Shadows Burned In (12 page)

Maybe she could hear them breathing. Maybe she could smell
their breath. Maybe she would know just where to look for them.

They heard the front door scrape against its facing as she
opened it. Into the light stepped Old Suzie. She wore a workman’s shirt and
heavy boots and overalls, but she was missing her trademark cowboy hat. It was
hard to see her hair because the porch light cast weird shadows, but it looked
like it didn’t go below her collar. Short and iron gray. And she had a huge
grin on her face. No, a huge
smile
.

David wondered what she was smiling at, then snapped to it
immediately. What else?
Little boy pizza just arrived
, he thought.
And
she looks hungry
.

“Hello?” she said, the porch creaking under her weight. Her
voice sounded strange, like if it didn’t get an answer, it might just never
speak again. Then her smile started to fade back into the hard, tanned lines on
her face. She looked left and right, strained her neck forward to get a better
view of her own front yard. “Hello?” she said again. She listened to the
crickets chirping. In the distance, she could still hear trick-or-treating
children down the street.

But none here.

She sighed once, stood up a bit straighter, and went back
in. Normally when she closed the front door, she had to push it closed two or
three times to get the warped wood past the facing. But this time Suzie closed
it with sufficient force to make it in one try.

David and Theron saw none of this. As soon as she’d opened
the door and stepped out on the porch, Theron had grabbed his friend’s arm and
pulled him around toward the back of the house. This had been the diversion.
Now they were putting the battle plan into action.

They made their way to the back door, keeping close to the
house, just like in the movies. Theron peered through the screen. Low light shone
from the windows in the kitchen.

“Come on!” said Theron. “This is it!”

David was less sure. “This is
what
?”

“We’re going in, of course!”

“
What
?”

“We have to go now! While she’s still around front!”

“But—”

“What are you,
scared
?”

“Yeah, no, I—”

“
I’m
going, then.”

And with that, Spider-Man reached for the back door. David
thought for a moment, wiped his cold palms on his polyester costume.
If I
don’t go, Theron will tell everyone at school. And then Pete Lasco won’t be the
only one wanting to kick my butt
. A shivering Batman followed after.

Theron opened the screen door and its loud spring made a
sound

rrrrrrrrraaaaaaaawwwww

that made them both pause. Then Theron screwed up his
courage and placed his hand on the back door’s handle. He slowly turned it to
the right. It was unlocked. He carefully pushed it open.

The kitchen was smaller than David thought it would be. He
could smell something cooking and wondered how witches preferred their children
cooked nowadays: fried, steamed, or baked in an oven?

(the old-fashioned way)

They inched into the kitchen. The front door slammed, and Theron
nearly jumped out of his skin. Voices were coming from the other room. Anxious
voices.

(children for the pot)

Plaintive.

David and Theron looked at one another. Their mouths hung
open behind their masks. They could hear snippets of the conversation, and the
words “afraid,” “rescue,” and “lovey” came to them.

Then there was laughter.

Theron crawled to the kitchen doorway. The door leading into
Suzie’s parlor was open. He saw her shadow approaching. Her big feet clunked on
the hardwood floor as they came toward him. He could tell by her steps she was
in a foul mood.

(want it quick and painless, kids)

Her feet pounded like they were trying to punch holes in the
floor. The closer they got, the madder they sounded.

(don’t think so)

Then they turned away and Theron heard her sit down in the
parlor.

“. . . rescued . . .”

David came up beside him and looked into the parlor. Suzie’s
chair sat at about a thirty-degree angle to the kitchen door, and with its back
to the front door.

“. . . impossible . . .”

If she turned her head left and bothered to look, she would
see them there kneeling in the doorway, trying to be inconspicuous superheroes.

“. . .
Gilligan
! . . .”

Instead, she stared straight at the TV.

Theron pulled David back into the kitchen. “Okay,” he
whispered, “now we have some fun.” He opened the bag he’d brought and took out
two firecrackers and matches.

“What are you gonna do with that?” David asked stupidly.

Theron’s skin scraped the plastic as he smiled behind his
mask. “Have some fun with the old witch.” He lit a match. “Now here’s what
we’re gonna do. We’ll set off a few firecrackers, then run straight for the
front door and out of here, okay?”

