And while the Sipling cottage and all of Dreamthorp burned in the Sunday morning sunlight, Dubuque, Iowa, was drenched with rain, rain that the man who called himself Gilbert Rodman could hear as he sat in a supply closet in a cheap hotel and waited for a whore to wake up.
He had seen her the night before as he wandered through a section of town with a higher than average number of bars, small diners with stuttering neon signs, warehouses, and transient hotels. She had been standing in front of an arcade, wearing a pair of hot pants fifteen years out of style for everyone but working-class hookers. Her hair was long and black, her complexion dark, her cheeks mottled by acne scars. Wrinkles fanned out from her dark brown eyes. Her large breasts were jammed into a skimpy halter, and her arms and neck were covered with turquoise jewelry.
She looked so much like the Great Bitch that he wanted to gut her where she stood.
But no. That would have been foolish. It was not his way, had never been his way. He was slow, and careful, and methodical. Only by being all those things had he never been caught, never even been confronted, suspected, arrested.
And he would not be this time.
He would wait until everything was safe. Then he would do what he wanted, whatever he wanted with the Great Bitch who had used his balls and the Lesser Bitch who had destroyed them.
Destroyed them! . . .
His fingers tightened on the handle of the ghetto blaster he was carrying, and he made himself relax, made calmness flow into him. He thought about the music and glanced down at the box.
It was a cheap one, a bottom-of-the-line Sony with no Dolby or metal tape capacity, but what the hell, the price had been right. Cherry and Hod sure weren't going to use it again. Their tapes were shit though, all that country crap. But he'd found a record shop that stocked a decent selection of jazz cassettes and bought several with the money he'd taken from Hod's wallet. He had needed a place to crash for the night, asked a down-and-outer on the street where he could get a cheap room, and the rest was history. As soon as he saw the turquoise lady, he knew there would be no sleep for him that night.
It was eleven o'clock when he spotted her. He watched her for a few minutes before he decided what to do. He didn't want to take her to a hotel. He wanted someplace where he could hear her. He had fixed Cherry so she couldn't yell, just in case a cop stopped to check out the rig and heard her. But this time he wanted to hear it, to be in a place where the turquoise lady could scream and scream and scream her head off, and no one would ever hear a damn peep. That would be rare and rich and satisfying. He had noticed a string of warehouses a few blocks back. That would be perfect. She might think twice about turning a trick in a warehouse, but he had enough money to persuade a cheap whore. Hod's wallet had contained over four hundred dollars.
Gilbert had made up his mind to approach the woman, when a man dressed in a polyester suit, a string tie, and cowboy boots walked up to her and began to talk. Though Gilbert, from his position across the street, could not hear what was said, he quickly figured it out when the woman nodded, rubbed the man's leg with the hand not holding her voluminous straw purse, and they both turned and walked down the street.
Gilbert crossed the street then, and fell into step several yards behind them, listening over the sound of traffic, rock music, and shouts.
". . . for an all-nighter?"
"You got enough for all night?"
"You mean equipment or money?"
A car badly in need of a muffler drove by then, and Gilbert lost the cowboy's words, but the woman laughed and squeezed the arm that she was clinging to. All-nighter, Gilbert thought. That was too bad, but there was nothing he could do about it at this point. He could follow them, that was all, and wait until the man left, wait until she came out the next morning or afternoon. Or evening. But he would wait.
The pair went into the Hotel Excelsior at the end of the block. Gilbert waited outside, watching them through the flyspecked glass door as they went through the false ceremony of registering. An elderly, bald man took a key from one of the dozens of hooks on the wall, and handed it to the man, who gave him several bills in exchange and then led the way upstairs.
After they rounded a landing, Gilbert went in and asked the desk clerk if they had a Mr. Fenton staying there. While the desk clerk looked at the register, Gilbert examined the key board and, although he could not exactly determine which of the keys had been taken, he could see that it was on the third floor—either room 305, 307, or 309.
