Shadows 7 (6 page)

The dog was still barking and the child dressed swiftly, pulling on his sailor's shirt with the square starched collar that went so well with his navy blue shorts. She could hear the child's parents stirring in the master bed. The child looked up at them cautiously and ran out the door. Victoria tried to follow him, but she could go no farther than the door to the bedroom. She turned and crossed back to the window in time to see the child appear on the lawn.

The bedsprings creaked behind her and she turned to watch the first drowsy stirrings of the people in the master bed. Jimmy's father pulled himself slowly to a sitting position, shook his head and smiled down at the woman still sleeping beside him. He slid out of bed and stretched, and Victoria smiled to see what a fine man Jacob was, even in his floor-length bedgown, with that handsome walrus mustache and muttonchop sideburns, his face as yet young and strong. He went to the window and called something to the boy, waking the woman. Victoria watched her yawn and rub her eyes. It took the woman much longer to pull herself out of bed to begin her morning ritual. She washed her face in the basin and pulled an ivory screen from the corner and stood behind it to dress. Without shame, Victoria walked behind it to watch. It was so strange to think of herself that way. It had been such a long time. She reached out her hand in an attempt to touch the supple skin and the woman shivered, but Victoria felt nothing.

The room was empty now. Hers again for a little while only. She looked lovingly at the hard woods, the dainty enamels, the glass bottles on the vanity, wishing once again that she could hold them. Each detail, from the handmade quilt to the imported persian rug of her mother's, brought back a flood of memory. Soon, she would have to go, never to see it again.

Her reverie was short-lived. The boy was back in the room, tugging the dog behind him on a homemade hempen leash. She remembered the day when she and Jimmy had made the leash out of old pieces of rope; and though it was far from beautiful to her eyes, Jimmy had thought it the best piece of craftsmanship ever done. Now, dog-chewed as well, it could barely withstand the pressure that Pomeroy was putting on it, for suddenly the dog
saw
her, and began to lunge with all his might to get away from the room.

"Hush, Pomeroy! Stop
keening
like that. Father will make me give you up if I can't make you behave." Jimmy gave one final yank, pulling the dog into the room and slamming the door behind him just as the leash finally snapped. "Now look what you've done! Listen, dog, you've
got
to be quiet." His voice was full of the desperation of childhood, dreading the judgment of a court from which he had no appeal. "There'll be an awful row if they find out that I haven't left for my piano lesson yet, but you've got to settle down before I go. Father told me last night that this was your last chance."

The frightened dog gave one last eerie cry; a sound reminiscent of fairy stories—the howling wolf, the banshee's wail. Then, as if it were all too much for him, he curled himself into a tight little ball and jammed himself under the tallboy.

"I don't know what's got into you today, but that's better. Now, don't you start screeching again. I've got to get out of here, and that won't be easy if I don't want Mother to see me." He ran to the window and leaned out over the sill. Victoria peered out over his shoulder. The woman had just come around from the rear of the house, carrying a large wooden basket. "Mother!" she heard Jimmy whisper. He pulled back at once, the look on his face becoming more and more anxious as he heard the front door slam, the sound of footsteps on the stairs. He looked around. With the trundle in place, there was no room under the bed, and the dog had taken up the space under the tallboy. He couldn't slip under the vanity, for that was where his mother always put the basket when she came upstairs.

The footsteps were coming closer. He spotted the tiny closet and slipped inside.
No, Jimmy!
She put out a hand to stop him, but it did no good. Still, he had left the door open the tiniest crack. Enough to let air in. Enough to hear when the woman left the room and it was safe to come out. Enough to make sure that he wasn't locked in. But the woman pushed it closed. She slammed the main door against it when she pushed into the room with the basket. She placed the basket under the skirt of the vanity and quickly made up the beds.
The closet. My God, the closet.
The woman's hands were deft and sure. A tug here, a twist there. She pulled out the trundle, smoothed out the sheet and pushed it back underneath the main bed, then stood for a moment to admire her work.