In the other room the boom of commercials began with bright
music, loud voices, and hyperactive announcers. David suddenly felt very sick—that
queasy feeling you get inside when you realize the milk you just drank must’ve
started to curdle. “Why not go back out the back door?” he asked.

Spider-Man cocked his head to one side. “Because, dummy,
then there wouldn’t be any
fun
in it.”

David swallowed. “Oh.”

“Here we go . . .”

Theron touched off a string of five firecrackers and was
preparing to toss it into the parlor when Old Suzie stepped into the kitchen
for a beer.

“What the . . . ?”

Batman peed himself.

Spider-Man stood in the center of the kitchen like a plastic
army man, legs spread apart, left arm forward for balance, right arm cocked
back with a hand full of firecrackers, poised to throw.

“What are you kids doin in my
house?”

The fuse burned.

David couldn’t speak. He tried to open his mouth, but his lips
just brushed against his mask. Theron tried to move and felt as if his joints
had frozen. One look at the much-talked-about Medusa had turned him to stone.

“You gonna answer me, or—”

CRACK
. . .
CRACKCRACKCRACK . . . CRACK

The firecrackers exploded in rapid succession, and only
after the first one went off did Theron remember to drop them. The tiny
explosion set his hand to stinging and he cried out. Suzie screamed at the
noise and David just sat there on the floor, working his mouth and not breathing,
feeling his lower body getting warmer.

“Great God Almighty!” Suzie yelled. David managed to get his
feet under him. She was going for Theron.
Good
, one part of David’s mind
thought,
more time for me to get out
.

But Theron had found his feet too. David scampered toward
the parlor as fast as he could, Theron on his heels.

“
Wait
!” came the heavy,
been-doing-her-husband’s-work-for-years voice. “You boys come back here, damn
it!”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” screamed David, imagining what she’d do
to them if she caught them.

Her big boots came clomp-clomp-clomping after them. The boys
split up, running around the parlor like chickens in a farmyard, trying to keep
Suzie’s furniture between them and her.

“You boys have some explaining to do!”

Theron led the charge for the front door.

“Oh,
no
you don’t!”

clomp
– clomp
– clomp

But the boys beat her to the hallway and that’s when David
saw it, he
saw
it! The cauldron she mixed her children up in with

(spiders and bats)

eye of toad and tongue of snake to make them
mmm mmm good
.

Suzie grabbed him by the cape.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” screamed David again.

“Great God Almighty!”

“Let him go!” Theron yelled bravely as he opened the door to
make his own escape.

“I don’t think so,” said Suzie as David struggled to get
free of her. She tugged, trying to get a better grip while he squirmed, and
suddenly there was a loud

rrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiip

and Batman was de-caped. As he pulled free, David fell
forward, knocking the huge cauldron-bowl onto the floor, where it shattered. He
could hear Suzie audibly gasp at the sight as dozens of crystal pieces and
hundreds of tiny candies went everywhere. David made the obscure observation
that Suzie had been planning on giving out those tiny bite-sized Snickers his
father liked so much, and thinking about the old man filled him with dread. But
he pushed all that aside running through the front door onto the porch and he
and Theron made good their escape.

Behind them Old Suzie stood in the doorway, looking back and
forth from their forms growing smaller by the second to the broken mess on her
floor but unable to coax any words from her throat. She stood there, rubbing
her eyes from time to time, just stood there and stared into the night, long
after the boys had vanished. Then she slowly closed the door and went to the
kitchen to get the broom and dustpan and trashcan. And that beer.

knock – knock – knock

“Trick or treat.”

The girl stood there for a moment, giving the homeowner time
to come to the door. She imagined their picking up a bowl of candy and gripping
the knob to turn it. The person inside would probably be expecting several kids
to be trick-or-treating together, so maybe they’d bring a lot of candy to the
door. Since she was alone, that would mean more for her, right?

No one answered. She could hear scraping noises inside. She
knew she was at Old Suzie’s house and the other kids said she was a witch. But
the girl didn’t believe that. She decided to try one more time.

knock – knock – knock

“Trick or
treat
.”

The front porch light was suddenly flicked off.

