“Steve Hutter,” the lumpy face said. “And that’s Herbie Boston. He’s real bad sick. I gotta get him to a hospital real quick.”
“What’s the matter with your face?” Blair said.
“My face?” The escaped prisoner named Steve Hutter moved cautiously out from behind the tree. “It’s not just my face. It’s all over me. Hang onto that dog, okay?” He pulled up the front of his shirt, and even in the dim light it was obvious that his stomach was just as red and lumpy as his face. “It’s all over me. Poison oak. It’s driving me crazy.”
“Does he have poison oak, too?” Blair asked.
“Herbie? No. Not poison oak. He’s got a lot worse than poison oak.” Keeping his eyes on Nightmare, he took a step forward, glanced at the lump under the blanket, and put his hands up around his mouth. “He thinks he’s got rabies,” he whispered.”
“Rabies?” David gasped. “Why does he think that? Did something bite him?”
Steve Hutter made a snorting noise. “Yeah, something bit him. That dog of yours almost bit his arm off, nine or ten days ago. His arm is swole up bigger’n a pumpkin, and he’s burning up with fever.”
“Nightmare bit him?” David said. Beside him, Nightmare was standing quietly but the hair was still up on his back, and now and then a soft growl rumbled in his chest. “Are you—sure?”
Hutter, who had begun to scratch frantically on both sides of his neck, stopped long enough to say, “Am I sure it was that dog that done it? Well, if it wasn’t, it was one that looked just like him. You got some more big as that?”
“Well, look,” David said. “Your friend couldn’t have rabies if it was this dog that bit him—because Nightmare doesn’t have rabies.”
The man under the blanket swayed to a sitting position and pulled the blanket away from his face. His eyes looked wild and feverish. “Are you sure?” he asked in a croaking voice.
“I’m positive,” David said. “If he bit you nine or ten days ago, and he was rabid then, he’d be dead by now. So he couldn’t have had rabies when he bit you.”
Herbie Boston, alias “The Weasel,” stared at David with bloodshot sunken eyes and then threw back the blanket. “Look,” he said.
But when David started forward, still hanging onto Blair with one hand and Nightmare with the other, The Weasel cringed away in terror.
“Keep away,” he pleaded. “Keep him away from me.”
So David told Nightmare to stay, and Blair to keep a tight hold on his collar, and then he moved a few cautious steps closer. Not too close though, in case the man under the blanket wasn’t as sick as he was pretending to be.
The Weasel’s right arm was in a makeshift sling made from a strip of plastic that looked as if it might once have been a garbage bag. With his left hand he very carefully pushed the plastic back until David could see a swollen, discolored mass, punctured by a series of deep, festering indentations. It wasn’t a pleasant sight.
Pulling the sling back in place, The Weasel cradled his arm against his chest and looked up at David with his strange feverish stare. Rabies or not, he was definitely sick—and frightened.
“It couldn’t be rabies,” David said, “but it might be blood poisoning. You’d better get to a doctor right away.”
“Yeah,” The Weasel said, “we got to get to a doctor.”
Steve, the other convict, had edged out from behind the tree. “We was on our way to the road,” he said. “We was going to flag down a car and ask them to call an ambulance—and the law. We was going to give ourselves up. Only Herbie couldn’t go no farther.”
David thought fast. The road was about half a mile away. In the other direction, Golanski’s place was not much farther, and mostly down hill. And Mr. Golanski had a gun, in case the prisoners decided to change their minds about giving themselves up. “We could go to Mr. Golanski’s,” he said.
“Golanski’s?” Steve said.
“The old coot with the shotgun,” The Weasel muttered, rocking back and forth over his arm.
“I don’t know,” Steve said to David. “We thought about going there. But we been over that way before, and we seen that old guy with his cannon. He’d probably blow us away and ask questions afterwards.”
“He wouldn’t if we were with you,” David said. “And it would be a lot easier to get there.”
“The kid’s got a point,” The Weasel said.
