In a way it serves Antoine right, Roland was thinking.
Antoine got up clumsily and flung something—probably a rock—at Harry. Roland could see blood down the front of Antoine’s white shirt. And Harry was fighting like a mysterious little bullet that came again and again at Antoine from different directions. It looked as if Antoine was trying to flee now. He was stumbling through the underbrush to the left. Roland saw Harry leap for Antoine’s left hand and apparently cling there with his teeth. Or had it been a streak of sunlight? Roland lost sight of Antoine, because he fell again.
Roland gasped. He had not been breathing for several seconds, and his heart was pounding as if he had been fighting too. Now Roland forced himself to walk towards the place where he thought Antoine lay. Everything was silent except for Roland’s footfalls on the leaves and twigs. Roland saw the black, white and green of Antoine’s clothes, then Antoine’s face streaked with blood. Antoine was lying on his back. Both his eyes were bleeding.
And Harry was at Antoine’s throat!
Harry’s head was out of sight under Antoine’s chin, but his body and tail trailed down Antoine’s chest—as a fur piece might do from someone’s neck.
“Harry!” Roland’s voice cracked.
Harry might not have heard.
Roland picked up a stick. “Harry, get away!” he said through his teeth.
Harry leapt to the other side of Antoine’s throat and bit again.
“Antoine?” Roland went forward, raising the stick.
Harry lifted his head and backed on to Antoine’s green lapel. His stomach was visibly larger. He was full of blood, Roland realized. Antoine didn’t move. Seeing Roland, Harry advanced a little, nearly stood up on his hind legs, came down again and, staggering with the weight of his stomach, stepped down on to the leaves beside Antoine’s outflung arm, lay down and lowered his head as if to sleep. Harry was in a patch of sun.
Roland felt considerably less afraid, now that Harry was still, but he feared now that Antoine might be dead, and the possible fact of death frightened him. He called to Antoine again. The blood was drying and darkening in the eye sockets. His eyes seemed to be gone, just as Roland had thought, or at least nearly entirely eaten out. The blood everywhere, on Antoine’s clothing, down his face, was dark red and crusty now, and no more seemed to be coming, which was a sign that the heart had stopped beating, Roland thought. Before Roland realized what he was doing, he had stooped very close to the sleeping Harry and was holding Antoine’s wrist to feel for a pulse. Roland tried for several seconds. Then he snatched his hand from the wrist in horror, and stood up.
Antoine must have died from a heart attack, Roland thought, not just from Harry. But he realized that Harry was going to be taken away, even hunted down and killed, if anybody found out about Antoine. Roland looked behind him, in the direction of La Source, then back at Antoine. The thing to do was hide Antoine. Roland felt a revulsion against Antoine, mainly because he was dead, he realized. But for Harry he felt love and a desire to protect. Harry after all had been defending himself, and Antoine had been a giant kidnapper, and possibly a killer too.
It was still only a little past 9:30, Roland saw by his watch.
Roland began to trot back through the woods, leaping the bad patches of underbrush. At the edge of La Source’s lawn he stopped, because Brigitte was just then tossing a pan of water on to some flowers by the back steps. When she had gone inside the house again, Roland went to the toolhouse, took the fork and spade, and carried these into the woods.
He dug close beside where Antoine lay, which seemed as good a place as any to try to dig a grave. His exertions sobered him, and took away some of his panic. Harry continued to sleep on the other side of Antoine from where Roland was digging. Roland worked like one possessed, and his energy seemed to increase as he labored. He realized he was in terror of Antoine’s body: what had been the living fossil, so familiar in the household in Paris and here, was now a corpse. Roland also half expected Antoine to rise up and reproach him, threaten him in some way, as ghosts or corpses did in stories that Roland had read.
Roland began to tire and worked more slowly, but with the same determination. The job had to be done by midday, he told himself, or his mother and Brigitte would be searching for Antoine by the lunch hour. Roland tried to think of what he would say.
