Stranglehold. Part 14

"What?"

"You come to pick up your son with a gun on your hip?"

"I'm carrying some cash from the restaurant. It's out in the car. I have a permit, Liddy."

"I know you have a permit. Just don't do it again, Arthur. Ever."

"Oh, for chrissake."

"I mean it."

She called up to Robert again. It was hard keeping the anger out of her voice but she tried.

This time he came downstairs. He was carrying a small box of his plastic guys and some copies of Cracked and Mad. His boots and jacket were on so he was ready. She was relieved. He didn't look quite so reluctant to be going along this time. Which meant she didn't have to feel so guilty.

"When will you be back?"

"I'll have him back by dinnertime."

"Fine."

She bent down to give him a kiss and a hug. Pretty soon, she thought, she wouldn't be bending anymore. She'd be standing on tiptoe the way he was growing.

"Bye, honey. Have a good time."

"Bye, Mom." He kissed her back. His lips were still wet and smooth. Like a baby's lips.

"Arthur?"

He turned to her.

"Lose the gun, please."

He nodded and they left together out into the lightly falling snow.

Ellsworth, New Hamps.h.i.+re He'd come here often as a boy. The property was just off his parents' property. There was a hill leading down to a winding solitary stream where you could catch crayfish in summer and which, even now in the dead of winter, slashed its arterial way down the mountain like an open wound, defeating the freezing flesh of ice which attempted to close over it.

You pa.s.sed the stream, crawled up the banks, and you were in a field of tall brown gra.s.s and low scattered scrub. He'd hunted here many times-quail and the occasional rabbit. He wasn't supposed to. But Old Man Wingerter never got down this way very often back then and he was dead now, his property in dispute between his surviving daughters. n.o.body was going to give a d.a.m.n what he did here these days.

"Quiet now," he said to the boy.

They both were breathing hard from the climb up over the banks and the boy was cold, he was s.h.i.+vering. But Arthur could see he was excited too. What kid wouldn't be? Out here with his dad and his dad's brand-new AK-47? Like Cowboys and Indians. Only better. Because the weapon was starkly, coldly real and even the quiet kids like Robert had some sense of its power. h.e.l.l, the kid had seen the Rambo movies, right?

But it took over an hour of moving slowly and carefully through the gra.s.s and brush before they saw anything. And by then it was clear that Robert was getting bored with the game. Kids these days had lousy attention spans, he thought. When he was a kid he could go all day with a pitiful little .22 in his hands. It had all the stopping power of a gnat. But he loved the .22 anyway. You had to have patience to hunt. Patience and desire.

It was obvious his kid had neither.

He heard Robert sigh behind him. Like Arthur was putting him through something.

The kid had no appreciation.

At least he was basically keeping quiet about it. Not tramping around s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the hunt like a lot of kids might do. He was good for that much, anyway.

When the rabbit bolted out of the brush not four feet away from them, Arthur was ready, the weapon on full automatic, spraying the ground in a short tight arc that exploded through the bare dry brush, turning it to powder, and exploded the rabbit too-a wet furry brown-and-red mess lying in the snow.

One ear gone.

A leg almost shot away.

"Jesus! Jesus!" Robert was saying behind him.

The kid was astonished. The kid couldn't believe what he'd seen.

Arthur whooped and laughed and held the rabbit up for their inspection. Robert wouldn't think that hunting was boring now. No way. Not anymore.

"Did you see that? We d.a.m.n near stepped on him! Most times you've got to have yourself some dogs to get one of these guys. We got lucky!"

Jeez, G.o.d was all the kid was saying.

Shaking his head. Eyes wide like he'd seen a ghost.

And he realized then that it wasn't just astonishment that he was seeing on his son's face, though that was there too. It was also-inexplicably-horror.

Plymouth, New Hamps.h.i.+re By 6:45 she was beginning to get mad. Dinnertime was normally 6:00/6:30, and he knew that, and even though the sauteed chicken would do just fine on simmer she still had the rice to make once Robert got home and she still had to steam the vegetables, and the point was, anyway, that he deliver him back on time, not whenever he d.a.m.n well felt like it.

At just before seven she heard the car pull in, heard its door slam and then heard it pull right out again. That Arthur was leaving quickly was probably just as well. She'd been nearly ready to go out there and make the kind of scene that Robert probably didn't need.

He came in slamming the door behind him and ran for the stairs.

"Robert?"

She smelled it right away.

He'd soiled himself.

He never did this during the day.

"Robert?"

