and a primal terror swelled within her breast even as she let out a
thing squeal of pleasurable excitement.
On the bed beside Violet, her sister also softly cried out.
On the canyon floor the mouse froze, sensing onrushing doom but not
certain from which quarter it was coming.
The hawk deployed its wings as foils at the last moment abruptly the
true substance of the air became apparent a provided a welcome braking
resistance. Letting its hind quarters precede it, extending its legs,
opening its claws, the hawk seized the mouse even as the creature
reacted to the sudden spread of wings and tried to flee.
Though remaining with the hawk, Violet entered the mind of the mouse an
instant before the predator had taken it. She felt the icy satisfaction
of the hunter and the hot fear of the prey. From the perspective of the
hawk, she felt the flesh puncture and split under the sharp and powerful
assault of her talons, and from the perspective of the mouse she was
wracked by searing pain and was aware of a dread rupturing within. The
bird peered down at the squealing rodent in its grasp, and shivered with
a wild sense of dominant and power, with a realization that hunger would
again sated. It loosed a caw of triumph that echoed along the canyon.
Feeling small and helpless in the grip of its winged assailant in the
thrall of excruciating fear so intense as to be strong akin to the most
exquisite of sensory pleasures, the mouse looked up into the steely,
merciless eyes and ceased to struggle, went limp, resigned itself to
death. It saw the fierce beak descending, was aware of being rended,
but no longer felt pain only numb resignation, then a brief moment of
shattering pain then nothing, nothing. The hawk tipped back its head
and bloody ribbons and warm knots of flesh fall down its gull. On the
bed Violet turned on her side to face her sister. Having been shaken
from sleep by the power of the experience with the hawk, Verbina came
into Violet's arms. Naked, pelvis pelvis, belly to belly, breasts to
breasts, the twins held each other and shuddered uncontrollably. Violet
gasped against Verbina's tender throat, and through her link with
Verbina's mind, she felt that hot flood of her own breath and the warmth
it brought to her sister's skin. They made wordless sounds a clung to
each other, and their frantic breathing did not beg to subside until the
hawk tore the last red sliver of nourishing meat from the mouse's hide
and, with a flurry of wings, threw itself into the sky again.
Below was the Pollard property: the Eugenia hedge; the grey blued,
slate-roofed, weathered-looking house; the twenty-year-' old Buick that
had belonged to their mother and that Candy sometimes drove; clusters of
primrose burning with red and yellow and purple blooms in a narrow and
untended flower bed that extended the length of the decrepit back porch.
Violet also saw Candy far below, at the northeast corner of the
sprawling property.
Still holding fast to her sister, gracing Verbina's throat and cheek and
temple with a lace of gentle kisses, Violet simultaneously directed the
hawk to circle above her brother. Through the bird, she watched him as
he stood, head bowed, at their mother's grave, mourning her as he had
mourned her every day, without exception, since her death those many
years ago.
Violet did not mourn. Her mother had been as much a stranger to her as
anyone in the world, and she had felt nothing special at the woman's
passing. Indeed, because Candy was gifted, too, Violet felt closer to
him than she had to her mother, which was not saying much because she
did not really know him or care a great deal about him. How could she
be close to anyone if she could not enter his mind and live with him,
through him? That incredible intimacy was what welded her to Verbina,
and it marked the myriad relationships she enjoyed with all the fowl and
fauna that populated nature's world. She simply did not know how to
relate to anyone without that intense, innermost connection, and if she
could not love, she could not mourn.
Far below the wheeling hawk, Candy dropped to his knees beside the
grave.
MONDAY AFTERNOON. Thomas sat at his work table. Making a picture poem.
Derek helped. Or thought he did. He sorted through some magazine
clippings. He chose pictures, gave them to Thomas. If the picture was
right, Thomas trimmed it, pasted it on the page. Most of the time it
wasn't right, so he put it waside and asked for another picture and
another until he gave him something he could use.
He didn't tell Derek the awful truth. The awful truth that he wanted to
make the poem by himself. But he could hurt Derek's feelings. Derek
was hurt enough. Being dumb really hurt, and Derek was dumber than
Thomas. Though Derek was dumber-looking, too, which was more hurtful.
His forehead sloped more than Thomas's. His nose was flatter, his head
had a squashy shape. Awful truth.
Later, tired of making the picture poem, Thomas and Derek went to the
wreck room, and that was where it happen Derek got hurt. He got hurt so
much he cried. A girl did it. Mary. In the wreck room.
