"Aren't you going to go get him?"
"No. He'll go back to sleep in a few minutes."
"He's hungry!" She felt her cold cheeks redden with anger. "Are you letting htm starve to death?"
"I've got formula for him. Don't you get it, Mother? I love Drummer. I'm not going to let anything hap —"
"Balls," Natalie said, and she strode past her daughter into the hallway. She reached out, found a light switch, and turned on the overhead light. It stung her eyes for a few seconds, and she heard Mary pick up the gun again. Natalie continued into the guest bedroom, turned on a lamp, and looked at the crying, red-faced baby wrapped in a coarse gray blanket on the bed. She wasn't prepared for the sight of such a small infant, and her heart ached. This child's mother — Laura Clayborne they said her name was — must be ready for an asylum by now. She picked up the crying infant and held him against her. "There, there," she said. "It's all right, everything's going to be all —"
Mary came into the room. Natalie saw the animal cunning in her daughter's eyes, the years of hardscrabble living etched on her face. Mary once was a beautiful, vivacious young woman, the belle of the ball in Richmond society. Now she resembled a bag lady, used to living under train trestles and eating out of cast-iron pots. Natalie looked quickly away from her, before her eyes were overpowered by the waste of a human being. "This child's hungry. You can hear it in his crying. And he needs his diaper changed! Damn rt, you don't know the first thing about taking care of a baby, do you?"
"I've had some practice," Mary said, watching her mother rock Drummer with a gentle motion.
"Where's the formula? We're going to warm some up and feed this child, right this minute!"
"It's in the car. You'll walk down to the boathouse with me, won't you?" It was a command, not a question. Natalie hated the boathouse; it was where Grant had hanged himself from an overhead rafter.
When they returned, Natalie switched on the kitchen stove and warmed a bottle of formula. Mary sat at the small table and watched her mother feed the freshly diapered Drummer, the Colt near at hand. The shine of light on her mother's diamond rings drew Mary's attention. "That's right, that's right," Natalie crooned. "Baby's having a good dinner now, isn't him? Yes, him is!"
"Did you ever hold me like that?" Mary asked.
Natalie ceased her crooning. The baby sucked noisily at the nipple.
"What about Grant? Did you hold him like that, too?"
The nipple popped out of the infant's mouth. He made a little wailing sound of need, and Natalie guided the nipple back into his cupid's-bow lips. What would Mary do, she wondered, if she were to suddenly turn away, walk out of this house with David Clayborne, and get into the car? Her gaze fixed on the Colt and then skittered away.
Mary read it. "I'll take my son now," she said, and she stood up and lifted Drummer away from her mother. Drummer kept feeding, staring up at her with big, unfocused blue eyes. "Isn't he pretty? I almost had a wreck looking at him. He's so pretty, isn't he?"
"He's not your son."
"Talking shit," Mary crooned to Drummer. "Talking shit shit shit, yes she is."
"Please listen to me! It's not right! I don't know why you did this, or what… what's in your mind, but you can't keep him! You've got to give him up! Listen to me!" she insisted as Mary turned her back. "I'm begging you! Don't put this child in danger! Do you hear me?"
Silence, but for the sucking. Then: "I hear you."
"Leave him with me. I'll take him to the police. Then you can go on wherever you want to, I don't care. Lose yourself. Go underground. Just let me take that child back where he belongs."
"He's already where he belongs."
Natalie glanced at the pistol again, lying on the table. Two steps away. Did she dare? Was it loaded, or not? If she picked it up, could she use it if she had to? Her mind careened toward a decision.
Mary held the baby with one hand and retrieved the gun with the other. She tucked it down in the waistband of her faded denims. "Mother," she said, and she looked into Natalie's face with her cold, intense eyes in that hard and bitter face, "we don't live in the same world. We never did. I played the game for as long as I could stand it. Then I knew: your world would break me if I didn't fight back. It would grind me down, put me in a wedding dress and give me a diamond ring, and I would look across the dining room table at some stupid stranger and hear the screams of injustice every day of my life, but by then I'd be too weak to care. I'd live in a big house in Richmond with foxhunt paintings on the walls, and I'd worry about finding good help. I'd think that maybe we should have nuked Vietnam, and I wouldn't give a shit about whether the pigs billy-clubbed students in the streets and whether the Mindfuck State got fat on the bodies of the uneducated masses. Your world would have killed me, Mother. Can't you understand?"
