Word Made Flesh

11

The orchards cover a couple of acres of land north of the Wormland farmhouse and run adjacent to the borders of the state reservoir. They were planted by Brockden during his first season in Quinsigamond, but they suffered from some unnamed blight before the initial harvest and never managed to take hold. The trees are all dead and desiccated now, but if you make it all the way through a sometimes dissolving path, you come to a sudden clearing, a small valley, in the center of which is the remains of a greenhouse. It wasn’t a large structure, and after decades left untended and vulnerable to storms and wandering vandals, most of the glass panes are shattered and the foundation has even sunk a bit deeper into the earth than originally intended. Inside, what’s left of the clay pots and planters, fertilizers and hand tools and petrified bulbs, still sits under a frozen shower of glass shards and twisted, hanging steel frames.

Wylie and Gilrein used to come here last year, hike through the orchard and end up inside the hothouse, studying the remains like unschooled archaeologists trying to find clues to a lost culture through its botany habits. They spent a week once trying to clean out debris, thinking they could transform the place into a hidden retreat and going so far as to carry a secondhand powder-blue love seat over their heads and through the orchards, placing it finally in a corner of the hothouse swept almost free of glass. They had scavenged it from a local Salvation Army store and it had brass studs scrolled along its rim. At some point Wylie brought a tasseled quilt embroidered with a generic pastoral scene — some wild-haired maiden on her back in a meadow, lost in the reading of a tiny book — and draped it over the love seat to hide the torn fabric and bulging stuffing. And more than one night they spent riding each other in the greenhouse, wondering if their choked-off cries frightened any of the native wildlife.

“Gilrein,” he hears and flinches, his own name once again sounding like the start of an attack.

But when he turns, there she is, dressed in clothes — jeans, oversized sweater — he no longer recognizes.

“Wylie,” he says, the name coming out strange, sounding like an anachronistic curse.

She steps through what was once a doorway and is now just an oddly angled portal.

“I got a phone call from Rudy Perez,” she says. “He didn’t make a lot of sense.”

“You know Perez,” Gilrein says, studying her face, and upset but not at all surprised by how nervous he is, “totally uncomfortable when he’s got to handle the truth.”

Wylie smiles and says, “Good thing it doesn’t happen that often.”

She walks over to him, leans in, and kisses him on the cheek, sisterly, warm but setting up the correct distance right at the start.

Gilrein runs a hand through his hair.

“Jesus, Wylie,” he says, “couldn’t you have made yourself ugly or something?”

She gives up that laugh, the chin shooting out at him slightly. She says, “I could say the same thing, you know.”

“No,” shaking his head, but keeping everything friendly, “no you can’t. Those are the rules. The walker doesn’t get to carry the torch for the walkee. It would screw up all those pop songs.”

“Yeah,” she says, voice soft, restrained. “I guess so.”

And then back to business. Gilrein has always attributed her ability to instantly screw down her emotions to some kind of inherent, maybe genetic coolness just under the surface of her skin.

She says, “I can’t believe Rudy Perez rang me up because he was so concerned about affairs of the heart.”

He can match her, he lies to himself. He can keep the whole thing on some kind of professional, detached plane, just two bureaucrats swapping information. Two adults involved in a short business discussion whose protocol leaves nothing at stake.

“Perez tried to tell me you were working for August Kroger,” with maybe just a little exaggerated disbelief in the voice. He’ll need practice.

Wylie turns sideways, rests half of her behind on the edge of the love seat.

“And why would that be any of your business?” But she’s missing her mark as well, getting overly defensive too soon.

“Hey, Wylie,” he says, all of a sudden completely unsure of just how to play this, “look at me, for Christ’s sake. We don’t have to be this way with each other, do we?”

“Look, Gilrein, I told you, what, six months ago, that we couldn’t talk to each other at all. That’s the only way to do this—”

“Have I called you? Have I come by the Center?”

“—I get this call from Perez saying you’ve gone crazy or something. Saying you threatened to burn down the Shoppe and you were serious. He says you beat him up.”

“Screw Perez, okay?”

“What’s going on?”

“You don’t want to see me, why’d you come down here, Wylie?”

“I don’t want to do this, Gilrein. I can’t do this, all right? I’m feeling a little hungover right now, okay?”

“Just answer the question and then go if you want, okay? Just tell me, Perez is lying, right? You’ve got nothing to do with August Kroger, right?”

They stare at each other. Gilrein watches the way her hand toys with a tassel on the quilt.

Finally she says, “The fellowship was running out. I hadn’t finished the book. I didn’t have any money.”

