Devoted(41)
His dreams are unlike any he has had before. A wildness informs them, an almost frantic sense that anything is possible, that just ahead lies some revelation that will satisfy his every need and put an end forever to all his fears. Urgently he races through a gothic forest and then across a moonlit meadow, in a body other than his own, four-legged and quicker than a man, his breath steaming from him in a night coldness that he can’t feel because he is hot-blooded and burning with exertion. He is with others of his kind, lean and long-limbed and sharp-toothed beasts, and when they glimpse the lame and hobbling deer, there is a howling that is a celebration to them but horrifying to the gentle object of their passion. At this peak of excitement, the dream morphs, he morphs, and no longer understands what he is or knows what he wants, only that he must feed. He is something that crawls and scuttles in a blinding dark, consuming filth, something that is driven by a mindless agitation, to which the slightest draft is a threat, and sudden light sends him into frenetic flight, into crevice and hole and descending rot. And he finds himself now something else altogether, drowned and yet alive, creeping across the floor of an ocean, under tremendous pressure that would kill a man, far below the reach of the warm sun, where phosphorescent plants weave tentacles of eerie light. Through the fathoms comes a familiar music that draws him toward wakefulness. As he ascends, he understands that these dreams were shaped not out of the ordinary experiences of life, but perhaps issued from genetic memories installed by whatever DNA billions of archaea have carried with them when he inhaled them in Springville, Utah.
He wakes.
From below issues “Moon River,” which irritates Shacket in the same way that the painting in Megan’s studio irritated him. Both her art and this song are too soft, too richly layered with the useless emotions that cloud the mind and prevent a recognition of the truth that life is hard and dark and meaningless. Life is about nothing but desire and its fulfillment, hunger and its satisfaction, hatred and the violence that it requires: It’s about the power to take what you want by any means necessary. Theft, rape, and killing are no less natural to humankind than breathing; they are the essential serum of the species, and in Shacket that serum will achieve a purity heretofore unseen.
He turns back the covers and sits on the edge of the bed. He slips his feet into his shoes and ties the laces. He picks up the pistol he left on the nightstand and crosses the room to the door.
40
Woody stepped into the living room, and Megan’s heart lifted at the sight of him. When he came to the piano, she hoped that he might have recovered from his sorrow sufficiently to put right at least a few of the photographs of his father that he’d overturned. However, though she gave him “Moon River” yet again from the top, he only stood listening, with a dreamy expression.
When she finished playing and quietly closed the fallboard, she said, “Honey, why did you turn these photographs facedown?”
The boy turned his attention to the toppled frames and frowned.
“You still miss your dad, I know. I miss him, too, very much. I always will. He was the best man I’ve ever known.”
Woody looked at her, still frowning, but she could read nothing in his face or eyes.
“Putting away pictures of him won’t also put away the painful memories. Keeping your dad in our lives with pictures and memories, keeping him in our hearts where we never really lose him—that’s the best way to come to terms with what happened. Do you understand, sweetie?”
Still frowning, the boy nodded. As she suggested that they set the photographs upright together, he left the living room.
There would be no point in calling him back. He was neither thoughtless nor disobedient, merely a prisoner of his condition, impelled to act according to an interpretation of the moment and the circumstances that was logical to him but beyond her understanding.
Very likely, after they ate dinner, as Megan cleared the table, Woody would return to the living room on his own and would set all the silver frames upright, the meaning of her request having been received by him as if her words were in a foreign language and required laborious translation. Such delayed compliance to a request was not unusual.
She followed him along the main hallway to the kitchen. He went to the table and settled in the chair where she’d been sitting and picked up the novel she’d been reading. Careful not to displace her bookmark, he began reading from page one.
The book had nothing in it that she would wish to censor from him, so she said only, “It’ll be a late dinner now, but a good one.”
Before she retrieved the sliced carrots and cauliflower from the refrigerator, potted them, and spiced them for cooking, she decanted a second glass of cabernet. For Woody, she poured grape-raspberry-flavored Sparkling Ice. She served it to him in a wineglass just like hers.
41
Shacket stands at the head of the stairs, his back against the hallway wall, so that he is gazing down into the foyer as the boy and then his delectable mother exit the living room. Having heard their one-sided conversation, he wonders if the woman suffers her son’s mental disability in a milder form. It makes no sense to talk to a mute with half a brain as though he understands and might at any moment respond, when in fact he’s never spoken a word in his stunted life.
When the soft creak-thump of the swinging door signals that they have entered the kitchen, Shacket quickly descends the stairs to the foyer with a catlike silence that inspires a Cheshire grin. His becoming thrills him. The subtle smell of her wet vagina, which trails after her, is a promise that floods his mouth with saliva. He licks a modest overflow from the corners of his lips.