"All that is past history," Natalie answered. "The fighting in the streets is over. The student rebellions, the protests… all of it is gone. Why can't you let it go?"
Mary smiled thinly. "It's not gone. People just forgot. I'm going to make them remember."
"How? By committing more murders?"
"I'm a soldier. My war didn't end. It'll never end." She kissed Drummer on the forehead, and her mother flinched. "He's part of the next generation. He'll carry on the fight. I'll teach him what we did for freedom, and he'll know the war's never over." She smiled into the baby's face. "My sweet, sweet Drummer."
Natalie Terrell had thought for over twenty years that her daughter was unbalanced. Now it came at her in a savage rush: she was standing in a kitchen with a madwoman who held a bottle of formula to an infant's lips. There was no way to reach her, she was beyond touching, a resident of a world of twisted patriotism and midnight slaughters. For the first time, she feared for her own life.
"So you sent them to the beach house," Mary said, still looking at Drummer. "That was motherly of you. Well, they'll find out soon enough that I'm not there. The pigs won't be kind to you, Mother. You may get a taste of the whip."
"I did it because I didn't want to see that child hurt, and I hoped —"
"I know what you hoped. That you could put me in your fist and mold me, like you tried to mold Grant. No, no; I won't be molded. I suppose I can't stay here much longer, can I?"
"They'll find you wherever you go."
"Oh, I've done pretty well up until now." She looked at her mother, and saw she was afraid. It made her feel both elated and very sad. "I'll take one of your rings."
"What?"
"One of your rings. I want the one with the two diamonds side by side."
Natalie shook her head. "I don't know what you —"
"Take off that ring and put it on the table," Mary said; her voice had changed. It was a soldier's voice again, all daughterly pretense gone. "Do it right now."
Natalie looked at the ring Mary meant. It was worth seven thousand dollars, and had been given to her as a birthday gift by Edgar in 1965. "No," she said. 'Wo. I won't."
"If you don't take it off, I'll do it for you."
Natalie's chin lifted, like the prow of a battleship. "All right, come ahead.",
Mary moved fast; she held Drummer in the crook of her left arm and was upon Natalie before she could back away. Mary's hand grasped her mother's. There was a fierce pull, some pain as skin was torn and the finger was almost wrenched from its socket, and the ring was gone.
"Damn you to hell," Natalie rasped, and she lifted her right hand and slapped Mary Terror across the face.
Mary smiled, a handprint splayed across her cheek. "I love you, too, Mother," she said, and she put the ring with its double diamonds into her pocket. "Would you hold my baby?" She gave Drummer to Natalie, and then she walked purposefully into the den and yanked the telephone from its wall socket. She flung the telephone against the wall and smashed it to pieces as Natalie stood with tears in her eyes and the baby in her arms. Mary offered her mother another smile as she passed her on the way out the front door. She drew her pistol, put the first bullet t
hrough the Cadillac's left front tire and the second bullet through the right rear tire. She returned to the house, bringing with her a whiff of gunsmoke. When they'd walked down to the boathouse to get the formula, Mary had made her mother stand far enough away so Natalie couldn't tell she was in a van, not a "car," what make it was or what color. That was for the best; when her mother got back to civilization, she would sing like a little teakettle to the pigs. Mary took Drummer back from Natalie's trembling hands, her mother's face drawn and pallid. "Will you stay in the house, or do I have to take your shoes?"
"What would you do? Tear them off my feet?"
"Yes," Mary said, and her mother believed her. Natalie sat down in a chair in the den and listened to the squeal of air leaving the Cadillac's tires. Mary squeezed the last drink of formula into the baby's mouth, then she held him against her shoulder and patted his back, trying to draw forth a burp.
"Lower," Natalie said quietly. Mary moved her hand and kept patting. In a few seconds Drummer did his thing. He yawned in the folds of his blanket, getting sleepy again.
