Mine

5: Little Black Snakes

"How many nights?" The desk clerk asked, glasses perched on the end of his nose.

"Just one," she said.

He gave her a piece of paper on which to fill out her name and address. She put down Mrs. Jack Morrison, 1972 Linden Avenue, Richmond, Virginia. Across the top of the paper was Luxmore Motel, Santa Rosa, California.

"Sweet little baby, yes she is!" The clerk reached over the registration desk to tickle Drummer under the chin. Drummer didn't like it; he was tired and hungry, and he squirmed restlessly in Mary's arms.

"My son," Mary said. She drew away, and the clerk offered a chilly smile and got her room key. "I'll need a wake-up call," she decided. "Five o'clock."

"Five o'clock. Wake-up call for Room Twenty-six. Got it, Mrs. – " He checked the paper. "Mrs. Morrison." He pushed his glasses off his nose. "Ah… cash in advance, please."

Mary paid him the thirty dollars. She left the motel office, limping into the cool, damp air of northern California. It was just after two-thirty in the morning. Mist drifted around the halogen lights on I-101, which cut through Santa Rosa and headed north toward the redwood ranges. A fifth of a mile from the Luxmore, County Highway 116 cut across the verdant, rolling hills toward the Pacific Ocean, and eleven miles away down that road was the town of Freestone.

She got into the Cherokee, drove it along the motel lot to Room 26, and parked it in the designated space. She was too weary to care if the night clerk noticed that a woman who said she was from Virginia had an Iowa tag. The revolver in the bag over her shoulder, she unlocked the door of Room 26 and took Drummer in, then closed the door and bolted it.

She was trembling.

She laid Drummer down on the single bed. The curtains were decorated with faded blue roses, and stains marred the gray carpet. A red sticker on the television set cautioned that the X-rated closed-circuit channel should be viewed only by mature adults. The bathroom had a shower and a tub and two cigarette butts floating in the toilet. She didn't look at herself in the mirror. That chore would be for later. She sat down on the bed, and springs groaned. The ceiling, was riddled with earthquake cracks. That was California for you, she mused. Thirty dollars for a ten-dollar room.

God, her body hurt. Her mind was tired; it craved a blank slate. But there was still much to be done before she could sleep.

She lay on her back next to Drummer, and stared up at the cracks. There was a design to them if you really noticed. Like Chinese quill strokes. Shouldn't have spent that hour in Berkeley, she thought. That was dumb, walking the streets. She'd planned only on driving through, but there was something so ripe, so haunting about Berkeley that she couldn't leave it without seeing the old places. The Golden Sun coffee shop, where she had first met Jack, the Truck On Down head shop, where she and the other Storm Fronters bought their roach clips and bong pipes, Cody's Bookstore, where political discussions of the Mindfuck State had made Lord Jack rage with care for the downtrodden masses, the Mad Italian pizzeria, where CinCin Omara used to be the night manager and slip her brothers and sisters free pizzas: all those were still there, aged maybe, wearing new paint, but still there, a vision of the world that used to be.

A young world, Mary thought. A world full of brave dreamers. Where were they now?

She'd have to get up in a minute. Have to take a hot shower, wash her hair, and squeeze the watery yellow pus from her oozing thigh wound. Have to get herself ready for Jack.

But she was so tired, and all she wanted to do was crash. It wouldn't be right to let Jack see her like this, grimy with road dirt, her teeth unbrushed and her armpits foul. That was why she'd stopped at the 7 Eleven just before the Oakland Bay Bridge; there was a sack in the Cherokee that she had to go get.

Drummer began to cry louder. Hungry cry. With an effort she roused herself, got his formula ready, and stuck the bottle's nipple into his mouth. As he sucked on it, he stared at her with eyes that were every bit as blue as Jack's. Karma, she thought. Jack was going to look at Drummer and see himself.

"You're scared."

God was standing in the corner, next to a lamp with a crooked shade. "You're scared shitless, Mary my girl. Aren't you?"

"No," she answered, and the lie made God grin. Two heartbeats and he was gone. "I'm not scared!" Mary said stridently. She concentrated on feeding her baby. Her stomach was a tight bag of nerves. Her right hand twitched around the baby's bottle.

The thought crept in again, as it had several times today, like a little black snake at a picnic: what if Jack weren't one of those three men?

