by Stuart Woods
Bo held her wrist to stop the stroking. It astonished him that he was becoming excited, even now, after what he had just seen. Her power over him was that great.
“Now, here’s what we do,” Kathleen continued. “There’s some dynamite out in the shed,” she said, still in her soothing voice. “Daddy used it in the well digging. What you do, is you put some dynamite under the road. We’ll get my things in the car – I’m all packed – and when we drive off you’ll blow up the road. You did that stuff in Korea, so you’ll know how to do it. Then the lake will come in, and the house will go under.” She raised her head. “Oh, I nearly forgot. We’ll put Daddy and Mama and Joyce in the well. There’s some cement bags in the shed, too. We’ll put them in the well on top of them; that way, when the lake comes in they won’t float up. Bo, you’re hurting my wrist.”
Bo was surprised that he was gripping her wrist so tightly. He tried to hold it more gently. It was hard.
“We’ll take Daddy’s little typewriter with us,” Kathleen continued, resting her head in his lap again, nuzzling his crotch. “I’ll write letters to people from him saying we’ve all moved away. I always typed his letters, I’ll know what to say. We’ll take his checkbook, too. I can write the checks just the way he did. And I’ll write letters to people from Joyce, too. I’ve always written her letters for her, nobody will think that’s funny. Remember how I used to write letters to you from her when you were in Korea? It was me put in the sexy parts. Bet you didn’t know that, bet you thought it was Joyce all the time.”
Bo nodded dumbly. He had thought it was Joyce, but when he thought about it, it made sense; it would have been Kathleen saying those things, wouldn’t it? It made sense. He had to make some sense, now. He had to.
“We’re going to be so happy, Bo,” Kathleen said, rubbing her ear against his crotch. “We’ll get us a nice house on a beach out there. There’s lots of beaches in California. At night, we’ll take a blanket out on the beach and lie out there naked, and I’ll do nice things to you, really nice things.”
“Kathleen,” Bo managed to say. He had to make some sense.
“I’ll do things you never even dreamed about,” she continued. “I’ll…”
“Kathleen, shut up,” Bo said. He put his hand on her neck and held her still. “And stop doing that. I’ve got to talk to you, and I can’t talk to you if you’re doing that.”
“All right, Bo,” she said quietly, keeping her head perfectly still. “Talk to me.”
“This is all completely crazy,” Bo said, keeping his hand on her neck, hold her head still. “Nobody will believe any of this, and there isn’t enough money. Houses and things cost a lot more in California than they cost here. The money would be gone in no time, it just isn’t all that much.”
“I figured it all out, Bo,” she said. “Don’t you worry, it’ll be wonderful.”
“No, you can’t figure it out,” Bo replied. “It can’t be figured out. I can’t disappear on the same night that your whole family does. They’ll come looking for us, and they’ll find us, and they’ll bring us back.”
They were both quiet for several minutes now. Then Kathleen tried to move her head, but Bo tightened his grip a little and held her still.
“Bo,” she said, “we have to go away tonight. We have to do it just like I figured it out. If we don’t, they’ll put you in the electric chair.”
“What?” he said. “No, that’s not what will happen. They’ll send you away for a few years; you’re only thirteen, they won’t put you in the electric chair.”
“Not me, Bo,” she said. “You.”
Even before she spoke, Bo thought he knew what was coming.
“I never touched the shotgun,” she said. “I wore a pair of Mama’s gloves. But you touched the shotgun. You picked it up and you pumped it. They’ll find your fingerprints all over it, not mine.”
Bo made a small whimpering noise.
“I’ll tell them you did it, Bo,” she said, and her voice took on an edge he had never heard. “You better take me to California, or I’ll tell them you did it, and they’ll believe me; I’ll make them believe me, you know I can do it.”
Bo felt a great sadness. He knew she could do it, this little slip of a girl, she’d tell them every sort of lie, and they’d believe her. She’d sit in a courtroom and deny she’d ever called him and asked him to come out there. She’d say he’d made her do the things they’d done in the patrol car. She’d say it, and they’d believe her.
