The Fiend

(15)

Charlie had lain awake half the night making plans for the coming day, how he would spend his free hour at noon and where he’d go right after work. But before noon Louise phoned and invited him to meet her for lunch, and at five o’clock his boss Mr. Warner asked him to take a special delivery to the Forest Service ten miles up in the mountains. He couldn’t refuse either of these requests without a good reason. His only reason would have seemed sinister to Louise and peculiar to Mr. Warner, but to Charlie himself it made sense: he had to find a little girl named Jessie to warn her not to play any more tricks on him because it was very naughty.

It was six o’clock before he arrived back at the city limits. He drove to the school grounds as fast as he could without taking any chances on being stopped by the police. The mere sight of a police car might have sent him running home to Ben, but he saw none.

At the rear of the school the parking lot, usually empty at this time, contained half a dozen cars. Charlie’s first thought was that an accident had happened, Jessie had taken another fall and hurt herself very seriously and would be in the hospital for a long period; she would be safe in a hospital with all the doctors and nurses around; no stranger could reach her, a stranger would be stopped at the door and sent packing. Alternate waves of relief and despair passed over him like cold winds and hot winds coming from places he had never visited.

He drove around to the side of the school and saw that no accident had happened. A group of older boys were playing baseball and a few spectators were watching the game, including a man and woman who acted like parents. There were no young children in sight.

Charlie pulled over to the curb and turned off the ignition. He had no reason to stay there, with Jessie gone, but he had no reason to go home either. He had called Ben from work and told him that he was going on an errand for the boss and not to expect him home until seven or later. Though Ben had sounded suspicious at first, the words “special delivery” and “Forest Service” seemed to convince him not only that Charlie was telling the truth but that Mr. Warner trusted him enough to send him on an important mission.

Charlie watched the game for a few minutes without interest or attention. Then one of the players he hadn’t noticed before came up to bat. He was a boy about sixteen, tall and thin as a broom handle. Even from a distance his cockiness was evident in every movement he made. He tapped the dirt out of his cleats, took a called strike, swung wildly at the second pitch and connected with the third for a home run that cleared the fence. With a little bow to his teammates he began jogging nonchalantly around the bases. As he rounded second base Charlie recognized him as the boy he’d seen several times with Jessie. There was no doubt about his identity: he even looked like Jessie, dark, with thin features and bright, intense eyes.

Charlie sat motionless, hardly even breathing. This was Jessie’s brother. The phrase kept running through his head like words on a cracked record: Jessie’s brother, Jessie’s brother, Jessie’s brother. Jessie’s brother would live in the same house as Jessie, so it was now simply a question of following him, cautiously so the boy wouldn’t get suspicious, but keeping him in sight at all times until he stopped at a house and went inside. Charlie’s throat felt so thick that he had to touch it with his fingers to make sure he was not swelling up like a balloon. The house he goes into will be Jessie’s house. If I’m lucky there’ll be a name on the mailbox and I won’t have to ask Louise to help me. I’ll be on my own, I’ll do it all by myself.

The home run had broken up the game. There was a round of cheers and applause, with the man and woman deliberately abstaining. They walked onto the field and started talking to the pitcher, who turned his back on them. Players and spectators were dispersing, toward the parking lot and the side gate. Within five minutes the playground was empty of victors and vanquished alike, and a flock of blackbirds were walking around in the dust, nodding their heads as if they’d known right from the beginning how it would all end: someone would win, someone would lose. Charlie had done both.

The boys drifted off in twos and threes, wearing their uniforms but carrying their cleated shoes and bats and baseball mitts. Some of them passed Charlie’s car, still discussing the game, but Jessie’s brother and two of his teammates went out the gate on the other side of the school.

Charlie drove around the block, passed them, and parked in front of a white stucco house. As they went by the car Charlie pretended to be searching for something in the glove compartment in order to keep his face hidden from them. Their voices were so loud and clear that he had a moment’s panic when he thought they were talking directly to him. They knew all about him, they were baiting him—

“—four o’clock in the morning, man, she’ll have a fit,” Jessie’s brother said. “She’s always grouching about me waking everybody up too early when I go fishing.”

