Peyton Place (42 page)

“Thank you, Normie,” she said. “There are some cookies there on the table. Help yourself.”

It was as he was reaching for a cookie that Norman heard a faint “Meow.”

“Where's Clothilde?” he asked.

“Fast asleep on my bed, the naughty girl,” replied Mrs. Card. “But I just don't have the heart to push her off when she climbs up on the furniture. She's due any time now, and I know exactly how she feels.”

Mrs. Card laughed, but even over that sound, Norman heard again the faint “Meow” of a cat. Surreptitiously, so as not to make Mrs. Card suspicious, Norman turned and looked at the tall, thick green hedge which separated the Cards’ back yard from that of Miss Hester Goodale. It was Miss Hester's cat that he had heard, and he knew very well that the cat was never anywhere that Miss Hester was not. The back of his neck was suddenly cold.

Why, she's watching us! he thought, shocked. Miss Hester's watching us through the hedge! What else would she be doing out in her yard, if she weren't watching?

But there was nothing for Miss Hester or anyone else to see in the Cards’ back yard, and for that reason, Norman began to wonder just exactly what it was that Miss Hester watched. He knew that Miss Hester sat and watched something for the mewing of the torn cat was the regular, soft mewing which a cat makes when he rubs against the legs of someone who is still and pays no attention to him. Norman was not an overly curious child. He had never been plagued by the affliction to which he referred as “nosiness,” but now he was assailed by a sudden and terrible longing to know
why
Miss Hester watched, and, more important,
what,
and in the next moment it came to him that this was Friday, and always, on Fridays, at four o'clock, Miss Hester left her house and walked toward town. He gulped his lemonade.

“I have to go, Mrs. Card,” he said. “My mother wants me home by four o'clock.”

He ran out into the street and to a point far enough beyond Miss Hester's so that Mrs. Card would not be able to see him if she should decide to go into her own house and look out the front windows. Then he sat down on the curbstone to wait for four o'clock.

Norman did not, or perhaps he could not, analyze this strange feeling that was in him. It was a frantic need to see and to know, and of such proportions that he knew he would never have a moment's peace until he had seen and until he knew. It was fortunate for Norman that he realized the dimensions of his desire, for after this one time, he was never able to do so again. Years later, when he fell prey to vague longings of an indeterminate nature, he brushed them away as foolishness. He never again realized the enormity of a desire the way he did on this hot Friday afternoon in 1939.

He
had
to know, thought Norman, and his thinking did not go beyond that point. When it was four o'clock, and he saw Miss Hester walk out of her front gate and move down the street, his heart began to pound with anticipation, as if he were on the brink of a world-shaking discovery. He waited until she was out of sight, and before he could think any more about it and grow frightened, he ran across the street and through Miss Hester's front gate. It was the first time he had ever been beyond the walk in front of her house.

The grass around Miss Hester's house was tall and unkempt. It came nearly to Norman's waist as he made his way to the rear of the cottage. When he had reached a point directly in front of the back porch, he paused to study what he saw. The only article of furniture on Miss Hester's porch was a wicker rocking chair, painted green. It was turned to face the hedge which separated her yard from that of the Cards’. Softly, with his heart thumping, Norman made his way to the porch. He sat down in the rocking chair and looked at the hedge. There was a gap in the green, he saw, of perhaps three inches, and through this gap he could see Mrs. Card sitting in her “chayze lounge.” Mrs. Card was reading a bright-jacketed book, and smoking. Occasionally, she reached down and scratched at the monstrous lump which was her abdomen. Norman's heart sank with disappointment.

If this was all, Miss Hester must be as loony as folks said she was. Only a really loony person would sit and watch Mrs. Card read and smoke and scratch herself. There
must
be something more. This couldn't be all.

He sat in Miss Hester's rocking chair for a long time, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. It was hot, a hot, sleepy afternoon. The “sizzle bugs” in the trees never stopped their scraping, and a smell of smoke lay over everywhere. It came from the forest fires which burned almost three miles away, but which were coming closer and closer to town every minute. It was a sleepy, sleepy smell, the smell of smoke. Norman started. Too late, he heard the echo of the clock on the front of the Citizens’ National Bank on Elm Street. It had rung five times, and the sound Norman heard now was the latch on Miss Hester's front gate.

