by Jack Todd
Travis slips the cruiser into gear and drives toward town. He’s making the turn onto Main Street when he passes a parade of vehicles headed in the opposite direction, most of them oversized pickup trucks with teenagers riding in the back despite the cold. He shrugs, figuring they’re headed for a party somewhere. Same thing he’d be doing if he wasn’t on duty.
Travis parks the cruiser and steps into the fragrant warmth of the donut shop. There are a couple of insomniac codgers seated at the counter, so there will be no slipping into the toilet for a knee-trembler with Bridget. She bags his favorite donuts, pours his coffee, whispers that she’ll make it up to him when their shifts end in the morning. Travis lingers and Bridget obligingly undoes the top button of her uniform and bends over to give him an eyeful. They’re still whispering to each other when one of the codgers clears his throat to get the deputy’s attention. “You see all them pickup trucks heading out of town, Travis?”
“Yep. Figure there must be a party somewhere.”
“There’s already been a party, deputy. Expect you ought to know that much. They were down at the Bald Eagle the last six or seven hours, drinking hard. Albert Fall says they were bragging about how they’d go out to Rose’s place and mess up old Poe, maybe drag him down to the gallows the Carney boys built. I expect it was all talk, but you still got another deputy out there just in case, isn’t that right?”
Travis shakes his head. “Nah, not exactly. I’m pretty much it tonight.”
He’s trying to ignore the man, but the old coot won’t let it drop. “Hell, I ain’t one to tell a man how to do his job, Travis, but maybe you ought to get back out there and make sure everything is alright. Them folks was liquored up bad. They weren’t lookin to get into a snowball fight.”
“They were drunk, you’re saying?”
“You gotta take the badge out of your ears, deputy. That’s what I said before. They are drunk and hostile, and there’s a big bunch. I don’t think they’d be fool enough to try something, but you never know. Thing with a mob, they get to egging each other on, you don’t know what they might do.”
Travis mulls it over. Chances are there’s nothing going on. Among the bunch who drink at the Bald Eagle are some youngsters who don’t mean much harm, but there are a few genuine hard cases in the mix, like the Carney brothers. He grabs his hat and treats himself to one last peek at Bridget’s bosom. “I suppose I’d better get back out there, doll. I’ll see you in the morning.”
In the cruiser, he curses the old men. Busybody old bastards. They’re on his case because they’re jealous that he has Bridget and they don’t, but they’re just the type to call Jim Dunn and say his deputy was lollygagging at the donut shop when he should have been keeping watch. Four more hours and the long winter night will be over, he’ll be off his shift, and he’ll have Bridget to keep him warm.
~
A ring of stones
They come on snowmobiles and in muscle cars and on giant pickup trucks with oversized tires. They have been drinking for hours, working themselves to a frenzy. They park in a semicircle facing the yellow house. They’re a wild crowd, always have been, but the worst they have done before this night is get drunk and spray-paint the high school or break the windows on a row of trucks parked outside the cement factory. They’re still drinking hard, the drivers as drunk as their passengers. They have cases of beer in the beds of the pickups and bottles of rum and vodka and wine are making the rounds. The biggest of the trucks is blaring Black Sabbath at ground-shaking volume. The only ones missing are the Carney brothers, who egged the mob on and then said they were going to head home to oil up the trap door in the gallows and get it ready for Poe.
No decision is made. They’re looking for trouble, but they don’t know what sort of trouble. Some think they should haul Poe back to the gallows at the Carney place and hang him because a good, solid gallows like that shouldn’t go to waste. Others just want to knock Poe around a little to scare him. More than anything, they are filled with an aimless, unfocused hate that has settled on Poe as its unsuspecting target. There is evil afoot in the land and someone must pay, and for reasons none of them could articulate, that someone must be Poe. Not one soul in the mob speaks up to say that given the verdict of the jury, Poe might actually be innocent. He’s different, he’s strange. They’ve been hearing all their lives that the man is a mutant, and for a mutant to do what he did to a beautiful human girl, well, it just won’t do. They secretly thrill at the thought of the giant taking his enormous pecker out of those OshKosh B’gosh overalls he wears and impaling the helpless girl with it, but he must pay nonetheless.