Some people were playing a game of marbles in one corner. Some were
watching TV. Thomas and Derek were sitting on a couch near some
windows, Being Sociable when any came around. The aides always wanted
people at The home to Be Sociable. It was good for you to Be Sociable.
When one came around to Be Sociable with them, Thomas and Derek were
watching hummingbirds at a feeder that hung outside windows.
Hummingbirds didn't really hum, but they zip around and were a lot of
fun to watch. Mary, who was at The Home, didn't zip around and wasn't
fun to watch, she hummed a lot. No, she buzzed. Buzz, buzz, buzz, all
the time.
Mary knew about eye cues. She said they really mattered, eye cues, and
maybe they did, though Thomas had never heard of them and didn't
understand what they were, but then a lot of things he didn't understand
were important. He knew what eyes were, of course. He knew a cue was a
stick you hit balls with because they had a pool table right there in
the wreck room, near where he and Derek were sitting, though nobody used
it much. He figured it would be a bad thing, real bad, if you stuck
yourself in the eye with a cue, but this Mary said eye cues were good
and she had a big one for a Down's kid.
"I'm a high-end moron," she said, real happy with herself, you could
tell.
Thomas didn't know what a moron was, but he couldn't see a high-end to
Mary anywhere, she was fat and mostly droopy all over.
"You're probably a moron, too, Thomas, but you ain't high-end like me.
I'm almost normal, and you ain't as close to normal as me." All this
only confused Thomas.
It confused Derek even more, you could tell, and in his thick and
sometimes hard to understand voice, Derek said, "Me? No moron."
He shook his head.
"Cowboy." He smiled.
"Cowboy." Mary laughed at him.
"You ain't no cowboy
or ever going to be. What you are is you're an
imbecile." They had to ask her to say it a few times before they got
it, but even then they didn't really get it. They could say it but
didn't know what it was any more than they knew what one of these eye
cues looked like.
"You've got your normal people," Mary said,
"then morons under them, then imbeciles, whore dumber than morons, and
then you got idiots, whore dumber than even imbeciles. Me, I'm a
high-end moron, and I ain't going to be here forever, I'm going to be
good, behave, work hard to be normal, and someday go back to the halfway
house."
"Halfway where?" Derek asked, which was what Thomas wondered too.
Mary laughed at him.
"Halfway to being normal, which is more than you'll ever be, you poor
damn imbecile." This time Derek realized she was looking down on him,
making fun, and he tried not to cry, but he did. He got red in the face
and cried, and Mary grinned sort of wild, she was all puffed up,
excited, like she'd won some big prize. She'd said a bad word-damn-and
should be ashamed, but she wasn't, you could tell. She said the other
word again, which Thomas now saw was a bad word, too,
"imbecile," and she kept saying it, until poor Derek got up and ran, and
even then she shout it after him.
Thomas went back to their room, looking for Derek, but Derek was in the
closet with the door shut, bawling. Some of the aides came, and they
talked to Derek real nice, but he didn't want to come out of the closet.
They had to talk to him a long time to get him to come out of there, but
even then couldn't stop him from crying, and so after a while they had
to Give him Something. Once in a while when you were sick, like with
the flu, the aides asked you to Take Something, which meant pill of one
shape or another, one color or another, big or little But when they had
to Give You Something, it always was a needle, which was a bad thing.
They never had to Give Something to Thomas because he was always good.
But sometimes Derek wasn't nice as he was, got to feeling so bad about
himself that he couldn't stop crying, and sometimes he hit himself, just
hit himself in the face, until he broke himself open and got blood on
himself, and even then he wouldn't stop, so they had to give Him
Something For His Own Good. Derek never hit anyone else, he was nice,
but For His Own Good he sometimes had to be made to relax or sometimes
even made to sleep, which was what happened the day Mary the high-end
moron called him an imbecile.
After Derek was made to sleep, one of the aides sat beside Thomas at the
worktable. It was Cathy. Thomas liked Cathy. She was older than Julie
but not as old as somebody's mother. She was pretty. Not as pretty as
Julie but pretty, with a nice voice and eyes you weren't afraid to look
into. She took one of Thomas's hands in both of hers, and she asked if
he was okay. He said he was, but he really wasn't, and she knew it.
They talked a while. That helped. Being Sociable.
She told him about Mary, so he'd understand, and that helped too.
"She's so frustrated, Thomas. She was out their in the world for a
while, at a halfway house, and she even had a part-time job, making a
little money of her own. She was trying so hard, but it didn't work,
she had too many problems so she had to be institutionalized again. I
think she regrets what she did to Derek. She's just so disappointed
that she needed to feel superior to someone."
