by James Newman
“I mean...Jesus...you saw for yourself, Kate.” David’s voice dropped to a whisper, and even as he spoke they watched Becca on the floor, vigorously scratching again behind her ears, at the nape of her neck. “She’s infested with the damn things. Crawling with them.”
“It’s not the end of the world,” Kate said. “We’ll fix it.”
Becca turned to them then and her hand was outstretched toward Kate, her fingers pinched together. “I got another one, Mommy.”
Kate stood, took the tiny, wiggling thing from between Becca’s fingernails. This one, too, was doomed for the toilet.
David made a sour face, swallowed.
“Another one,” Becca said. “I bet I got them from that dirty old man.”
“We covered that already, Becca,” David said sternly.
Becca did not acknowledge that fact. She stared at her father and said in a quiet voice, “Yeah, Daddy, but you should have seen some of the things that were crawling through his beard.”
“Becca—”
“I’ll bet that’s where I got it. When he put his yucky beard on me.”
The Littles wasted no time in taking care of Becca’s problem. That evening they drove to Frank’s Grocery across town and bought three bottles of specially-medicated lice shampoo (100% EFFECTIVE! boasted the red and white bottle with the stop-sign logo on the front, KILLS LICE AND THEIR EGGS WITH ONE TREATMENT!). David felt embarrassed taking the product up to the front counter, though, and—in a rare moment that hardly suited Kate’s personality—she jerked the bottles out of his hand, frowned at him, and claimed she didn’t give a damn what people thought.
David shrugged, walked away to thumb through an issue of Sports Illustrated at the magazine rack while Kate paid for the stuff.
They followed the directions inside the box upon returning home. There was much more to the procedure, though, than just washing Becca’s hair with the special shampoo. Per the instructions, they also had to go through the child’s curls strand by strand with a special comb (included in the package) in order to pick out all of the unhatched nits. It was a very tedious process. Kate lost count of how many times she had to tell Becca to sit still, and at one point when the little girl threw a temper tantrum, crossed her arms and roughly slammed herself back against Kate’s belly, Kate lightly slapped her daughter several times on her naked legs, something she later regretted and apologized for despite the motto which had been her upbringing: spare the rod and spoil the child.
Finally, David went to bed before their task was complete, citing extreme boredom.
Kate frowned, shook her head as he walked off. She didn’t appreciate his turning in early, but she chose not to argue with her husband. A mother’s job is never done, she figured.
The whole procedure took nearly all night. David had been right—Becca’s head was crawling with the things.
One thing Kate didn’t tell her husband, however, was that lice were never this big. These things were at least five times the size of normal adult lice, some as big as baby cockroaches.
Becca had to have contracted the vermin somewhere. But where?
Kate refused to entertain the possibility that her daughter might have been correct. That she had contracted the lice from...the old man in her nightmare, for God’s sake?
That was nothing short of ridiculous.
Still, she couldn’t help but wonder...
No. Such a thing was impossible.
Impossible.
CHAPTER 16
“Sheriff,” Mavis said from behind her desk. “Phone call.”
Mavis Ledbetter was sixty years old, a shrewd old woman with hair the color of storm clouds and a bosom larger than any Sheriff Guice had ever seen. She was the best dispatcher he’d ever employed, and if sometimes Guice’s high opinion of her was influenced by the fact that Mavis baked one hell of a batch of chocolate-chip cookies, then so be it. Mavis had been described as “grandmotherly” by more than one Morganville citizen, but such comparisons ended with her appearance. She could be an ornery sort sometimes—that was one hell of an understatement, actually, as Mavis favored off-color humor and politically-incorrect jokes over talk of bake sales and church get-togethers any day—but Guice loved her like one of his own relatives. She had been with the department far longer than he had been Sheriff of Morgan County, and Sam hoped her frequent threats to retire on days when things weren’t going well were only that, idle threats. He didn’t know what he would do without her.