The grave was deep enough. Roland set his teeth and pulled at Antoine’s green jacket and the side of his trousers, and rolled him in. Antoine fell face downwards. Harry, ruffled by Antoine’s arm, stood on four legs looking sleepy still. Roland shoveled the earth in, panting. He trod on the soil to make it sink, and there was still extra soil which he had to scatter, so it would not catch the eye of anyone looking in the woods. Then with the fork he pulled branches and leaves over the grave so it looked like the rest of the forest floor.
Then numb with fatigue, he picked Harry up. Harry was very heavy—as heavy as a pistol, Roland thought. Harry’s eyes were closed again, but he was not quite limp in sleep. His neck supported his head, and as Roland lifted him to his own eye level, Harry opened his eyes and looked at Roland. Harry would never bite him, Roland felt sure, because he had always brought meat to him. In a way, he had brought Antoine to Harry. Roland trudged back with Harry towards the house, saw the cage in the woods and started to pick it up, then decided to leave it for the moment. Roland put Harry down beside a sun-warm rock not far from the lawn.
Roland put the fork and spade back in the toolhouse. He washed his hands as best he could at the cold water tap by the toolhouse, then thinking Brigitte might be in the kitchen, he entered the house by the front door. He went upstairs and washed more thoroughly and changed his shirt. He put on his transistor radio for company. He felt odd, not exactly frightened any longer, but as if he would do everything clumsily—drop or bump into things, trip on the stairs—though he had done none of these things.
His mother knocked on the door. He knew her knock.
“Come in, Mama.”
“Where have you been, Roland?”
Roland was lying on his bed, the radio beside him. He turned the radio down. “In the woods. I took a walk.”
“Did you see Antoine? He’s supposed to fetch Marie and Paul for lunch.”
Roland remembered. People were coming for lunch. “I saw Antoine in the woods. He said he was taking the day off, going to Orléans or something like that.”
“Really?—He was letting the ferret loose, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, Mama. He’d already let the ferret loose. I saw the cage in the woods.”
His mother looked troubled. “I’m sorry, Roland, but it was not an appropriate pet, you know. And poor old Antoine—we’ve got to think of him. He’s terrified of ferrets, and I think he’s right to be.”
“I know, Mama. It doesn’t matter.”
“That’s a good boy. But Antoine, just to go off like that—He’ll go to a film in Orléans and come back this evening probably. He didn’t take the car, did he?”
“He said he was taking the Orléans bus.—He was very annoyed with me. Said he might be gone a couple of days.”
“That’s nonsense. But I’d better hop off now for Marie and Paul. You see what trouble you caused with that animal, Roland!” His mother gave him a quick smile and went out.
Roland managed to save some meat from dinner, and took it out around 10:30 p.m., when Brigitte had gone to bed and his mother was in her room for the night. Roland sat on the rock where he had left Harry earlier that day, and after seven or eight minutes, Harry arrived. Roland smiled, almost laughed.
“Meat, Harry!” Roland said in a whisper, though he was a good distance from the house.
Harry, slender once more, accepted the underdone lamb, though not with his usual eagerness, having eaten so much that day. Roland stroked Harry’s head for the first time. Roland imagined coming to the
woods in the daytime, training Harry to stay in his pocket, teaching him certain commands. Harry didn’t need a cage.
After two days, Mme. Lemoinnier sent a telegram to Antoine’s sister who lived in Paris, asking her please to telephone. The sister telephoned, and said she hadn’t heard a word from Antoine.
It was curious, Mme. Lemoinnier thought, that Antoine had just walked off like that, leaving all his clothes, even his coat and raincoat. She thought she should notify the police.
The police came and asked questions. Roland said he had last seen Antoine walking towards the Orléans road where he intended to catch the bus that passed at 11 a.m. Antoine was old, Mme. Lemoinnier said, a little eccentric, stubborn. He had left his savings bank passbook behind, and the police were going to ask the bank to communicate if Antoine came to make a withdrawal or to get another passbook. The police went over the ground that Roland showed them. They found the empty cage, its door open, which Antoine had carried into the woods. The Orléans road was to the right, the opposite direction from where Antoine was buried. The police walked all the way to the Orléans road. They seemed to believe Roland’s story.