They started out then with the two prisoners walking ahead—The Weasel with his good arm across the other guy’s shoulders. David and Blair and Nightmare followed a few yards behind. They didn’t dare get too close because every time they did Nightmare would growl and the two guys would start to panic. The whole procession moved very slowly, and then The Weasel collapsed and had to rest for a while before he could go on. Leaning against the trunk of a tree, he hugged his wounded arm and babbled about how sick he was and the terrible luck he’d had ever since he was born—how his mother died when he was six and his stepmother didn’t like him, so he spent most of his time hanging out in the hills.
David believed him. At least he believed that he was sick. The feverish eyes and deliriously babbling voice were convincing. And the sad story about his childhood was probably true, too. David couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. But at the same time, there was something about the slant of the thin mouth and the quick shifts of the dark eyes, that made him very glad Nightmare was on his side—his and Blair’s.
“I grew up in these parts, kid,” he said staring at David with his burning dark-rimmed eyes. “Used to swim in that lake back there when I was your age. Sometimes I used to hide out in the woods for a week at a time, snitching chickens and garden stuff from farms and cooking it over bonfires. Made out real well. Knew these woods like the back of my hand—what farms were easy pickin’s and a lot of good hide-outs.”
Steve stopped scratching his stomach and snorted. “Makes a good story, don’t it?” His face was too messed up with poison oak to tell whether or not he was frowning, but he sounded angry. “Made it sound real good, Herbie did, about how we could hide out here for weeks, living off the fat of the land and hiding out in a cave that nobody’d find in a million years.”
“A cave?” David asked.
“Yeah. Place he found when he was a kid. Only when we got there that hairy crocodile of yours had beat us to it, and when Herbie pulled his gun, he nearly got eaten alive. That was the end of the nice, safe cave-condo old Herbie promised me before we busted out.” Steve stared at The Weasel bitterly. The Weasel ignored him and went on rocking his wounded arm. “End of our gun, too,” Steve went on, starting to scratch again. “Couldn’t get Herbie to go back with me to look for it. Told him I couldn’t find it by myself. Me, I’m a city boy. Never saw a God d—” He looked at Blair, and then went on. “Never saw a tree ’cept in a park till I was a grown man. One mountain looks just like another to me.”
For the first time since he’d put it away in his backpack, David remembered the gun. For a moment he considered getting it out—to make sure the convicts didn’t change their minds about turning themselves in. But then he remembered he didn’t even know if it were loaded, or if it had a safety catch on it, and how to get it off if it did. And then he flashed on a fact from a gun control debate in social studies—more homeowners who owned guns got shot than ones who didn’t. If he got the gun out, it would be just his luck for the convicts to get it away from him. Besides, for the time being Nightmare seemed to be weapon enough.
David tuned back in on the conversation in time to hear Herbie, The Weasel, say, “Okay, so I’m scared of dogs. I can’t help it. My stepmother used to threaten to sic her mangy old police dog on me, when I was a kid. I’ve had this thing about dogs ever since.”
“Phobia?” David suggested.
“Yeah, that’s right,” The Weasel said to Steve. “I got me a phobia. What’s your excuse? I didn’t notice you rushing back into that cave after I dropped the gun.”
“Well, hell,” Steve said. “I thought we woul
d go back later after the dog had gone off. I didn’t know you wouldn’t even go along to show me the way back.”
“Look, man—” Herbie was starting when David interrupted.
“Hey, pardon me,” he said. “But we’d better be going. It’s just about dark. Do you think you could go on now—er—Mr. Boston?”
So The Weasel staggered to his feet, and they started off again towards Mr. Golanski’s.
They were almost there, halfway across Golanski’s cow pasture, when Blair tugged on David’s arm pulling him to a stop.
“David,” Blair said. “Mr. Golanski will tell—about Nightmare.”
Blair was right. He should have thought of it himself. Suddenly David realized what he had to do. He yelled at the convicts to wait a minute and they did, leaning against the gate that led into the backyard.
David took off his backpack. Turning his back on Nightmare, he opened the pack and took out the gun, while he told Blair what to do. “You go on home with Nightmare,” he said. “Take the shortcut through the orchard. And when you get home, put him in the tool shed. He’ll probably stay there if you tell him to, and if you don’t close the door. And if you get home before I do, just go on in and tell them I’ll be along in a few minutes. Just as soon as I finish turning the escaped prisoners over to the police. Okay? You think you can find the way in the dark?”