"I wouldn't try to walk to the ranger's station in the dark," Mary advised. "You could break an ankle. I'd wait until the sun comes up."
"Thank you for your concern."
Mary rocked Drummer, a motion as soothing to her as it was to the infant. "Let's don't say good-bye as enemies. Okay?"
"Everyone's your enemy," Natalie told her. "You hate everything and everybody, don't you?"
"I hate what tries to kill me, body or spirit." She paused, thinking of something else to say though it was time to get going. "Thanks for helping me with Drummer. Sorry I had to take the ring, but I'm going to need some money."
"Yes. Guns and bullets are expensive, aren't they?"
"So is gas. It's a long way to Canada." There's a morsel to feed the pigs, she thought. Maybe they wouldn't be so hard on her. "Tell Father I asked about him, will you?" She started to turn away, to go out through the back door the same way she'd entered the house, using the key that always remained hidden on the doorjamb's ledge. She hesitated. One more thing to say. "You can be proud of me for this, Mother: I never gave up what I believed in. I never quit. That counts for something, doesn't it?"
"It'll make a fine epitaph on your gravestone," Natalie said.
"Good-bye, Mother."
And she was gone.
Natalie heard the creak of the back door opening. The thunk of its closing. She stayed where she was, her hands folded in her lap as if awaiting the soup course at a formal dinner. Perhaps five minutes slipped past. And then a sob broke in the woman's throat, and she lowered her face and began to cry. The tears fell from her cheeks onto her hands, where they glittered like false diamonds.
Mary Terror, behind the van's wheel with Drummer swaddled and warm on the floorboard, saw the last of the house's light in her rearview mirror before the skeletal trees got in the way. She felt weakened; her mother had always had the knack of draining her. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered but being at the weeping lady at two o'clock on the afternoon of the eighteenth, and giving Drummer to his new father. She could imagine the radiance of Lord Jack's smile.
Today was Monday, the fifth. She had thirteen days. Time enough to find a cheap motel off the highway, lay low for a while and make some changes. Have to smell the wind and be sure the pigs weren't near. Have to disappear for a while, and let the heat drift past. She said to the sleeping Drummer, "Mama loves you. Mama loves her sweet, sweet baby. You're mine now, did you know that? Yes you are. Mine forever and always."
Mary smiled, her face daubed green by the dashboard glow. The van made a rocking motion, almost like a cradle. Mother and baby were at peace, for now.
The van sped on, its tires tracking across the dark land.
Where the Creatures Meet
1
Shards
ON THE FOURTEENTH DAY OF FEBRUARY, TWO THINGS happened: a TWA jet carrying two hundred and forty-six people exploded in the air above Tokyo, Japan, and a deranged man with an AK-47 assault rifle opened fire in a shopping mall in La Crosse, Wisconsin, killing three people and wounding five others before he took refuge in a J.C. Penney's. Both these news items together drove the last nails into the flagging Mary Terror drama, dooming it to that part of the newscasts and papers known as "the coffin corner": dead items.
The fifteenth dawned. Laura Clayborne awakened sometime around ten, after another restless night. She lay in bed for a while, getting her bearings; sometimes she thought she was awake when she was still dreaming. The sleeping pills tended to do it. Everything was confused and uncertain, an entanglement of reality and delusion. She gathered her strength to face another day, a monumental effort, and she got out of bed and peered through the blinds. The sun was shining, the sky was blue. It was windy outside, and it looked very cold. There were, of course, no more reporters. The reporters had trickled away, day after day. The press conferences held by the FBI — which were really only attempts to keep the story newsworthy — had ceased luring the reporters in. The press conferences had stopped. There was never any news. Mary Terror had vanished, and with her had vanished David.
Laura went to the bathroom. She didn't look at her face in the mirror because she knew it would be a terrible sight. She felt as if she'd aged ten years in the twelve days since David had been stolen. Her joints throbbed like an old woman's, and she constantly had headaches. Stress, the doctor had told her. Perfectly understandable in this situation. See this pink pill? Take half of one twice a day and call me if you need me. Laura splashed cold water into her face. Her eyelids were swollen, her body bloated and sluggish. She felt warm wetness between her thighs, and she touched down there. Watery reddish fluid on her fingertips. The stitches had pulled loose again; nothing would hold her together anymore since her baby was gone.