"He is, though," she said to Drummer. His eyes were searching the room, his mouth clamped tightly on the nipple. "It's him in the picture. Didi knew it was him." She frowned. Her head hurt when Didi's face came to mind; it was like holding a metal photograph with saw-toothed edges. And another little black snake crawled into her realm of summer where was the bitch?

The bitch knew all about Lord Jack and Freestone. Benedict Bedelia had told her. So where was the bitch right now, as the clock ticked toward three?

When she found Jack, they would go away somewhere safe. A place where they could have a farm, maybe grow some weed on an acre or two, kick back in the lamplight and look at the stars. It would be a mellow place, that farm where the three of them would live in a triad of love and harmony.

She wanted that so very very badly.

Mary finished feeding Drummer. She burped him, and his eyelids were getting heavy. Hers were, too. She lay with Drummer in the crook of her arm, and she could feel his heart: drum… drum… drumming. Have to get up and bathe, she thought. Wash my hair. Decide what to wear. All those things, the heavy details of life.

She closed her eyes.

Jack was walking toward her, wearing a white robe. His golden hair hung over his shoulders, his eyes blue and clear, his face bearded and chiseled. God was at his side, in black leather. Mary could smell the sea and the aroma of pines. The light streamed through bay windows behind Jack. She knew where they were: the Thunder House, on Drakes Bay about forty miles from the Luxmore. The beautiful chapel of love, the place of the Storm Front's birth. Jack walked across the pinewood floor, his feet in Birkenstock sandals. He was smiling, his face alight with joy, and he reached out to take his gift.

"She's scared shitless," she heard God, that demon, say.

Jack's arms accepted Drummer. He opened his mouth, and the shrill ring of a telephone came out of it.

Mary sat up. Drummer was wailing.

She blinked, her brain sluggish in its turn toward thinking. Phone ringing. Phone. Right there, next to the bed. She picked up the receiver. "Yeah?"

"It's five o'clock, Mrs. Morrison."

"Okay. Thanks." The clerk hung up. Mary Terror's heart began to hammer.

The day had come.

Her clothes were damp, her fever sweat returned with a vengeance. She let Drummer cry himself out, and she left the room and got her suitcase and the 7 Eleven sack from the Cherokee. The sky was still black, tendrils of mist drifting across the parking lot. Morning stars glittered up above; it was going to be a sunny, California-groovy day. In the bathroom of number 26, Mary stripped her clothes off. Her breasts sagged, there were bruises on her knees and mottling her arms. Her thigh wound was a dark, festered crust, yellow pus glistening in the dried blood. The bite on her forearm was less severe but just as ugly. When she touched her thigh to try to squeeze out some of the infection, the pain brought fresh blisters of sweat up on her cheeks and forehead. She turned on the shower's taps, mixing the water's temperature to lukewarm, and she stepped into the shower with a new cake of soap she'd bought that smelted of strawberries.

Her shampoo, also purchased at the 7 Eleven, left her hair with the aroma of wildflowers. She'd seen an ad for it on TV, young girls with white teeth and shiny tresses. The water and suds washed the grime off her body, but Mary left her wounds alone. She had no electric dryer, so she toweled her hair and ran a comb through it. She swabbed under her arms with Secret roll-on, and taped her wounds with wide bandages. Then she dressed in a clean pair of bluejeans – painfully tight on her swollen leg, but it couldn't be helped – and a pale blue blouse with red stripes. She shrugged into a black pullover sweater that had a mothball smell in it, but it made her look not so heavy. She put on dean socks and her boots. Then she reached down to the bottom of the sack and brought out the vials of makeup.

Mary began to fix her face. It had been a while since she'd done this, and her right hand began to spasm, so she had to use the left, awkwardly. As she worked, she watched herself in the mirror. Her features were strong, and it wasn't hard to see the young girl who used to live in that face. She wished her hair were long and blond again instead of reddish-brown and cropped short. She recalled that he liked to curl her hair around his fingers. There were dark hollows, purple as bruises, beneath her eyes. Put a little more makeup on them. Now they weren't so bad. A touch of rouge on the cheeks, just a touch to give her face some color. Yes, that's good. Blue eyeshadow on the puffy lids. No, too much. She rubbed some of it off. The final touch was a light sheen of rose-colored lipstick. There. All done.

Twenty years fell away. She looked at her face in the mirror, and she saw the chick Lord Jack loved. He would love her twice as much now, when she brought him their son.

