Lost (26 page)

The Buick was turning back.

That's when the Chinaman started to bark.

“
Chinaman!
” Mamie screamed, “
Chinaman! Chinaman! Chinaman! It's him! It's him!
” She twisted and climbed on the seat, straining to look out. “It's him! It's him! Chinaman! It's him!” Her eyes frantic and searching, she pulled the lock knob up with both hands.

The passenger door flew open and Mamie plunged out. She fell in the snow and scrambled up, saw the Chinaman's head rise through the snow, and ran from the car toward him. “
Chinaman!
” She threw her arms around his ugly face, all her pent-up feelings overflowing, tears running from her eyes. He barked once, gruff and mean, then nuzzled and licked her face. “Oh, Chinaman,” she gasped against the swipe of his tongue. “Oh, Chinaman, let's go! Where's Sherman at?” she whispered. “Take me, take me.”

The dog back-stepped from her and barked. “Take me home,” she said. He started to go, swung his head back, then barked again and pumped away through the snow. She chased after him. “I'm comin', Chinaman. I'm comin'. Wait for me!”

Immobilized at first by shock and fear, Leona shoved her purse under the seat, grabbed the key, and ran from the car, oblivious to everything but retrieving the child. “Mamie, don't! Don't go there!”

She swooped and caught her runaway and it was like holding a wild screeching cat. All teeth and fingernails, Mamie shrieked and struck out blindly. Leona tried to hold her in a tight clasp.

As they started back to the car, she glimpsed an odd movement in the snow. She looked again and saw a dark snow-speckled mass rushing toward her. A wail broke from her lips.
It's that dog!
Swinging Mamie against her hip, she ran for the car. And the Chinaman hit her like a blast. His teeth snagged her hair and the back collar of her coat. The force of his hurtling body carried them around and lifted her off her feet; Leona could feel the dog hanging on to her coat, riding with her through the air. They were thrown down in a hard slamming spin. She tried to break her fall with her arm and still hold Mamie; heard her coat tear away as she sprawled across the icy ruts in the drive.

The Chinaman rolled to his feet at once, rending the torn piece of coat like slaughtered meat. “Oh, Mamie, get up! Try to get in the car!” The dog dropped the piece of fur. Tightening her arm around Mamie, she heaved up. “Get to the car!” she gasped. She knew he was coming, saw the hackles on his back, saw his hindquarters gathering.

Panicked, she stepped to the side and ran, but he was at her, tearing at her, dragging to get her down. She felt the coat ripping on her back as she fell. Mamie squealed when Leona again tried to protect her. “Lemme go!” she yelled. “Lemme go!”

Leona slapped the dog hard across its muzzle, threw her arm up and absorbed the flailing wrench of his jaws. Part of her sleeve was gone. She was struggling with all her might, but he was too fast and too strong, eclipsing her with his hideous weight. The flesh of her ear stung and bled. I'm all in, she thought, I can't stop it, and felt the teeth jab at her body.

In the glittering air, one of the policemen yelled “Hey!” and quickly there came a low, shrill whistle. The dog twisted up, ears cocked. Again the whistle sounded. Through her torn sleeve, Leona saw the dog tramp away, his paws beating the snow in soft explosions. Still calling out to the dog, Mamie chased after him until Leona caught her again. And even then Mamie went on struggling, her eyes searching the cottages as the dog vanished from sight. “Let him go,” Leona said, still dazed. “Mamie, for God's sake.” Then she noticed what Mamie must have seen—a snowy, white-on-white shape like a snowman withdrawing itself into the space between two cottages. And Mamie screamed out across the empty expanse: “
No-o-o!
”

From the crest of the drive, two policemen were hustling toward them saying something, but Leona couldn't hear it. They've got us, she thought. She tried to move quickly, but her legs wobbled like stilts. She called out, “Officer … My little girl, she's my little girl,” and clambered to the car.

The policemen drew closer. “Lady, don't you hear good?” one of them shouted. “Get going! Get outa here!
Get out!
We've got a murderer loose in here!”

She put Mamie in the back seat, then got in and drove past the police cars angled in front of the red coupe. She couldn't stop shaking. Without pausing at the stop sign, she skidded the car onto the highway and sped away from the swarming red lights. Slowly, Mamie turned from looking out the back window. When Leona glanced in the rear-view mirror, Mamie's tear-stained eyes met hers with a gaze of fierce triumph.