“Tell ‘em I’m busy,” Sheriff Guice grunted. He’d been in a foul mood all week, and he saw no need to break the cycle now. Hell, it was Friday—might as well finish out the week the same way it started. As an afterthought, though, he supposed he should ask: “Who is it, Mavis?”
“Joel Rohrig. Says you’re expecting a call from him.”
Guice’s eyebrows rose with curiosity. “Right. I’ll take it in my office. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Sam Guice walked past the dispatcher’s desk—briefly frowning at the sticker on the side of her PC monitor: I’D SLAP YOU BUT SHIT SPLATTERS (he’d asked Mavis to remove it time after time, citing how unprofessional it appeared, but Mavis had ignored his demands thus far, so he rarely tried anymore)—and entered his office. He pulled his squeaking swivel chair up to his desk, a desk that normally remained so clean and tidy but over the past few weeks had become covered with paperwork. Things had changed in Morganville of late, and Sheriff Guice longed for the days when his shift dragged by, when the peak of his day meant pulling over some out-of-towner with lead in his foot out on Brookside Boulevard.
He glanced at the Dawson report, which lay open on the desk before him, before picking up the phone. “Guice speaking.”
“Sheriff. It’s Joel Rohrig.”
“You got something for me?”
“I sure do. But when all is said and done, I’m afraid it’ll raise more questions than it answers.”
“Wonderful,” Guice groaned.
“The toxicology results are back on the Dawson boy,” Joel said. “Are you ready for this?”
“Shoot.”
“Billy Dawson definitely died from some sort of poison. Question is, what sort of poison was it? This was no spider bite, no bee sting, nothing we’ve ever seen before. Even the boys in Raleigh are stumped.”
“So what exactly are you telling me?” Guice asked.
“There’s the rub, Sheriff. I don’t know. The results were one hundred percent conclusive that the boy died from those stings. Hell, you and I knew that the first time we looked at him. But we’ve never seen anything like that toxin I drew from his veins. It’s some new strain, apparently, and I’ve got to be honest with you: frankly, I’m clueless.”
“Snakebites, maybe?”
“Negative. Like I said, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Homicide?”
“No,” Joel replied. “I don’t think we’re looking at a homicide here. A freak accident of nature, if anything.”
Guice sighed.
“Any other ideas?” Joel said.
“How about a new sheriff?” That thought had crossed Guice’s mind more than once since he and Deputy Keenan paid their awful visit to Billy Dawson’s mother. It was never easy informing a parent that his or her child was dead. Never easy at all. And now they couldn’t even offer the poor woman the consolation of answers to the questions the whole town was asking: What happened to Billy Dawson? How did he die? Was he murdered?
Both men knew there was nothing much else to say. Softly, Rohrig said, “I’m gonna go now, Sheriff. I have lots to do. I’ll call you if I find anything else that might be helpful, okay?”
“Please do,” Guice replied. His voice was weak. “Thanks, Joel. Thanks for everything.”
“It’s my job.”
“Merry Christmas to you and yours, son.”
“Same back at you, Sheriff.”
Sheriff Guice hung up. For several long minutes after the connection was se
vered, he just sat there staring at the paperweight upon his desk—a scorpion preserved in a rock-hard crescent of amber, with ARIZONA inscribed upon the label at its base. It was a souvenir Mavis had brought back for him when she vacationed there several years before.
Ugliest damn thing he’d ever seen. Guice frowned at it, wondered why he even kept it around. But then he remembered why...because there were a hell of a lot more papers on his desk to keep weighted down these days.
CHAPTER 17
Only two days until Christmas, and the Littles were just getting around to shopping for the holiday. With everything they needed to do since moving to Morganville—settling in, their search for a new obstetrician for Kate, getting back into the swing of things with Becca’s home-schooling—they had been unable to find enough hours in the day to add Christmas shopping to their already exhausting list of things to do before the end of the month. David finally finished his latest project, the cover to that sci-fi novel he’d been working on ever since they left New York but he could never seem to get just right, and as soon as he was done (or at least satisfied that the painting was the best it was going to be) he cleaned up and announced to Kate and Becca that they were going out.
