He took off his robe—the burgundy chenille Brooks had given him for Father’s Day last year, bought with the boy’s own money earned selling kitchen-knife sets door to door. Jules and the old lady wrapped the man who called himself the Colonel. They walked side by side down the first few steps, into the warm light of the spiraling stairway, but Jules’s robe was a foot too long and snagged under the old man’s feet.
“I’m going to carry him,” Jules said, and Veronica nodded yes, her eyes closing for a moment in what Jules knew was sad acceptance.
He lifted the man, now quiet, unblinking, lost. Jules feared he may have had a stroke. He was as light as Leslie had been that first visit to the Castle, when she and Jules had run through the maze, laughing all the way to the secret garden, where Jules had lifted her into his arms and they’d been as happy as an old-fashioned bride and groom on their wedding day.
22.
Dom
Dom was crouched on his stomach in the ferns, the fronds tickling his nose. He’d brought a Whatchamacallit bar the Colonel had given him last week, but it was tucked deep in the pocket of his cargo pants and he was worried the crackling wrapper might give his position away.
As soon as he’d heard the unmistakable bong, bong, bong of a mighty bell—not the sound of a bell through a loudspeaker like the effect on his Casio keyboard, but a real bell—he knew it had to be the Castle. He’d dressed so quickly in his stealth outfit that he’d forgotten to put on underwear and he could feel his balls chafing in the canvas pants. He’d worn black head to toe—winter turtleneck, long pants, rolling up his black dress socks over the pants cuffs, and he’d borrowed Maddie’s Doc Martens, hoping he didn’t get them scuffed ’cause they were kind of brand-new. He was already sweating, his hair a damp, itching mess under his black winter ski mask/hat. But it was worth it. For the camouflage and to keep the creepy-crawly caterpillars off his skin.
What they said about those things being poisonous was true. The Colonel had been rubbing lotion into Champ’s fur all week after taking him to the vet for a wicked rash. Now Champ had to be tied up when he was outside, poor boy.
Dom missed the summer woods of last year. Laying in the cool, damp pachysandra, the only thing crawling over him an ant, a ladybug, a daddy longlegs. This summer sucked. There was nothing to do. No one to hang out with. He had to entertain himself with spying on the new neighbors. And what he saw the other night, outside Mr. and Mrs. Marshall’s bedroom window … well, he wasn’t sure if it could be called entertainment but it was one hell of a show. And it wasn’t really spying, he told himself. He’d been given a mission to keep his eye on these so-called neighbors, by not one but two VIPs of Avalon Island, the Colonel and Veronica.
Dom had watched the man put his thing in his wife. From behind, so the man’s thick butt muscles had flexed as he pumped away. Dom had heard from Patrick Hanover that people did it like that—the man behind the woman—so they wouldn’t make a baby. Dom had wanted to look away, knew it was just as dirty as the stories he thought up at night in his own bed, but he couldn’t. It was part of his mission. He didn’t want to give the Colonel a false report.
Now, from where he lay, approximately sixty feet from the ballroom windows, the stained glass glowing like in St. John’s church, he had a decent view of what the Marshalls were up to tonight. The door leading from the ballroom to the stone patio was propped open, and if he looked through the heavy military binoculars he’d found in the Colonel’s closet, he could just make out the figures sitting on something. A sofa? He turned the knobs on the specs slowly until one was in focus, and then the other. He almost dropped them in the sprays of fern.
The Colonel was curled up on the sofa. His hands tucked under his chin like a little kid all cozied up in his bed on Christmas Eve. Those hands that were never still, that were always reaching out and grabbing Dom’s arm tight around the biceps to make sure Dom was listening. Flying up to the sky to ask God to help him make some point. Jabbing in Dom’s face so Dom knew he was in trouble because you are on my list, buddy, so you better get in shape. Shape up or ship out, pal. And poking, they were always poking into Dom’s chest, harder and harder, until Dom had to take a step back, surrender, and let the Colonel know he was in charge.
But here he was, the Colonel sleeping like a baby. His head in a woman’s lap. Dom had to refocus the binoculars and there it was, clearer, clearer. It was Veronica. A smile on her face as she talked to him. Mr. Marshall.
He had to find Maddie. Tell her the Colonel had finally gone bananas, just as the black man had guessed, mocking Dom that first humiliating meeting the day Dom had painted his face with clay. Your granddad got all his marbles? And Veronica, well, what if she was fraternizing with the enemy? The very ones she’d warned Dom about when she’d given him his mission. There are people who are out to get your grandfather.
Maddie might be in that castle right now, Dom thought. Doing it with Brooks. Maybe they were a whole family of sex addicts, and who could Dom trust now? Not his mom all doped up in la-la land. Not his dad. He knew what his dad would say. Use your brain, Dom! Is Dom short for Dummy?
He should’ve listened better when the Colonel had given him his orders. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he told himself. He’d been so nervous and excited, his hands shaking with the weight of the gun, and he hadn’t focused on the Colonel’s words. Something about witches and wolves in the woods, and some guy named Slick Willie, and a wall that had come tumbling down. You should’ve written them down, Dom. Dumb Dom. Because, now, the two missions—the Colonel’s and Veronica’s—were all mixed up in his head and how was he going to save the Colonel, the island, the country, when he couldn’t even remember the instructions?
After molting to the fourth stage, larval behavior changes dramatically. Larvae feed during the night, then descend the trees at dawn in search of protective locations where they rest for the remainder of the day.
At dusk they climb the trees again to feed.
—“The Homeowner and the Gypsy Moth: Guidelines for Control,” United States Department of Agriculture, Home and Garden Bulletin, No. 227 (1979)
23.
Maddie