The desk clerk told Gilbert that there was no Mr. Fenton in residence, Gilbert thanked him and walked out. Fifteen minutes later he came back into the hotel through the rear door and climbed the steps to the third floor, where he listened at the doors of rooms 305, 307, and 309. In 309 he heard the sounds of lovemaking—sincere on the man's part, wholly false on the woman's.
Across the hall from 309 was a door with SERVICE stenciled on it in chipped and faded letters. It was unlocked. Inside was a large sink, a wet mop and bucket, and a locked cabinet. The closet reeked of urine, but the floor was clean, so Gilbert sat down with his backpack and boom box beside him, and waited for a half hour, when he once again listened at the door of 309 and heard snoring. A smile on his face, he left the Hotel Excelsior with his box and his backpack and headed toward the row of warehouses.
Two hours later, he returned empty-handed to the hotel and went back into the supply closet, where he sat on the floor, crossed his arms on his knees, and rested his head on them. He slept fitfully, waking each time there was a noise in the hall, and looking through the door to see what had caused it. At no time did the door of room 309 open.
When he was able to enter a thin sleep, his dreams were thick and dark, and he saw his mother dying in the bed, the same bed to which she had taken him over and over again, dying in the bed in her bedroom, because there was no money for the hospital, and what could the hospital do for her that had not been done? Now there was only the dying. The dying and the truth
You did this It was you
He had learned the truth months before, had heard the word motherfucker in school, and laughed at it, but laughed the wrong way, and the others had looked at him and said things, and he had said things back, things that had not sounded right to them, and then they had known, somehow they had known, and accused him, and he had said more, and then they all got quiet, and the guidance counselor had called him into his office and asked him questions using words that he didn't understand, but the guidance counselor understood what he was saying all right, but by that time his mother was already dying, lying in her bed, her black hair like a frame around her face. She was not pale, his mother never was pale, but she was different, less ruddy, a sickly yellow-orange color that reminded him of fruit just on the verge of rotting.
You did this you put it in me and you poisoned me, my own son poisoned me, put it in his mother
gave me the cancer
He awoke just before dawn, to a gentle sound that slowly washed away his mother's dying words, words that he heard over and over again, hundreds of miles away from her, from where he had left her to die alone, while he had run away from New Orleans, gone out into the world to become Gilbert Rodman, keeping his first name, taking the second from an obscure and unfinished story by Poe about an explorer who went west.
Rodman.
He would be a Rodman.
What was that noise, he wondered, and then, as wakefulness came to him, he realized it was rain. He heard it striking the roof several floors overhead, heard the surge of it as it poured down unseen spouting in the walls. He stood up and stretched his muscles, splashed rusty water on his face from the sink. Then he sat down again and waited until the door of 309 opened.
At 7:30 the man in the cowboy boots came out and walked down the stairs. Gilbert waited another two hours until the turquoise lady left. At a safe distance, he followed her out onto the street. The rain was coming down hard, and he stepped next to her as she was standing under an awning waiting for the ligh
t to change.
"You working?" he said, with a hopeful smile.
She turned and looked at him coldly. "Not this morning, honey." Her voice was rough, abraded by vice.
"Aw, come on now," Gilbert said in his best aw-shucks, country boy manner. "That's why I hate workin' the damn night shift. You pretty ladies do the same thing, and by the time I'm ready to cut loose, you're all too tired."
"You got that right, pal." The light changed, but she didn't cross the street.
"I could make it worth your while. Say, twenty-five bucks." Gilbert started low. He didn't want to look too anxious.
"Honey, that wouldn't get you a handjob." She started to move from under the awning, and Gilbert put a hand on her arm to stop her.
"How much then? For an hour of your time?"
She turned and looked at him closely. She was older than he had first thought. That was good. He wanted her to look older. "What did you have in mind?" She wasn't friendly, not at all. That was good too.