“You know what I could tell them, Bo.” Kathleen said.
He knew. She had always known what he was thinking. Bo knew everything in another moment. He knew the fix he was in and what he had to do to get out of it. After all, she had laid the whole thing out for him. Not the money, of course, he couldn’t do anything about the money. But the rest of it made perfect sense.
“Bo?” she said. It was her last word.
He tightened his grip, put his other hand on the back of her neck to help. He took a deep breath and did it. It didn’t take long, only an instant. She didn’t feel much, no more than a chicken felt when you wrung its neck. The crunching noise transmitted itself up his wrists and reached him through the air, and she was limp, gone. He sat there and stroked her hair for a few minutes, running through it all in his mind. Then he got up and did the things that Kathleen had told him to do.
A little under an hour later, he stopped the car near the top of the hill, got out, and waited. He had timed it nicely. There was a “whump”! not much of a noise really, and a flash, and the fog moved on the water as it ran through the gap in the roadbed. Soon, the gap widened, and a rushing noise reached him. After a few minutes, the rooftops had vanished. Donal O’Coineen and his family were under the lake.
38
For a long moment, it was quiet enough to hear the crickets. Then Howell spoke.
“All of them, Bo?” he asked. He took a deep breath and asked the question he had been waiting all night to ask. “What about the baby?”
Bo winced as though he had been struck.
Scotty came to life. “What baby?”
“Kathleen O’Coineen was pregnant,” Howell said. “That’s why Donal pulled her out of school.”
“How the hell did you figure that out?” she asked, dumbfounded.
“Lorna Kelly told me; she and Mary O’Coineen were sisters, remember. Kathleen had her baby a couple of weeks before the family disappeared. What happened to the baby, Bo?”
Bo made a vague gesture. “I didn’t know about the baby,” he said, heavily. “Honest to God I didn’t, not until after Kathleen was dead.”
“Tell us about the baby, Bo,” Howell urged. “It can’t hurt to tell us, now.”
Bo looked defeated. “I’d finished at the well and set the charge at the road, but I damn near forgot to get the transfer deed. I went back into the house for it, and the baby started to cry. I went upstairs. It was in a crib in the room that Joyce and Kathleen shared. It was crying, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“What did you do, Bo?”
“At first, I was going to throw it down the well,” Bo said, “but I couldn’t. It was a baby, and it was mine; I knew it was mine.”
“For Christ’s sake, Bo,” Scotty nearly shouted. “What did you do with it?”
“I thought about leaving in on somebody’s doorstep, but that would have only caused a lot of talk, made the newspapers and all. Then I remembered; when I came back from Korea, I flew from San Francisco to Atlanta and took a cab to the bus station. On the way, we passed the Georgia Baptist Children’s Home in Hapeville, out by the airport. It was the only orphanage in the state that I knew about. I called Eric and told him that everything was okay, but that I was tired and wanted to go home, that I’d bring his car and the deed to him in the morning. Then I put the baby in a box, and I drove it to Atlanta in Eric Sutherland’s car. It was the middle of the night, and there was no traffic. I gave the baby a bottle I found in the kitchen, and it was real good all th
e way to Atlanta; it didn’t cry or anything, it just slept. I guess I got there about four in the morning, before daylight, anyway. I left the box on the steps of what looked like the kitchen door and rang the bell. Then I got the hell out of there. I was back in Sutherland before Eric got up.”
Scotty, wide-eyed, was the first to speak. “What kind of box did you put the baby in?” she asked Bo.
Bo turned to her. “I didn’t even know whether it was a boy or a girl, until…”
“What kind of box was it, Bo?” Scotty demanded.
Bo hung his head. “It was a dynamite box,” he said, his face contorted with guilt. “I’m awful sorry, Scotty, I just didn’t know.”
The three of them stood in the room, silent, Howell looking back and forth from Scotty to Bo, baffled. “Hang on just a minute,” he said, finally. “What’s all this about a box?”