"I am... It was... It was out there in the world once," Thomas said.
"I know you were, honey."
"With my dad. Then with my sister. And Bobby."
"Did you like it out there?"
"Some of it... scared me. But when I was with Julie and Bobby... I
liked that part.".
On his bed, Derek was snoring now.
The afternoon was half gone. The sky was getting ugly stormy. The room
had shadows everywhere. Only the desk lamp was on. Cathy's face looked
pretty in the lampglow. Her skin was like peach-colored satin. He knew
what satin was like. Julie once had a dress of satin.
For a while he and Cathy were quiet.
Then he said, "Sometimes it's hard."
She put her hand on his head. Smoothed his hair.
"Yeah, I know, Thomas. I know." She was so nice. He didn't know why
he started to cry when she was so nice, but he did. Maybe it was
because she was so nice.
Cathy scooted her chair closer to his. He leaned against her. She put
her arms around him. He cried and cried. Not hard terrible crying like
Derek. Soft. But he couldn't stop. He tried not to cry because crying
made him feel dumb, and he hated feeling dumb.
Through his tears, he said, "I hate feeling dumb."
"You're not dumb, honey."
"Yeah, I am. Hate it. But I can't be nothing else. I try not to think
about being dumb, but you can't not think about it when it's what you
are, and when other people aren't, and they go out in the world every
day and they live, but you don't go out in the world and don't even want
to but, oh, you want to, even when you say you don't." That was a lot
for him to say, and he was surprised that he had said it all, surprised
but also frustrated because he wanted so bad to tell her how it felt,
being dumb, being afraid of going out in the world, and he'd failed,
hadn't been able to find the right words, so the feeling was still all
bottled up in him.
"Time. There's lots of time, see, when you're dumb and can't go out in
the world, lots of time to fill up, but then there really ain't enough
time, not enough for learning how to be not afraid of things, and I've
got to learn how not to be afraid so I can go back and be with Julie a
Bobby, which I want to do real bad, before all the time runs out.
There's too big amounts of time and not enough, and that sounds dumb,
don't it?"
"No, Thomas. It doesn't sound dumb."
He didn't move out of her arms. He wanted to be hugged.
Cathy said, "You know, sometimes life is hard for everyone Even for
smart people. Even for the smartest of them all."
With one hand he wiped at his damp eyes.
"It is? Sometimes is it hard for you?"
"Sometimes. But I believe there's a God, Thomas, and that he put us
here for a reason, and that every hardship we have to face is a test,
and that we're better for enduring them."
He raised his head to look at her. Such nice eyes. Good eyes. They
were eyes that loved you. Like Julie's eyes or Bobby's.
Thomas said, "God made me dumb to test me?"
"You're not dumb, Thomas. Not in some ways. I don't like to hear you
call yourself dumb. You're not as smart as some but that's not your
fault. You're different, that's all. Being.. different is your
hardship, and you're coping with it well."
"I am?"
"Beautifully. Look at you. You're not bitter. You're not sullen. You
reach out to people." "Being Sociable."
She smiled, pulled a tissue from the box of Kleenex on the worktable,
and wiped the tears from his face.
"Of all the smart peo
ple in the world, Thomas, not any one of them
handles hard ship better than you do, and most not as well."
He knew she meant what she said, and her words made him happy, even if
he didn't quite believe life was ever hard for smart people.
She stayed a while. Made sure he was okay. Then she made sure Derek
was still snoring.
Thomas sat at the worktable. Tried to make more poems.
After a while he went to the window. Rain was coming dow now. It
trickled on the glass. The afternoon was almost gone. Night was soon
coming down on top of the rain.
He put his hands against the glass. He stared into the rain into the
gray day, into the nothingness of the night that was slowly sneaking up
on them.
The Bad Thing was still out there. He could feel it. A man but not a
man. Something more than a man. Very bad. Ugly-nasty. He'd felt it
for days, but he hadn't sent a warning to Bobby since last week because
the Bad Thing wasn't coming any closer. It was far away, right now
Julie was safe, and if he sent too many warnings to Bobby, then Bobby
would stop paying attention to them, and when the Bad Thing finally
showed up, Bobby wouldn't believe in it any more, and then it would get
to Julie because Bobby wouldn't be paying attention.
What Thomas most feared was that the Bad Thing would take Julie to the
Bad Place. Their mother went to the Bad Place when Thomas was two years
old, so he'd never known her. Then their dad went to the Bad Place
Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place Page 17