It was like the taste of blood in his mouth.

In the falling snow, he watched the roof of the Buick speed along the motel's front embankment, gain ground, and sink down the road. Again she had got away from him, just as she had that night in the hospital, but this time he had drawn blood. The next time she wouldn't get off so easy. The Chinaman nudged his wrapped hand. “Good boy,” Sherman said.

Another cruiser skidded toward the Ford, red lights flaring. Car doors slammed. Metal cracked and ratcheted as they loaded shotguns.

You bastards
.

And yet the fear and the rage revived him. Had anybody seen him? he wondered. Do the police know me, know who I am?
Risk it
, he told himself. Gotta risk it. Shivering with fear, he took a step forward. He was flirting with danger and he knew it, could feel it surge through him. “Chinaman,” he said, “come on.” Braced inside himself, he walked out into the open drive. Scooping up a snowball, he looked around. Policemen were spread out everywhere. “You can't stop me,” he muttered. “Nobody can. Just try it.”

Quickly he hurled the snowball. The Chinaman bounded after it and Sherman ran along behind him toward the highway. A clipped cop voice yelled for him to stop. Bastards, he thought, gathering up more snow; I dare ya.

“Aw, hell, leave him alone,” one of the troopers said. “It's just some kid playing with that damned dog.” And the men lowered their guns and turned away.

13

Her hand still trembling, Leona gripped the rear-view mirror and adjusted it downward until the small staring face slid into the reflecting oblong. She placed her hand back on the steering wheel, but time and again her eyes flicked up to Mamie in the mirror. She knows all about this, Leona thought. Whoever it is chasing after us, doing these things—Mamie knows them. She knows that dog; she was calling its name. So many things were beginning to make sense. Someone had been with the dog. That shape like a snowman. And Mamie had tried to follow the dog to that shape. But who was it?

The wind caused the shattered window to flex and flutter at her side and fear pulsed through her. That's when it had started: with that window, the night she took Mamie. She could still see the shoes stepping from the curtains in Mamie's hospital room, could feel herself lift Mamie and rush outside, and the dog—she cringed, remembering—the dog attacking her car. It was all the same, the same dog, the same … The policeman had said murderer. The realization chilled her. Mamie had run toward a murderer.

Little details kept nagging at Leona, little things she had once overlooked or dismissed, like the tramped-down place in Emma's garden littered with bits of string and cigarette butts. Emma knew. She had been so unyielding, trying to tell her something wasn't right. What a fool I've been, Leona thought, I should have guessed Emma knew more about this than she said.

Oh, Emma, what was it you said? What have I done? A murderer.
A murderer
, Emma. Oh, my God.

Since leaving Graylie, she hadn't tried to call her sister for the most obvious reason: the police would probably expect her to. But now she had to, just as soon as she could get to a telephone. Assuming that everything was all right, she would ask Emma to tell her again what dreadful thing had happened in Mamie Abbott's family.

Her left ear was still bleeding a little from the scrape of the dog's teeth. Already it was swollen and stiff. She could feel it throb. And in the back of her mind was the knowledge that she would have to ditch her car, the 1948 Buick Roadmaster, the only car she had ever owned. She had never believed the authorities would endanger the children by attempting to capture them in a moving car. But the police, she realized, were a secondary threat; today had proved just how wrongheaded and sentimental she had been about the car. Now there was no choice; she had to get rid of it and cover her tracks.

She had driven perhaps twenty miles before they came to a gas station. Knowing that the shattered window would eventually cave in and leave them exposed to the weather, she asked the attendant if he could tape something over it, to keep it from flying into the car when the glass crumbled apart. “Lady,” he said. “What the hell happened to you?” She asked if she could use the telephone.

But no one answered at Emma's house. In the rest room, she washed her face and her bloodied ear and tried to tidy herself. Undoing her clothes, she quickly examined herself. Though the dog had attacked her mercilessly, his teeth for the most part had only jabbed into the thickness of her coat. Across her abdomen and thighs her skin was scratched and bruised, but not torn and punctured as she had first feared. Still, it felt as if every bone in her body had been hurt. She straightened out her clothes and pulled on a sweater and her summer raincoat. What remained of the ruined fur coat she dropped in an outside barrel where trash was burning. Never again would she leave an obvious trail. Then she quickly returned the Browning automatic to the briefcase and took it with her to the front seat of the car, to have it close at hand if she needed it. The attendant had knocked out the shattered glass and replaced it with a piece of taped-in cardboard.

