The shrieking ceased.
Cavell and Younker stepped carefully toward the cell, peering into the dim depths.
Gray yarn swayed in the aftermath of Ms. Burgett’s frenzy. Through it they could see her crouched against the far wall. She was staring at them and smiling.
Cavell tapped Younker’s sleeve with a shaking finger. “All right, she’s calm now. Let’s go.”
“Yes, let’s go.”
Their footsteps echoed loud and rapid down the long corridor.
* * * * *
Cavell slammed a book down on the table.
“I figured out what went wrong yesterday,” he said. “Fireflies. Listen here: ‘Firefly bioluminescence is caused by a chemical reaction in the light organs. Predators avoid eating fireflies because these chemicals give off a bitter, musky taste, and can be toxic to amphibians, reptiles, arachnids, and other insects.’ There you go. She thought you were trying to poison her…or at the very least didn’t like the taste.”
Younker picked up the book and looked at the spine. “A Field Guide to North American Insects. You just happen to have that lying around your house?”
“I like to read.”
Younker chuckled. “Whatever. Good job, detective.” He handed the book to Cavell and nodded toward a slip of blue paper pinned to the bulletin board. “I guess we’ll find out tonight whether she bears a grudge. You see what’s at the top of our duties?”
“I haven’t even taken off my coat yet.”
“Check it out.”
Cavell squinted at Dr. Peterson’s nearly indecipherable handwriting.
“Wait a minute.”
Younker slapped Cavell on the back. “The Widow’s nest has gotten too large again! And who gets to clean it out? Me and thee.”
Cavell sighed. “I’d just as soon clean the latrines.”
Younker grinned. “That’s on the list too.”
Ms. Burgett’s web had grown impressively dense during the last few days. The floor, walls, and ceiling were covered with yarn. The bed and table could hardly be seen.
“The yarn…it looks almost sticky.”
“It is,” said Younker. “She licks every strand.”
“I hate spiders,” Cavell said, shivering slightly. “I don’t mind them behind glass or on TV, but…anytime I see one I kill it if I can.”
“Yeah? Try stepping on this one.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“We’ll need to secure her arms,” Younker said. “That’s how the day shift usually does it.”
Cavell turned up the light in the cell to forty watts. “I can’t see her.”
“Keep your stick handy, and your taser, too.” Younker held up a pair of scissors. “I’ll cut away a few of the bigger sections close to the door, you hang tight next to me, and then we’ll see about getting her secure and finishing the rest of the cleanup. Ready?”
“No.”
“Good enough for me.” Younker typed in the lock code and the glass door slid quietly aside.
“It’s humid in here. One of us should talk to Peterson about having the ventilation checked.” Younker started snipping away. The skein of yarn began to slough off in great clumps he then kicked out into the passage.
“Do you see the Widow?”
“No. Ouch! Jesus!”
“What? What?” Cavell raised his stick.
“Put that damn thing down. Oh, man.” Younker sucked on his thumb. “A goddamn spider bit me.”
“Come again?”
“A spider! A spider, Cavell.”
“Come here.”
“Eh?”
Cavell stepped forward and pulled Younker into the light of the hallway. “There’s two more on your shirt.” He pointed to the tiny brown spiders but made no move to brush them away.
“The Widow’s got her own little fan club in there, don’t she?” Younker batted the spiders off with his stick. They drifted to the floor on gossamer threads, hit ground, and scurried back toward the cell. Younker was too quick. He brought his boot down hard. They sounded like bitten grapes as their abdomens burst.
Ms. Burgett moved quickly. Before Younker could turn she was on his back, shrieking as she slashed at his face with her claws.
Blast it, Younker, first the fireflies, now you kill her friends, Cavell thought, then brought the night stick down on Ms. Burgett’s arm. There was a crack, louder than Younker’s screams, and Ms. Burgett fell off his back. Cavell raised his stick again. Ms. Burgett lunged forward and caught it with her good hand. Younker, still screaming, fumbled for his taser, flicked it on, and jammed it into Ms. Burgett’s neck. Blue lightning sizzled across her face, leapt across her filed teeth, and arced down her chest.
