Chapter 9
Jeff Busby ran the only electronics store in Riley and he was running it into the ground. As sole proprietor of Busby’s Electronics and Repair Shop since its inception in 1961, he had sold many a transistor radio on his watch—had repaired quite a few more. Truth was Jeff was too old and outdated to be of much practical use anymore. When the digital revolution hit in the early ‘80s and the gizmos began shrinking down to ridiculously tiny sizes, he had started looking for a way out. Not finding one, he’d continued on. "They don’t make them like they used to" was his usual response to the fancy contraptions the younger fellas brought in for him to fix. These days, he gave those to the boy, along with the house calls. He was too old for that kind of shit anyway. Besides, he preferred staying in shop and dirtying his hands with DC motors, vacuum tubes, things like that—things that made sense.
The boy worked part-time, but since it was summer, Jeff had upped his hours. He liked the boy. Was supposed to be a musical prodigy or something—though he had yet to hear any of the kid’s so-called "God-given talent" his customers (not so many these days) were constantly yapping about. Then again, that didn’t concern him. What did was the fact that the kid was a whiz with small motors. He also knew his way around all of that computer gobbledygook. That alone made him a godsend. If he could afford to pay him more, he would, but he couldn’t, so he didn’t.
Jeff sat hunched over the counter, skimming the paper and breaking his fast with a mug of coffee and a spread of donuts, when the boy walked in Monday morning around nine-thirty. Rounding tables stacked chin-high with adapters, motors, and hunks of old metal, Russell made his way to the back of the store, where his boss stuffed his face with a jelly-filled. Translucent red jam bloodied the tips of Busby’s walrus moustache, making him appear as if he wasn’t eating a donut at all.
"Rusty!" Jeff mumbled enthusiastically through a crammed mouth. Swallowing, he dabbed his lips with a napkin. Crisper, he said, "Just the man I wanted to see."
"Morning," Russell said dolefully, plopping down in a frayed, vinyl-backed chair. He grabbed his wet pony-tail and wrung a few drops of moisture onto the untiled foundation.
"What’s wrong, son? You seem down."
"Long night."
Busby nodded knowingly and winked. "What’s her name?"
"What? No—nothing like that."
"Then you were probably worked up over this." Jeff flashed Russell the front page of the Riley Courant. A small dilapidated house wrapped in yellow police tape dominated the top half. On the lawn, three men in space suits stood in mute conversation: one astronaut pointing at his open palm with an index finger, the other two moon men bending to look at the first man’s hand and also, Russell assumed, to hear what he said. Dozens of small lumpy orange bags lay stacked like cordwood next to a white van. No one seemed to be guarding them; they were just there. The gate to the backyard stood wide open, the tall, green grass between the house and the fence clearly matted down. The left side of the photograph captured a few of the gawkers leaning over a police barricade, trying to gain a better view of the backyard.
Russell recoiled away from the image.
"Whatsa matter, son?" Busby cackled. "You don’t like dead critters?"
Russell swallowed and asked, "What is that, yesterday’s paper?"
"Hell no! Today’s. Big news for these parts. They’re talkin’ rabies."
No shit, Sherlock.
"It happens," Russell managed to get out.
"Sure does. But I still say ‘twas the folks who live there that killed those critters. I heard personally from Rick Duchamp that the CDC—that’s Centers for Disease Control—pulled out two hunnerd and seventy-eight animals from that backyard—most of them rabbits. Ain’t that somethin’? Rick would know ‘cause he stayed there all day and watched. Said no one was home when the authorities arrived and that whoever lives there ain’t been home since. Now that don’t look too good, does it?"
"I guess not."
"Now I ain’t got nothin’ against hunting…"
Oh great, he’s revving up. He’ll ramble. He always does.
"…I hunt myself, but there’s something I don’t cotton to when it comes to killing rabbits. It just don’t sit right with me. Never has. I guess it goes back to my childhood days—are you listening, Rusty?"
No.
"I had this bunny when I was twelve, name of Hazel. My pop found him trapped in some asshole’s snare…"
Russell shifted his gaze over the top of his boss’s head and nodded to keep up the illusion of listening when in reality he didn’t hear a word beyond "snare."
