Michael Malone

by Dingley Falls

  "Fuck it," Henry whispered. He fired once into the shepherd's head. Then the room was quiet. "Okay. Everything's okay now," he said to the dead dog. Still squatting, he turned to take Judith by the shoulders. "Tell me where Chin is. Is Chin here? Where is she?"

  The woman's eyes, terrified, moved past his, came back, and looked for him as if she couldn't see him. "She's not here."

  And Henry breathed out, weights pulled off his chest. From outside he heard, without registering it, a slammed door, footsteps running, and a man's voice yelling, "Jude! Jude!"

  The woman was swallowing quickly and trying to speak again.

  "Miss Lattice first house Cromwell past Elizabeth, Chin Lam. Please.

  Help me. Please." Then she called, "John!" her body went into spasms, and she fell toward him, reaching for the towel next to her on the floor.

  While Henry tried to pull the towel around her, a large shape loomed in the hole of the window and glints of silver flashed, a badge, a gun.

  A voiceless howl twisted open John "Hawk" Haig's mouth.

  Driving to save his wife from fire, the policeman had heard three shots come from his home. The noise blew into his head and beat down reason. He was already insane when through the shattered glass he saw Maynard Henry's hands on the naked, bloody, motionless body of his wife.

  Henry saw at once that it was too late to move, and he was knocked sideways by the shot before he heard it. A burn stung through his left arm as he waved yelling, "Hey, no! Haig! Hold it!

  No!" But Haig, his silent, piercing howl still unended, fired again.

  And then Henry, trained to kill rather than be killed, raised his arm with Barnum's gun still in his hand, fired, and the shape went away from the hole in the window, and the howling stopped.

  As soon as Henry shot, he dropped the gun and crawled out through the window. But John "Hawk" Haig lay, face pressed against his careful earth and broken flowers, killed by a single trained bullet.

  "Fuck it, just fuck it!" the young thin man mumbled, shivering now in the wet T-shirt, as he bent to push his fingers against Haig's throat, knowing he would find no pulse.

  Then she was running out the door, the towel around her. He jumped over the steps and led her back, his arms impersonal but shielding. Back in the hall, he let go.

  "You his wife?"

  She nodded, read the message of John's death in Henry's face, pressed her hands against her stomach.

  "Listen, I'm sorry, but don't go out there, okay? He's gone. No, listen. I'm sure, honest, I'm sure. Hold tight. Nothing you can do."

  Then he went into the room where the blood of Limus Barnum soaked into the rug. With his thumb he lifted the eyelids. The dead eyes stared past him at some other horror, and the lips grinned a final smile.

  As Henry snapped off the talking television, he saw the rivulets of blood running down his arm, so he grabbed a wool scarf off the armchair and wrapped it around the wound where a bullet had passed cleanly through his flesh. She was still nodding when he came back into the hall. "That one's dead," he told her. "Got a robe?

  Listen, you better get something on. You're okay. Listen." He kept talking to her as he moved through the house, his hand pressing against the scarf. On the bathroom door he found two robes; he brought her the woman's. Mechanically she put it on. As he opened closet doors, she watched him and tied the cord of her robe into knot after knot.

  "Listen, okay? I'm going to take these blankets, okay?" He went back into the family room, then outside again, then he came back.

  They stood together in the hall by the open door. "Listen, I covered things up, okay? And I took the keys to that bike. Can you hear me?

  Look here. Are you all right? Look here." He shook her once by the shoulder. "Are you hurt bad?"

  Finally she shook her head, still shivering, the click of her teeth audible.

  "Okay. Now, try not to freak. Just keep breathing. Can you listen?" His frown was not as much angry as very impatient; he spoke in a hurried seriousness. "I'm going to call an ambulance to come get you, but then I'm going to get out of here. I gotta find Chin."

  Dizziness swam over her eyes as she caught at his arm. But her hand slid on blood. Her eyelids started to twitch; her eyes rolled upward.