"Oh, you know, the usual." Gilbert grinned shyly. "Maybe some of that . . . French stuff."
"Blowjob," she said, making it sound like one syllable.
"Well, uh, yeah. I'd like that. And, you know, the regular stuff too. You know, the, uh . . ."
"Fucking." She sighed, and Gilbert could smell her breath. He was sure she hadn't brushed her teeth that night. "Sixty bucks," she said.
Gilbert shook his head uncertainly. "That's an awful lot."
"Overtime pay, honey." She smiled at him, showing teeth that were white at the tips and yellow at the gum. "You'll enjoy it."
"Yeah," Gilbert said, chuckling. "I guess I will at that."
"You wanta go to the Excelsior? I get a deal there."
"No, let's go over to my place," Gilbert said.
"Where's your place?"
"About four blocks over. On Lexington."
"What? That's all warehouses and shit down there."
"I got a place in one. I'm a watchman."
She looked at him oddly but shrugged. Jesus, Gilbert thought, the bitch was stupid. But that was good, that was fine, that made it all the easier. "It's raining," she said. "We have to walk?"
It was his turn to shrug. "You see any cabs?"
He didn't have an umbrella, so he got a USA Today from a machine and held it over their heads as they walked. When they were half a block away from the warehouse Gilbert had found the night before, the woman stopped walking. Gilbert, still holding the paper, took a couple of steps away from her before he stopped. "What's the matter?"
She shook her head. The rain had diminished to a fine mist, and her black hair shone. "I don't know," she said. "This don't feel right."
"Aw, come on," Gilbert said. "Look, can I help where I live? I mean, you got a penthouse yourself, you're so picky? Really, I got a nice little apartment down in the basement. That place right there." He pointed to a huge building of weathered brick. TYLER BEARINGS was dimly visible on the side, like ghost letters. "Come on. Please?" He tried to make it sound innocent, like a poor schmuck who goddamit never got laid, and wasn't it her duty, as a professional, to ease this poor, horny guy's pain?
She thought for a moment, then nodded. "Okay. Seventy bucks."
"Seventy? . . ." Gilbert didn't give a damn. He would have promised her a thousand. He knew he would get it all back. But he had to pretend to be concerned. "I thought you said sixty."
The turquoise lady shook her head. "I changed my mind. Seventy."
Gilbert gave her a sheepish grin. "Well . . . okay. Seller's market. But I hope you're good.
"I will be." She followed him.
The night before, Gilbert had gone into the warehouse through a window and had unlocked the door through which he now led the woman. The room they entered was huge, the girders of the ceiling hidden in the darkness above. What little light there was came through the dusty, translucent windows that ran down one wall of the warehouse. The place was empty except for a blanket in the exact middle of the room. Cherry and Hod's boom box sat beside it. The rain had begun to fall heavily again, and its impact on the metal roof of the warehouse sounded like pellets of lead.
Gilbert closed the door. The turquoise lady looked around uncomfortably. "I want to do it here," Gilbert said.
"Here? In this place? Kiss my ass!" The anger hid fear, Gilbert knew it.
"I was hoping you'd kiss mine." He held up a hand. "I'm just kidding, okay? I mean, about kissing my ass. I really do want to do it here, I'm not kidding about that."
"Christ, you mean—on that blanket?"
"Is your price going up again?"
"Hell, yes! Look, buddy, I don't want any part of—"
"A hundred dollars," Gilbert said calmly. "That's all I've got. Call it a whim, okay? I mean, I happen to like open spaces, you know?" There was no way out for her now. He was toying with her. "No shit. A hundred bucks. Hell, it's a clean blanket, look."
She started to walk toward the blanket. Gilbert followed.
"I've even got music. See?" He pressed a button on the box and the sounds of Thelonious Monk's Misterioso came out.
The turquoise lady looked at Gilbert, mistaking the excitement in his face for sexual readiness. She shrugged. Gilbert thought she shrugged a hell of a lot. But he would break her of that. It would be hard to shrug without shoulders. "Okay," she said. "What the hell. But the money first, huh?"