Without a thought, except that he must not be caught by Miss Hester, Norman hurled himself off the porch. There was a space between the under part of the porch and the hedge of perhaps a yard in width, and Norman lay there, flat on his stomach. He prayed that Miss Hester would not walk to the edge of her porch and look down, for she would see him at once, and God only knew what she'd do. You could never tell what a loony person would do, and anyone who spent her time in looking through the gap in a hedge when there was nothing to be seen must be really loony. Norman heard the soft snap of Miss Hester's screen door, and the softer squeak of her rocking chair as she sat down. Evidently, she was not going to come to the edge of the porch and look down. He heard her whispering to her torn as she tied him to a rung of her chair, and he wondered how long she would stay out on the porch. Until dark, probably, and then wouldn't he catch it when he got home. He heard a car pull up in the driveway next door. It was Mr. Card, arriving home. Norman turned his head in minute fractions of an inch to look through the gap in the hedge. Sweat made him itch, and the dry blades of grass on which he lay tickled his nose. He had an hysterical desire to sneeze and just as strong an urge to urinate.

“Hi, baby!” It was Mr. Card, coming around the corner of his house and into his back yard.

Mrs. Card dropped her book and held out her arms to him, and Mr. Card came to sit on the edge of the “chayze lounge” next to his wife.

“Poor darling,” said Mrs. Card. “You're all hot and sweaty. Have a lemonade.”

Mr. Card unbuttoned his shirt and then took it off. His chest and shoulders gleamed as he reached forward to the small table to pour himself a cool drink.

“Hot,” he said, “I guess to hell it is. Hotter than the hinges down at the shop.” His throat muscles contracted as he drank, and he set his glass down on the table with a little snick.

“Poor darling,” said Mrs. Card, and ran her hand over his bans chest.

Mr. Card turned to her, and even from where he lay, Norman could see the difference in him. His shoulders, the back of his neck, his whole body had stiffened, and Mrs. Card was laughing softly. Mr. Card gave a little cry and buried his face in her neck, and up over Norman's head, Miss Hester's torn meowed softly. The rocking chair in which Miss Hester was sitting did not creak at all. If Norman had not known better, he would have sworn that there was no one on the porch but Miss Hester's torn. Norman could not take his eyes off the Cards. Mr. Card had unbuttoned the straight, full jacket of Mrs. Card's dress, and now he was loosening her skirt. In the next instant, Norman could see the huge, blue-veined growth which was Mrs. Card's abdomen, and he thought he would throw up. But Mr. Card was running his hand lovingly over the growth; he caressed it gently and even bent his head and kissed it. He held Mrs. Card in the circle of his dark, black-haired arms, and Mrs. Card's body looked very, very white. Norman dug his fingernails into the dry grass beneath his hands and clenched his eyes tightly shut. The desire to be gone and away from this place was a physical sickness in him. Why didn't Miss Hester get up and go into the house? Would she never go? Mr. Card's big hands were cupping Mrs. Card's breasts now, and Norman saw that these, too, were swollen and blue veined. How was he going to get away? If he jumped up and tried to run, Miss Hester might chase him. Miss Hester was tall, and presumably long legged, and if she tried, she could probably catch him. What would she do with him then? If she was as loony as folks said she was, there was no telling what she might do. You could never tell about a loony person. Nor could Norman try to crash through the hedge and into the Cards’ back yard. What would they think of him, after they had befriended him, given him lemonade and promised to give him first choice of Clothilde's kittens, if they ever found out that he had spied on them. Norman glanced through the gap in the hedge. Mr. Card was on his knees on the ground, his face hidden in Mrs. Card's flesh, and Mrs. Card was lying very still, with her legs spread a little, and a smile on her face that showed her teeth.

I've got to get out! thought Norman desperately. Whether old Miss Hester catches me or not, I've got to get out!

He raised himself slowly to a crouch, so that his eyes came just barely to the edge of the porch. Then he knew that he did not have to worry about Miss Hester chasing him. Miss Hester was sitting rigidly in her chair, her fists clenched on the arms, her eyes staring glazedly through the gap in the hedge, and there was a line of sweat over her top lip. The torn, black, fat and sleek, was tied to a rung of the chair, and he rubbed gently against Miss Hester's legs, uttering his gentle, mewing bid for attention. Norman stood up and ran, and Miss Hester never turned her head to look at him.