What happens next occurs as though preordained by some unholy stroke of fate. Someone produces a gallon jug that has been emptied of wine. Somebody else siphons gasoline from one of the pickup trucks to fill the jug. One of the girls reaches up under her dress to slip off her panties, laughing and holding them up for everyone to see before she soaks them in gasoline and stuffs them in the neck of the bottle.
“That’s how you make a Malakhov cocktail, see?”
“Molotov.”
“Huh?”
“Molotov. It’s a Molotov cocktail.”
“Well, Stevie, ain’t you the little know-it-all teacher’s pet? Maybe we ought to light your snotty little ass on fire. What’s it matter what it’s called? It lights things on fire, that’s all I got to know.”
A kid who has his father’s Zippo from the Korean War offers to light the torch right there, and would have, except someone yells that they have to get closer to the house or it will blow up in their faces before they have time to throw it. The kid with the Zippo follows a tall blond youth carrying the bottle. The tall kid is so drunk he can’t judge distance. He crouches in the snow thirty feet from the house, and the Zippo kid tugs at his jacket, hollering that they aren’t close enough.
They are too drunk to be quiet, but there’s no sign of life from the house. The tall kid runs to a snow-covered bush a dozen feet from the front door and waits for the one with the Zippo to light the torch. He has to flick the old lighter four or five times before it catches. It’s turned all the way up and the flame shoots six inches in the air. The gasoline-soaked panties in the neck of the bottle catch fire, and the boy holding the jug stares at the flame, mesmerized and immobile, with people yelling at him to throw it before it blows up in his hands. He panics and pitches it like a baseball, and the big window on the south side of the house shatters. They hear the crash of the flaming cocktail exploding inside. The blond boy and the kid with the Zippo run back to the trucks and stand with the rest of them to watch. A big football player who can barely walk stumbles over a pile of rocks hidden under the snow, stones Poe had collected for the wall. He digs out a rock and slings it at the house because he’s mad that he fell. The cry goes up. “Rocks, rocks, we got plenty of rocks over here if you want to throw ’em.” They dive into the pile and grab stones by the handful and start chucking them at the house in a gleeful, destructive frenzy.
Rose is a light sleeper, but on this night she’s exhausted, in the deepest sleep she’s had since Poe was jailed. She hears the crash of the exploding window as though in a dream, but doesn’t wake. It’s the smell of gasoline that finally rouses her, gasoline and the crackling of flames. From the shed out back, she hears the frantic honking of the geese. She sits up and pokes her feet into her slippers. She has just stepped through the door into the sitting room when the curtains burst into flames with a whoosh! and a wall of heat drives her back. She struggles into her robe and shakes Poe hard. He’s easy to rouse when it’s time to get up, but if you try to wake him in the middle of the night it’s like waking a corpse. She bounces him up and down on the bed and shouts into his ear. “Poe! Poe! The house is afire! You got to get up, Poe!”
Poe rolls over onto his back, but he’s still snoring. Rose tugs at his arm, trying to drag him out of bed, but she can’t budge him. The room has started
to fill with smoke and she can feel the heat from the fire. She tries to reach the kitchen to get a basin of water to throw in Poe’s face, but the fire has spread and there is no way through. She smashes the bedroom window with her elbow, but the opening is far too small for either of them to squeeze through, and the oxygen simply feeds the fire. Frantically, she slaps his face, screaming, “Poe! Poe! You gotta wake up, honey! We’re gonna die in here!”
Something, perhaps part of the ceiling, collapses in the living room and a shower of sparks shoots underneath the bedroom door. She slaps Poe again, putting all her strength into it. He lifts his head, still groggy, thinking he’s back in jail, trying to understand why his mother is hitting him in the middle of the night.