Mary was afraid. Seeing him, after all this time… the thought made her stomach churn, and she feared she might throw up in her terror, but she hung on and the sickness passed. She brushed her teeth twice, and gargled with Scope.

It was nearing six o'clock. It was time to go to Freestone and find her future.

Mary pinned the Smiley Face button, her talisman, on the front of her sweater. Then she took her suitcase out to the Cherokee, the sky just beginning to turn a whiter shade of pale. She went back for Drummer, pushed the new pacifier into his mouth, and hugged him close. Her heart was the drummer now, pounding in her chest. "I love you," she whispered to him. "Mama loves her baby." She left the key in the room and closed the door, and then she limped to the Cherokee with Drummer in her arms.

Mary started the engine in the silence of the dawn.

Seventeen minutes before Mary Terror turned the key, a Cutlass with a new radiator had roared past the community of Navato, thirty miles south of the Luxmore Motel. Laura was speeding north on I-101 at seventy miles an hour. The green hills of Marin County rose before the highway in the faint violet light, hundreds of houses nestled in their folds, houseboats on the calm water of San Pablo Bay, peace in the misty air.

There was no peace within Laura. The flesh of her face was drawn tight, her eyes glassy and sunken in her skull. The fingers of her right hand had cramped into a claw on the wheel, her body numbed by its all-night ordeal. She had slept for two hours in the office of Marco's Garage, and popped the last Black Cat between Sacramento and Vallejo. Electricity had surged through her when she'd seen a sign pointing the route to Santa Rosa. Just to the west of Santa Rosa was Mary's destination, and hers as well. The miles were ticking off, one after the other, the highway almost deserted. God help her if a trooper got on her tail; she wasn't slowing down now, not even for Jesus or the saints. Sacramento had been her last gas stop, and she'd been flying ever since.

So close, so close! God, what if Mary's already found him! she thought. Mary must've gotten there hours before! Oh God, I've got to hurry! She glanced at the speedometer, the needle nosing toward eighty and the car starting to vibrate. "Take it easy on 'er," Marco had urged before Laura had pulled out of the garage near seven-thirty. "Once a clunker, always a clunker! You go easy on the gas and maybe you'll get where you're goin'!"

She'd left him four hundred and fifty dollars richer. Mickey, the retarded kid who liked Batman, had waved at her and hollered, "Come back soon!"

SANTA ROSA, a sign said. 14 MI.

The Cutlass hurtled on as the orange ball of the sun began to rise.

WELCOME TO FREESTONE, THE HAPPY VALLEY TOWN.

Mary drove past the sign. Orange light streaked the windows of small businesses on the main thoroughfare. Grassy hills rose around the town, which had not yet awakened. It was a small place, a collection of tidy streets and buildings, a flashing caution light, a park with a bandshell. The speed limit was posted at fifteen miles an hour. Two dogs halted their sniffing on the sidewalk, and one of them began to bark noisily at Mary as she eased past. Just beyond the caution light there was a gas station – still closed, at this hour – with a pay phone out front. She pulled into the station, got out of the Cherokee, and checked the phone book.

Cavanaugh, Keith and Sandy. 502 Muir Road.

Hudley, N. 1219 Overkill Road.

No home-number listing for Dean Walker, but she had the address of his auto dealership Hudley's wife had given her. Dean Walker Foreign Cars. 677 Meacham Street. Was there a map of Freestone in the phone book? No, there was not. She looked around for a street marker, and found one on the corner under the caution light. The street she stood on was Parkway, the cross street McGill.

Mary tore out the listings for Cavanaugh and Hudley, and returned to the Cherokee. "Going to find him!" she said to Drummer. "Yes, we are!" She got back on Parkway, and continued slowly in the direction she'd been going. "He might be married," she told Drummer, and she checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror. "But that's all right. See, it's a disguise. You have to do some things you don't like to fit in. Like at the Burger King where I used to work. 'Thank you ma'am.' 'Yes sir, would you like fries with that sir?' Those kind of things. If he got married, it's so he can hide better. But nobody knows him like I do. He might be living with a woman, but he doesn't love her. He's using her to play a role. See?"

Oh, the things she and Jack would teach their son about life and the world would be miraculous!

The next cross street was Meacham.

