before he cut his wrists and went to lie down alongside his sleeping wife. “I just can’t see the point of continuing on without the gals,” the retired teacher informed the disc jockey. “And it’s occurred to me that perhaps this is a test, of our love for them, of our devotion for them. You understand, don’t you, mate?” The disc jockey replied that he did not understand, that he thought Eliot Ainsley had “lost his fookin mind”—but a great many men did. These suicides were known by various names, but the one that became part of the common usage was coined in Japan. These were the Sleeping Husbands, men who hoped to join their wives and daughters, wherever they had gone.
(Vain hope. No men were allowed on the other side of the Tree.)
4
Clint was aware that both his wife and son were staring at him. It was painful to look at Lila, and even more so to look at Jared, who wore an expression of complete bewilderment. Clint saw fear in Jared’s face, too. His parents’ marriage, a thing so seemingly secure that he had taken it for granted, appeared to be dissolving right before his eyes.
Over on the couch was a little girl cocooned in milky fibers. On the floor beside the girl was an infant, snug in a laundry basket. The infant in the basket didn’t look like an infant, however. It looked like something that a spider had wrapped up for a future snack.
“Bump, lock, clap-clap,” Lila said, though she no longer sounded like she cared all that much. “I saw her do it. Stop pretending, Clint. Stop lying.”
We need some sleep, Clint thought, Lila most of all. But not until this sitcom idiocy was resolved. If it could be, and there might be a way. His first thought was of his phone, but the screen wasn’t big enough for what he wanted.
“Jared, the Internet’s still up, right?”
“Last time I checked.”
“Get your laptop.”
“Why?”
“Just get it, okay?”
“Have I really got a sister?”
“No.”
Lila’s head had begun to droop, but now she brought it up. “Yes.”
“Get your laptop.”
Jared went to get it. Lila’s head was sinking again. Clint patted first one of her cheeks, then the other. “Lila. Lila!”
Her head rose again. “Right here. Don’t touch me.”
“Have you got any more of that stuff you and Linny took?”
She fumbled in her breast pocket and brought out a contact lens case. She popped up one of the plastic compartments. Inside was a little powder. She glanced at him.
“It’s strong,” she said. “I might claw your eyes out. Cocoon or no cocoon. I’m sad, but I’m also extremely pissed.”
“I’ll chance it. Go on.”
She bent, closed one nostril, and snorted the powder up the other. Then she sat back, eyes wide. “Tell me, Clint, was Shannon Parks a good lay? I thought I was, but she must have been better, if you had to go hot-dogging back to her when we were only married a year or so.”
Jared returned, his closed face saying I didn’t hear that last part, and set his laptop down in front of his father. He was careful to maintain a separation from Clint when he did it. Et tu, Brute?
Clint powered up Jared’s Mac, went on Firefox, and searched for “Sheila Norcross Coughlin basketball.” The story came up. And the picture of the girl named Sheila Norcross. It was a damned good head and shoulders shot, showing her in her basketball jersey. Her pretty face was flushed with on-court hustle. She was smiling. Clint studied the picture for almost thirty seconds. Then, without a word, he turned the laptop so Jared could look. His son did so with a tight mouth and his fists clenched. Then they slowly relaxed. He looked at Lila, more bewildered than ever. “Mom . . . if there’s a resemblance, I don’t see it. She doesn’t look anything like me. Or dad.”
Lila’s eyes, already wide from the fresh ingestion of magic powder, widened even more. She uttered a harsh caw of a laugh. “Jared, please, don’t. Just don’t. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”