“Jesus Christ” is all he can manage.

“It’s just a stupid job, Gilrein,” her voice getting louder and tighter.

“August fucking Kroger. I don’t believe this.”

“It’s a job. In my field. Okay, all right. I need to stay in town. Until the book is done. You don’t have any—”

“You couldn’t teach?” knowing it’s exactly the wrong thing even as he says it.

“I’m not a teacher,” the studied accenting of the last word carrying the perfect resentment, “I’m a researcher.”

“Could’ve just sold your ass down in Bangkok, you know,” getting nastier than he’d feared. “Some people love that clinical look. And real blonds are at a premium on Chin Avenue.”

“You bastard,” glad to hear it because he knows he deserves it.

“What do you want from me, Wylie, huh? You remember who I am?”

“Yeah, I remember who you are—”

“August Kroger, for Christ sake,” sputtering, not at all sure how to convey his sense of outrage and bottomless disappointment. “You leave the Center to go to work for a filthy little gangster like Kroger.”

“Mr. Kroger has never been arrested—”

“Mister Kroger,” yelling now, “Mister Kroger. I don’t believe this. I was a cop for a long time, Wylie. I knew what Kroger ate for dinner before you even heard his name.”

“He’s a major collector,” she says, trying to go back to a measured tone no matter how unlikely the chance. “He’s got a stunning library. And he’s not some poseur. He knows his material. He understands what he’s buying.”

“You don’t want to hear it, do you?” Gilrein says, as if he’s just figured something out. “That’s it, right? You already know the bulk of it and you don’t care.”

“Is this where you judge me, Gilrein? Is this the part where you tell me how disappointed you are in me?”

“He’s filthy, Wylie. Worse than you’ve allowed yourself to imagine. He’s not a neighborhood mayor, you know. He’s lying if he’s told you otherwise. He doesn’t take care of his people. He doesn’t have any people. He’s just a mob rat who read some books.”

“Look, Gilrein, I’ve got nothing to do with his business affairs—”

“Business affairs,” the words bursting out of his mouth.

“I’m the curator,” she says. “I’ve got complete autonomy. I run his library. Period. I’ve got a budget and a general mission. I go through the catalogs. I attend the auctions. I contact the dealers. I acquire and I inventory and I restore.”

He shakes his head and blinks like he’s just emerged from a murky pool of water.

“It really doesn’t bother you that this guy is a killer. A goddamn down-in-the-slime bad guy.”

She exhales melodramatically and says, “It’s good to know you haven’t lost that paranoia I used to love.”

It hurts because, in the larger scheme of things, it’s true.

“Wylie,” he says, “take a look at this,” and he starts to peel his shirt up off his chest. She gets alarmed, gets up off the love seat and takes a step back but then sees the run of blue and purple bruises along his ribs.

“Oh my God,” she says, her head bending forward to study the contusions as if they were a map to the library of Alexandria.

“What—” she begins.

And he snaps, “August Kroger did this to me.”

She squints up at him, her head still bent level with his torso, her eyes showing either confusion or doubt. Then she confirms that it’s doubt by straightening and nodding and gathering herself together for a final goodbye to an ex-lover gone crazy with rejection.

But before she can speak he says, “You ever meet his goons?”

She stares at him.

“Guy named Raban,” he says. “And a guy named Blumfeld.”

He watches the recognition turn her around, put their entire encounter, instantly, into a brand-new framework.

“So you know them.”

“They did this?” pointing to his midsection.

“Grabbed me in an alley off Voegelin.”

“But why?” suddenly wondering, he can tell, if it has something to do with her.

“That,” he says, “is why I went to see Rudy Perez.”

“I don’t understand,” she says, sitting again.

He lowers his shirt, folds his arms.

“They think I’ve got something that Mister Kroger wants,” wishing but unable to avoid the sarcasm.

“A book?”

“It’s Kroger. What do you think?”

“You’re sure it was—”

“Look, Wylie, just tell me if he’s been expecting something new. Was there something coming into the city that he had his eye on? Something Leo Tani might’ve had a hand in moving?”

She looks past him, her head shaking slowly. “There’s nothing. If there was, I’d be the buyer. I’d have set up the transaction. I swear, if Kroger had a purchase in mind, I’d know about it.”

“Have there been any brokers calling—”

He breaks off and looks outside, about five feet beyond the greenhouse, and sees a dog standing rigid, staring back at him. Gilrein is no dog expert, but it looks like a Rottweiler, stocky with short black fur and tan markings on the face and snout. Wylie turns and sees it, then looks back to Gilrein.