That’s weird
, she thought.
Maybe they ran out of
candy
. She exhaled, disappointed.
Momma always says when the porch light
is out, it means they’re out of candy
. She turned to leave and scraped one
of her rays on the front door. She had come as the sun. A simple enough costume
her mother could make for her. But the cardboard bent easily. Now she had a ray
that flapped when she walked. Tonight just wasn’t her night.

“Light’s off,” called her mother from the street. She had
spent the evening walking her daughter around the neighborhoods, trying to get
what they could. “They ain’t got no more candy. Come on, Regina.”

Chapter 11

Wayne Alan Kitts walked the length of the wall again, judged
the distance again, looked at the guards looking at him, then glanced away
again and counted the seconds when they weren’t watching him watching them. He
flexed his hands once, twice, used the action to count the seconds. Then he
turned away as he saw the guard on the south tower turn back toward him. He had
five minutes to go before out-time was over. Leaning against the wall, Kitts
tried to be cool, like Steve McQueen in that old World War II movie where he tries
to jump the motorcycle over the barbed wire and gets tangled up in it. He even
styled himself “Cooler King” inside, the nickname for McQueen’s character in
the movie.
A motorcycle would help right about now
, he thought, looking
again at the razor wire that lined the prison wall, thinking how hard it would
be to climb that thing without getting sliced up.

Or shot, bendejo
, Kitts thought.

Yeah, or shot.

He looked around the compound, trying to seem nonchalant,
when he saw her walking in. He preferred blondes, but without much of a choice
these days, he wouldn’t have kicked this one out of bed. Her jeans were painted
on, her boots cracking on the hard cement as she walked across the basketball
court. She passed close enough that, had Kitts stretched his arm out, he
could’ve touched her. And he was mightily tempted.

With the wind blowing, he thought, and with the right angle,
he could see just inside the armhole of her sleeveless shirt. He imagined more
than saw the curve of her right breast, just a glimpse. He could almost feel
its weight in his hand. And the sunglasses.
Jesus, women look so much better
in three dimensions
, he thought. He heard someone call what must have been
her name, Caroline, and he stood and stared. Kitts put aside all thoughts of
escape, replaced them with a downright desire to
stay
, boy. He almost
fell over as she leaned up to kiss her boyfriend. As they walked across the yard
together, the boyfriend looked in his direction.

“Hey!”

Kitts was startled back to reality.
Never let ’em see you
sweat, boy. That’s how you live in here. That’s how you stay alive in here.
But
it was a bit late for that now.

“Yeah, Sarge?”

“Keep your eyes to yourself,” said the sergeant of the
watch, placing his arm protectively around the woman.

She was
his
woman.
Ramirez’s
woman. And God,
how he hated Ramirez. But Cooler King Kitts played it cool. “Aw, c’mon, Sarge,
I’m just window-shoppin. I ain’t buyin.”

Then Ramirez did the one thing Kitts hadn’t expected. He
smiled. It was a sunny day, a hot day for this time of year, and he had those
damned mirrored sunglasses on. Kitts hated not being able to see the sergeant’s
eyes.
The eyes are the windows to the soul
, his grandmother had taught
him. And on more than one occasion Kitts had found it to be true. It had saved
his life and cost other people theirs. He always knew how to handle someone after
he looked in their eyes.

But that damned smile.
Wipe it off, lawman
, thought
the Cooler King.
Or I’ll fucking cut it off your face and shove it up your
ass
.

With one thumb hooked in a belt loop of Caroline’s bodypaint
jeans and his hand resting on her ass, the sergeant ambled in his direction.
Kitts’s breathing got shallow.
He’s bringing her over here
. Fantasies
blossomed in his head.

Ramirez took a drag on his cigarette, standing at ease. “You
still planning your breakout?” he asked. “’Cause me and the boys got a bet.
Y’know, kinda like a baby pool. We figure you’ll be over the wall before the
first real warm day. ’Course, to be fair, that’s to say the first
real
warm
day. None of those iced-tea-on-the-porch winter days we have around here. The
month of June is right popular with the pool, in fact.”

Kitts heard Caroline giggle a bit as she mock-swatted her
beau’s badged chest.