Immediately Becca began to enlighten her parents on everything she wanted Santa Claus to bring her for Christmas this year. Kate and David eyed one another, their mouths turned up in excited little grins of their own, as Becca described in vivid detail the new Barbie bicycle she had seen in the Sears Wish-Book and had to have or she would just die, about the Barbie Sing-Along Radio and Just-4-Kidz Kitchen Set with a real working microwave—she couldn’t wait to cook Daddy some of those oatmeal raisin cookies he loved so—and the Baby Bouncy-Bear that danced and jiggled spastically across the floor when you gave him a really big hug. Kate and David nodded the whole time, unable to get a word in edgewise. The little girl’s sentences all ran together as she insisted that she’d been a really good girl this year and hopefully Santa would bring her so many toys she wouldn’t know what to do with them all.
“That’s up to Mommy and Daddy to decide,” David said as they packed into the 4Runner and headed for the Morganville Mall across town. He offered Kate a sly wink. “Santa confers with us very closely, you know.”
“Really? You told him I’ve been a good girl, didn’t you, Daddy? Didn’t you?”
David looked at Kate, and she turned to gaze out the window, hiding her own smile. “That’s for us to know and for you to find out.”
“Daddy!” Becca giggled. “I have been a good girl. A very good girl. Mommy, tell him!”
Kate’s shoulders shook with the laughter she attempted to hold inside. She glanced back at Becca, shrugged.
“There’s something you’ve got to understand, Little One,” David explained. “Santa doesn’t just confer with us a couple days before Christmas.”
“What do you mean?” Becca asked.
“He confers with Mommy and Daddy all year.”
“Uh-oh.”
Kate and David laughed.
Finally, though, Kate let Becca off the hook: “I think you’re going to have a wonderful Christmas, baby.”
“Yay!” Becca squealed.
After several more minutes of excited jabbering about all the things she couldn’t wait to open Christmas morning, Becca’s tiny face took on a look of severe concentration.
“Mommy, Daddy...what’s Santa’s telephone number?”
“What?” David laughed.
“You said you talk to him all year. So what’s his telephone number?”
Busted. David desperately tried to keep a straight face. “That’s, um, privileged information, sweet-pea. I’m afraid it’s against the law to give out Santa’s phone number.”
“Really?” Becca was astounded.
“Really.”
“Wow,” Becca said. Another minute or so of deep, freckle-faced introspection, then: “What would they do to you if you broke the law, Daddy? If you gave out Santa’s number, would you go to jail?”
“Depends on the circumstances,” David said. “I doubt it. I probably just wouldn’t get any Christmas presents for the next thirty years or so.”
“Oh, no! That would be awful!”
“Awful indeed.”
“So what’s the verdict on Mommy and Daddy?” Kate asked. “Do you think we’ve been good all year?”
Becca seemed to ponder that one for several seconds. “Yeah...yeah, I do.”
Both Kate and David sighed with mock relief.
“Mommy’s been very good,” Becca said. “You, Daddy...you’ve been okay, I guess.”
David gasped. “Just ‘okay’?”
“Yeah, you’ve been pretty good. I think you’ll do fine this year, too.”
They all laughed together, long and loud, as they entered the parking lot of the Morganville Mall.
CHAPTER 18
As his truck neared the Morganville Mall, Fred Dawson wished he was fuckin’ dead. He was scum. Dirt. He didn’t deserve to live.
Back when he had first met Billy’s mother, the world seemed like a sparkling diamond in the palm of his hand. He and Donna had fallen in love so quickly, and so young—Donna had dreams of attending college, one day becoming a lawyer, while he worked toward getting his GED after dropping out of West Morganville High—and they were so sure nothing could ever go wrong. Their love seemed the answer to all their problems, the cure to the world’s every ill.
Then Donna got knocked up.