It was the weight of not knowing that was killing her. Was David dead? Murdered and thrown into the weeds by the roadside? Had she sold him on the black market for cash? Was she planning to use him in some kind of cultish rite? All those questions had been pondered by Neil Kastle and the FBI, but there were no answers.
Sometimes the urge to cry suddenly overwhelmed her, and she was forced back to bed. She sensed it coming now, growing stronger. She gripped the sink, her head bent forward. An image of David's body lying in the weeds swept through her mind. "No!" she said as the first tears burned her eyes. "No, damn it, no!"
She rode it out, her body trembling and her teeth clenched so hard her jaws ached. The storm of unbearable sadness passed, but it stayed flickering and rumbling on the horizon. Laura left the bathroom, walked through the untidy bedroom, through the den and to the kitchen. Her bare feet were cold on the floor. Her first stop, as usual, was the answering machine. No messages. She opened the refrigerator and drank orange juice straight from the carton. She took the array of vitamins the doctor had suggested for her, swallowing one after another the pills that might have choked a horse. Then she stood in the middle of the kitchen, blinking in the sunlight and trying to decide if she should have raisin bran or oatmeal.
First, call Kastle. She did. His secretary, who'd initially been sweetness and Georgia peaches but was now more crisp and lemony at Laura's sometimes-dozen calls a day, said Kastle was out of the office and wouldn't be back until after three. No, there was no progress. Yes, you'll be the first to know. Laura hung up. Raisin bran or oatmeal? It seemed a very difficult decision.
She had Wheat Chex. She ate standing up, and she spilled some milk on the floor and almost cried again, but she remembered the old saying so she let it go. She wiped the drops of milk away with her foot.
Her parents had gone home the previous morning. It was the beginning, Laura knew, of a cold war between her and her mother. Doug's mother had returned to Orlando two days previously. Doug had started back to work. Somebody's got to make some money, he'd told her. Anyway, there's no use just sitting around here waiting, is there?
Doug had said something the night before that had sent Laura into a r
age. He'd looked at her, the Wall Street Journal on the sofa beside him, and he'd said, "If David's dead, it won't be the end of the world."
That remark had sliced through her heart like a burning blade. "Do you think he's dead?" she'd asked him savagely. "Is that what you think?"
"I'm not saying he's dead. I'm just saying that life goes on no matter what happens."
"My God. My God." Laura's hand had gone to her mouth, her stomach roiling with horror. "You do think he's dead, don't you? Oh Jesus, you do!"
Doug had stared at her with heavy-lidded eyes, and Laura had seen the truth in them. The subsequent storm had driven Doug out of the house, racing away in his Mercedes. Laura had called C. Jannsen's number. When a woman had answered, Laura had said bitterly, "He's on his way. You can have him, and I hope you enjoy what you get." She'd hung up, but not with a slam as she'd first intended. Doug wasn't worth the effort. Sometime before midnight she'd found herself sitting on the bed, cutting apart their wedding pictures with scissors. It came to her, as she'd sat with the shards of memories in her lap, that she was in real danger of losing her mind. Then she'd put all the pieces into a little pile atop the dresser and she'd taken two sleeping pills and searched for rest.
What to do? What to do? She wasn't ready for work yet. She could imagine herself trying to cover a social function and collapsing in the foie gras. She put on the coffeepot, and she wandered around the kitchen straightening things that were already straight. As she passed near the telephone, she thought of calling Neil Kastle again. Maybe there would be some news. She picked up the phone, put it down, picked, it up once more, finally left it in a helter-skelter of indecision.
Straighten up in the den, she thought. Yes, it needed straightening.
Laura walked in and spent a few minutes going through magazines in the basket where they collected. She chose issues that were two or three months old and stacked them up for the trash. No, no; this one couldn't go. It had an article about breastfeeding in it. This one couldn't go, either, it had an article about how babies responded to music. She drifted away from the magazines to the bookshelves, and began to line the volumes up so that their spines were exactly even. The larger-sized books gave her a fit of consternation. And then she came to a volume that made her hand stop its relentless arranging.