But he did hear a strain of piano music waft down from the…air conditioning vents? No. From the street? No. From his strained and overwrought conscience? We’ll put that in the “Maybe” file. But it did come, and it came on its own. Russell knew that it wasn’t really there, that Busby couldn’t hear it, and that if a customer were to walk in (they never did), he wouldn’t be able to hear it either. He recognized it as a variation of a Chopin tune he had composed on a listless November night five years ago. He had been so young then—except young wasn’t the right word. "Unfettered" was more like it. The world hadn’t begun falling apart yet, and for twelve-year-old Rusty, the idea of real responsibility was still a nascent, nebulous concept. Now, though, at seventeen, he had that bull firmly by the horns, thank you very much. He had shouldered too much responsibility, and it was kicking him in the ass. The past two nights he had spent lying awake in bed, worrying how he was going to fake his way through the coming day. He didn’t have a real plan; he’d always winged it in the past, and, in the past, that had always worked for him. But now, that kind of extemporaneous approach just wasn’t going to cut it. Now, he knew something about himself that he hadn’t known before: he couldn’t be relied upon. He had let O’Brien down, and now O’Brien was gone. Where the boy and his dog ran off to yesterday, Russell hadn’t a clue. But he sure as hell cared. He imagined the two of them sleeping the night away in some mildewy culvert on the edge of town, with Mike using Huey’s fat, tubular body as a warm undulating pillow.
And the look on Pete’s face when he’d dropped him off at his house had also haunted Russell’s long, dark, sleepless hours. Those pursed Semitic lips, those downcast eyes stealing glances at Mike through the rear passenger window pretty much said, "You’re on your own this time, Rusty-Boy. Count me out." And why had that hurt exactly?
Because with that look he basically called me crazy, as if sticking up for Mike O’Brien was something only a crazy person would do. And I can sit here listening to music that doesn’t exist, though I hear it clear as diamonds, and say with sincere conviction, "I’m not crazy; they are, because they’re the ones who can’t hear what I hear." I really do mean it, too. I am not crazy. And I wasn’t crazy for defending Mike—even though I had selfish reasons for doing so, namely to keep Hector from killing me (and he would, too, if he ever found out what I did to his dog). I know Mike didn’t kill those animals. Lola killed them, and I killed her. So, Even Steven, right? Pete knows O’Brien is innocent, but if ever questioned on it, he’d rat Mike out in a heartbeat, because Pete has no backbone—no balls. Because, deep down, Pete’s a pusillanimous, unimaginative prick who’s so close-minded to the possibility of something that weird occurring in his precious, rational universe—never mind the fact that he, along with three other people, had waded through a sea of animal carcasses only two days ago—that he’d rather let O’Brien take the fall than admit that his vice grip on capital R Reality might be faltering even the slightest bit.
But would I? If questioned, that is. Would I break down and cry, "Yes, officer, that Mike O’Brien kid is goofy as hell. Give him a cane, a tuxedo, and a monocle, and he’s the spitting image of the nut you’re looking for. If you ask nicely enough, he’ll even dance a little jig for you. The things I could tell you about that kid. Did you know…
And off I could rattle all the insane stunts I’ve witnessed O’Brien pull. And hours later, after fi
nishing my tale, I doubt I’d have any qualms about saying, "You know, officer, come to think of it, I can see Michael O’Brien trapping hundreds of wild animals and disemboweling them. It would take a lot of work, but he could do it. Did you know that he used to jog down Cuthbert Road buck-ass naked? With his endurance…"
And off Mike would go, in the backseat of a police cruiser, never to be seen again.
Michelle, you were there in my early morning thoughts, too. What would you do? Would you snitch or would you keep quiet? I think you’d keep quiet. Snitching isn’t your style. With your AC/DC tees and purple hair, you’re not the type to crack under pressure. You definitely have more guts than I do. Your imagination isn’t as keen as mine, though. I shouldn’t be able to know that, but I do. You’re no musical genius, that’s for sure. It’s your fingers—they’re too short. You’ll never be a great guitarist, though you are very creative. You don’t know the extent to which I’ve yearned for you during all of our half-hour sessions in my bedroom, when you held your Ovation guitar in your lap and the swell of your left breast hidden and the fullness of the right cradled in the hollow of your instrument’s curve. Somehow, throughout all of our accumulated minutes together—minutes that have added up to days—you have managed to remain oblivious, or perhaps insouciant, to the effect your glaring, yet subtle, beauty has had on me. The way your hair drapes over your face when you play and how you push wayward strands behind your ears when they become too much of a nuisance and hamper your strumming. Your hair is purple, but you wanted it to be red, like mine. Your hair is really black, though I have yet to see it that color. And when I found out you and Hector had broken up, I wanted so badly for you to notice me in a way that was other than just a friend that I would play the most aching, delicate, sweeping songs on my guitar—songs that flowed like angel hair, like your hair—hoping you’d notice the songs were really for you and you’d suddenly want to stay after your lesson had ended and hang out. I was this close—this close—to asking you to come with me and Pete to Keller’s, but at the last second I just couldn’t do it. My hands started shaking, and I needed to piss really bad. I know you like me, too. And I know Hector would kill me if he saw me with you. He already suspects our connection. He threatened me with a meat fork three days ago. I pretended it was no big deal, but I knew that he knew that something wasn’t right. He’d kill for you. He’d kill for Lola. You’re both his girls, you see, but now only one of you is alive. I’m sorry for getting you into this mess, Michelle. I’ll try my hardest to get you out. But please don’t tell Hector what I did to his Bloodhound. Please, I am begging you.
