“How could I?”
She sounded irritable now, but her voice was no less seductive than it
had been.
“The cats went after him, though.”
“Did they hurt him?”
“A little. Not bad. But he killed Samantha.”
“Who?”
“Our poor little pussy. Samantha.”
Candy did not know the cats’ names. They had always seemed to be not
just a pack of cats but a single creature, most often moving as one,
apparently thinking as one.
“He killed Samantha. Smashed her head against one of the stone
pilasters at the end of the walk.” At last Violet looked up from her
sister’s hand. Her eyes seemed to be a paler blue than before, icy.
“I want you to hurt him, Candy. I want you to hurt him real bad, the
way he hurt our cat. I don’t care if he is our brother-”
“He isn’t our brother any more, not after what he did Candy said
furiously.
“I want you to do to him what he did to our poor Samantha I want you to
smash him, Candy, I want you to crush his head crack his skull open
until his brains ooze out.” She continued to speak softly, but he was
riveted by her words. Sometimes, like now, when her voice was even more
sensuous than us it seemed not merely to play upon his ears but to
slither inside his head, where it lay gently on his brain, like a mist,
a
“I want you to pound him, hit him and tear him until he’s just
splintered bones and ruptured guts, and I want you to rip his eyes. I
want him to be sorry he hurt Samantha.” Candy shook himself.
“If I get my hands on him, I’ll kill him, all right, but not because of
what he did to your cat.
cause of what he did to our mother. Don’t you remember what he did to
her? How can you worry about getting revenge on a cat when we still
haven’t made him pay for our mother, after seven long years?” She
looked stricken, turned her face from him, and fell silent.
The cats flowed off Verbina’s recumbent form.
Violet stretched out half atop her sister, half beside her.
and put her head on Verbina’s breasts. Their bare legs were twined.
Rising part of the way out of her trance like state, Verbina stroked her
sister’s silken hair.
The cats returned and cuddled against both twins where there was a warm
hollow to welcome them.
“Frank was here,” Candy said aloud but largely to himself and his hands
curled into tight fists.
A fury grew in him, like a small turning wheel of wind out on the sea
but soon to whirl itself into a hurricane. However, rage was an emotion
he dared not indulge; he must control himself. A storm of rage would
water the seeds of his need. His mother would approve of killing Frank,
for Frank had betrayed the family; his death would benefit the family.
But if Candy let his anger at his brother swell into a rage, then was
unable to find Frank, he would have to kill someone else because the
need would be too great to deny. His mother, in Heaven, would be
ashamed of him, and for a while she would turn her face from him and
deny that she had ever given birth to him. Looking up at the ceiling,
toward the unseen sky and the place at God’s court where his mother
dwelled, Candy said,
“I’ll be okay. I won’t lose control. I won’t.” He turned from his
sisters and the cats, and he went outside to see if any trace of Frank
remained near the Eugenia hedge or at the pilaster where he’d killed
Samantha.
BOBBY AND Julie ate dinner at Ozzie’s, in Orange then shifted to the
adjoining bar. The music was provided Eddie Day, who had a smooth,
supple voice; he played contemporary stuff but also tunes from the
fifties and early sixties.
It wasn’t Big Band, but some early rock-and-roll had a swing beat. They
could swing to numbers like “Dream Love, rumba to “La Bamba,” and
cha-cha to any disco that was put into Eddie’s repertoire, so they had a