Younker pulled away.
Ms. Burgett fell.
Breathing hard, Younker and Cavell leaned heavily against the glass. Younker sobbed in distress, his face a criss-crossed pattern of welts and scratches. Cavell had his hand on his heart. It was pounding furiously.
“It…it shouldn’t have done that,” panted Younker. “The taser. She was damp. The current hit her too hard. She…check her pulse, Cavell.”
Cavell inched forward as Younker slid down the glass and slumped to the floor, patting his bloody face with his shirtsleeve and moaning.
Ms. Burgett lay on her face. Her limbs looked wrong, somehow. Cavell reasoned the taser juice must have tightened them up. He grasped her unbroken arm to turn her over, but recoiled as he touched the skin. The arm felt funny, like the bones were in the wrong places. Not broken, just …
Cavell turned to Younker. “I don’t think I can—”
“Come on, Cavell, get a pulse on the bitch. Hurry up! I—”
Younker stopped in mid-sentence. His eyes left Cavell’s face and looked up, up, far over and behind Cavell’s head, as Cavell sensed, but did not see, something rising tall, too tall, behind him.
“Younker?”
Younker breathed in. Breathed out. Breathed in again, then opened his mouth for a bellowing scream that came out silent, like air in a great hollow tunnel.
Cavell turned.
The bloated, dark shape swung down and bit him quickly on the neck, twice, before running back up its silk line, scuttling across the ceiling, and falling on Younker like a leaden weight. Immediately Cavell felt ice in his veins as the poison pulsed into his body. His face and shoulders already numb, he could hear Ms. Burgett working behind him, but could not turn. All he could see was the mass of tiny, brown spiders seething across the webs of yarn and over a wet, deflated mess that had disguised Ms. Burgett well for a long time.
A touch of something thin and sharp behind him, and he found himself turned about to face her again.
Your children, Cavell mouthed silently as she spun her webbing tightly around him with hairy spinnerets. No more yarn, now.
“Adaptable!” Younker shrieked beside him. “I’ll give you that! All these years. Good for you! You had me fooled. You had…”
Younker’s face went slack. He spoke no more.
Ms. Burgett, Cavell mouthed. Ms. Burgett, please.
“Mrs. Burgett,” she snarled, looming over the stricken man. The voice from the wide, slavering mouth was like night wind hissing through dead grass. She dipped her fangs toward him again, hairy pedipalpi caressing his face, the red hourglass on her raised black abdomen shining wetly in the dim fluorescent light, and added, “I’m a widow.”
The Day After
Christmas Day was sixteen hours over. Presents lay open and scattered across three cluttered rooms. The house was full of people sitting in scarred furniture, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, eating cold ham and warm chicken salad. Cats snaked around the legs of children. Children ran into adults, bumped their heads, cried. On the floor of the kitchen, in front of the dishwasher, a black poodle puppy with a red bow around its neck slept soundly, oblivious to the nearby trampings and voices.
One of the men at the kitchen table, fifty-two years old, had just arrived. The engine of his white Toyota Camry still ticked wit
h heat by the ice-slicked curb. His wife, prim in a tan turtleneck and red wool sweater, sat beside him, making small talk with his sister. Outside, on the front porch, his son smoked a cigarette next to strange relatives and stared at the ground.
The man had been in the house a month ago for Thanksgiving and four months before that for an unexpected visit. Beyond that, he seldom saw the place. He lived far away.
Although eight people sat crammed around the table and half a dozen children crawled and toddled across the linoleum floor, the man was only concerned with one person: the old woman sitting across from him.
She had no teeth because she refused to wear her dentures and her hair was long, straight, and white. Although almost blind, she didn’t wear glasses. That was something else she refused to do.