I bet O’Brien goes on rants and circumlocutious tangents in his own addled mind, just like the narcissistic one I’m spiraling down now. I know that he does; I feel that he does. Does he hear music, too? And if so, is it nearly as lovely as the music I am listening to right now? I wonder if this is the price I must pay for my talents, to be doomed to hearing my inner voice more clearly than my outer one. Sometimes I have such a difficult time hearing my outer voice. I tend to digress, especially when I try not to. No one notices this, but I do. Then, as I grow aware of my rambling, I concentrate on what I’m saying and let go at the same time. It’s a lot like playing piano or guitar: try but don’t try, be aware of being out of control. I talk from my heart and my ass but never from my head. I repair motors and solve trigonometry problems the same way. I listen to my gut. I put my ear to the ground like an Indian. In eighth grade, I carved "Logic is for Losers" into my homeroom desk. It was part of a rebellious streak that started long before middle school and has yet to show any signs of abating. And I still believe that about logic. I’ll never stop believing that about logic. I know O’Brien feels the same, but I don’t know where O’Brien is, so I can’t share this with him.
I tried so hard yesterday to appear superior to Mike, to be the voice of reason—and I hate the voice of reason. I wanted him to fear me, but I don’t know why. It felt good to watch the kid cower away from me, though. Damn good. And I felt vindicated when the crazy son of a bitch tackled Apollo, because it finally gave me a reason to punch the bastard. I had wanted to smack him in the face, too, but I just couldn’t do it. Even now, the thought makes me queasy. Oh yeah, he’ll definitely tell Hector what I did to Lola. But let’s see him try to prove it. He could find the blood-soaked collar and the hoe I threw into that vacant lot last night, bring both pieces of evidence to Hector’s doorstep, lay them down in front of him, and say, "Look what Rusty did," and still Hector wouldn’t believe him. Hector would blame O’Brien, even though Hector hates me more. He’d figure only O’Brien would be crazy enough to kill his dog, and he’d be wrong, because Hector really is that dumb…
"You awake, son?"
Shit! The old man.
Russell snapped his head down. "Yeah—"
"Liar!" Busby spat. "You were ignoring my story."
"No, I wasn’t," Russell said. "I heard every word of it,"
"Blaagh, it wasn’t important anyhow. I’m an old man, Rus. I tend to ramble."
"So do I."
"Now what in hell’s that suppose ta mean? You’re too young to ramble—unless you got a couple screws loose in the old noggin, like me." Busby laughed and rapped his bald pate with his liver-spotted knuckles.
The words were out of Russell’s lips before he could stop them. "I ramble in a different way, I guess."
Confusion and something else bloomed in Busby’s sagging face. He quickly raised the newspaper off the counter.
That’s fear you saw. When you confuse people, you also scare them, Russell thought, stifling a revelatory grin with the back of his hand.
I know something you don’t know! he told the universe.
"Says right here," Busby began, reading from the newspaper, "they found a headless dog mixed in with the other critters. They also found the head, and from the looks of it, the dog might have been rabid after all. Says they still need to do some testing to be sure, but ‘early indications point to rabies as the culprit behind Saturday’s bizarre discovery.’ Now, who cut off that dog’s head? That’s what I want to know. Looks like the cops wants to know, too. Listen: ‘Local and state agencies request anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of the family residing at one-seven-nine Peach Street, or anybody seen entering or exiting the premises between nine o’clock Friday evening and noon Saturday, to please contact the Riley Police Department.’ How ‘bout that?!"
"Did they say what kind of dog it was?"
Busby dropped the paper on the counter and ran his finger over the print. "Nah, but I bet he was an orn’ry sumbitch. Probably had some Rottweiler in him. You ever seen a rabid dog, Rus?"
"No."
"Well, let me tell you, it ain’t pretty. Folks get all scared and scream, ‘Rabies! Oh no!’" Busby threw his arms up like a mock evangelist. "‘Kill it! Kill it!’ Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty to be afraid of, but nothing to lose your head over—heh-heh-heh. Best thing you can do if you ever come across a rabid dog, or any other kind of rabid animal, is to stay away. They’ll attack if you go near ‘em. It really is a sad sight to see, because it’s the disease makin’ ‘em act that way—they’re still God’s creatures. If you can, you’re supposed to shoot ‘em. They die terrible deaths if you don’t put them out of their misery. Stumbling round, foaming…ugggh." He shivered at the last part.