The closet. Open the closet. Look in the closet. Don't leave! The child is in the closet!
Victoria tried to block the doorway with her insubstantial body. The woman shivered and looked uneasily over her shoulder, but she walked out into the hallway where Victoria couldn't follow. Victoria knew where the woman was going. Downstairs to do her canning. Down to the basement kitchen two flights below, where the muffled cries and hammering of the boy would not be heard.

Victoria's father had made that closet. He had made it for her mother, with cedar-lined walls and a door that was strong and tight against vermin and the weather. There was no handle on the inside. Nor was there any reason for Jimmy's mother to be alarmed at the child's absence. She would not begin her frantic, desperate search until her husband came home at five-thirty, and even then it would not occur to her to search the house. But Victoria did not want the woman to open the closet door later that night and find the small crumpled form as it slid bonelessly to the floor, cold and lifeless, the blue face stained with tears, hands raw and bloody. She tried to open the door herself, but those hands, once able to make a bed in five minutes, were now unable to turn a knob. Jimmy was already screaming and hammering on the thick door, but even right outside, she could barely hear him. "Mother, Mommy, please!"

She looked around the room for some way to attract the woman's attention. "Someone please come help me," Jimmy shouted, and silently, she echoed his plea. If she could only knock some of the bottles from the windowsill, or knock the vanity mirror over. A loud noise would bring the woman. There had to be a way. She had been given an opportunity to try and so there
had
to be something she could do. To go through this again and to change nothing would be the worst sort of cruelty. "Mom-my!"

The dog. The dog could sense her presence, and the dog could make a lot of noise. She bent low and pushed her head under the tallboy. The dog inched backward, away from her, making a soft, high-pitched wail deep in his throat.
Bark, you fool! Bark for Jimmy!
She pressed forward, and the dog moved back until, free at last from the tallboy, he bounded across the room. He jumped on the bed and began to growl.
Don't growl. Bark! Jimmy's in the closet!
The dog jumped off the bed and backed himself against the wall. She followed, flailing at him with her fists.
Bark! Howl! Knock something over!
The dog began to bark and still she chased him.
Louder!
The dog barked. The dog howled as though all the demons of hell were after him.
Louder!!!

The woman burst into the room. "Pomeroy, stop it this instant. This time you'll have to go," the woman shouted.
Stop now, dog. Let her hear the boy.
With the door open, the dog leapt off the bed and ran out of the room. The woman turned to follow, still shouting after him.
Wait! Don't go again! You stupid fool! You've got to save Jimmy. Do you want the boy to die?
She tried to grab the woman's hair, to tear at her clothes, to tackle her. Again the woman shivered.

"Mother, Mother, please!" Victoria heard it faintly. The woman seemed to hear something too. She paused in the doorway and looked around. "Somebody, anybody, help me!" The woman cocked her head, listening, then crossed to the window.
Not there, you fool. The closet!
"Help me. Let me out!" The woman walked back to the closet and opened the door. Jimmy fell out into her arms. His face was red, his cheeks stained with tears, his hands bruised and sore. He was the most beautiful child that Victoria had ever seen. He clung tightly to his mother's waist, sobbing, frightened by his momentary imprisonment, but otherwise unaware of the dark wings that had brushed the back of his neck.

As Victoria watched, the woman and the child began to fade. Color went first, draining away until they looked like an old sepia-toned photograph. Then they faded away altogether, disappearing very slowly, an image retained on the eyelid, then they were gone. As she watched, the tallboy peeled and chipped and began to lean unsteadily to one side; a pane of glass suddenly cracked and fell away. Then it too had shimmered and vanished, replaced by a blond oak bureau on top of which sat a vase of artificial flowers. The walls behind it turned pink, then green, then blue, and finally white. And as she watched, the view from the window changed, the empty wooded lands across the road giving way to tracts of housing developments and tall factory smokestacks that puffed their wastes on the distant horizon. This room was plain and bare compared with the other, and yet they were the same.