Heavy black smoke pours into the room along with the stench of burning linoleum from the kitchen. Rose, gagging and coughing and overcome with smoke, topples to her knees, then falls onto her side, unconscious. Poe tries to open the door, but the doorknob is so hot he burns his fingers and jumps back, shaking his hand. He tries to get Rose to stand up, but her body is limp. He bends his knees, hefts his mother over his shoulders, and lifts her in the fireman’s carry, the same way he had borne Miranda, only Rose is much heavier. He staggers under her weight, takes a deep breath, charges at the bedroom door, and bursts into the maelstrom of flames that is the living room. Poe stumbles back, but there is no other way out. He lowers his head and, with a roar like a wounded bear, barrels through the living room to the front door, shatters it with a heave from one shoulder, and bursts into the clear cold night. There he stands, teetering and barefoot in the snow with Rose over his shoulders, surveying the pickups and snowmobiles parked in a ring, the people screaming at him, their faces flushed from the fire and contorted with rage, the scene lit by the burning house and the halogen lamps atop the pickups.
The sight of him rouses the mob. There he is! That’s Poe! That’s the goddamn rapist mutant who done that girl! Get him! Take the freak down!
Poe feels a surge of heat down his back. Rose is on fire, her nightgown blazing. He lies her down and tries to douse the flames by packing her in big handfuls of snow, but the first stone catches him in the jaw and spins him around, and another thuds into his rib cage. He roars in pain and turns to face his tormentors. Most of them are at it now, even the girls, chucking rocks as hard as they can throw them. They’re staggering drunk and their aim is terrible, but there are so many rocks coming that Poe can’t dodge them all. He charges at the biggest of them, lifts the boy over his head, and throws him into the bodies of two others. The three of them go down in a heap, but scramble to their feet and back away, still hurling rocks at him as they retreat. A jagged hunk of granite opens a gash high on Poe’s forehead. He backhands a boy who gets too close and sends him flying, but another catches Poe in the knee with a three-pound stone. The leg collapses and Poe falls.
“What’d I do?” he roars as he goes down. “What’d I do? I didn’t do nothin. What’d I do?”
They laugh and point, chanting “Freak! Freak! Freak! Freak! Mutant! Kill him! Kill him! Kill the freak!” Some of the girls are laughing, too, although one girl is crying and begging them, “Please stop please stop please stop, you’re going to kill him.”
The bloodthirst is on them and they pay her no attention. A rock catches Poe behind the ear and dazes him. Blood from the wound on his forehead is pouring into his eyes, leaving him half blind. He is howling from the pain in his leg, and he feels lightheaded and weak. Behind him, Rose has stopped moaning. Poe thinks she must be dead, and he is collapsing under a hail of stones. A boy lifts a pitchfork like a javelin, preparing to hurl it at Poe to finish him off, while others cavort like devils, dancing in the wild yellow light from the burning house. With one hand, Poe reaches back for Rose, seeking her hand, finding it, pulling it to him as his world goes black.
In his cabin up the hill, Wild Bill De Graaff hears the commotion down at Rose’s place and climbs out of bed, cursing. He looks out the window and sees the big gathering of pickup trucks and guesses the rest. He steps into his boots and pulls on a coat and gloves and is just heading out the door when he sees the little yellow house go up in flames. He jogs to the pickup as fast as his old legs will carry him, starts the engine, reaches back to make sure the shotgun is in its rack, and goes careening down the hill, leaning on his horn all the way.
To get to Rose’s place, he has to go all the way down to the highway and double back along the path that leads to her house. As his old truck slips and slides along the icy track and he fights to keep it out of the ditch, he sees Poe surrounded like a bear fighting a pack of wild dogs, sees him catch a rock flush in the mouth and go down on his knees, trapped by an angry mob flinging stones at him from five or six feet away, closing in for the kill. Bill hauls the shotgun out of its rack and holds it out the window as he drives straight into the pack, feeling the solid impact as the truck sends two boys flying. The pickup spins its wheels in the snow and stalls. Bill jumps out, desperation rendering him spry for his age, the shotgun at his hip. It’s a pump-action twelve-gauge, and at close range it will wreak havoc. The first blast catches the hip of the tall blond boy who had thrown the Molotov cocktail into the house. The boy is fifty feet away, but it’s still enough to spin him around. The buckshot at that distance has scattered too much to do real damage, but the kid yelps and limps off into the darkness, screaming at Bill. “Are you crazy, you old fart? You’re trying to kill me!” Bill pumps another round into the chamber and fires straight over his head.