“We could all stay at my house overnight. My folks sleep like they’re in a coma.”

“Good thinking, man. I’ll just check in at the house and check right out again.”

“Maybe we should leave even earlier than four. We’ll catch the fish before they’ve got their eyes open—”

The boys passed out of earshot. Cautiously, Charlie raised his head. The snatch of conversation he’d overheard worried him. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that Jessie had told her brother about him and the brother had told his two friends and the three of them were taunting him: he was the fish who would be caught before he opened his eyes. They had found out from some secret source that he always woke up at four o’clock in the morning. Or was it five? Or six?

The ordinary facts of his existence were all crowding together in one part of his mind and trampling each other like frightened horses in the corner of a corral. Some died, some were mutilated beyond recognition, some emerged as strange, unidentifiable hybrids. Four and five and six were all squashed together; he didn’t know what time it was now or what time he woke in the morning. The setting sun could have been a rising moon or the reflected glow of a fire or a lighted spaceship about to land. Jessie and her brother merged into a single figure, a half-grown boy-girl. Louise and Ben had faces but they wouldn’t let him see; they kept their backs to him because he’d done something they didn’t like. He couldn’t remember what it was he’d done but it must have been terrible, their backs were rigid with disapproval and Louise had deliberately let her hair grow long and braided it around her head the way his mother used to. He hated it. He wanted to take a pair of scissors and cut it off. But the scissors wasn’t in the kitchen drawer where it was always kept, and the drawer had lost its handle. It didn’t even open like a drawer. It sprung out when he pushed a little silver button, like the glove compartment in a car.

Glove compartment. Car. He blinked his eyes painfully, as though he were emerging from a long and dreadful sleep. The sun was beginning to set. It was a quarter to seven by his watch. Three boys were walking up the street. He followed them.

Ralph MacPherson worked at the office until nearly seven o’clock. He felt too weary to contact Kate again but he could picture her waiting at the telephone for his call, getting herself more and more worked up, and he knew he couldn’t postpone it any longer.

She answered before the second ring, in the guarded half-disguised voice she always used before he identified himself.

“Hello.”

“Kate, this is Mac.”

“Have you found anything out about Gowen?”

“Yes.”

“Well? Was I right? He’s some bum Sheridan picked up in a bar and hired to do his dirty work for him.”

“I hardly think so,” Mac said as patiently as he could. “I went over to Miria Street this afternoon and dropped in at a drugstore around the corner from Gowen’s house. I pretended I’d lost the address. Not very subtle, perhaps, but it worked. The druggist knows the Gowen family, they’ve been his customers for years. It didn’t take much to start him talking. Business was slow.”

She made an impatient sound. “Well, what did he say?”

“Charles Gowen lives with his brother Ben. Ben manages a downtown cafeteria, Charles has a job with a paper company. They’re both hard-working and clean-living. They don’t smoke or drink, they pay their bills on time, they mind their own business. There’s a neighborhood rumor that Charles is going to marry one of the local librarians, a very nice woman who is also hard-working and clean-living, etcetera, etcetera. In brief, Gowen’s not our man.”

“But he must be,” she said incredulously. “He ran away from me. He acted guilty.”

“It’s possible that you scared the daylights out of him. He may not be used to strange women chasing him around town. Not many of us are. Make me a promise, will you, Kate?”

“What is it?”

“That you’ll stop thinking about Sheridan’s machinations just for tonight and get yourself a decent rest.”

She didn’t argue with him but she didn’t promise either. She simply said she was sorry to have bothered him and hung up.

Parked half a block away, Charlie watched the three boys turn in the driveway of a house on Cielito Lane. Only a difference in planting and a ribbon of smoke rising from a backyard barbecue pit distinguished it from its neighbors, but to Charlie it was a very special house.

He drove past slowly. The mailbox had a name on it: David E. Brant.