Every night that Roland could go out unobserved, he fed Harry, and usually once during the day too. The few nights Harry did not turn up, Roland supposed he was hunting rabbits or moles. Harry was wild, yet not wild, tame, yet not reliably tame, Roland knew. Roland also realized that he didn’t dare think too much about what Harry had done. Roland preferred to think that Antoine had died from a heart attack. Or—if Roland ever thought of Harry as a murderer, he put it in the same realm of fantasy as the murders in the books he read, real yet not real. It was not true that he was guilty, or Harry either.
Roland liked best to imagine Harry as his secret weapon, better than a gun. Secret because no one knew about him, though Roland intended to tell Stefan. Roland had fantasies of using Harry to kill a certain mathematics professor whom he detested in his lycée. Roland was in the habit of writing letters to Stefan, and he wrote Stefan the story of Harry killing Antoine, in fiction form. “You may not believe this story, Stefan,” Roland wrote at the end, “but I swear it is true. If you care to check with the police, you will find that Antoine has disappeared!”
Stefan wrote back: “I don’t believe a word of your ferret story, obviously inspired by Antoine walking out, and who wouldn’t if they had to wait on you? However it is mildly amusing. Got any more stories?”
Goat Ride
Billy the goat was the main attraction at Playland Amusement Park, and Billy himself was the most amused—not the children or their parents who fished out endless quarters and dimes, after having paid the one-dollar-fifty admission for themselves and seventy-five cents per child. Hank Hudson’s Playland wasn’t cheap, but it was the only place of amusement for kids in or around the town.
Screams and cheers went up when Billy, pulling his gold and white cart, made his entry every evening around seven. Any president of the United States would have been heartened by such a roar from his adherents, and it put fire into Billy too. All sinew and coarse white hair, brushed to perfection by Mickie, Billy started on the gallop, dashed past a white rail fence against which children and adults pressed themselves out of his way and at the same time urged him on with “Hurrahs!” and “Ooooohs!” of admiration. The run was to take a little froth off Billy’s energy, as well as to alert the crowd that Billy was ready for business. Back at the start of the Goat Ride, Billy skidded to a halt on polished hooves, hardly breathing faster but snorting for effect. The ride cost twenty-five cents for adult or child, and Billy’s cart could take four kids, or two adults, plus Mickie who drove. Mickie, a redheaded boy whom Billy quite liked, rode in front on a bench.
“Gee up!” Mickie would say, slapping the reins on Billy’s back, and off Billy would go, head down at first till he got the cart going, then head up and trotting, looking from side to side for mischief or handouts of ice cream and caramel popcorn which he was ever ready to pause for. Mickie wielded a little whip, more for show than service, and the whip didn’t hurt Billy at all. Billy understood when Hank yelled at Mickie that Hank wanted them to get on with the ride in order to take on the next batch of customers. The Goat Ride had a course round the shooting gallery, through the crowd between the merry-go-round and the ice cream and popcorn stands, round the stand where people threw balls at prizes, making a big figure eight which Billy covered twice. If Mickie’s whip didn’t work, Hank would come over and give Billy a kick in the rump to tear him away from a popcorn or peanut bag. Billy would kick back, but his hooves hit the cart rather than Hank. Still it was seldom that Billy could call himself tired, even at the end of a hard weekend. And if the next day was a day when the park was closed, and he was tied to his stake with nothing to butt, no crowds to cheer him, Billy would dig his horns into the grass he had already cropped. He had a crooked left horn which could tear into the ground, giving Billy satisfaction.
One Sunday, Hank Hudson and another man approached the post at the start of the Goat Ride, and Hank held his hands out palms down, a signal to Mickie to stop everything. The man had a little girl with him who was hopping up and down with excitement. Hank was talking, and slapped Billy’s shoulder, but the little girl didn’t dare touch Billy until her father took one of his horns in his hand. Ordinarily Billy would have jerked his head, because people loved to laugh and turn loose before they were thrown off their balance. But Billy was curious now, and continued chewing the remains of a crunchy ice cream cone, while his gray-blue eyes with their horizontal pupils gazed blandly at the little girl who was now stroking his forelock. The four kids in Billy’s cart clamored to get started.