Goddamn him. Goddamn the fucking bastard. First thing
I’ll do when I get out
. . .

The guards on the towers, which couldn’t have been more than
two-hundred feet apart, were laughing at him. They couldn’t’ve heard Ramirez.
Could they? Or was Kitts such a joke to them that they must’ve known what
Ramirez was chiding him about?

Goddamn bastard
.

Kitts just shrugged, which was a bit difficult because he
was also trying to lean further into the wall at his back to present the most
unconcerned portrait possible. Indifferent nonchalance. A look that said,
Sticks
and stones, motherfucker
. “I figure I might go as early as December,” he
said, smiling back. “Cooler then. Who wants to break out in the heat?”

Ramirez nodded. “Cooler then, for the ‘Cooler King,’” he
said, laughing. Turning to Caroline, he flicked his eyes Kitts’s direction.
“Ever seen
The Great Escape
, doll? This guy thinks he’s Steve fucking
McQueen. Digging tunnels and riding bikes across Germany like some goddamned
movie star war hero.”

First thing I’ll do, motherfucker. First thing
.

“December, eh? Good idea,” Ramirez mused. “Let me know when
it’s gonna be, and I’ll split the kitty with you. Fifty-fifty.”

Kitts forced himself to laugh for the audience. “Yeah, man.
And I’ve been looking for some swampland to buy for a homestead—know of any?”

“Yeah,” said the sergeant, grabbing his crotch. “You can take
up residence right here anytime you want. A little grassy, and one great big hard
rock to climb, sweetcheeks.”

Despite their distance, the tower guards laughed out loud,
and now some of the prisoners were looking on and smiling, currying favor with
the deck warden, as they called Ramirez. And then Caroline laughed too, though
she swiped playfully at Ramirez’s chest again as if to say he shouldn’t make
such jokes when she was around. Still, she laughed, a lilting giggle that put
the lie to her false modesty. Her sunglasses flashed on Kitts, taking in the
funny little man.

Goddamn bastard. Fucking humiliate me
. Cooler King
Kitts said, “Really? That’s not what I heard. I heard Franklin damn near went
blind looking for it and you beat him to death because he couldn’t find it.
Lethal injection, my ass.”

(too far)

The warning came from way back inside Kitts’ head. This was
a game they were playing, always fixed in its outcome. Guards and prisoners
traded insults, mostly one-on-one, sometimes with an audience, but never with
the prisoner getting the better line. This was a game, and he’d just jumped out
of bounds. And now, the penalty phase.

“You fucking red-haired bastard,” said Ramirez, advancing.
The yard went quiet, and the tower guards took the safeties off their weapons
smoothly, with the flip of a thumb hidden beneath a covering arm. “You best
learn to keep that mouth to yourself.”

The Cooler King went cold. His heart skipped fear into his
veins. In another place, the street, anywhere but here, he’d meet Ramirez
head-on, damn the weapons and everything else. But here he was helpless, a
chained dog about to be whipped with nothing to do but stand there and take it
and hope it didn’t break anything vital. He stood up from the wall so he
wouldn’t be off-balance. But it was the wrong thing to do because, off-balance
or not, he was about to take a beating, and now he just appeared more
threatening to Ramirez.

“Ramirez, I—”

“What? I can’t quite hear you.”

“I was about to say that—”

The billy club went up so fast and across Kitts’s mouth that
he was still trying to finish his sentence as he hit the ground, wondering why
his mouth wouldn’t move. He realized, finally, through the numbness, that he’d
been hit, hit hard, as the warm, coppery blood flooded his mouth. Pain began to
radiate like a thousand tiny pinpricks in his jaw.

“Still can’t hear you,” Ramirez said.

Kitts tentatively touched a loose tooth with his tongue. The
club came down three times quickly on the back of his knees, and he forgot all
about his mouth. The rest of the prisoners looked on, some in impotent rage at
the abuse of a fellow inmate, some in happy appreciation for the entertainment
before them. Most were just glad it wasn’t their day in the barrel. Kitts cried
out, and he thought he saw at least one prisoner begin walking toward them.

Nonono, don’t make it worse, goddammit—

But then the tower guards chambered rounds in stereo, and
the blurry figure coming in his direction stopped.