  "Hey, lady. Hang on. Don't bum out now. You hear me?" He helped her into the living room but she pulled away, shuddering, when he tried to seat her on the velveteen sofa. He stood back. "I'm not going to do anything to hurt you. You understand?" He wound the scarf around his arm, tying it with his teeth. "I didn't come here to start shit, I was just looking for my wife. This is a bad scene. I'm sorry it got laid on you, but you saw the minute the cop saw it was me, he tried to blow me away and I couldn't get him to lay off long enough to see what was happening. You see? It was just a damn motherfucker, just tough fucking luck. I know that's shit to you, but be sure you're clear on what's true, okay? Not that it'll help. They're going to fry me for this. So I gotta go right now 'cause I gotta see Chin before they grab me. Then you can tell them what you have to.

  I don't mean to stick you in the shit, but I got to have that little bit of time. Okay? Can you handle it?"

  Judith raised her eyes to Maynard Henry's and studied them fixedly. He nodded at her. Then she could hear him telephoning.

  From the hall she watched him come out of the family room, something over his shoulder, her blanket. Judith stepped aside. The man walked, stooped, toward the door. The blanket began sliding, and the black German shepherd's head lolled limply against the thin white back, smearing the undershirt red.

  Judith Haig stood in the door while Maynard Henry struggled to wrap the dog tightly in the blanket. With his belt and the chain left there, he managed to lash Night's body to the motorcycle. Then she went back inside the house, back into the family room. She pulled the blanket away from the body of Limus Barnum.

  Outside the sky was livid now. Sweeping its blaze over the land, now climbing the ridge, fire scalded the clouds. The moon had fled.

  John "Hawk" Haig's new red brick ranch house that sat waiting to be connected to success now glowed with bright orange light. Of such force and so close was the fire that Maynard Henry, weaving dangerously up the steep grade of the ridge, did not hear above that terrible crackle the sound of a shot fired in the house behind him.

  chapter 55

  Sirens screamed through Dingley Falls. From east and west and north as well men rushed to fight, then film, the fire. The oogah-oogah call to volunteer firemen summoned from the top of Town Hall. Among the volunteers, the selectman Cecil Hedgerow and Luke Packer's father, Jerry, already clung in careful nonchalance to the side of the bright polished truck. A co-fighter, Limus Barnum, had missed the rallying horn.

  Except for William Bredforet, who paid no attention, and Coleman Sniffell, who wore wax earplugs to bed, and Mrs. Jack Strummer, who was sedated, and Sid and Kate, who were trying a new rear-entry position that required their full concentration, few Dingleyans were able to sleep through the noise of the battle.

  Winslow Abernathy in pajamas and robe was standing by his front window to watch the screaming red engines clatter past when he heard Prudence Lattice call his name as she hit at his door. In a panic of tears and agitation, the tiny woman told him that Maynard Henry, "that man," had barged into her home, set her aside, and taken Chin Lam. "His wife," the lawyer reminded Miss Lattice. But she shook her head, her fingers tremulous on his silk sleeve, and told him that Maynard Henry had not even allowed Chin time to pack her little suitcase. "Oh, Winslow, he was drenched in blood. He'll kill her, I know. She was just frightened to death."

  With a stiff hug, Abernathy assured the old woman that Chin Lam would not be hurt.

  "How can you say that?" she sobbed into the robe.

  And, of course, how could he be sure? Faith and truth need not necessarily coexist. While dread tightened on his heart, he rushed to his study to phone the police. An operator answered; neither Chief Haig nor his assistant were there. Had there been any accident
s locally? he asked her. There was a major fire, she said, is that what he meant? What did he mean? Why did he think something had happened to Judith Haig, not to Chin Lam, but to her? He telephoned the Haig residence. The repeating ring infuriated him. His heart thudded absurdly against the bones of his chest, surely audible to Pru, who had followed him and who stood, baffled, fingers to her mouth.

  "Pru, don't worry. Excuse me, I'm going to get dressed now. I'll look into this. I'm sure he's not going to hurt her, but, all right, thank you, excuse me." And he left his old neighbor there to find her way out or stay, as she chose. Upstairs in his room, where he pulled pants, shirt, and jacket on over his pajamas, Abernathy searched out the window for a plan. Absurd. He had just remembered that Beanie had taken her car, and a poet, to New York. Arthur had taken his car, and Emerald, to Litchfield. Lance, in his car, had sneaked out of town, probably, as he'd put it, to Gautamaula (sp.). And he, Winslow, apparently did not have a car of his own. A preposterous realization, but impossible to remedy after midnight. Whom could he ask? Not Evelyn, never get away; shouldn't involve Tracy; not Ernest; Scaper asleep; Smalter's light was on. He'd ask Sammy. Where were his shoes? Any shoes. He stumbled to dial his neighbor's number.