He nodded, took five twenties from his pocket, and handed them to her. She put them in her handbag. "You, uh, want to get undressed now?"
"Sure." She kicked off her shoes, slid the hot pants off her hips, then pulled her blouse up over her head without unbuttoning it. She wore no bra. "How about you?" she asked him.
"I want to watch you first," he said. "The panties too. Leave the jewelry on. I like that Indian jewelry. It reminds me of somebody I knew. She was part Indian. Seminole. Almost as pretty as you."
She was smiling a little now, getting into it, Gilbert thought. They all did. It was what they all wanted, whether they sold it or gave it away. They wanted it.
"Okay," she said, standing naked in front of him. "Your turn."
"Don't rush," Gilbert said. "I want this to take a long time. Now, lie down," he told her, and she did as he asked. He could feel the handle of the knife pressing against his ankle. The music played on, cool and sweet. He knelt on the blanket beside her, his right hand resting on his pants cuff. "You do it," he said. "Take them off me."
She smiled wryly, wriggled her body so that she could reach his pants front, undid his belt, and unzipped his jeans.
"That's good," he said huskily. "Now. Put your hand in there. Touch me."
The turquoise lady licked her lips, and her heavy jewelry shifted across her breasts as she moved. She lifted a cupped hand, touched his belly, slipped beneath the waistband of his underpants. The music whined, she lost her smile, reached farther in, deeper.
Her face went the yellow-orange color, the same color the Great Bitch's face had worn when she was dying.
"Oh, no," Gilbert whispered to her. "You found out my secret."
Her mouth opened wide. Her hand froze.
"What a shame," Gilbert told her. "What a shame. You found out my secret."
Her body shook. The knife came out. The rain came down.
Death is terrible only in presence.
—Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp
That afternoon, Sam and Esther Hershey's drive to Dreamthorp had been unpleasantly paranoid, with Sam repeatedly expressing the opinion that they were probably under surveillance by the state police, and wouldn't it be better to wait for a few weeks until the "cops take the heat off."
"Sam," Esther told him again as they walked across the site of the old sawmill, "the museum commission doesn't have money to hire policemen to follow people around. You're just being foolish."
"Well, I don't want to get arrested," Sam mumbled.
"We're not going to get arrested. Now where do you think we ought to dig?"
"I still t
hink we should have brought the metal detectors."
"The Indians didn't have anything metal, Sam."
"I mean as camouflage. Anybody sees us digging here will get suspicious."
"There's nobody to see. Now why don't we dig where you found the statue. Where was that anyway?"
"Over here, I think," Sam said, trying to remember. "I covered up the hole pretty good, but I think it was near this tree." He stepped over to a thick-boled white pine that had survived the depredations of the woodcutters, and dug his hovel into the earth. "Yeah, I thought so. The ground's pretty soft here on top."
Sam began to dig in earnest then, while Esther stood and watched. "Anything I can do?" she asked after a few minutes.
"No. Maybe you can dig a little when I get tired."
"I think you ought to dig more carefully."
"What do you mean, more carefully?" Sam panted, pushing down hard on the turned step, hearing a grinding noise as the blade struck stone.
"Well, what that Miss Peters at the museum said. About breaking things. There might be pottery or beads or who knows what down there, and you might break it."
"I'm not going to break anything. Doggone it, I can hardly get through this rock as it is."
"Rock?"
"Yeah. We've never dug down this far before. Lotsa rock under here. I guess the soft stuff on top is from all the layers of rotting trees and stuff." He grunted again as the shovel struck rock, then knelt and tugged a fist-sized rock from the bottom of the small hole he had made. He tossed it into the bushes.
Esther sat on a stump and watched him some more. "You know what you need?" she asked after seeing him struggle with increasingly larger rocks. "A digging iron."
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