NOS4A2(76)

“Pick that shit up when you go,” Vic told her.

She stepped on some of the papers as she proceeded around Maggie to the door. She was careful not to put her foot on the dirty, sun-faded fedora sitting on the edge of the bottom step.

“He’s not d-d-done, Vic,” Maggie said. “That’s why I wanted—was hoping—you could try to f-f-find him. I know I told you n-not to b-b-b-back when we first met. But you were too young then. You weren’t ready. Now I think you’re the only one who can fff-find him. Who can stop him. If you still know how. Because if you don’t, I’m worried he’ll try and f-fuh-fuh-find you.”

“The only thing I plan to find is a phone to call the police. If I were you, I wouldn’t be here when they show up,” Vic said. Then, turning back and getting into Maggie Leigh’s face, she said, “I DON’T KNOW YOU. Take your crazy somewhere else.”

“B-b-b-buh-but, Vic—” Maggie said, and lifted a finger. “Don’t you remember? I g-guh-gggave you those earrings.”

Vic walked inside and slammed the door.

Wayne, who was standing just three paces away and who had probably heard the whole thing, jumped. Hooper, who was right behind him, cringed and whined softly, turned and trotted off, looking for someplace happier to be.

Vic turned back to the door and leaned her forehead against it and took a deep breath. It was half a minute before she was ready to look through the fish-eye spyhole into the front yard.

Maggie was just straightening up from the front step, carefully placing her filthy fedora on her head with a certain dignity. She gave the front door of Vic’s house a last forlorn look, then turned and limped away down the lawn. She didn’t have a car and was in for a long, hot, six-block walk to the closest bus station. Vic watched her until she was out of sight—watched and idly stroked the earrings she was wearing, favorites since she was a kid, a pair of Scrabble tiles: F & U.





By the Road


WHEN WAYNE WENT OUT HALF AN HOUR LATER, TO WALK Hooper—no, check that, to get away from his mother and her mood of pressurized unhappiness—the folder was sitting on the top step, all the papers neatly shuffled back into it.

He glanced over his shoulder, through the still-open door, but his mother was up in the kitchen, out of sight. Wayne shut the door. He bent and picked up the folder, opened it, and glanced at a thin stack of printouts. “Alleged Serial Killer.” “Morbid Vandals.” “Boeing Engineer Vanishes.”

He folded the sheaf of paper into quarters and put it in the back pocket of his shorts. He shoved the empty folder down behind the hedges planted along the front of the house.

Wayne was not sure he wanted to look at them and, at just twelve years old, was still not self-aware enough to know he had already decided to look at them, that he had made his decision the moment he shoved the folder out of sight behind the hedge. He crossed the lawn and sat on the curb. He felt as if he were carrying nitroglycerin in his back pocket.

He stared across the street, at a lawn of wilted, yellowing grass. The old guy who lived over there was really letting his yard go. The guy had a funny name—Sig de Zoet—and a room full of little model soldiers. Wayne had wandered over the day of Gram’s funeral, and the old guy had showed them to him, being nice. He had told Wayne that once upon a time his mother, Vic, had painted a few of his figures. “Your mother hoff a fine brush even then,” he said, with an accent like a Nazi. Then his nice old wife had made Wayne a glass of frosted iced tea with slices of orange in it that had tasted just about like heaven.

Wayne thought about going over there to look at the old guy’s soldiers again. It would be out of the heat, and it would take his mind off the printouts in his back pocket that he probably shouldn’t look at.

He even got as far as pushing himself up off the curb and getting ready to cross the street—but then he looked back at his own house and sat down again. His mother wouldn’t like it if he wandered off without saying where he was going, and he didn’t think he could head back into the house and ask permission yet. So he stayed where he was and looked at the wilting lawn across the street and missed the mountains.

Wayne had seen a landslide once, just last winter. He had been up above Longmont with his father, to tow a Mercedes that had slid off the road and down an embankment. The family that had been in the car were shaken up but unhurt. They were a normal family: a mom, a dad, two kids. The little girl even had blond pigtails. That’s how normal they were. Wayne could tell, just looking at them, that the mom had never been in a mental asylum and that the father didn’t have storm-trooper armor hanging in his closet. He could tell that the children had normal names, like John and Sue, as opposed to bearing names lifted from a comic book. They had skis on the roof of the Mercedes, and the father asked Lou if he took AmEx. Not American Express. AmEx. Within minutes of meeting them, Wayne loved the whole family with an irrational fierceness.

Lou sent Wayne down the embankment with the hook and the winch line, but as the boy edged toward the car, there came a sound, from high above: a splintering crack, loud as a gunshot. Everyone looked up into the snowy peaks, the sharp-edged Rockies rising above them through the pines.

As they stared, a white sheet of snow, as wide and long as a football field, came loose and began to slide. It was half a mile to the south, so they were in no danger. After the first crack of its letting go, they could barely even hear it. It was no more than a low roll of distant thunder. Although Wayne could feel it. It registered as a gentle thrum in the ground beneath him.