  Smalter stood on the white rococo porch, car keys in hand, and watched Winslow Abernathy flap hurriedly across the landscaped grass of Elizabeth Circle. He began to talk while still in the street.

  "Very good of you, Sammy. Hope I didn't wake Ramona."

  "Ah, you know better. She's up on that widow's walk gawking at the conflagration. Is that where you're going? I'm surprised at…what's the matter?" Smalter, his blue magnified eyes riveted on the lawyer's, suddenly felt the anxiety impatient in Abernathy's face and suddenly thought of Judith Haig alone in her house on the highway's edge.

  "Ramona didn't seem to be feeling well at all earlier today when I brought the will by," the lawyer finished his sentence.

  Smalter's hand, held out to offer the key, pulled back. "Winslow?

  What's the matter? It isn't Mrs. Haig? Has something happened to her? The fire's not all the way down to the highway, is it?"

  More stunned at what he instantly sensed were Smalter's feelings about Judith Haig than at Smalter's eerie perception, Abernathy stared down at the midget a moment, then shook his head. "I don't know," he answered. "I want to go see." His hand was still extended.

  Struggle was muted in Smalter's face. He remembered how he'd felt seeing Winslow and the postmistress sitting together in Pru's shop. Finally he gave a brisk sigh. "The pedals have been especially adjusted, you see, so you'll have to move the seat back as far as you can. I took my booster chair off. Unfortunately, Mrs. O'Neal has Ramona's car, or you could take that because I'm afraid someone as tall as you is going to look ridiculous folded up in this roadster."

  Abernathy reached again for the key. "Oh, don't worry about that, Sammy."

  "I don't," replied Mr. Smalter, leading the way up the dark brick walk to the Victorian carriage house.

  With an enthusiastic sense of destiny, two young emergency van attendants (one of them brand-new at the job) jolted onto Route 3 toward what they assumed, from the fleet of fire trucks in the area, must be a major disaster on the order of a supersonic jet crashing on top of the house to which they had been directed by Maynard Henry's anonymous call. Slammed to a stop, the young men ran around an opened empty patrol car, its light flashing, and suddenly saw a woman crouched over in the yard beneath a huge broken picture window. They found her picking slivers of glass from the body of a dead policeman, whose head lay on the skirt of her robe.

  Inside the house they found a male body sprawled naked except for the pants wadded around his feet. Bloody holes gaped in his groin and chest and face, three bright red-splattered openings in his flesh, and all around him the rug was sticky with dark stains. The younger attendant lurched back outside and vomited into a laurel bush. The older called the state police, as he was unable to persuade the woman to answer his questions about what he described to the patrol as looking like a double-murder gunfight over somebody's wife.

  Convinced that despite her bruised face and bloodstained robe the survivor was not critically injured, he simply gave her a shot to tranquilize her—not that she had offered the slightest resistance to anything they did, but lay, tightly wrapped, on the stretcher as they wheeled her into the van and screeched away. The new driver was worried that his partner might have seen him vomit; he feared too that he had sounded inanely naïve with his, "Gosh, I don't believe it, a shoot-out!" which he cursed himself for having exclaimed. He flipped on the siren and gunned the motor, forcing the car in front of him halfway onto the shoulder, then sped past with belligerent legality at ninety miles an hour.

  Shortly before 1:00 A.M. the tiny bright yellow MG Midget was stopped by the roadblock set up on Route 3 to forestall locals and vacationers from driving up the ridge to sightsee. With some difficulty and more embarrassment, Winslow Abernathy, almost bent double, unraveled himself from the roadster, noticing as he extricated a leg that he wore no sock and that his pajamas showed below his pants cuff. The area looked like a battle station. With a group of men (among them the Argyle fire chief), Cecil Hedgerow stood bent over a car hood where a surveyor's map flapped up at the corners. For a wind had risen, after the still, sullen day, and now the fire licked south and westward, huge and hot even where they stood. "It doesn't look good," said Hedgerow, his own face singed and his hands white bandaged mitts. "It could head straight through Birch Forest and wipe out all those vacation homes around here." He swept an arm across the map to Lake Pissinowno. "Or worse, if the wind suddenly swings directly south, it's possible it could jump the highway and go down East Woods. Could get Dingley O.I. before the Rampage stopped it. Hell, it could go right into Dingley Falls.