“Nightmare knows the way,” Blair said. “What’s that for?”
“That’s just in case they change their minds about turning themselves in when you take Nightmare away.” David stuck the gun barrel under his belt and shrugged into his backpack. Then he waited until Blair and Nightmare had started back across the field.
The convicts were still leaning on the gate. When David called to them, they opened the gate and started across the yard. He took the gun out of his belt and held it in front of him with the barrel pointed down at the ground. It felt heavy and cold and deadly, and holding it made him feel very nervous. More nervous than he’d been since he first saw the prisoners by the lake.
It was very dark under the big trees in Golanski’s yard. The convicts plodded along toward the lights of the house, without looking back. They didn’t even seem to notice that Blair and Nightmare were no longer there. And David was pretty sure that they hadn’t yet noticed the gun. He didn’t intend to call their attention to it unless he had to.
The light was on in Mr. Golanski’s kitchen. When they got to the house, David cleared his throat and said, “Knock on the door.” His voice came out funny because of the nervousness, and instead of knocking Steve turned around and stared at him.
“Well, would you look at that,” he said, and suddenly the whiney ingratiating tone was gone from his voice, replaced by a smooth, confident purr. “The kid’s got a gun. Our gun from the looks of it. That kind of changes things, don’t it, Weasel? I’ll bet a sweet kid like that’s not going to use a gun on nobody, no matter what. What do you think, Weasel?”
“Yeah,” The Weasel said. “You may be right. You don’t want to fool around with a dangerous thing like that, now do you, kid. If you’ll just hand it over to—”
David was backing away, thinking desperately that he should have known better than to fool around with a gun, when the back door of Mr. Golanski’s house opened with a bang. The light streamed out across the porch and framed in the doorway was a high-shouldered, hulking figure. It was Mr. Golanski with his double-barrelled shotgun.
Chapter Seventeen
“THEY’RE HERE! THEY’RE HERE, DAVID. With a truck and everything.” When Janie yelled, Esther and Blair got up off the floor where they’d been playing Chinese checkers and ran to join Janie and Amanda on the window seat. David followed more slowly. His breath had suddenly started to get quick and shallow the way it always did when he had to give an oral report in school.
In the driveway a man and woman were getting out of a blue car. Behind the car a big van was just coming to a stop. On the side of the van there was an oval-shaped logo, a border of small “4os” surrounded a huge “TV.” Channel 40 was the local TV station. David swallowed hard. “Okay, Blair,” he said. “Don’t forget.” Blair went on staring out of the window. David pulled him off the window seat and turned him around. “What are we going to say if they mention a dog?” he prompted.
In a toneless chant—obviously reciting from memory—Blair said, “We’re going to tell the truth, except about Nightmare. We’re going to say it was just a stray dog, and he ran away.”
“You probably won’t have to say much,” Amanda said. “David will do most of the talking. Just agree with what he says. Okay, Bleeper?”
“Okay,” Blair said, “I remember.”
“I wish they’d ask me,” Janie said passionately. “I’d remember.”
“How could you remember?” Esther said. “You weren’t there.”
“I know, stupid,” Janie said. “What I remember is what they’re supposed to say. I remember every bit of it. Most of it was my idea.”
“David!” It was Dad, calling from downstairs.
“Okay, Blair,” David said. “This is it.”
In the living room the man and woman who’d gotten out of the car were standing near the mantel talking to Molly. On the other side of the room two other men were bustling around setting up lights and reflectors. Dad introduced everybody. The first man and woman were Mr. Gomez and Ms. Bell from the Valley Press, and the other two guys were from the TV station. Mr. Gomez was a newspaper photographer, and Ms. Bell was a reporter. It turned out she was the one who was going to ask the questions.