Scotty was staring incredulously at Bo, apparently unable to speak. She began speaking, never taking her eyes from Bo. “I’m adopted,” she said. “My parents got me from the Georgia Baptist Children’s Home, in Hapeville, in September of 1952. I had been left on the doorstep there in a dynamite box. My father used to tell the story all the time. ”Dynamite comes in small packages,“ he used to say.” She continued to stare at Bo as if she were seeing some fascinating creature for the first time. Tears began to spill from her eyes.
“Holy shit,” Howell said, looking worriedly at Scotty. She was flushed and was breathing rapidly.
“This can’t be happening,” Scotty said, still staring at Bo. “I’ve lived all my life wondering who the hell I was, and now I find out.” She suppressed a sob, then went on. “Let’s see, my paternal grandfather was Eric Sutherland, right?” She went on without waiting for confirmation. “My maternal grandfather was Donal O’Coineen. My mother is Kathleen O’Coineen, who, it turns out, was a mass murderer and who still comes to visit from time to time.”
“Huh,” Bo said.
“And you”… she pointed a finger of her unhandcuffed hand at Bo… “you are my father? Christ, I’ve been trying to put you in jail for three months!” She sat back in her chair and shook her head violently. “I know this is a weird time to think of this, but whatever happened to my journalistic objectivity and detachment? I’m up to my ass, I’m trapped in my own story! What editor would ever believe this? What reader would believe it?” She began sobbing. “I don’t believe it!”
“I’m real sorry about everything, Scotty,” Bo said. “I just didn’t know until you told me about the box. I want you to believe that.”
Scotty managed to get control of herself for a moment. “I believe you, Bo,” she said. “I’ll try and forget about it if you will.” She started to sob again.
Howell was baffled. “Forget it? How can you forget it? He’s your father, for Christ’s sake!”
“Thanks, John,” Scotty said through her tears, “I believe I’ve got the picture.”
Howell’s eyebrows shot up; he snapped his fingers. “That’s what Mama Kelly has been on about, then. She kept saying, ”Little Kathleen is in danger.“ Jesus Christ, You’re little Kathleen!”
“I guess I am,” Scotty said, nodding at Bo and his shotgun. “And I’m in danger.”
Howell had nearly forgotten about that. Fascinated by Bo’s story, he had forgotten that he had meant to grab for the shotgun the first chance he got. “Listen, Bo…”
“Just shut up for a minute, John,” Bo said, waving the shotgun. “I’ve got to think for a minute.”
Howell stopped talking, stopped breathing, but not because of Bo. He had heard something, or rather, didn’t hear something. The crickets had stopped. Something was happening.
“Look, Bo,” he said. “You can’t kill us. You can’t kill Scotty, she’s…”
“You think I haven’t thought about that? If you’d just stayed away from the airport tonight, everything would have been all right. That was the last delivery here, ever.”
“No, Bo,” Howell said, shaking his head, “nothing would have been all right. You murdered Eric Sutherland. You’ve killed your father, for God’s sake. You’ve killed the mother of your child. Do you think killing your daughter will make it all right? Do you think anything could ever be all right again?”
“Yes, I killed the sonofabitch,” Bo nearly shouted. “He played me along for all of my life; he never told me. If he’d told me, not when I was kid, but even as late as when I came back from Korea, then I could have married Joyce. I wasn’t tainted, but I didn’t know that. None of this would have ever happened if he’d only told me, can’t you see? It wasn’t until I figured it out on my own, when I found out he’d been having my mother’s grave tended all these years, that he admitted it. Then he tried to buy me off, showed me his will and how everything was left to me; that’s when I killed him.”
“He didn’t tell you just like you didn’t tell Scotty,” Howell said.
“Hardly,” Scotty chimed in.
“Everything would have been all right if you hadn’t been at the airport tonight, don’t you see? With Sutherland’s money, I could have taken care of Scotty for the rest of her life. Hell, I was already planning it.”
“It’s got nothing to do with our being at the airport, Bo,” Howell fired back. “It’s got to do with you, and the way you always try to overcome your own weakness by killing somebody. You were weak enough to let yourself be seduced by a twelve-year-old girl, then you killed your way out of it; you were weak enough to let Eric Sutherland pave the way for you and run your life, and you killed your way out of that; then, with all you had going for you here, you were weak enough to take drug money, and now you’re going to kill your way out of that, too?”