  The damn thing was, nobody could get to it, it seemed to start out in the middle of nowhere!" And with disgust, he circled the area near Bredforet Pond.

  Abernathy tried to fold his jacket up over his open shirt, through which his pajama top poked. "What about the Haig house?" he asked.

  "Somebody told you what happened there? Unbelievable!"

  "Tell me what?!" Terrified, he turned Hedgerow back toward him. "Cecil! What?"

  And the selectman matter-of-factly (too exhausted for horror) explained that John Haig had been killed a few hours earlier, it appeared, at his house. So had another man, not yet identified as far as he knew. And Mrs. Haig…Abernathy's head was bursting against his eardrums…was in shock; Hedgerow didn't know how serious it was, but she was in the hospital, he thought, in Argyle. He did know there'd been a problem here between the fire department (who were considering water blasting or even dynamiting along that strip, should the wind turn the fire toward Dingley Falls) and the state police (who didn't want anything destroyed that was possible evidence in the vicinity of possible homicides).

  Abernathy left Hedgerow arguing that he could not let any more heavy fire equipment cross the rickety Falls Bridge, while the fire chief, more accustomed to disaster, accepted a Coke, yelled into his car radio mike, poked at the map with jabs of his finger, and posed for a photographer from the Argyle Standard. Word was that volunteer fire teams from three counties were working together to keep the situation under control. In addition, extra Madder volunteers (rounded up by Carl Marco, by whom most of them were employed) were up on the ridge wetting down the ground and trees and trying to clear a gap in the fire's path. It might work. And it might rain; the latest weather report gave a 50 percent chance of precipitation. And what you learn, the chief confessed to the reporter, after a life's experience, is that you never know what's going to happen and you better stop pretending you do.

  Turned back by the roadblock, Winslow Abernathy (overaccelerating and popping the clutch) jerked the MG around, scraping the bumper of Ernest Ransom's Mercedes parked beside the road, and sped back through Dingley Falls. Racing back through a town that fire might raze. And though it bore his wife's name, had sheltered her fami
ly for three hundred years, and him and his for the last thirty of those, he was not thinking of Dingley Falls, but only of driving past it without getting killed. He felt that he looked like a clown in a tiny circus car, his knees around the steering wheel, as the yellow roadster motored, veering, loudly down High Street while emergency vehicles, rerouted from Falls Bridge, raced by in the other direction.

  Sammy Smalter's car roared past Alexander Hamilton Academy, where Walter Saar and Jonathan Fields lay together a little less awkwardly than the night before. Past the Bredforets', where Mary stood by the street to watch the excitement while Bill Deeds warned her they should wake William and evacuate the house. It roared past Glover's Lane, where, seated on the toilet, A.A. Hayes was shocked by the changing times as revealed in his son's "girlie" magazine, as he himself had once called them; shocked by the erection the photos had given him; shocked by the unremembering innocence that allowed him even for a second to delude himself into supposing that his wife, June, would let him make love to her tonight if his life depended upon it. Feeling like a moronic teenager, he checked the lock sheepishly, then began to masturbate. No doubt, this was exactly why he could never get into the john; because that's what his sons Tac and Charlie were doing in here, and probably his daughters Suellen and little Vickie, too. By phone, Hayes had already dispatched the annoyed Coleman Sniffell to go interview the fire fighters, but if the town started to actually burn down, he was going to have to get involved himself. Funny to think of a northern town burning down while a southerner played with himself. Shocked, Hayes realized he was getting ready to ejaculate. He spun some toilet paper quickly off the roll.

  The MG hurried past Elizabeth Circle, where Evelyn Troyes phoned Tracy Canopy to come help her make sandwiches to take up to the fire fighters. Past all the houses where Dingleyans stood in various stages of dishabille and watched from various vantage points as sulfurous clouds illumined by flames surged and swirled through a red sky. Up Cromwell Hill Road and on to Argyle. But all Winslow Abernathy could think of was the absurd notion that if Judith Haig were dying, he had only to get there in time to grab hold of both her hands and then he could pull her back, out of the arms of death.