Firestarter(39)

"Pretty rickety truck," Ray said. "If they don't turn off the main road, we ought to be able to catch up to them."

"Let's go, then," John said. "We can keep in touch with A1 and Norville by way of OJ on the walkie-talkie."

They trotted back to the car and got in. A moment later the tan Ford roared out of the parking lot, spewing white crushed gravel out from beneath its rear tires: Lena Cunningham watched them go with relief. Running a motel was not what it once had been.

She went back to wake up her husband.

8

As the Ford with Ray Knowles behind the wheel and John Mayo riding shotgun was roaring down Route 40 at better than seventy miles an hour (and as a caravan of ten or eleven similar nondescript late-model cars were heading towards Hastings Glen from the surrounding areas of search), Irv Manders hand-signaled left and turned off the highway onto an unmarked stretch of tar-and-patch that headed roughly northeast. The truck rattled and banged along. At his urging, Charlie had sung most of her nine-song repertoire, including such golden hits as "Happy Birthday to You," "This Old Man," "Jesus Loves Me," and "Camptown Races." Irv and Andy both sang along with that one.

The road twisted and wound its way over a series of increasingly wooded ridges and then began to descend toward flatter country that had been cultivated and harvested. Once a partridge burst from a cover of goldenrod and old hay at the left side of the road and Irv shouted, "Get im, Bobbi!" and Charlie pointed her finger and chanted "Bam-ba-DAM!'" and then giggled wildly.

A few minutes later Irv turned off on a dirt road, and a mile farther along they came to a battered red, white, and blue mailbox with MANDERS stenciled on the side. Irv turned into a rutted driveway that was nearly half a mile long.

"Must cost you an arm and a leg to keep it plowed in the winter," Andy said.

"Do it m'self," Irv said.

They came to a big white frame farmhouse, three stories tall and set off" with mint-green trim. To Andy it looked like the sort of house that might have started off fairly ordinary and then grown eccentric as the years passed. Two sheds were attached to the rear, one of them zigging thisaway, the other zagging thataway. On the south side, a greenhouse wing had been added, and a big screened-in porch stood out from the north side like a stiff skirt.

Behind the house was a red barn that had seen better days, and between the house and the barn was what New Englanders called a dooryard-a flat dirt stretch of ground where a couple of dozen chickens clucked and strutted. When the truck rattled toward them they fled, squawking and fluttering their useless wings, past a chopping block with an ax buried in it.

Irv drove the truck into the barn, which had, a sweet hay smell Andy remembered from his summers in Vermont. When Irv switched the truck off, they all heard a low, musical mooing from somewhere deeper in the barn's shadowy interior.

"You got a cow," Charlie said, and something like rapture came over her face. "I can hear it."

"We've got three," Irv said. "That's Bossy you hear-a very original name, wouldn't you say, button? She thinks she's got to be milked three times a day. You can see her later, if your daddy says you can."

"Can I, Daddy?"

"I guess so," Andy said, mentally surrendering. Somehow they had gone out beside the road to thumb a ride and had got shanghaied instead.

"Come on in and meet the wife."

They strolled across the dooryard, pausing for Charlie to examine as many of the chickens as she could get close to. The back door opened and a woman of about forty five came out onto the back steps. She shaded her eyes and called, "You there, Irv! Who you brought home?" Irv smiled. "Well, the button here is Roberta. This fellow is her daddy. I didn't catch his name yet, so I dunno if we're related." Andy stepped forward and said, "I'm Frank Burton, ma'am. Your husband invited Bobbi and me home for lunch, if that's all right. We're pleased to know you." "Me too," Charlie said, still more interested in the chickens than in the woman-at least for the moment. "I'm Norma Manders," she said. "Come in. You're welcome." But Andy saw the puzzled look she threw at her husband.

They all went inside, through an entryway where stovelengths were stacked head high and into a huge kitchen that was dominated by a woodstove and a long table covered with red and white checked oilcloth. There was an elusive smell of fruit and paraffin in the air. The smell of canning, Andy thought.

"Frank here and his button are on their way to Vermont," Irv said. "I thought it wouldn't hurt em to get outside of a little hot food on their way."

"Of course not," she agreed. "Where is your car, Mr. Burton?"

"Well-"Andy began. He glanced at Charlie, but she was going to be no help; she was walking around the kitchen in small steps, looking at everything with a child's frank curiosity.

"Frank's had a little trouble," Irv said, looking directly at his wife. "But we don't have to talk about that. At least, not right now."

"All right," Norma said. She had a sweet and direct face-a handsome woman who was used to working hard. Her hands were red and chapped. "I've got chicken and I could put together a nice salad. And there's lots of milk. Do you like milk, Roberta?"

Charlie didn't look around. She's lapsed on the name, Andy thought. Oh, Jesus, this just gets better and better.