The Orphan (7 page)

“Get on in here,” Gus said almost in a whisper, motioning with the gun. The thunder hit again, farther away, and the rain began to come down heavily.

Vaire had stopped near the sink, touching her father’s arm, looking at him as if he would suddenly explain it all.

“For an ugly couple of farmers,” Rusty said, holding the butcher knife between opposed fingertips, “you two got a real peach for a daughter. Come on over here, doll.” He indicated the chair between Aunt Cat and Robert. Vaire walked on into the dining area and around the table, touching Little Robert’s head as she passed.

The whole time she sat at the table, she looked at her father, with whom she seemed in full sympathy. She did not once look at Rusty, and it was as if he and his comments did not exist. Robert felt her as a source of strength, for she seemed to banish evil by ignoring its existence.

“There’s no more money here,” Martin said. “We got a small bank account, but they wouldn’t let you fellas cash a check.”

“Let’s look around, farmer,” Old Hackett said. “Cause I just don’ believe you. Gimme that gun, he said, pawing at Gus. “I’ll get the money outta this damned liar.”

“Get away,” Gus said in a low voice. “I’ll take care of the gun.” He pushed the old man back and swung the shotgun to cover the room again.

“Tommy, you and the old man take the farmer around and see if you can help him recall where he’s got his savings hid at,” Rusty said. “Gus and me will stay here and talk with the ladies.”

“I swear,” said Martin, his face pale in the dusky kitchen, “there isn’t any more money. It’s not ...” Thunder crashed in a long rolling roar, drowning the rest of his words, and continued as Old Hackett said something fiercely, pantomiming silently in the crashing sound with his arms raised, a funny little Punch figure on a puppet stage, weak and ridiculous.

Tommy and Hackett each took one of Martin’s arms and led him out the back door. “Let’s look down the cellar,” Tommy said. They all ducked out the door into the gray downpour of rain, becoming hazy figures at once, humped against the fall of water, moving past the screened porch out of sight.

“Bunch of fools,” Aunt Cat said so suddenly that Gus jumped and swore. “We haven’t got any more money. That pig money was ust about the whole savings we had. We had to borrow this year to put the soybeans in the ground.”

“Well, we’re going to find out,” said Rusty. “Happen I don’t believe you. I seen all that farm machinery, and that car ain’t but two years old.” But the whole time he was talking, his hands were touching Vaire, her hair, her bare arm, the side of her neck, her cheek. And his eyes looked at her with the bright blank stare a cat gets watching a hurt mouse that can’t run.

Robert’s stomach felt like a fist squeezing. Above the pounding rain now they could hear splintering and crashing sounds from the cellar.

Rusty was touching Vaire’s bare arm with the point of the knife now, making the flesh dimple. “You gotta be that farmer’s daughter in all the jokes,” he was whispering in her ear. “You’re pretty enough for a whole train load of salesmen, baby.”

Vaire shook her head as if a fly had buzzed too close. Robert’s eyes were fixed on Rusty’s face, following each movement of his head as he sniffed the young woman’s hair and whispered in one ear and then the other.

“It’s all right, Little Robert,” Vaire said, reaching over to take his hand. “It’s going to be all over with soon. These bad men will be gone. It’ll be all right again.”

“Quit messin’ around, you goddam fool,” said Gus. He was more tense than before, holding the shotgun at the ready, his finger inside the trigger guard.

“Fuck off,” said Rusty. “This’s my party.” He allowed the hand not holding the knife to slide down Vaire’s shoulder until it rested on her left breast. He was saying something in her ear, and this time she could not ignore it as a flush rose in her neck and face. Robert could hear the spit working in Rusty’s mouth.

The noises in the cellar had stopped, and the rain was pounding steadily like huge drums beating in different rhythms, making no rhythm at all but just a heavy sound that made you feel deaf and stupid.

“You watch ’em for a minute or two, Gus,” Rusty said, his hand sliding over to take Vaire’s wrist. He twisted her arm behind her with a sudden move, bending her body forward over the table, and then pulled her up off the chair. She let out a tight little gasp, but otherwise did not indicate she knew such a person as Rusty existed.

“The farmer’s daughter and me goin’ to explore upstairs and see if we can find something.”

Vaire looked across at her mother whose hands were now gripping hard on the table edge. “Just be quiet now, Ma,” she said, her body bent over to one side as if she were crippled. “I’m going to be all right.” Her voice shouted unnaturally over the pounding of the rain.

When she had to drop Little Robert’s hand, I knew he couldn’t hold on much longer. The blood seemed to be filling his body tight, burning in his face and hands. His mind was blanking out as Rusty shuffled past his chair, pushing Vaire ahead of him toward the stairs. The little boy’s hands leaped out to grab the man at hip level, pulled himself, chair and all, to the man’s leg and bit as hard as he could.

That is what Little Robert intended, but as the adrenalin rushed into his veins, he could not hold his shape, and as he bit down the shift came suddenly.

