She had got up at last, and walked over to where Eugene was lying unconscious on the sand, one of his legs broken by the fall. She had kissed him, and then squatted to pass water. She hoped, and hope it was, that there would be fruit from the seed of that day’s love, and it would be a keepsake of her joy.
In the house Eugene struck the boy. Aaron’s nose bled, but he made no sound.
“Speak, boy.”
“What shall I say?”
“Am I your father or not?”
“Yes, father.”
“Liar!”
He struck again, without warning; this time the blow carried Aaron to the floor. As his small, uncalloused palms flattened against the kitchen tiles to raise himself he felt something through the floor. There was a music in the ground.
“Liar!” his father was saying still.
There would be more blows to come, the boy thought, more pain, more blood. But it was bearable; and the music was a promise, after a long wait, of an end to blows once and for all.
Davidson staggered into the main street of Welcome. It was the middle of the afternoon, he guessed (his watch had stopped, perhaps out of sympathy), but the town appeared to be empty, until his eye alighted on the dark, smoking mound in the middle of the street, a hundred yards from where he stood.
If such a thing had been possible, his blood would have run cold at the sight.
He recognized what that bundle of burned flesh had been, despite the distance, and his head spun with horror. It had all been real after all. He stumbled on a couple more steps, fighting the dizziness and losing, until he felt himself supported by strong arms, and heard, through a fuzz of head-noises, reassuring words being spoken to him. They made no sense, but at least they were soft and human: he could give up any pretence to consciousness. He fainted, but it seemed there was only a moment of respite before the world came back into view again, as odious as ever.
He had been carried inside and was lying on an uncomfortable sofa, a woman’s face, that of Eleanor Kooker, staring down at him. She beamed as he came round.
“The man’ll survive,” she said, her voice like cabbage going through a grater.
She leaned further forward.
“You seen the thing, did you?”
Davidson nodded.
“Better give us the low-down.”
A glass was thrust into his hand and Eleanor filled it generously with whisky.
“Drink,” she demanded, “then tell us what you got to tell —”
He downed the whisky in two, and the glass was immediately refilled. He drank the second glass more slowly, and began to feel better.
The room was filled with people: it was as though all of Welcome was pressing into the Kooker front parlour. Quite an audience: but then it was quite a tale. Loosened by the whisky, he began to tell it as best he could, without embellishment, just letting the words come. In return Eleanor described the circumstances of Sheriff Packard’s “accident” with the body of the car-wrecker. Packard was in the room, looking the worse for consoling whiskies and pain killers, his mutilated hand bound up so well it looked more like a club than a limb.
“It’s not the only devil out there,” said Packard when the stories were out.
“So’s you say,” said Eleanor, her quick eyes less than convinced.
“My Papa said so,” Packard returned, staring down at his bandaged hand. “And I believe it, sure as Hell I believe it.”
“Then we’d best do something about it.”
“Like what?” posed a sour looking individual leaning against the mantelpiece. “What’s to be done about the likes of a thing that eats automobiles?”
Eleanor straightened up and delivered a well-aimed sneer at the questioner.
“Well let’s have the benefit of your wisdom, Lou,” she said. “What do you think we should do?”
“I think we should lie low and let ‘em pass.”
“I’m no ostrich,” said Eleanor, “but if you want to go bury your head, I’ll lend you a spade, Lou. I’ll even dig you the hole.”
General laughter. The cynic, discomforted, fell silent and picked at his nails.