The man reached over an ashtray filled with cigarette butts and beer tabs. He took the old woman’s palsied, wrinkled hand in his own. She clutched it with surprising strength.
“I went to Spain last week, Mum,” the man said at last. “Did I tell you that before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It was beautiful,” he said.
“Oh yes?”
“Yes.”
Both of them fell silent, but neither let go of the other’s hand. Kaitlyn, the eight-year-old granddaughter of the man’s brother, ran into the kitchen and demanded someone play Hungry, Hungry Hippos with her. She threw the game up on the table until someone did. The marbles made loud rattling noises until the man’s wife lost to her. Then she dragged it off the table and ran out of the room.
“Jeff’s doing well in school,” the man said to the old woman.
“What?”
“Jeff’s doing well in school.”
“He must be in high school now.”
“Actually he’s in college, Mum. Remember?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, of course.”
“He’s a junior. He even has an apartment downtown. He can walk to all his classes. He’s doing really well.”
“That’s good. That’s very nice.”
Out of the outdoor cats, a white shorthair the size of a Shetland Sheepdog, had found its way inside and into the kitchen. The man’s sister-in-law screamed at it, then screamed at one of her daughters to throw it outside. The daughter told her seven-year-old daughter to do it for her. The seven-year-old grabbed it and carried it out of the room by its armpits. She returned a moment later with a four-inch scratch on her arm, bawling her head off.
Together, mother and daughter went off to the bathroom. The man’s sister-in-law shouted medical instructions from across the house.
The man tried again.
“I remember when John and I were kids,” he said. “Remember how we used to make Christmas ornaments out of papier-mâché?”
“Um.”
“We used to make two dozen at a time, all shaped like stars, then sell them door-to-door. Remember that? We used to sprinkle them with glitter.”
“Oh. Oh, yes. Sure.”
The old woman fiddled with her empty teacup. She picked it up off the saucer, looked inside, and set it down. Then she picked it up again and started clinking it against the saucer. She clinked it so rapidly the man couldn’t keep track of it. Then she stopped and placed it gently on the table beside the saucer, running a yellowed thumbnail along its cracked rim.
“Janet and I both have next week off,” the man said. “It feels good to have some time away from work. We’ve both been so worn out.”
“Oh, yes.”
The man nodded.
The old woman’s gaze rested on her teacup again. She picked it up and started clinking it against her saucer a second time. Then she stopped abruptly and looked him in the eye. “I have to find my keys. It’s late and I’d better be getting home now.”
“Mum, you are home,” the man said gently.
“This isn’t my house.”
“You’ve lived here for three years. Remember? You live with John now.”
The old woman shook her head violently. “No I don’t. I live on the farm. They must be getting tired of me. I’ve been here all day.”
“Mum, it’s okay. Don’t worry. It’s okay.”
A paused lengthened between them. Everyone else kept talking, but they did not.
“I’m sorry,” the old woman said at last. “I get confused by things.”
“It’s not your fault,” the man said. “Don’t worry. It’s just how things are.”
The old woman looked at the man and smiled. The man squeezed her hand and she squeezed back.
“You remind me of my son,” she said.
In the other room, one of the little boys knocked over a glass of Pepsi. Everyone in the kitchen knew it was Pepsi because three other children came in and started yelling about it.
Come Spring
They tramped up the back yard, through the woods, to the clearing at the top of the hill. It was very steep and the dew-wet grass made each step tricky, so Jake grabbed his grandfather’s hand and held it tight.
“You tired?” his grandfather asked.
“Course not, Grandpa. You?”
“No siree.” Sweat ran down the wrinkles of the old man’s face and into his white beard.
“I never been this high up above town before,” said Jake.
“It’s a special place,” said his grandfather, stopping to catch his breath. “Whenever a forest ends somewhere up high, you know you’re in for a sight. And beyond the hill, far down below, there’s a stream where I used to fish when I was a boy. Caught trout the size of my forearm!”