Bo turned a violent red, and Howell knew he had gone too far. “You stupid bastard,” Bo shouted, “I own this town, now, I own this lake; I own everything Eric Sutherland owned! Do you think I’m going to let you walk out of here and take that away from me?” He swung the shotgun toward Scotty. “You’re goddamned right, I’m going to kill my way out of it, and right now!” He pumped the shotgun and started to bring it to his shoulder.
Howell was struggling past his inflamed ribs, trying to get to his feet before the gun went off, but instead of a shotgun, what he heard was a loud click from across the room. Bo swung the shotgun in that direction and froze. The player piano was starting to play.
“I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” rolled from the machine at a loud volume.
Bo stared open-mouthed at the piano, then, an animal noise rising in his throat, he fired at the instrument. Bits of wood flew everywhere, but the instrument played madly on. Bo fired again; then he stopped and spun to his left. Howell turned to follow his stare.
She looked different, more womanly. The childish overalls were gone, and she wore a simple, virginal, white dress, tied at her small waist with a narrow sash. Her dark hair fell in long waves around her shoulders, and there was a suggestion of lipstick, stark against her white skin. Two buttons undone revealed the swell of her full breasts, straining against the tight fabric. Her huge, dark eyes were fixed on Bo Scully; a little smile played about her lips. Then, she turned and looked at Scotty for the first time, frankly, with curiosity; then, it seemed, with something like approval.
Scotty stood, transfixed by her first sight of her true mother. Howell remembered a photograph he had seen at the Kellys, a family group on a front porch, a little girl of four or five. Now he knew why the child had looked familiar; she had looked like Scotty. Now the resemblance was less strong, but it was there. They were mother and daughter, Kathleen and Scotty.
Bo pumped the shotgun again. He was now emitting a continuous noise made up of a growl and a scream. He raised the gun, took aim and, to Howell’s helpless horror, fired at the girl. He was astonished when she seemed unaffected, her expression never changing, but a large section of the French doors behind her exploded into fragments.
Three shots, Howell managed to count to himself, in spite of what was happening; five more
to go.
Kathleen O’Coineen stood, smiling indulgently, as Bo emptied the shotgun at her, affecting only what lay behind her.
Howell hurled himself across the room toward the desk, clawed the drawer open and found Scotty’s pistol, its shells lying next to it. Frantically, he began loading the gun. He had two shells into the chambers when Kathleen, ignoring him and Scotty, turned gracefully, glanced beckoningly at Bo, and walked out of the house, onto the deck. Bo threw the shotgun through what was left of the French doors and ran after her. Howell saw him stop on the deck, staring out at the lake. Howell finished loading the pistol and went after him, then stopped as he reached the door. Scotty was right behind him, dragging the chair to which she was handcuffed.
Bo gazed, wide-eyed, out over the valley. Howell gazed with him. It was just as in the dream, the house ablaze with light, the fog on the rising lake, and all of it lit by a large moon.
Bo said something, not quite a word, and started moving down the stairs from the deck.
“Wait a minute, Bo!” Howell said, and pointed the gun at the sheriff. Bo glanced at him, then continued down the stairs. “Stop, Bo!” Howell said, louder this time. Bo had reached the bottom of the steps and was moving toward the road to the valley. Howell lowered the gun and screamed as loudly as he could. “Bo, don’t go down there! For Christ’s sake, come back!”
Howell moved to follow him, but Scotty had squeezed her chair through the door and grabbed at him, getting hold of his belt. “No, no, Johnny, don’t follow him!”
Howell struggled on down the stairs, dragging Scotty after him, she dragging the chair. They made the bottom and moved a few steps toward the road before Scotty was able to stop him.
“You can’t follow him, you can’t!”
Suddenly, Howell realized she was right and stopped. They stood in front of the cabin and watched Bo run down the road and toward the house, as fast as his legs could move him. Occasionally, he shouted something, but they couldn’t make it out. Finally, they saw him reach the house and run through the front door.