Now that it was Russell’s turn to speak, he switched topics. "So," he began, "what do you need me to do today? Any big projects lined up?"
Busby grunted. "Look around this heap. We don’t have ‘big projects.’ We have let’s-try-to-keep-our-noses-out-of-the-water projects. Big difference, kid."
"I can clean up. Organize some of this crap. Sweep—the floor’s pretty dirty." Russell stood and moved around the shop. He kicked a small AC motor across the concrete, went to where it stopped and kicked it in a new direction. When he was confident Busby was out of earshot, he added, "Torch the place for insurance money."
No a
nswer, and Russell thanked God for the deafness of old people.
Then, as if finally hearing his first question, the old man yelled across the room, "I almost forgot! I need you to go over to Rhoda Baker’s place. She called Saturday saying her AC was on the fritz—cutting off and on. Sounds like the blower to me, but you never know. You know where she lives?"
Walking back to the counter, Russell said, "Never heard her name before in my life."
"Sweet old gal. She’ll talk your ear off if you’re not careful, though." Busby reached under the counter, spread a tattered map over the newspaper, and pointed out the street.
Russell jotted the address onto a napkin. "Okay, I know where that is. Bad blower?"
"Probably. If the compressor blew, I’m sure she’d be on the phone by now, screaming in my ear."
"What would we do without air conditioners?" Russell said slyly. "That‘s all we ever fix around here."
"We take what we get," Busby returned. "Now scram!"
Russell grabbed the tool box off the countertop and swiftly exited the shop. The doorbells jingled in his wake.
He dropped the toolbox into his truck bed and started out for Mrs. Baker’s house with lightheartedness in his chest. After all, he was back at work, back in the smooth groove of his regular routine. It was almost funny how, at times, work could feel like getting paid to waste time instead of actual work. For Russell, repairing air conditioners was like clipping his toenails; sure, it required a modicum of attention on his part, but the challenge of the task was negligible. In fact, very few of his endeavors required his full focus. His real test in life lay in convincing the people who were jealous of him that he was just like them.
On Main Street, Russell slid a CD into the dash, pushed a couple of buttons. All at once, pounding bass, drum, and guitar cut the silence in the cab with a deft roundhouse kick of awesomeness. A few bars later, Anthony Kiedis was announcing to everyone within earshot that they could—and indeed, should—suck his kiss.
Rolling down the window, Russell welcomed the dewy morning air in as much as he welcomed the mighty Red Hot Chili Peppers out. The music was his gift to the denizens of Riley—and a lesson. He cranked the volume so that everyone he passed, and everyone who passed him, could hear what great rock n’ roll sounded like. Without knowing it, he began bobbing his head with the beat. As expected, he received a fair share of glowers from pedestrians and motorists (he got the feeling, though, that they hated his long hair just a little more than his music), but he kept bouncing his head as if he didn’t give a fuck. (In reality, he wanted them to cluck their tongues and slowly shake their small-minded heads. He wanted to be that rebel in a small town, because he was that rebel in a small town. The title had been bestowed upon him around the same time he received the brain and soul that thought and felt differently than everyone else’s. Since life had given him lemons, he made musical masterpieces.)
Goddamn, I feel good! he thought while turning off Main Street and onto Johnson Avenue. He grinned at a wannabe cowboy strolling along the busted-up sidewalk to his right. Looking up, the man shook his gnarled, work-worn fist at Russell. Russell cranked the stereo even louder and mouthed the words to the song with affected exaggeration.
After passing the irate cowboy, Russell opened the glove compartment, found his big, mirrored aviator sunglasses—the type cops wear—and put them on, all while pounding his fist against the steering wheel to Chad Smith’s kick beat. He checked his face in the rearview mirror and laughed. When the song ended, he skipped ahead a half dozen tracks, reached into his pocket, took out an imaginary lighter, mimed flicking it—doing so twice, as if failing to light it the first time—and held his empty fist out the window. Behind him, the drivers thought he was motioning for them to pass, and when they realized he wasn’t, they honked their horns at the crazy teenager, who they naturally assumed was doing an impression of the Statue of Liberty.
Russell waved his hand in a loop. "Go around," he shouted over the music. When the cars sped to pass the dawdling pickup, Russell shot the drivers huge, toothy grins. "Red Hot Chili Peppers!" he yelled. A man in a brown Dodge sedan shouted something back through an open passenger window. Russell nodded enthusiastically; he didn’t hear a word.