He hadn’t meant for it to happen, neither of them had, but sometimes Fred Dawson thought God brought him into this crummy world just to laugh at him every time he tried to do something right. Like his old man used to say when Fred was growing up: “shit happens.” So true, those ingenious words of Dawson intellect: Shit happens, and ninety-nine percent of the time it happens right in the path you’re walkin’...
Many times since then, Fred had wondered how the hell she had gotten pregnant. Of course, he knew how it happened—ha-fuckin’-ha—but he never understood what went wrong the night Billy was conceived. He’d worn a rubber, something Fred Dawson hated to do with every fiber of his being. On the night in question—a warm August evening down in Greenville, South Carolina—Fred had been driving a truck for AutoZone and Donna had traveled with him that weekend, as they were inseparable at that point in their relationship. Fred had tried just once in his life to do the responsible thing, to try and prevent another inevitable Dawson fuck-up before it happened. And still God pulled the rug out from under him and laughed like a fucking hyena when Fred fell flat on his ass.
For the first year of his son’s life, Fred had tried his damnedest to play the role. At least, he fooled himself into thinking he had tried. Fatherhood was never something Fred wanted. He dreamed of spending carefree hours with Donna on his days off like teenagers struck with puppy love, their imaginations their only restriction. He had plans, plans to make something of himself, as well as allowing Donna to do the same. But all of that had been tossed out the window thanks to one tiny hole in one Extra-Large Ramses condom.
It wasn’t fucking fair.
Fred began to drink, shortly after Donna told him the news. Heavily. And where he had never harbored any desire to cheat on her before, he began to flirt with other women while out on the road hauling this or that to here or there. Once he even picked up the clap from some lot lizard at a truck stop down in Alabama—Donna had never let him live that one down, even though Fred saw it as just another honest mistake. Then she had told him nine months after Billy was born that she just couldn’t take it anymore. She told him to get out, and Fred had to admit that it had been a long time coming. He was not upset when it finally happened, not even angry, really; in fact, he felt a great weight lift off of him. No more living a lie. No more futile efforts toward playing that impossible role. It had been, in all honesty, what Fred wanted all along.
They had spoken, weeks later. Donna had assured him that every child needs a father, and if he decided to do the r
ight thing she would never prevent him from seeing his son.
He had tried. At first. Fred tried to do the things with Billy fathers are supposed to do: taking the boy camping on cool summer nights, picking him up to go to the movies on those rare weekends when he wasn’t working, even just dropping by Donna’s place to toss a softball back and forth with Billy despite usually being too drunk to catch half of his son’s gentle throws. But he had known all along that he was merely going through the motions. Fred Dawson was a nomad, a traveler lured by the freedom of the open road, with no ties to home, family or responsibility. He had never wanted a life that fit snugly into the strict borders defined by 2.5 squalling kids, the white picket fence with the peeling paint, and the Golden Retriever with the gimp leg.
Gradually, his visits with Billy grew more and more infrequent. In those early years, Fred would drop by at least once every few weeks to see his son, but then as Billy saw his fifth, sixth, and seventh birthdays, those visits dwindled to once every two or three months...until, eventually, Fred Dawson saw his boy only a couple times a year.
Fred tried to rationalize his icy attitude toward his son, had denied time and again to himself as well as Donna that he was just another deadbeat father. Shortly after Billy turned seven, he tried to blame it all on Donna’s marriage to another man. Problem was, Fred knew she owed him nothing. As much as he hated to admit it, Donna had every right to move on. And Fred actually liked her new husband. Joe Evanson was good to Donna, fantastic with Billy, so Fred ultimately recognized his excuses as nothing short of pathetic.
He was scum. Dirt. He knew it. And he didn’t deserve to live.
Fred cursed himself now, wished he was dead for what felt like the millionth time since he first heard the news a little over two weeks ago. God, how he wished he had it all to do over. If he had really tried, dedicated himself toward doing what he knew deep in his heart was right, he could have been a father to Billy. He could have given up the booze, the life on the road, and he could have been there for his son.