I find myself biting Rusty’s hip. My teeth grate across his pelvic bone as my claws spring into his groin and buttocks to hold him still. His screams are very shrill, and he jabs at me with the knife. I flip it out of his hand and try to disengage from him, but his fists are tight in my pelt. I hear noises at the back door over the heavy throbbing of the rain, and I bite the screaming man again quickly and knock him away with a back-handed blow as the table came crashing over, pinning my feet to the floor. The farm woman has tipped it over either in surprise or in an attempt to help. A woman is screaming. I am most concerned for the shotgun, and I kick at the table and spit out the man’s flesh as I crouch to avoid the blast.

The crash of the shotgun going off is different from the thunder, but splits the ears in the close room. It is not directed at me. Martin had evidently seen the struggle going on and made his own move at the same time as Robert grabbed Rusty. Gus is facing the back door, the shotgun at waist level. In the doorway three men are down in a struggling pile. I smell more blood and see the shotgun swinging around. Gus’s eyes are points of light beneath his shaggy hair, his face white as pond ice. I note the old farm woman crawling around the table toward the young woman who is lying on the floor partly beneath the floundering and bloody Rusty whose inarticulate screams continue without stopping. The gun is swinging as I get out from under the bodies, the chair, the table edge. The linoleum on the floor of the kitchen is slippery as my claws spring out for a grip, not like wood, and the gun swings farther, almost on me as I see its twin black holes searching like eyes for me in the dim kitchen. I can almost look into those deadly sockets, but I make a long leap and swing my arm far out so that one extended claw hits the barrels.

The shotgun blasts into the ceiling, bringing down a shower of plaster and wood. Gus is staggering as I come out of my roll and leap for his throat. I miss and bite high into his shoulder, feel the collarbone snap and a rush of hot blood as I rip away, digging my hind claws into the linoleum, twisting the shotgun away as his screaming begins. I break my hold and twist the stock off the shotgun and hurl it hard at a window. It smashes and goes on through out into the gray pounding rain. Gus is falling now, on his hands and knees in the dimness while the hot blood pumps out of his neck in long jets. I leap for the back door and find Tommy rising in front of me, wavering, holding his arms around his chest. I take a swipe at him and knock him like a bundle of sticks into the corner of the porch where he lies silent.

In the back doorway where the rain blows in upon him in great wet sheets lies the old farmer, his chest punctured with purple holes, and blood washing from the wounds with the rain. The old sick Hackett sits against the wall of the porch, his eyes wide, his hands lying palms up. He seems to be looking at me and not believing what he sees, holding his breath.

I turn for a last look into the dim farmhouse while the rain pounds down on my back. Gus is lying in his blood on the linoleum, moving vaguely as more blood spurts out of his neck very fast. He will die, I think. Back farther in the dining room I see the two women standing over Rusty who is convulsing on the floor like a spine-shot rabbit. The older woman has a long knife in her hand, and the young, blonde woman’s green and white clothes are smeared with blood. The two women are looking directly at me with frightened eyes. I sniff the old farmer again. His faded blue eyes with all the wrinkles around them are looking at me. There is no fear in them, but I see that they are glazing over. He is dying. His gray hair is plastered down in streaks around his face by the rain. The harmonica is sticking out of his shirt pocket. For no reason I can imagine, I grab it in my teeth and run out into the gray fall of the rain.

The Grand Rapids Examiner
, Tuesday July 2, 1935

TWO PERSONS DEAD
IN ROBBERY ATTEMPT

Local Farmer Shot to
Death, Waif Missing

Mr. and Mrs. Martin Nordmeyer, their daughter and a foster child were the victims of a robbery attempt at their farm south of here Monday. Dead are Martin Nordmeyer, 61, and his alleged assailant, Aldo (Gus) Hamner, vagrant. Robert Lee Burney, foster child of the Nordmeyers, is missing and is believed to have run away in terror during the fracas. He is described as five years old, brawn hair, brown eyes, slender build, and wearing only a white nightshirt.

The three surviving robbery suspects are under police guard at the Sisters of Mercy Hospital with varying injuries received when they were attacked by a “wild dog or bear” that mysteriously came to the aid of the family. Hamner died at the scene from loss of blood, his jugular vein severed by a bite from the animal that Mrs. Nordmeyer described as a “cross between a bear and a gorilla.”

Sheriff Leonard Kendall reported the farm family’s kitchen “looked like a slaughter house” when he arrived late in the morning to answer a call from Mrs. Victoria Woodson, daughter of the Nordmeyers. “There was blood everywhere, splattered on the ceiling even. Mr. Nordmeyer dead from a shotgun charge in his chest, one suspect bleeding to death, two others in bad shape with the worst claw and teeth marks I ever seen.” Suspect Roger Rustum was hospitalized with deep hip lacerations and internal injuries; Thomas Prokoff, the third suspect, is reported in fair condition with two broken ribs and a concussion. Sheriff Kendall reported the fourth suspect, Oliver Hackett, was not iniured in the battle but is suffering from advanced tuberculosis and is in poor condition.