The mob scatters, the worst of the troublemakers running for their vehicles in the face of an assault from one crazy old man. A muscle car spins its wheels into a snowbank and stalls. A snowmobile takes off, runs twenty feet, and upends on a snowbank. Two or three pickup trucks get away, but there are still half a dozen boys chucking rocks at Poe from a safe distance. Bill turns to point the shotgun at them, but another snowmobile bears down on him. He has just enough time to raise the shotgun to his shoulder before the snowmobile catches him in the legs and sends him somersaulting into the snow. He knows before he lands that both his legs are broken, but he still manages to fire one last shell into the shins of a muscular kid who is still chucking rocks before he blacks out.
One of the boys is reaching down to grab the shotgun when they hear the siren. The remaining youngsters scatter. Snowmobiles speed off. The pickup trucks with their oversized tires cut across the snow. Travis Proulx tries to block one with his cruiser, but the truck rams him out of the way. The cruiser spins and stalls and he sits with the engine steaming, surveying the scene. The house is almost gone and the sheds where the goats and geese are kept are blazing, showers of sparks erupting into the night sky, lighting the scene so that he can see the wounded where they have fallen. A blackened goat with half its face missing staggers toward the car on shaky legs and walks right up to him before it falls over, stone dead.
Travis is on the radio, talking to the dispatcher, unable to remember the police codes, if there was ever a code for any of this other than mayhem and catastrophe. “You got to get everybody out to Rose’s place! Everybody. All hell has broke loose! Get the sheriff, get every deputy, get the state police, get the fire department. And ambulances, we’re gonna need a shitload of ambulances. We got multiple individuals down, we got wounded, we got some that might be dead, we got buildings burning. It’s like the freaking apocalypse out here.”
~
Return of the messenger
Prosper Thorne is having one of his lucid nights, lying awake pondering the wreckage of his life: the broken alliance with the usurper Anthony Coyle that sent him into exile, the remnants of what had been a brilliant legal mind now like the shards of glass left at an intersection after a three-car accident, his beautiful daughter, Miranda, apparently healthy but still missing three weeks of her young life and part of her soul. She has not returned to Cambridge and now it seems that she never will. She makes up various excuses, but he knows that the
real reason she isn’t going back is because she has to care for him. He is old and helpless, and the very last thing he wanted for her has come to pass: she is tethered to him by the frailty of his mind. Only his death will set her free.
It sometimes seems to Thorne that old age is one long aria of regret. All the mistakes a man makes in a lifetime wait until he has nothing left but to contemplate himself and the wrong turns he has made, and then they haunt him through every waking hour and filter into his dreams. He is still wallowing in that sea of regret when he hears the Kawasaki Ninja screaming up the county road, then Airmail pounding at the door as though he has come to announce that Judgment Day has arrived at last. So, the messenger has returned. Thorne sighs wearily, steps into his slippers, pulls on a dressing gown, and pads downstairs, cursing with every step.
When he opens the door, Airmail bursts through, bringing a blast of icy air with him. Thorne slams the door shut and turns to confront him. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing pounding on my door at this hour?”
Airmail performs a little bow. “So sorry, boss. I come bearing sad news, but I have a terrible thirst. I’ll just help myself to a beer from your fridge, good man.”
“The sun isn’t even up.”
“Then it’s still night and drinking time, is it not?”
Airmail pops open a Rolling Rock, pours half of it down his throat, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then shakes his head sadly. “I bring terrible news. The hounds of hell were turned loose in the night. They set fire to Rose’s house, burned it to the ground, then they went after Rose and Poe. Seeking vengeance for the crime committed on the person of your daughter.”
Thorne sits heavily, his face white. “That’s impossible. Miranda said Poe was acquitted.”