“Don’t ever open your mouth to me like that again, Cooler
King,” said Ramirez. “Get up.”

“Mmmmph.” Kitts struggled with his rage, his pain. He tried
to put on a properly cowed manner for Ramirez, anything to end the beating
sooner rather than later. Then the baton came down three more times on him, and
his lower back went numb. He dropped to the concrete again.

“I’m not fucking with you, you little prick,” said the
sergeant. “Next time I’ll take more than teeth out of you.” He turned around to
the audience, picked the one prisoner who’d walked forward as if to help Kitts,
looked him right in the eye and said, “Break it up! Everybody to your cells.
Lock down.” The inmate eyed him a moment longer, then cast his eyes down to
show the proper respect and headed slowly toward the door to the inside.

“Get up, Kitts,” said Ramirez. “Get up or you won’t be able
to get up again.”

Gasping for breath, Kitts put his palms flat on the concrete
and pushed. Pain shot through his lower back and legs. Blood drooled out with
spittle onto the ground. He lifted himself up onto his knees.

“You haven’t been here that long, Kitt
s
,” said
Ramirez. “That’s why I went easy on you. Fuck with me again and they’ll have to
dredge the Trinity to find you. Understand me?”

Kitts nodded, whatever it took to get past Ramirez now. This
didn’t make any difference. It wasn’t important.
Live to fight another day
,
said his head, then added,
Cooler King
in Ramirez’s snide voice, just to
mock himself.

“Walk to the infirmary,” said Ramirez.

Kitts stood up warily, his head spinning, his lower body in
agony. He saw the baton coming at his head then and shied away, staggering, arm
up. Ramirez stopped the swing before it hit. He bent down and whispered in the
prisoner’s ear.

“That’s right. Know your betters, Kitts. Keep it that way
and your fucking mouth shut when we have an audience, and you and me’ll do
fine.” The sunglasses reflected Kitts’s scared, bloody expression back to him
along with his knowledge that Ramirez had beaten him, was in total charge of
his life, no quarter.

“Now get to the fucking infirmary,” said Ramirez. “And when
the doc asks you how you got your injuries for his files, you just tell ’im you
were playing basketball and fell on the court . . .
hard
. Understand?”

Kitts nodded as he staggered away toward the main building.
All the other prisoners had been herded back into the cellblock by now. All he
could see was a blurry, kelly-green surface he knew was the basketball court
and a great stone building in front of him he knew housed the infirmary. His
hearing was acutely attuned, however. Maybe that was his body making up for the
blurred vision. Or maybe it wasn’t his body at all; maybe it was God or the
devil having a joke on him. The only sounds he heard were the wet squeaks of
his bloody-bottomed sneakers, a light slap as Ramirez bounced the baton in his
open palm, and the mocking laughter of the tower guards as they watched him
stagger away. He stopped for a moment as his palm found the doorjamb to the
main building, where he caught his breath.

I’ll bring that motherfucker to his knees
, Kitts
promised himself.
I’ll stick that baton so far up his ass he’ll choke on it
.

He walked into the building rubbing his eyes, and his vision
began to clear a little.

“Fall down, Kitts?” asked the door guard sitting behind the
first gate desk.

“Uhmm,” he mumbled, trying to nod.

“Yeah, I saw it,” said the guard. “Damned shame, but
accidents happen.”

The guard began to laugh, and Kitts’s spine froze with
hatred for Ramirez, for all of them. And especially for the woman who’d just
stood there.
Caroline
. He waited till he heard the chamber turn in the
cell door and advanced as the guard swung it open. Kitts tried to ignore the
laughter behind him and turned left down the first hallway. He still couldn’t
read the sign, but he knew where the infirmary was and let memory guide him.
One final chuckling bellow from the guard rankled him as he closed the door
behind him, shutting it all out.

The doctor looked up from his paperwork, frowned at him, and
took off his glasses. “Well, what happened to you?” he asked, getting up from
the desk.

If it’s the last thing I fucking do
. . .

“I fell,” Kitts managed. “Playing basketball.”

The doctor took a bottle of alcohol and a handful of cotton
balls off his shelf. “Uh-humm,” he said, shaking his head. “Sit down.”