Wrapped in Rain(46)

While the caller spoke, Katie's shoulders and face slowly relaxed. She leaned against the door frame and listened. After a minute, she said, "Hold on just one minute." She held the phone to her chest. "Somebody named Wagemaker."

I took the phone. "Hello?"

"Tucker, this is Gilbert Wagemaker."

"Gibby?"

"Tucker, Mutt's gone. Twenty-four hours ago."

"What happened?"

"Slipped out his bedroom window. We have no idea where he is." Gibby's tone sounded like the beginning of a very bad story. "A waiter at Clark's identified him with a picture and told us Mutt ate a big dinner, enough for three people, but there's no trace of him from there. We have no idea where he is."

I closed my eyes and ran my fingers through my hair. Katie stepped closer and put her hand on my arm. "I'll be there in the morning."

"Tuck?"

"Yeah?"

"His medication will wear off in about twenty-four hours."

"Meaning?" I already knew the answer.

"He's a ticking time bomb and I'm not sure what he'll do when he goes off."





Chapter 16


WHEN MUTT AND I WERE TEN, WE HAD TWO FAVORITE games-other than baseball. To its, baseball was the game, still is, but when we weren't playing that, we liked to do two rather sinister little things. The first was playing the shock game. That's where you slide across a hardwood floor with your socks on, building up the static electricity, and then touch the first person you see. We must have shocked each other ten thousand times. Miss Ella wouldn't let its do it to her, so we were pretty much limited to each other.

The second game was feeding the crows in the pasture. Except we used a different kind of bird food. We used Alka-Seltzer, and we loved to watch them eat it. They'd eat about three tablets, fly off to the water tower for a few sips, launch themselves back into the air, feeling light and bubbly, and the reaction would hit them about midway across the pasture. Forty flaps after the water tower, they'd buckle and dive like the Red Baron. They'd hit the earth with a thud and we'd line up some more tablets for the next flock. We knew Miss Ella wouldn't let its play the bird game from the back porch, so we snuck down to the corner grocery, bought five boxes of Alka-Seltzer, told the cashier that Rex had indigestion, and then lit out down the paved road and ducked under the fence on the north side of the pasture. We lined up all our Atka-Seltzer around some roadkill that looked like it used to be an opossum. With forty empty wrappers in our pockets, we dove back under the fence and could barely control our giggles when the flock of buzzards landed. We weren't expecting buzzards, mind you. Up to this point in the game, our opponent had been crows.



The buzzards were a true coup d'etat. Those big, black, ugly birds gobbled up those wafers like sugar tablets. For about five minutes nothing happened, and we started thinking that maybe Alka-Seltzer didn't work on buzzards. Then they started foaming at the mouth and dropping like flies. It was the most amazing thing we had ever seen. Buzzards were flapping, puking Alka-Seltzer foam everywhere, and walking around like Rex after ten or twelve drinks. About twenty of them flew off because, fortunately for them, they were the weaker birds and didn't get a chance to eat the Alka-Seltzer since the strongest ones made it to the kill first-a total reversal of the survival of the fittest.

When the flapping cleared, eight dead buzzards riddled the north end of the pasture. About that time, Miss Ella rang the dinner bell and we knew our goose was cooked. I looked at Mutt and said, 'We're in deep crap." Somewhere along in here I had grown cool and learned to cuss when Miss Ella couldn't hear me. He nodded and pointed to the field. There was no way we could bury eight buzzards before dinner, so we decided to leave them until morning, when we'd sneak down here with a shovel and cover up both the birds and the wrappers.

We hopped on our bikes and took off down the paved road, and a misty rain started to fall. Just a few hundred yards before the Waverly gate, a white Cadillac pulled up behind us with its blinker indicating it wanted to pull into the grocery store across the highway from us. The driver erratically passed Mutt, but I sped up. Thinking I had outrun the Cadillac, I turned and watched the big, long car cut directly in front of Mutt. Mutt kicked hard on his Bendix brake but only started sliding. He slid sideways, T-boned the side of the Cadillac, flew over the handlebars and the white cloth top, and landed face-first on a manhole cover just a few feet from me. When his head hit, it bounced, exploded like a red balloon, and slid along the manhole cover. The driver gunned it, spun the tires, fishtailed sideways, and took off. I looked down at Mutt, but his eyes were closed and he wasn't moving.



He lay crumpled in a pile of limp arms and legs. I dropped my bike, ran to the corner store, and told the man behind the counter, but he was already calling for an ambulance. When I got back to Mutt, he was balled up like a baby, eyes wide, and shaking. He was red from head to toe and lying in a puddle of blood and pee. The paramedics arrived a few minutes later. I told them what had happened and gave them Mutt's name and address, and they slid him into the back of the ambulance. In sixty seconds, the sound of the siren disappeared like the haunting sound of a midnight train, and I stood in the rain wondering what in the world I was going to tell Miss Ella.

Knowing I had to fens up and that I'd better do it quickly, I jumped on my bike and headed for home as fast as my legs would pedal me. I rode down the half-mile drive and ran in the back door, soaking wet and screaming, "Mama Ella! Mama Ella!" She came running, and when she saw me and no Mutt, she grabbed the keys for Rex's old Dodge Power Wagon. She threw me in it, mashed the pedal to the floor, and spun dirt out the drive. On the way, I told her what happened. Including the bit about the birds. There was no use lying to her, so I told her the truth, which caused her lips to grow tighter, her foot heavier, and her knuckles whiter. At one point, I glanced at the speedometer and it had passed ninety. We arrived at the hospital and the lady behind the counter checked her chart. She said they had admitted a Matthew Mason, but we'd have to wait while the doctors examined him. When Miss Ella said, "Can I see him?" the woman snipped, "No!" and tore off around the corner.