One block to the right, beside a Crocker Bank, was a brick building with a fenced-in lot that held a couple of Jaguars, a black Porsche, an assortment of BMWs, and various other imports. A sign with blue lettering said DEAN WALKER FOREIGN CARS.

Mary pulled up to the front of the building. It was dark, nobody at work yet. She took the revolver from her shoulder bag, got out, and limped to the building's plate glass window. On the glass-fronted door was a sign that told her the place opened at ten and closed at five. She decided that today it would open three hours and thirty-eight minutes early.

She smashed the door glass with the revolver handle. An alarm screamed, but she'd been prepared for that because she'd already seen the electric contact wires. She reached in, found the lock and twisted it, and then she pushed through the door. In the small showroom stood a red Mercedes. There was a couch with a coffee table where car magazines and brochures were stacked. On either side of a water cooler were two doors with nameplates. One said JERRY BURNES and the other said DEAN WALKER. His office was locked. The alarm was going to wake this sleeping town up, so she had to hurry. She was looking for something to batter the door open with when she saw a framed color photograph on the wall, above a row of shining brass plaques. Two men stood in the photograph, smiling broadly at the camera, the larger man with his arm over the smaller one's shoulder. The caption read: "Freestone Businessman of the Year Dean Walker, right, with Civitan President Lyndon Lee."

Dean Walker was big and fleshy and had a slick salesman's smile. He wore a diamond pinky ring and a power tie. He was black.

One down.

Mary limped back to the Cherokee, its engine still running. Dogs were barking, it seemed, all over town. She drove away from the car dealership, passing a garbage truck that had pulled over to the curb, two men getting out. She turned to the left at the next cross street, which was named Eastview. She went through a stop sign on the following street – Orion – but she hit the brake when she saw the next street marker coming up: Overhill Road.

Which way? She turned to the right. In another minute she saw she'd made the wrong choice, because there was a dead end sign and a stream that ran through a patch of woods. She turned the Cherokee around again, heading west.

She left the business section of Freestone and entered a residential area, small brick houses with neatly manicured lawns and flower boxes. She slowed down, looking for addresses: 1013… 1015… 1017. She was going in the right direction. The next block started with 1111. And then there it stood, in the golden early sunlight: the brick house with a mailbox that had 1219 Overhill on it.

She turned into the short driveway. Under the carport's canopy were two cars, a small Toyota and a midsize Ford, both with California plates. The house was similar to all the others in the neighborhood, except for a birdbath and a wooden bench in the front yard. "Trying to fit in," she told Drummer as she cut the engine. "Playing the suburban role. That's how it's done." She started to get out, but raw fear gripped her. She checked her makeup in the mirror again. She was sweating, and that fact dismayed her. The house awaited, all quiet.

Mary eased out of the Cherokee and limped toward the white front door, leaving Drummer and her gun behind. She could hear the faint, distant shrill of the dealership's alarm, and dogs barking. A couple of birds fluttered around the birdbath. Before she got to the door, her heart was beating so hard and her stomach was so fluttery she thought she might have to stagger to the ornamental bushes and retch. But she forced herself on, and she took a deep breath and pressed the buzzer.

She waited. Cold sweat slicked her palms. She was shaking like a girl on her first date. She pressed the buzzer again, miserable in her impatience. Oh God, let it be him, she thought. Let it be… let it be… let it –

Footsteps.

A latch was slipped back.

She saw the doorknob start to turn.

Oh God… let it be him…

The door opened, and a man with sleep-swollen eyes peered around its edge.

"Yes?" he asked.

She couldn't speak. He was a rugged-looking, handsome man, but he had a froth of curly white hair and he was probably in his mid-sixties. "Can I help you, miss?" Irritation had sharpened his voice.

"Uh… uh…" Her brainwheels were jammed. "Uh… are you… Nick Hudley?"

"Yes." His brown eyes narrowed, and she saw them tick toward the Smiley Face button.

"I'm… lost," Mary said. "I'm looking for Muir Road."

"That way." He motioned to his right, farther along Overhill, with an uptilting of his chin. "Do I know you?"

"No." She turned away, began hurrying to the Cherokee.

"Hey!" Hudley called, coming out. He wore pajamas and a green robe with sailboats on it. "Hey, how do you know my name?"

Mary slid behind the wheel, closed the door, and backed onto Overhill Road. Nick Hudley was standing in his yard, and two birds were fighting for dominion in the birdbath. Dogs howled, finding the alarm's note. Mary drove on, following her star.