She put down the pan of vegetables and followed him. The bathroom door was closed. His coat lay on the floor. "Robert? Are you all right?"

She heard him crying. To h.e.l.l with privacy, she thought. Even though she'd always been careful to provide it for him. She opened the door.

His soiled pants and underpants were lying on the floor. He was on the toilet.

No. Not quite on it.

He was braced above it, hands clutching either side of the seat holding him up just over it, as though.

She looked at him, tears running down his cheeks.

"It hurts!" he said.

... as though he couldn't bear to put his full weight down and ...

She felt the room begin to reel and she knelt in front of him, her hands fluttering out to him, to his arms, to his legs, like the wings of strange trapped birds-she didn't know where to touch him.

... and it was impossible for him in that position. She saw the s.h.i.+t slide down his poor little skinny thighs and drop to the floor and it was bad-smelling, dark, abnormal, as though there were something foul inside him, something evil there.

She grabbed some toilet paper off the roll and began to wipe him down, his legs and thighs, and he was crying harder now, so shamed by what he'd done, standing in front of her with his legs spread and shaking with tears and she was saying it's all right, don't worry, it doesn't matter honey, let's just clean you up, taking a wet facecloth off the sink and wiping him, rinsing it, wiping him some more, the cheeks of his b.u.t.t, turning him around, the cheeks red, smelling his s.h.i.+t all the while and thinking that she had never smelled s.h.i.+t like this, it was as though someone had poisoned him.

When she touched him between the b.u.t.tocks he screamed.

He jumped away, batting at her hand holding the facecloth. He turned and ran for his bedroom. She heard him fall to the bed and heard him sobbing in his pillow.

She knelt there, so stunned that she had to grab the edge of the sink to keep from falling to the tile floor.

The room had come unglued from the universe.

She felt suddenly adrift in an awful ice-cold storm made of sudden insight and a terrible knowledge. Knowledge like a cancer inside her.

It was as though somebody had poisoned him.

Yes. It was.

And she knew.

In a single moment it all made sense to her. She saw into the pattern. She saw deceit. She saw evil. She saw a sickness that was almost beyond her imagining.

The nervousness, the stuttering.

His soiling the bed.

The nightmares. Of course there were nightmares.

He was living one.

Her baby.

Even the G.o.dd.a.m.n crazy knee-chest thing made sense now. He was telling her something. He'd been telling her something all along.

How could she have been so stupid and blind as to miss it? As to not hear him asking for her help over and over, night after night, in the silent language of his body?

But no. It had been unthinkable until now. Unthinkable that Arthur would do this. Now-anything was possible.

b.u.t.t in the air. Head to the pillow.

She'd been there a lot more times than she cared to remember.

h.e.l.l, it was Arthur's favorite position.

You sick, cowardly, evil b.a.s.t.a.r.d, she thought.

I'll get you for this one.

For this I'm going after you.

I swear to G.o.d I am.

She got up off the floor and heard him crying and found that it was possible to stand up and walk again and went to comfort her son.

He wasn't home and he wasn't at his parents'.

Which left the restaurant.

She could have used the phone but she wanted-no, she needed-to see his face when she told him. She wanted to be looking right at him when he denied it. She wanted to watch him squirm.

The Lincoln was parked out front. For a moment she considered ramming it. Arthur loved that car. Instead she pulled in right beside it.

She'd driven Robert to Cindy's house once he calmed down. It was still early and Cindy's daughter Gail was still awake, and Robert seemed to like the idea of being in the company of another kid right now. Probably he needed to forget it. To forget everything. It was obvious that Cindy wanted to know what was going on but she didn't pry and all Lydia volunteered was that she had to talk to Arthur right away. Explanations-if she chose to make any, even to Cindy-could wait.

It bothered her that he wouldn't come right out and tell her what Arthur had done to him. She supposed he was ashamed. But she knew it would be a whole lot better if he could get it out and talk about it.

"Does Daddy touch you?" she'd said. "Does he touch you back there?"

He shrugged. "I dunno."

"Tell me the truth, honey. Nothing that's happened is your fault and it's nothing for you to be ashamed of. But I think Daddy's doing something he shouldn't be doing and I think you and I should talk about it."

He just sat on the bed and looked at her. She gave him a moment.

"Do you think you can? Do you want to try to talk about it?"

"Uh-uh."

"No?"

"Uh-uh."

"Do you think maybe you'll be able to talk about it later, then?"

She didn't want to press him. Not now.

"I dunno."

"Will you try?"

"I guess."