The animal carries a sense of foreboding with it, a vibration of purposeful menace. There’s no play in its body, no sense of random wandering. Its tongue is tucked and sealed in its mouth, its ears look brittle and taut. It stands motionless, doesn’t nose the ground, doesn’t give any sign of distraction from bird noise or a scent in the breeze.

The closest neighbor is half a mile away and Gilrein knows they don’t own any dogs. He squats down slowly, picks up a rock from a mound of silt and rubble.

“I think maybe we should walk back to your car,” he says, and without responding, Wylie steps next to him and takes hold of his arm.

They exit the greenhouse and start to walk slowly toward the path into the orchards. The dog moves up behind them, keeping an even five feet or so between them.

“I hate dogs” is all Wylie says and it comes out in a tight whisper.

Gilrein keeps the rock in his right hand, but when they reach the tree line and see the second Rottweiler he knows what he needs is his gun. Unfortunately, it’s sitting in the drawer of the nightstand next to the bed. The second dog drops into place on Wylie’s left and keeps perfect pace with them. Wylie’s grip on Gilrein’s arm tightens up, but he tries to keep their steps even and deliberate. The animals could just be someone’s demented choice of a hunting dog, some idiot with a rifle who wandered into the bird sanctuary to knock down some protected fowl and managed to get lost in the wood. But though they appear well trained and cared for, the dogs have no collars or tags.

When the path forks right, a third dog is waiting, sitting patiently on its haunches, inanimate as a piece of sculpture until they pass and it falls into a trot on Gilrein’s right. The dogs don’t acknowledge each other. It’s as if they’ve been bred only to anticipate Gilrein’s intentions and match his movements.

“What do we do?” Wylie’s voice in a tone he can’t ever remember hearing before. He can feel her straining to pick up speed, and he tries to pull her back, stay at a level march. So far, all threat has been implied. But then they come to the small slope that leads to the rear yard of the farmhouse. And at the bottom of the hill is another Rottweiler in the center of the path.

Gilrein stops and the dogs follow suit simultaneously, turning into pieces of bristly stone. It’s as if he can feel their joints tightening, ready for the spring. As if he can sense the run of salivation increasing over their gums and teeth and in their throats.

He looks out, scans the spread of forest that breaks right and left to either side of the pathway. And his eyes start to pick out the rest of them. He counts four more, off the path, guarding the periphery, staring back at him through the brush, waiting to see his next move.

“Oh, Jesus,” Wylie says, the voice fighting the burn of tears already in her throat, panic coming off her skin like heat.

The dog blocking the way forward seems to lean toward them. Gilrein slowly raises his throwing arm. The animal pulls back the rubbery folds of its mouth, reveals the teeth and lets an almost inaudible growl emerge from low in the throat. It’s a sound Gilrein has heard before and never forgotten, a noise that guards the scrap pounds around the edge of the city. The feral voice of the alleys that back the noodle joints in Little Asia. And it means that in a matter of seconds, this animal is going to launch itself on top of them and tear into their flesh.

The surrounding dogs modify their posture and join into the chorus. Wylie is hugging into him, trembling into his arm, something like a horrible, muted keening seeping out of her own throat.

And Wylie’s cry is the thing that launches him into motion. He pitches his rock like a bullet into the blocking dog’s head and runs, pulling Wylie down the slope and breaking off the path and toward the clearing. He’s got the momentum of the hill, but it’s not enough. The pack converges, snapping at his legs and ass and arms. Wylie breaks from him, runs to the left. The dogs ignore her and form a circle around Gilrein, charging in, their heads swinging, teeth tearing and snapping in air. Gilrein grabs a fallen branch, swings it like a baseball bat, everything he’s got, connects with a head, breaking something, the dog falling to the ground in a pile, not even time for the roar to turn to yelp.

He’s hit from behind. He manages to roll as he goes down, but the dog jumps onto his chest and makes a swipe at his throat. He gets his arm up in time to block the teeth.

And then there’s a gunshot and the dogs freeze, begin to retreat, back off several feet and hover until a whistle sounds and they bolt in full gallop in the direction of the house.

Gilrein starts to get up, but has to lean back down on a forearm, take a breath to keep his stomach under control. He looks to the tree line and sees a figure approaching, shotgun up on the shoulder. Gilrein gets to his feet, ready to charge the stupid bastard, coldcock him before the idiot can explain. But as he takes a step forward, he realizes the shotgun is being leveled at him.

And the face behind it belongs to August Kroger’s meatboy Blumfeld.