He just felt so damn good. Buoyed. Like a cork that had been forced underwater but was now free to float to the surface. A lot of it was being out of the shop, where Busby had inadvertently dragged him back to that awful weekend with his go-nowhere stories and musings on rabies. Was there a tale about rabbits, too? Russell thought there might have been, but he really didn’t care anymore. He was out—free from the musty, oily claws of Busby’s Electronics and Repair Shop. Breathing in the tepid morning breeze, Russell’s nose told him what his brain already knew: the day was going to be a scorcher. For the moment, though, the air was tangy and sweet, like a freshly-torn orange rind. Is it just my imagination, or are other people smelling this, too? That, he didn’t know. That there was any smell at all was strange. But these were strange days, weren’t they? Strange days, strange days…
But Russell didn’t care what kind of days they were, be it Dog Days or any other kind of animal days, because the Chili Peppers were on the stereo, the air was actually breathable, and things were taking a turn for the better. What more could a slightly-touched, imaginative seventeen-year-old ask for?
He glanced at the napkin on his lap and slowed to better read the street signs. When he spotted Crooked Back Lane, he snorted.
Turning and idling up the narrow, cratered street, Russell scanned for numbers above the dry, splintering doors, but the paint there was sunbleached to the point of illegibility.
Deciding it would be easier on his eyes and brain to go it on foot, Russell parked in an empty grass driveway, got out, hefted Busby’s toolbox from the truck bed, and began hoofing it across the yards. Far away, a dog barked and ice water flooded his veins. But he kept moving. The first house he stopped at—the one next to the one where he had parked his truck—didn’t have an address anywhere on it. So he headed to the next one.
Air conditioners purred and dribbled condensation from every window sill along the row of cramped, dying homes—every window sill, Russell knew, except the one belonging to 836 Crooked Back Lane. That one would be quiet, and the earth below it bone dry.
At first, the breathy ruckus was deafening, but once his ears adjusted, it didn’t seem quite so loud. Like being on an airplane, Russell thought, walking into the next yard
"Shit," he groaned, reading the number stamped on the letterbox. "It’s gonna be way the hell down there."
For a moment, he contemplated going back for the truck, but then quickly dismissed the idea as impractical. He wouldn’t be able to read the addresses from the street. Besides, it wasn’t hot enough to abandon his trek yet.
So he walked. The hay-colored grass crackled and hissed under his faded blue Sketchers. As he knew it would, the toolbox grew too heavy to carry with one arm and he had to recruit help from the other. A minute into carrying the toolbox this way, dark crescent moons began to radiate through his shirt sleeves and wax gibbous down his rib cage.
Too late to go back now. Almost there.
"If this isn’t it, I’m giving up," he said to no one. Then, looking above a door, he read the number that had been painted there sometime during Roosevelt’s first term—Teddy’s, not Franklin’s.
"Thank God," he said, stepping onto the battered porch. He looked right and spotted the white glare of his truck parked a football field’s length away, and then left, where the street dead-ended abruptly four houses down. A dilapidated barricade marked where the cement stopped and the piney woods began. Something about the dead-end troubled him, but he let it tumble from his mind.
He opened the screen door and knocked on the inner one.
While he waited, he listened to a cicada buzz from a distance he could only describe as too fucking close.
He tried propelling his thoughts at it: Shut up, you stupid b
ug. Why do you have to be so noisy?
Russell knocked on the door again, this time a little louder.
"Probably out getting her beehive done," he said, chuckling.
Then, noticing the air conditioner in the window sill, he fell silent. He couldn’t tell yet if was broken, but any idiot could see that it wasn’t running.
"Definitely out getting her beehive done."
Or out buying milk, or visiting a friend, or at the doctor. But she wasn’t in her house—that’s for sure. For one thing, all the windows were closed. For another, it was too hot outside for it to be comfortable inside without help from modern technology. (This being a liberal use of the term "modern." The unit clamped to the window came straight from the ‘60s. Busby would have loved it.)
The driveway (grassway?) was empty, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was out and about. Lots of old people didn’t own cars, and she was expecting somebody to come by at any minute. Wasn’t she? After all, Busby had called before sending Russell over.
"That son of a bitch better have called. If he didn’t…" Russell trailed off, fuming at Busby’s damn Alzheimer’s. (He didn’t know for a fact that Busby had dementia, but he did know that the man knew how to do a great impersonation of a guy who did.) "I’ll tear his mustache off with a pair of pliers if she’s not in there. I swear to God I will."