Jake stared at his grandfather’s forearm, trying to picture it.
“Can we go fishing there someday?” he asked.
His grandfather didn’t answer, just stared up the grassy slope. After a moment he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his pipe.
“Don’t tell Grandma,” he said, and struck a hidden match off his thumb.
Jake, impressed by this profound and casual trick, forgot all about fishing for the time being.
They continued climbing. “Can you do that again?” he asked.
“Sure can,” his grandfather said, then leaned over and snapped fire off the brim of Jake’s cap.
“There used to be butterflies here in the summer,” his grandfather said. “Huge. Some yellow and black, some red, hard as all get-out to catch.”
“Did you ever?”
“Sometimes. Had a big case full of bugs when I was your age. Maybe I can help you start your own. We can make a case out of some pine scraps I got in the shed.”
“Yeah?”
“Well sure, why not?”
They tramped on. The sun, bright and warm despite the early November morning, blazed down, and the wild grass began to dry.
Suddenly Jake remembered something he didn’t want to remember. Without thinking, he stopped cold.
“What’s the holdup?” his grandfather asked, turning back.
“Nothing,” said Jake.
“Then let’s go! Grandma will murder us both if we let breakfast get cold. We have to keep moving.”
But Jake just stood there, grass up to his knees, looking up at his grandfather with different eyes.
“You feeling better now, Grandpa?” he asked quietly.
His grandfather puffed out a circle of silver smoke and smiled. “That what’s bothering you?”
Jake nodded.
His grandfather nodded back. “Well,” he said, spitting expertly out the side of his mouth, “That’s a funny thing. Funny odd, I mean.”
He looked around for a place to sit down. Off to his left, the old stump of a once-enormous tree lay like a flat, smooth rock in the grass. He eased himself down slowly, motioning for Jake to sit beside him.
“This heart,” he said, poking his chest casually with his pipe, “is what all the trouble’s over.”
“Is that why you had to go to the hospital over Christmas?”
“That’s right.”
“And did the doctors
fix it? Is it OK now?”
His grandfather stared at him evenly for what felt like a long time.
“You having a good morning so far?” he asked.
“Sure am,” said Jake, “but I’d have a better one if I knew you were doing OK.”
“You don’t like liars, do you?”
Jake thought about it. “No sir,” he said. “You said not to take truck with liars.”
“Well, I guess I had a point there.” Chewing on the end of his pipe, the old man seemed to balance two things in his mind.
“No,” he said at last.
“’No’ what, Grandpa?” asked Jake.
“No, the docs couldn’t fix it,” he said.
Jake, shocked, felt tears well up.
His grandfather smiled and let out a dry laugh. “Well goodness gracious, Jake, that’s all right.”
Jake shook his head. “No! No, that’s not right at all! How can you say that, Grandpa?”
“Well, I’m here now, ain’t I?”
Jake said nothing.
“Ain’t I?” his grandfather demanded.
“Yeah, Grandpa. You’re here now. But you—”
“Won’t be soon?” The old man tamped out his pipe on the stump and put it back in his pocket. He ground out a last bit of smoldering tobacco with a calloused thumb. “That what you mean to say?”
“Yeah,” said Jake.
“We’ll see,” said his grandfather, squinting up the hill into the bright sun. “Come on, now. I was honest with you, you’ve got the truth, but for now we’ve got a good day ahead of us. That’s what’s important. No matter what, we can’t let it go to waste. I do so hate a ruined day.”
The old man slowly eased himself up off the stump and started climbing the hill again. Jake stood behind him, staring at the familiar figure but not moving.
“Come on, Jake! Don’t you want to see the view?”
A fast decision made, he ran to catch up. A moment later he met his grandfather on top of the hill and gazed out at a wilderness of golds and greens and browns and reds, all glistening and brilliant in the early morning sun.
Scaring the Crows Page 7