She drove another thirty miles and stopped and called again. She stood shivering in the roadside booth, listening to the telephone ring on the distant line. No answer. At the drive-in restaurant where she next called, she ordered hamburgers to take out. Still no answer. She tried to figure out where Emma might be but, of course, she could be almost anywhere. It was Thursday. Maybe she was out shopping or visiting with neighbors.

They entered West Virginia at about three o'clock in the afternoon and just before they crossed the Monongahela River, Leona tried to call again. The telephone rang and rang. Answer it, Leona pleaded, rapping her fingers on the metal shelf of the booth. Come on, Emma, answer. But no one did. They went on south and west through Barrackville and Pine Grove Hollow, driving and telephoning. As the afternoon moved toward nightfall, the pain caused by the dog's attack grew stronger.

A single band of blue winter light streaked the darkening sky. Surely she's home by now, Leona thought; it's nearly dark. In Fairmont, West Virginia, she saw a lighted telephone booth at the edge of the public-library lawn and pulled to the curb. The two Aldridge children had gone to sleep, but Mamie still watched her.

She gave the operator Emma's number. Feeling apprehensive, she listened to the distant telephone ring and ring; then it was picked up.

She gripped the telephone tight against her ear, but still it was difficult to hear. “Frank … Hello, Frank?”

“Leona … is that you?”

A little breathless, she said, “Yes, Frank, I—”

“Where are you?”

“I'm on the road, Frank. And the weather's so bad—”

“Leona … I've been wondering if you'd call.”

“Frank, could I talk to Emma? Is she there? I've been trying to call. I need to talk to Emma—”

“Damn you, Leona, you know what you did? It's all because of you …” The telephone banged. It sounded as if it had been dropped or thrown down. After a moment it was taken up again.

“Aunt Leona, this is Charlie—you know, Emma's boy? Dad's all worked up, but he wants you—me to tell you Mom's in the hospital. It's pretty bad, we don't know … It's really bad, Aunt Leona. Can you hear me? The night you left, somebody broke in here and beat Mom up—beat her nearly to death. She's in a coma.… Aunt Leona, are you there? Dad's all upset, so don't blame yourself. They've moved her to Scranton—to a hospital in Scranton.… Aunt Leona? Are you there?”

Leona tried to answer but her voice was strangled in her throat. Tears welled in her eyes. She was standing outside the booth, holding her face in her hands. She stumbled out across the library lawn, gasping for air, beginning to weep. When the waves of nausea and tears subsided, she nearly reached the car but then had to rush from it, moaning and retching. Bending down beside some hedges bordering the lawn, she couldn't hold it inside her and stood there heaving, so weak she could hardly stay on her feet. At last, wiping her face, she made her way back to the car.

Head spinning, she told the children, “I don't feel well,” and for once they kept their distance, perhaps sensing the depth of her pain. Again and again, tears filled her eyes. Leaning her sore ear against her hand, Leona drove into the night, the lights of cars approaching and focusing, horns blaring and yawning away, lights, endless lights taking shape like the evil, slanted eyes of that dog.

Emma, she thought, I never meant to hurt you, God knows. I'm so tired … worn to a frazzle … can't sleep, can't get hold of myself. I can't come to you and I want to, I want to. Oh, Emma, if that madman comes at me again, Emma, if he comes after any of these children or sends that dog, I'll kill him—I swear to God I will—for both of us.… Somehow I'll kill that vicious bastard if it's the last thing I ever do.

The children slept around her in the darkened car as free from worry, it seemed, as cattle roaming in moonlight. In her grief she felt utterly alone and apart from them. If only I'd never left, she thought. Emma would still be all right. I could have stayed with her and talked to her, and everything would be the way it was. Suddenly she remembered Emma dancing across the windy garden just before she left. And she saw the pennies, those sweet, silly pennies, in Emma's shoes. Oh, Emma, Emma. She had to pull off the road; she was crying hysterically, unable to control herself. She folded her arms on the steering wheel and hid her face and the grief poured from her. Finally, Walter woke up, leaned over the top of the front seat, and said, “Why're you cryin'? Did that dog hurt you?”