Victoria looked at the old woman lying on the simple Hollywood bed. A paramedic worked feverishly, administering CPR, while another adjusted the dials on the defibrillator for another try. Finally, the first one sat up. "Forget it, Ed. Nothing's going to help this one." Ed wiped the jelly from the machine's paddles and put them away. "Not surprising," he said. "She must be a thousand years old. I'll call the hospital. You can go over and tell the neighbors. They'll probably want to call her son."

Her son! Victoria noticed that on the nightstand beside her bed—the same nightstand that had been bare when she called about her chest pains, a few moments or years ago—was a gilt-framed picture. A picture of Jimmy, grey and balding, surrounded by his own grown children. And as the room began to fade, Victoria smiled.

Earl is Parke Godwin's brother and, like many a fine writer, didn't begin his career early on. Instead, he began writing when many of us will begin thinking that it's less than two decades until retirement. Earl currently lives in Texas, and this is his first published story.

I stay away from singles bars. I never was good at clever small talk, and I'm at my fumbling worst when the whole idea is to strike up a relationship with a woman. That's why I choose neighborhood haunts where the serious drinkers gather to pass the evening in comfortable ambience. However, the thought is always tucked away in the back of my mind that I just might meet a special lady who could laugh aside my clumsy, inarticulate style and find charming the rather eccentric limitations of my bachelor life.

I met her in spades.

It had been raining and there was a chill in the air, so I sat in the back of the crowded bar in my raincoat nursing a straight bourbon. There were a lot of women in the place, some very attractive, but not that special one with whom I'd consider dancing through a night's fantasy. In life I've settled for some very ordinary women. In my dreams I always go first-class.

She came in with a man, and they threaded their way back through the crowd until a waitress seated them in a booth right next to my table. The man hung up their raincoats and she stood next to me, shaking the water from her dark, shoulder-length hair. A drop landed on my upper lip; I slowly licked it off, staring at her.

They weren't happy: this I could see right away. Worry traced its path across her darkly beautiful features. This was a queen, not just worthy of my idle fantasy but one for whom I could work my whole life to wash the torment from that exquisite face and replace it with happiness. I don't say that easily, because I consider myself an accredited critic of beauty. I'm a photographer, and even if my sexual successes have been among the mediocre, I have a sharp eye for real beauty, and this creature with her eyes that leaped out and grabbed you would steal the heart out of a polar bear. The man? Who knows? I wouldn't remember him if he fell on me.

I tried not to stare. Her eyes flicked over me for a preoccupied instant and then away. I listened to the soft, tense tone of their conversation. He was saying things like, "Tired of it . . . had enough . . . impossible." I couldn't make out much. Most of it was in whispers and I don't hear well. They raised their voices slightly. The conversation was becoming more intense. The man leaned over the table, his face strained and angry, hers desperate and afraid. She hissed something that sounded like an ultimatum. He jumped up and shouldered his way through the crowd to the front door. I looked quickly at the woman. Her expression was one of weary defeat. It seemed to add years to her face.

Alone and nervous, she fumbled her way through several matches until she managed to light her cigarette. I caught her eye and raised my shot glass in a sympathetic toast. She started to raise hers, but the glass was empty. "I seem to be abandoned and the gentleman had all the money." She flashed a vulnerable smile.

I signaled the waitress. "May I join you?"

"By all means." Her confidence had returned, but there was still that air of vulnerability about her that excited me. I prayed I wouldn't overplay my hand.

I have a book at home called
How to Pick Up Women.
There are hundreds of opening lines for starting a conversation; I couldn't remember a single one of them. We looked at each other for an awkwardly long time until I blurted, "Was that your husband?"

"No."

"He sure ran off and left you like a lone duck."

"No, just a friend. It's not important now. Do you have the time? I have to go soon."

I felt my hopes plummet. "It's nine o'clock. Please—don't go. I love talking to pretty ladies."

She looked at me sharply, an appraising glance. "Aren't you the charmer." Then she fumbled with another match. I leaned over to steady her hand.

"Eres muy caballero."

"You're Spanish?"

"I've been a lot of things. Do you live around here?"