Russell opened the screen door and rapped for a good ten seconds, ending the cadence with an open handed slam—an exclamation point to underscore his growing anger—then pressed his sweaty ear to the sun-cracked inner door in hopes of hearing any kind of stirring about inside. An impatient "I’m coming, hold your horses" would have been enough to send his pissed-off-ometer into a dramatic nosedive. All he wanted was for the woman to be there. Was that too much to ask?
Maybe it was, because he didn’t hear any movement. Granted, the white noise from scores upon scores of humming air conditioners dulled the keenness of his musically-trained ear. And there was also the artlessly droning cicada to take into account. That fucking cicada.
She’s gone, Rusty. Might as well jot this down as another Jeff Busby senior moment.
While thinking this thought, the part of him that never thinks watched his hand slide down the door and grip its handle. A phantom spirit then seized his brain’s motor centers and forced his rogue hand down on the tarnished brass bar. He heard the faint click—barely audible over the static noises of nature and electric refrigeration—of the door escaping its frame.
He didn’t realize he was walking into the house until both feet were past the threshold. The screen door slammed shut behind him, making him jump as if being goosed.
"Shit!"
Instinctively, he slapped his palm over his mouth. Mrs. Baker could be anywhere in here, he thought. Or in the backyard, he added, inwardly chastising himself for not going around and checking the back before breaking into her house.
Is that what I’m doing? Am I breaking and entering?
Ultimately, Russell decided he was not, in fact, breaking and entering. First of all, you couldn’t call it "breaking" when the door wasn’t locked; and second, what kind of geriatric doesn’t like visitors? Even visitors who take it upon themselves to walk into a house without permission are generally welcomed by the open, flabby arms of the elderly.
Is she senile? She’s gotta be.
This thought served to set Russell a little more at ease as he stood there, awkwardly holding Jeff’s toolbox and staring down the short, dark hallway that led to the kitchen. From his vantage point, amber-hued light (filtered through a drawn cloth curtain he couldn’t see) lit a tiled counter top, painting it the color of mucus. To his right, what appeared to be the den loomed ominously.
All of the lights in the house were off and, from what Russell could gather, all of the window shades and curtains were drawn, too. A thin, spicy aroma—like cinnamon, but nuttier—clung to the air. The air itself was balmy. Not unbearably so, but edging toward it. In an hour, the house would be uninhabitable by human standards.
"Mrs. Baker," Russell called out tentatively.
There was no sound, except for a paper-like rustle coming from the kitchen.
He moved toward it. The heebie-jeebies tickled his rib cage big time, but otherwise, he felt safe. It was a lot quieter inside, for one thing. For another, he was more than confident in his ability to differentiate human noises from those of a—
Dog?
Yes, a dog. He didn’t know what made him think of a dog just then, but he did, and he knew better than to ignore his instincts.
Does she even have a dog? he wondered.
Arriving at the kitchen, he peered over the counter and discovered the noisemaker’s identity. A plastic grocery bag spiraled and skidded across the linoleum, caught in an incoming draft from the slightly ajar back door.
Russell went to the door and poked his head outside. A dirt square, barren save a few clusters of ambitious grass and a moldy deflated kiddie pool, comprised the entirety of Mrs. Baker’s backyard. The fences were chain linked, allowing him to see into the neighbors’ yards, but they were all just as desolate and dead as hers.
"No dog out here," he said over a pair of dueling cicadas. "Shut up," he hissed at them before closing himself in and the cicadas out.
The door didn’t have a lock, per se. Its closing mechanism consisted of a hook and an eye-bolt. He threaded the one into the other.
Bumpkins, he started to say, catching himself at the last second, remembering that people out here didn’t need locks. Decades. People have lived in these houses for decades. Remember that.
Once again, Russell found himself in the tiny, dark, odd-smelling house. He wanted desperately to throw a shade up or turn on a light. There was something about keeping the shades drawn during the daytime that Russell found unsettling.
Most people draw their shades when they leave, you dope. Cuts back on cooling costs.
That was true, and it was also true that Rhoda Baker had left Dodge, albeit temporarily, and Russell was inside her house without permission.
The part of his brain that told him she was going to step through the front door at any moment and have a heart attack upon seeing a stranger in her house also elucidated to him that now would be the perfect time to go out the same door and get to work on the AC unit.
But…
When the cat is away, the mice will play.
That impish devil was at it again, seeking out trouble Russell definitely did not need. It had crawled up his back, talons digging deep into his flesh, that day (Saturday. Why can’t I just say Saturday?) when he’d decided to check out O’Brien’s backyard without telling the cops that something might be wrong. And something had been wrong. Too wrong.
