David Reed for possession of the girl. He had won then, but now David had bigger fish to fry; he was bound for Anderson Avenue and parts unknown. That didn’t change the fact that there were two little kids here who had become orphans since lunch, however.
“Kim?” he asked. “Could you maybe help a little with-”
“No,” she said. No more, no less. And calm. No defiance in her gaze, no hysteria in her tone… but no fellow feeling, either. She had an arm around her daughter, her daughter had an arm around her, cozy as can be, just a coupla white girls sittin around and waitin for the clouds to roll by. Understandable, maybe, but Johnny was furious with her, nevertheless; she was suddenly everyone he had ever known who looked bored when the conversation came around to AIDS, or homeless children, or the defoliation of the rain forests; she was everyone who had ever stepped over a homeless man or woman sleeping on the sidewalk without so much as a single glance down. As he had on occasion done himself. Johnny could picture himself grabbing her by the arms, hauling her to her feet, whirling her around, and planting a swift kick square in the middle of her narrow midwestern ass. Maybe that would wake her up. Even if it didn’t, it would certainly make him feel a little better.
“No,” he repeated, feeling his temples throb with stupid rage.
“No,” she agreed, and gave him a wan little at-last-you-under-stand smile. Then she turned her head toward Susi and began to stroke the girl’s hair.
“Come on, dear heart,” Belinda said to Ellen, leaning down and opening her arms. “Come over here and spend some time with Bee.” The girl came, silent, her face twisting in an awful cramp of grief that made the silence somehow even worse, and Belinda enfolded her.
The Reed twins watched this, but really didn’t see. They were standing by the back door, looking bright-eyed and excited. Cammie approached them, stood in front of them, appraised them with an expression Johnny at first mistook for dourness. A moment more and he realized what it really was: terror so large it could only be partially concealed.
“All right,” she said at last. Her voice was dry and businesslike. “Which one carries it?”
The boys looked at each other, and Johnny had a sense of communication between them-brief but complex, perhaps the sort of thing in which only twins could engage. Or perhaps, he thought, it’s just that your brains have boiled, John. That was not actually so farfetched. They certainly felt boiled.
Jim held out his hand. For just a moment his mother’s upper lip trembled. Then it firmed and she passed him David Carver’s pistol. Dave took the shells and opened the box while his brother rolled the.45’s cylinder and held the gun up to the light, checking to make sure the chambers were empty just as Johnny had done. We’re careful because we understand the potential a gun has to maim and kill, Johnny thought, but it’s more than that. On some level we know they’re evil. Devilish. Even their biggest fans and partisans sense it.
Dave was holding out a palmful of shells to his brother. Jim took them one at a time, loading the gun.
“You act like your father was with you every minute,” Cammie said as he did it. “If you think of doing something he wouldn’t let you do if he was here, don’t . Is that understood?”
“Yes, Mom.” Jim snapped the pistol’s cylinder closed and then held it at the end of his arm with his finger outside the trigger-guard and the muzzle pointing at the floor. He looked both embarrassed by his mother’s orders-she sounded like the CO in an old Leon Uris novel, laying down the law for a couple of green privates-and wildly excited at the prospect of what lay ahead.
She turned her attention to the other twin. “David?”
“Yes, Mom?”
“If you see people-strangers-in the woods, come right back. That’s the most important thing. Don’t ask questions, don’t respond to anything they might say, don’t even approach them.”
Jim began, “Mom, if they don’t have guns-”
“Don’t ask questions, don’t approach them,” she repeated. She didn’t speak much louder, but there was something in her voice they both flinched back from a little. Something that finished the discussion.
“Suppose they see cops, Mrs Reed?” Brad asked. “The police may have decided the greenbelt is their best approach to the street.”
“Safest to stay away,” Johnny said. “Any cops we run into are apt to be… well, nervous. Nervous cops have been known to hurt innocent people. They never mean to, but it’s better to be safe. Avoid accidents.”
“Are you coming with us, Mr Marinville?” Jim asked.
“Yes.”
Neither twin said anything, but Johnny liked the relief he saw in their eyes.
Cammie gave Johnny a forbidding look-Are you done? May I get back to business? it said-and then resumed her instructions. “Go to Anderson Avenue. If everything looks all right there… “she faltered a moment, as if realizing how unlikely that was, and then pushed on “… ask to use someone’s phone and call the police. But if Anderson Avenue’s like it is here, or if things seem even the slightest bit… well…”
“Hinky,” Johnny said. In Vietnam they’d had as many words for the feeling she was talking about as Indians had for variations in the weather, and it was funny how they all came back, turning on like neon signs in a dark room. Hinky. Weirded-out. Bent. Snafu’d. Dinky-dau. Yeah, doc, it’s all coming back to me now. Pretty soon I’ll be whipping a bandanna into a rope and tying it around my forehead to keep back the sweat, maybe leading the congregation in the Fish Cheer.
Cammie was still looking at her boys. Johnny hoped she’d hurry up. They were still looking back at her with respect (and a little fear), but most of what she had to say from this point on would go in one ear and out the other just the same.
“If you don’t like what you see on Anderson Avenue, use that pipe you know about. Get over to Columbus Broad. Call the police. Tell them what’s happened here. And don’t you even think of coming back to Poplar Street!”
“But Mom-” Jim began.
She reached up and seized his lips, pinching them shut. Not painfully, but firmly. Johnny could easily imagine her doing the same thing when the twins were ten years younger, only bending down to do it.
“You save “but Mom” for another time,” she said. “This time you just mind Mom. Get to a safe place, call the police, then stay put until this craziness is over. Got it?”
They nodded. Cammie nodded back and let go of Jim’s lips. Jim was smiling an embarrassed smile-ohboy, that’s my ma-and blushing to the tips of his ears. He knew better than to remonstrate, however.
“And be careful,” she finished. Something came into her eyes-an urge to kiss them, Johnny thought, or maybe just an urge to call the whole thing off while she still could. Then it was gone.
“Ready, Mr Marinville?” Dave asked. He was looking enviously at the gun dangling at the end of his brother’s arm. Johnny suspected they would not be too far down the path through the greenbelt before he asked to carry it a while.
“Just a second,” he said, and knelt down in front of Ralphie. Ralphie backed away until his little butt was flush against the wall, then looked at Johnny over his thumb. Down here at Ralphie’s level, the smell of urine and fear was so strong it was jungly.
From his pocket Johnny took the figure he’d found in the upstairs hall-the alien with the big eyes, the horn of a mouth, and the stiff strip of yellow hair running up the center of his otherwise bald head. He held it in front of Ralphie’s eyes. “Ralphie, what’s this?”
For a moment he didn’t think the boy was going to answer. Then, slowly, he reached out with the hand that wasn’t anchored in his mouth and took it. For the first time since the shooting had begun, a spark of life showed in his face. “That’s Major Pike,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Yes. He’s a Canopalean.” He pronounced this word carefully, proudly. “That means he’s a nailien. But a good nailien. Not like No Face.” A pause. “Sometimes he drives Bounty’s Power Wagon. Major Pike wasn’t with them, was he?” Tears overspilled Ralphie’s eyes, and Johnny suddenly remembered the story every kid used to know about the Black Sox baseball scandal in 1919. A weeping little boy had supposedly approached Shoeless Joe Jackson, begging the ballplayer to tell him that the fix hadn’t been in-to say it wasn’t so. And although Johnny had seen this freak-or someone wearing a mask to make him look like this freak-he immediately shook his head and gave Ralphie a comforting pat on the shoulder.