While they waited for the TV guys to get their lights ready, Mr. Gomez showed David and Blair where they were supposed to sit, in two chairs near the fireplace. Across the room Dad and Molly and the other kids were all lined up on the sofa, Dad and Molly at each end and Amanda and Esther in the middle. Janie was perched on the arm next to Dad, and he was hanging on to the back of her shirt. David hoped he didn’t let go. If he did, she’d probably blast off from sheer excitement.
Except for the shallow breathing, David was feeling all right until the TV guys got their lights on and one of them picked up his camera. It was an enormous thing that sat on his shoulder, and when it turned its big round eye toward David, he suddenly felt like somebody was tightening a noose around his neck. For a panicky moment he was sure he wasn’t going to be able to say a single word. If anyone had started counting down or warning him to get ready the way they do in the movies, he’d have cracked up for sure; but instead Ms. Bell just asked him a question in a normal tone of voice, and he managed to answer with a minor amount of stuttering and gulping.
“I understand you were in the woods looking for your little brother, when you came across the two escapees,” she said. “Is that correct?”
“Yes,” David said, “for Blair—I was looking. I mean, I found him first—before we found the two guys.” He gulped, swallowed hard and tried again. “I found Blair, and we were starting home when we saw them. They were getting a drink from the lake.”
“I see.” Ms. Bell turned to Blair. “Were you frightened, Blair, when you saw the escaped prisoners?”
Blair smiled and tipped his head on one side. “Nooo,” he said thoughtfully. “I wasn’t.”
Ms. Bell nearly fell off her chair with enthusiasm. Blair had that effect on some people. “Really?” she said. “Why weren’t you frightened?”
“I wasn’t frightened because of . . . ,” Blair said and then suddenly he stopped. He put his hand over his mouth, and his eyes got very round.
“Blair!” Janie whispered loudly. “Because of the gun. Because of the gun.” David kept his eyes on the camera. It was still pointing at him and Blair. There was the sound of Dad hushing Janie, and then Blair took his hand away from his mouth and went on. “Because of the gun,” he said, nodding his head. Then he stopped saying anything. For several seconds the camera and Ms. Bell went on staring at Blair and Blair stared back, smiling calmly. At last Ms. Bell turned back to David
.
“But Blair wasn’t with you when you brought the prisoners to Mr. Golanski’s farm?”
“Yes,” David said, “I sent him home. After we got out of the hills, I sent him on home.”
“Why did you do that?” Ms. Bell asked.
“To tell them I was coming. So they wouldn’t worry.”
Ms. Bell smiled. Turning to Dad she said, “And what did Blair tell you when he got home, Mr. Stanley?” The camera swiveled toward Dad.
Dad smiled. “His exact words were ‘David says he’ll be home as soon as he turns the prisoners over.’ ”
Everybody laughed. “I’m sure that eased your minds considerably,” Ms. Bell said. “You must have been frantic.”
“Yes,” Dad said. “And we’d have been even more so if we’d realized how close to accurate Blair’s account was. Blair does have a tendency to fantasize, and I must admit I wasn’t entirely convinced that his prisoner story was based on fact. But we were worried, of course. We were just about to call the police when Mr. Golanski called to say that David had arrived at his farm with the two prisoners at gunpoint, and that the sheriff was there and all was well.”
“Oh yes, about the gun.” She turned back to David. “How did you happen to have a gun with you when you met the escapees?”
When the camera swung around, David immediately choked up again. “Who me?” he said stupidly. “How did we what? Oh—the gun. We found it in a cave. Actually Blair found it.”
“And that’s how you happened to be armed when you ran into the escaped convicts and were able to take them into custody?”
David swallowed hard. “Well, I had the gun then,” he said, “but it wasn’t any big deal. I didn’t really do anything. They were both pretty sick.”
“The convicts were sick?”
So David tried to explain how The Weasel had a bad dog bite, and Steve, the other one, had poison oak—and Ms. Bell laughed and said that didn’t sound too life threatening, and she thought it was terribly brave of David to have captured two dangerous criminals single-handedly. Then she asked Dad and Molly some questions about how they felt about the whole thing, and Janie volunteered to tell how she felt, and then it was all over.
Blair’s Nightmare Page 13