I said "fuck the authorities." When Pete pleaded to let Price handle it, I said exactly that. But what did I do after gathering everybody into the truck and high-tailing it away from Mike’s street? I drove to that Citgo and used a goddamn payphone to call the cops. I didn’t even give them my name.
Russell lingered in the kitchen, trying to make up his mind where to go next. One option was to veer right, walk down the short hallway, open the front door, and get to work on the air conditioner. That was the reason he’d come, after all. But another idea brewed steadily in his frothing mind, overtaking rationality and reason. And that thought was to do some exploring, to see what was figuratively cooking in this smelly, dime-sized hovel. The first place he would go would be into the inky depths of the living room. It was only a few short steps to his left, through an open doorway. Once there, it would be his for the taking. Because when the cat is away…
"The mice will play," Russell said, giving in willingly to his basest nature.
He wanted to explore, to see—just like how he had explored and saw in Mike’s backyard. And it wasn’t superlative enough to say that Russell was curious. He was downright nosey. He wanted to experience the nuances of other people’s lives, to sniff their trash, to breathe their air, to cra
wl inside their skins, like into a pair of pajamas, and walk around their abodes in their slippers. He couldn’t slip into their minds—though he yearned to know how other people used their brains—but he could, in this instance, take a look around some old lady’s home and come to know her a little better by examining how she decorated it and by taking in the photographs she kept on the walls. (They’re always on the walls, Russell thought. Old people always have pictures of their grandchildren displayed prominently on their walls.) Who knew, he might recognize a few of their borderline-Mongoloid faces as idiots he knew from school.
He began walking in the direction of the dark hole that was actually a doorway.
What am I doing? his mind blared, halting his forward progress. I can’t just walk around her house like this.
But he could.
Yet he didn’t
Executing a stiff about face, he headed for the hall.
Halfway across the kitchen, his sneaker fell on a gritty patch of linoleum and he skidded. But since he held Busby’s toolbox, the extra momentum shifted his feet to a less slippery part of the floor, saving him from a fall. After stutter-stepping a few times, he set the toolbox down, walked over to the door, and tugged the shade. The vinyl sheet flappedy-flapped around the roller six times. Bright daylight flooded the kitchen; Russell shut his eyes.
When he opened them, he looked at the floor and noticed several powdery tracks leading in from the back door, to the pantry, through the doorway, and into the living room. He immediately pegged them as dog tracks, but they could have just as easily been from a coyote or a wolf.
They’re dog tracks and you know it.
And a big dog, too. But it wasn’t still in the house. That he knew for a fact. If it were, he would have heard it by now.
Am I sure about that? Can I even trust my own ears after Lola on Saturday? And with the cicadas revving up for an encore outside, how am I supposed to keep track of what my senses are telling me? They’ve been letting me down so much lately. It’s the fucking cicadas. I can’t hear myself think. My grip…everything’s sliding out of my hands and there’s nothing I can do to stop—
"Get over your fuckin’ ego, man" Russell said aloud, stooping to lift the toolbox. After a quick peek over his shoulder, he headed down the hallway and out the front door.
He sat on the weathered porch to collect his thoughts on how to proceed. The smart thing to do would be to get started on what he had set out to Crooked Back Lane to do in the first place: fix the stupid air conditioner. Once he finished that, he could skip on out of there—just like old Rhoda—and cruise around town for a while, listen to some Led Zep, perhaps.
Having made his decision, he reached into the box, pulled out a screwdriver, got up, and tramped through Rhoda Baker’s sorry excuse for a flower bed. Dead, yellow stems and thin, brown leaves crunched like chicken bones under his feet. He ignored the sound and began loosening the rusty screws from the air conditioner’s cover.
Once he had the cover off, he dropped it to the ground and went back to the porch, where he tossed the screwdriver into the box.
"Shit!"
He couldn’t believe how stupid he had almost been. Removing the cover to an electrical device while it was still plugged in was one thing, but digging in with metal tools when you didn’t know if it was turned on was another. Russell was about to do the latter when he caught himself.
He looked at the door and winced. He couldn’t believe how much of a wuss he was being over an empty house, but he was. It smelled in there, and it wasn’t just an old person smell. Something else was mixed in: a musty, greasy, sweaty odor.
And those dog tracks, too. Don’t forget about those dog tracks in the kitchen.
"Those tracks don’t mean anything."
But there wasn’t a dog in the backyard, and Russell was pretty sure (not one hundred percent sure, but close) there wasn’t one inside either.
So where’s the bleeping dog?
"Jumped the fence? With the old lady at the vet?" Russell speculated. "Not my problem."
Then why am I scared to go in?