A quarter of a mile from Hudley's house, Muir Road branched to the right. Mary took the curve. Marching toward the hazy ocean were green hills dotted with redwood houses spaced far apart and set back from the winding road. Mary looked for names or numbers on the mailboxes. She came around a long curve where pampas grass grew wild, and she saw the name on a box that had a blue whale painted on it: Cavanaugh.

A crushed-gravel driveway led twenty yards uphill to a redwood house with a balcony looking toward the Pacific. In front of the house was a copper-colored pickup truck. Mary guided the Cherokee up behind the truck and stopped. Drummer had started bawling, upset about something. She looked at the house, her hands clenched on the wheel. She would not know for sure until she knocked at the door. But if he answered, she wanted him to see their son. She put the bag over her shoulder, picked up Drummer, and got out.

It was a pretty, well-kept house. A lot of labor had gone into it. A sundial stood on a pedestal in the yard, and red flowers that looked like shaving brushes grew in beds around it. The air was chilly, a breeze blowing from the distant sea, but the sun warmed Mary's face and its heat calmed Drummer's crying. She saw a sign painted on the driver's door of the pickup: YE OLDE HERITAGE, INC. Below that, in script, were the Cavanaughs' names and the telephone number.

Mary held the baby tightly, like a dream she feared losing, and she climbed the redwood steps to the front door.

There was a brass door knocker in the shape of an ancient, bearded face. Mary used her fist.

Her guts pulsed with tension, the muscles like iron bands across the back of her neck. Sweat sparkled on her cheeks, and she stared fixedly at the doorknob as Drummer's hand found her Smiley Face button and plucked at it.

Before she could knock again, she heard the door being unlocked.

It opened, so fast the movement made her jump.

"Hi!" A slim, attractive woman with long, light brown hair and hazel eyes stood there. She smiled, lines bracketing her mouth. "We've been looking for you! Come on in!"

"I'm… here to…"

"Right, it's ready. Come in." She moved back from the doorway, and Mary Terror stepped across the threshold. The woman closed the door and motioned Mary into a large den that had a vaulted ceiling, a rock fireplace, and a grandfather clock. "Here it is." The woman, who wore a pink sweatsuit and pale blue jogging shoes, unzipped a satchel that was sitting on the den's beige sofa. Inside was something in a lustrous wooden frame. "We wanted you to see it before we wrapped it," the woman explained.

It was a coat of arms, two stone towers on either side of what resembled a half horse, half lion against a field of flames. Across the bottom, in the same ornate handwriting as was on the pickup truck's door, was scrolled a name: Michelhof.

"The colors came out very well, don't you think?" the woman asked.

She didn't know what to say. Obviously the woman – Sandy Cavanaugh, Mary presumed – had been expecting someone to come pick up the coat of arms that morning. "Yes," Mary decided. "They did."

"Oh, I'm glad you're pleased! Of course, the family history's included in the information packet." She turned the frame around to show an envelope taped to the back, and Mary caught the glint of her wedding and engagement rings. "Your brother's going to love this, Mrs. Hunter."

"I'm sure he will."

"I'll get it wrapped for you." She returned the coat of arms to the satchel and zipped it up. "You know, I have to say I expected an older woman. You sounded older on the phone."

"Did I?"

"Uh-huh." The woman looked at Drummer. "What a precious baby! How old?"

"Almost a month."

"How many children do you have?"

"Just him," Mary said, and smiled thinly.

"My husband's a fool for babies. Well, if you'll make out the check to Ye Olde Heritage, Inc., I'll go downstairs and get this wrapped. Okay?"

"Okay," Mary said.

Sandy Cavanaugh left the den. Mary heard a door open momentarily, and the woman's voice: "Mrs. Hunter's brought her baby. Go say hello while I wrap this."

A man cleared his throat. "Is it all right?"

"Yes, she likes it."

"That's good," he said. There was the noise of footsteps descending stairs. Mary felt dizzy, and she placed a hand against the wall in case her knees buckled. A TV set was on somewhere at the back of the house, showing cartoons from the sound of it. Mary limped toward the foyer. Before she could get there, a man suddenly walked around the corner into the room and stopped just short of running into her.

"Hi, Mrs. Hunter," he said, summoning a smile. He offered his hand. "I'm Keith Cava -"

His smile cracked.