“What happened to the front of your shirt, Norman?” asked his mother when he went into his house. “It is all grass stained.”

Norman had never lied to his mother. True, there were things that he had occasionally omitted telling her, but he had never actually lied to her.

“I fell,” he said. “I was running around in the park, and I fell.”

“For Heaven's sake, Norman, how many times do I have to tell you that you must not run in this heat?”

Later, after supper, Evelyn Page discovered that she was out of bread, and she sent Norman to Tuttle's for a loaf. It was in the quickly gone period, between dusk and dark, when Norman passed Miss Hester's house on his way home from the store. He was almost abreast of the house, when he heard the most dreadful sound he had ever heard. It was a fierce caterwauling, the screaming of a terrorized animal fighting for freedom that he heard. Carefully, Norman put his mother's loaf of bread down on the sidewalk next to Miss Hester's front gate, and he walked toward the back of Miss Hester's house. He knew, with a dreadful certainty, what he would find there, but he forced his legs forward.

Miss Hester was sitting in her wicker rocking chair. Her position had not changed since Norman had seen her that afternoon, except that there was a new quality to the stiffness which held her now. Norman watched the tom, who struggled insanely with the rope that held him bound to the stiff, dead thing in the chair. The cat twisted, turned, leaped, but he could not get away from Miss Hester, and all the while that he tried, his throat emitted terrible, shrieking sounds of fear.

“Stop it!” whispered Norman from the porch steps. “Stop it!”

But the terrorized animal did not even notice him.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Norman's voice had risen until he was almost shouting, but the torn paid him no attention, and when Norman could stand it no longer, he jumped at the cat and fastened his hands around its throat. The torn fought, digging his claws deep into Norman's hand, but to the boy the scratches were no more than red marks made by a feather dipped in paint. He squeezed and squeezed, and even when he knew that the torn was quite dead, he continued to squeeze, and all the while he was sobbing, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”

It was Mr. Card who found Miss Hester. He and Mrs. Card had spent the evening at a movie, and when he opened the back door to let Clothilde out, after they had returned, the cat headed straight for the hedge and Miss Hester's back yard.

“Jesus! What a sight that was!” said Mr. Card later. “There was Miss Hester, sitting straight as a stick in that rocking chair, dead as a doornail. And that torn, with his neck broken, still tied to a rung. What I can't figure is, how come that torn didn't scratch when she choked him? There wasn't a mark on her!”

“Now perhaps it will be over,” sighed Seth Buswell as he put a drink together for his tired friend Matthew Swain.

“They say that deaths come in threes,” said the doctor, smiling to keep the seriousness from his words.

“Superstitious drivel,” declared Seth angrily, angry because he was afraid that his friend was right. “It's been a bad time, but it's over now.”

Matthew Swain shrugged, and sipped his drink.

In the Page house, Evelyn was holding Norman's head as he stood over the toilet and vomited.

“I got into a fight,” he said, when she asked him about the deep scratches on his arms and hands.

“Your little tummy is all upset, dear,” she said gently. “I'll give you an enema and put you to bed.”

“Yes,” gasped Norman. “Yes, please,” and in his head everything kept running together. Allison, and the Cards, and Miss Hester and the tom.

On the hills beyond Peyton Place, the fires raged, unchecked and uncontrollable.

Everything that men know how to do for the fighting of forest fires had been done in Peyton Place by the first week in September. Backfires had been made and had proved useless, for the wooded hills blazed in too many places at once. Weary men, in twenty-four-hour shifts, lined up on the tarred roads which cut through the hills and waited patiently, their backs bent under the filled Indian pumps they carried, for the blaze to reach their particular position. Other, more experienced, men fought on the dirt roads where they were enclosed on both sides by the tall, flaming trees, and everywhere the fight was futile, for the strength was all on one side. The fires which encircled Peyton Place in the late summer of 1939 were uncontrollable for the reasons a forest fire is always uncontrollable. A combination of too much fire in too large an area with too few men and too little equipment, plus just enough wind to fan and spread flame and too little, much too little, water. The only stream of any size which was not completely dried up by the drought of ’39 was the Connecticut River.