"I’m not."
Then go.
"I am!" Russell huffed, throwing open the screen door and pushing the wooden one out of the way. He banked right and stormed into the living room, staying close to the walls to keep from tripping in the dark.
Heavy cloth drapes obliterated the chance of light seeping into the room—any real light, anyway. A narrow crack of sunshine peeked through the edges of the drapes, but that served more as a beacon than a real source of illumination. Russell made his way toward it. When he got there, he fumbled blindly for the wand. There wasn’t one.
"Screw it," he said, grabbing a handful of fuzz and forcefully throwing it aside.
The curtain slid on its track and late morning sun spilled into the room, causing streaks and orbs to explode in the hemispheres of Russell’s eyes.
Looking down, he scanned the brown shag carpet below the windowsill until finding what he was searching for: a thick, gray electrical cord running from an outlet, along the baseboard, up the wall, ending at the Kennedy-era AC unit.
"Hmmm," Russell said, pushing aside the other heavy curtain. "Let’s see what we’ve got here."
He tried the on/off switch.
Nothing.
He turned the unit off and went to the outlet, where he nudged the bulky plug with the toe of his shoe. The prongs slid further into the holes. Giving it an extra push for good measure, Russell let out a "Bingo," and flipped the switch again.
The air conditioner sputtered, then growled angrily to life.
"And they pay me for this," he said, wiping the sweat from his brow with his forearm.
He reached down to turn the machine off, hesitated, then decided to leave it on.
Let her be surprised.
Russell smiled. He really was a considerate guy.
Staring through the scratched-over window pane in front of him, he couldn’t help but to also smile at the desolate yard and street. What he saw was so old and barren that it made him feel grateful—not grateful because he was fortunate enough not to live on that particular stretch of road, but grateful because the street possessed a lonesome, ruinous beauty that only he could notice and appreciate. What’s it called again? Crooked Back Lane.
Yeah, I bet there are a lot of crooked backs behind those crumbling walls. I wonder if it’s termites that are causing them to decay—like at Mike’s house—or if some other maligned force too incomprehensible to imagine is afoot. Will this house eventually sink, too? Probably. Everything collapses. Everything rots. Everything turns to dust. Sometimes termites just help the process along.
Russell shook his head, snapping himself out of his self-induced fugue state. A split second later, the street and houses came into focus and he could barely remember what he had been so feverishly contemplating only moments before.
Termites? Was it termites?
"Who knows, who cares?"
With the job complete and feeling the need to stop by a gas station for a celebratory Coke, Russell mulled over which store was closest and how long he could dawdle there before returning to Busby’s shop, where the geezer would almost surely assign him some bullshit task like sweeping the floor or organizing the wire bins.
"Today I think I’ll take my sweet-ass time getting back."
Because when the cat is away,
"The mice will play."
Impishly, Russel turned and faced the living room. With the sun at his back, he saw clearly the room’s contents, and there she was.
Dressed in a sheer, lime-green nightgown, Rhoda Baker lay slumped over the armrest of a blue, paisley recliner, her red, swollen hand dangling inches above the floor, making an eternal grab for a remote control buried in the shag. A veiny, pale breast so lumpy it could have been filled with beans drooped from the armhole of her gown. Further down, her spindly, bruised left leg rested at an impossible position on the coffee table; her right one twis
ted out at an odd angle from her hip, raising the nightgown in the most unfortunate of places. In the shaft of sunlight, Russell saw everything.
He saw her face, too—or what was left of it—when he averted his gaze upward and away from what he couldn’t believe was exposed. She sat frozen, a statue, forever gazing at heaven with eyes that weren’t there. Her throat was gone—ripped out. Russell observed about an inch of gristly, corrugated windpipe before looking away.
Then he bolted. Like a startled deer, he took in the threat, processed it, and decided his best option lay in saving his sorry ass. Never once did it occur to him that the danger was over, the threat gone—only that he had to get out of there. And quick.
Russell ran out the front door, and Russell screamed as he jumped over the toolbox, and Russell felt the shift inside of him as he sprinted toward the truck he had parked so deliriously and hypnotically far away.
And distantly, the impish voice that had told him to poke around the old lady’s house spoke up again. Even as he ran, and the cicadas droned, and the unseen dogs barked maniacally at him from miles away (or so it seemed), he heard that voice clearly, because the voice was his own.
"This summer sucks," the voice (Russell) said.
He had to laugh. And he did laugh.
He laughed like a lunatic as he jumped in his truck and sped away, leaving Crooked Back Lane in a fishtail of dust and screeching tires.
He laughed because it was funny.
Real funny.
And when something is funny, you laugh.