Hank was taking lots of paper money from the man. Hank kept his back to the main part of the crowd, and he counted the money carefully. Hank Hudson was a tall man with a big stomach and a broad but flat behind which once or twice Billy had butted. He wore a Western hat, cowboy boots, and buff-colored trousers whose belt sloped down in front under his paunch. He had a wet pink mouth with two rabbit-like front teeth, and small blue eyes. Now his wife Blanche joined the group and watched. She was plump with reddish-brown hair. Billy never paid much attention to her. When Hank had pocketed the money, he told Mickie to get on with the ride, and Billy started off. Billy did his usual twelve or fifteen rides that evening, but at closing time he was not led back to his stable.
Mickie unhitched Billy near the entrance gate, and Billy was tugged towards a pick-up whose back hatch was open.
“Go on, git in theah, Billy!” Hank shouted, giving Billy a kick to show he meant business.
Mickie was pulling from the front. “Come on, Billy! Bye-bye, Billy boy!”
Billy clattered up the board they had put as a ramp, and the hatch was banged shut. The car started off, and there was a long bumpy ride, but Billy kept his balance easily. He looked around in the darkness at whizzing trees, a few houses that he could see whenever there was a streetlight. Finally the car stopped in a driveway beside a big house, and Billy was untied and pulled—he had to jump—down to the ground. A young woman came out of the house and patted Billy, smiling. Then Billy was led—he let himself be led mainly because he was curious—towards a lean-to against the garage. Here was a pan of water, and the woman brought another pan of a vegetable and lettuce mish-mash that tasted quite good.
Billy would have liked a gallop, just to see how big the place was and to sample some of the greenery, but the man had tied him up. The man spoke kindly, patted his neck, and went into the house, where the lights soon went out.
The next morning, the man drove off in his car, and then the woman and the little girl came out. Billy was taken for a sedate walk on a rope. Billy pranced and leapt, full of energy but content to stay on the rope until he realized that the woman was taking him back to the lean-to. Billy dashed forward, head down, felt the rope leave the woman’s hands, and then he galloped and rammed his horns, not too hard, against the
trunk of a small tree.
The little girl shrieked with pleasure.
Billy’s rope caught under a white iron bench, and he made circles around the bench until there was no more rope left, then butted the bench, knocked it over, and tossed his head. He liked making his bells ring, and he looked gaily at the woman and the little girl who were running towards him.
The woman picked up his rope. She seemed to be a little afraid of him. Then much to Billy’s annoyance, she tied the end of the rope to a nearby stone statue. The statue, which looked like a small fat boy eating something, stood by a little rock pond. Billy was alone. He looked all around him, ate some grass which was delicious but already cut rather short. He was bored. There was no one in sight now, nothing moving except an occasional bird, and one squirrel which stared at him for a moment, then disappeared. Billy tugged at his rope, but the rope held. He knew he could chew through the rope, but the task struck him as distasteful, so he made a good run from the statue and was jerked back and thrown to the ground. Billy was on his legs at once, prancing higher than ever as he assessed the problem.
Billy took another run and this time put his back into it, chin whiskers brushing the ground. A solid weight struck his chest—he was wearing his harness—and behind him he heard a crack! then a plop! as the statue fell into the water. Billy galloped on, delayed hardly at all as his plunging legs hauled the statue over the brim of the pond. Billy went on through hedges, over stone paths where the statue gave out more cracks! and became ever lighter behind him. He found some flowers and paused to refresh himself. At this point, he heard running feet, and turned his head to see the woman of the house plus a boy of about Mickie’s age coming towards him.
The woman seemed very upset. The boy untied the rope from the remnant of statue, and Billy was tugged firmly back towards the lean-to. Then the woman handed the boy a big iron spike which the boy banged into the ground with a hammer. Billy’s rope was then tied to the spike.
The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder Page 19