The search for the little boy, a waif the family had found in their barn about two months ago, is continuing today.

The mystery animal that broke up the robbery attempt has not been positively identified or seen since it ran out of the Nordmeyers’ house after mortally wounding one suspect and severely iniuring another. Upon his being asked it he thought it was a large wild dog, suspect Rustum said, “It wasn’t no dog. It was a fiend out of hell.” Comments from the Nordmeyer family indicated they too were mystified at the appearance of the animal.

Martin Nordmeyer is survived by his wife Catherine, two daughters, Victoria Woodson of Cassius and Renee Hegel of this city, and two granddaughters. Funeral arrangements are pending.

***

I foolishly allow my mind to think about this terrible morning, so that I stop too soon at the little railway hut that is less than a mile from the Nordmeyer farm. I do not think about the hut or what it is used for, only that I must hide, since I cannot shift form at the moment. I dig under a shallow foundation and emerge into the stuffy little tool house where I will wait for darkness. The torn, wet rag that was Little Robert’s nightshirt hangs about me. I tear it away, knot up the harmonica in one strip of cloth and tie it around my waist. The hut contains shovels, rakes, pick axes, other tools leaning against the walls, and a platform with iron wheels and long levers on top. I am steaming wet and sticky with blood, and the smell of creosote in the hut is suffocating. I block it all out to sleep.

I wake full of fear at the sound of crunching cinders. The hut is without cover of trees behind, the nearest ones down the track half a mile or more on the side. How have I been so stupid? The crunching cinders get louder. Men’s voices, many of them. I slip to the hole I have made under the back foundation, but there are already men outside settling against the shady side of the hut. Now they are all around the hut in the shade, talking, rattling metal pails. I smell bread, meat, stale fruit. They are eating their lunch. At the double doors in front of the hut the lock begins to rattle. They will come in. My head is foggy. I force my rage to form, clearing my mind, so that I can visualize the layout of the countryside. I have been here in the nights. Behind the hut it is open country at this point all the way to the river, but directly out front and across the track is first a small creek, then a thornapple hedge that extends a long way to the south. The end of the hedge is almost opposite the hut. I have to go out the front or be in sight for a long while to the men sitting in back of the hut. The lock springs open with a rusted sound and the doors are being lifted and pulled across the cinders. I wait behind the iron wheeled platform crouching low, wishing at that moment to shift, but unable to. I put it out of my mind.

“Let’s wait till after we eat to get it out,” a short round man in overalls is saying. “It’s a heavy sucker.”

As his companion who is partly behind the opened door is about to answer, I charge toward the half opened door, hitting it hard with my shoulder.

“Crise-a-mighty!” The fat man is screaming as I hit him with my shoulder and he spins away and down. The other man is larger and is carrying a shovel. I slam past the door, but the other man is swinging his shovel at me. In mid-leap I kick with one hind leg, striking him in the chest so the shovel just grazes my back. Then I am down the embankment, sliding in the cinders into the weeds, leaping the creek awkwardly as I hear a great commotion and crying out behind me, and around the hedge for what should be a long straight run that will put me out of sight and reach. I have forgotten the fences. Barbed wire, the first two of four strands, then another one of five tight strands, and in the distance I can see at least two more. They slow me down, and I can hear the men on the railway embankment running and crying out. I wait to pant a moment, lying up under the thorn hedge. It is very hot, the sun’s heat wavering up from the dark soil of the cornfield where the stalks with their dark green leaves are standing about two feet high. The vivid green rows dwindle in perspective toward the far fences where I see clumps of trees, a barn roof, other buildings. That is behind the Nordmeyer’s east field, the one where the Guernseys graze. My mind snaps, clearing my perceptions at once. I smell the dried blood in my fur. I am being foolish again. I wonder for a second if I am ill, then I hear the noises of iron wheels along the track and excited men’s voices. They are catching up with me on some sort of car on the tracks. There is no cover beyond the end of the hedge, and now they will arrive there before me. I glance back along the hedge row, my eyes just above the weed tops. In the waves of heat rising from the dark soil I see the distorted figures of half a dozen men spread out in a line, carrying shovels, picks, iron bars. Their voices come to me now from two directions as the men on the handcar arrive at the far end of the hedge row. The hedge is too thick and thorny to get through. Not time to dig under it, so many roots in hedges. The cornfield with its endless ranks of low corn plants offers no cover at all. I am trapped, and it is because of my own foolishness. But there is no time now to wonder about the cause of such muddleheadedness. The men are at both ends of the hedge, advancing cautiously, sticking their shovels and bars into the weeds and into the hedge itself as they advance. I smell my own fear. I try to concentrate on Robert Lee Burney, but I cannot. There is some block there preventing him from emerging. In wonder I realize that
he
does not want to come out. To try another animal form would be worse. I am too inexperienced for that. I do not wish to hurt humans. The ones at the Nordmeyer farm threatened my own survival, but I do not wish to harm these men. Also, to show myself to so many witnesses is certain to bring on a hunt I would have great trouble escaping in my present state.