Wolf Flow (21 page)

    Anne looked over her shoulder, eyes widening. "What the fuck-"

    They both bent down, on either side of the bowl. He saw her face bent and magnified, the amazed look even bigger.

    "Sonuvabitch," said Anne. "That's
wild
…"

    Between their faces, the fish swam back and forth in the dark-tinged water, swerving against the bowl's curved glass.

    

    

    "It's quiet out here, you know?" Lindy laid her head against Mike's shoulder. Her last hit was fading away, leaving her in peace. "Real quiet," she murmured. "I've never been anywhere it's this quiet."

    They were sitting on the steps outside the clinic, the ones leading up to the verandah. The sun had just started to lower behind the hills, pouring a pink-tinged radiance across the dry valley fields. A hawk drew a slow wheel in the distant sky.

    She glanced at Mike beside her, but he didn't seem to have heard her. His face was all dark and broody.

    "I always lived in the city." The chemical drift made the words come rolling out of her. "With everybody screaming at you all the time. Not like it is here."

    She closed her eyes, so she could just feel him next to her and not have to see him scowling all slit-eyed at the landscape.

    "I could learn to like it out here… It's so peaceful. You know what I mean."

    Her head snapped to the side as Mike shoved her away from himself. She opened her eyes and saw him looking with disgust at her.

    "What the fuck are you talking about?" The corner of his mouth curled. "Are you kidding? This fucking place is a dump. You want to become like the assholes who live out here?" Flecks of spit showed white on his lips as he yelled at her. "Like that stupid kid that comes around? Is that what you want?" He turned away from her, shoulders hunched. "Yeah, peace and quiet-peace and quiet until your fuckin' brain turns to Jell-o."

    She had shrunk back from him, from the force of his wrath. Trembling, she watched him squeeze his hands into white-knuckled fists.

    

    

    Doot gave Anne the binoculars. They were a pair his dad used for spotting deer whenever he went out during hunting season. "Down there," he said, pointing.

    Lying on her stomach beside him, Anne propped herself up on her elbows and scanned the territory below. She spoke as she kept the binoculars up to her eyes.

    "You got it from that old place?" She peered into the rubber eyecups. "Where?"

    They were keeping low in the dry grass at the top of the hill, to avoid being spotted. Doot slapped away a bug that had been itching at his chest. They'd had to wait until Anne's mother had come home from work, to take over watching all the younger kids, before they'd been able to come out here, Anne riding behind him on the motorbike.

    "There's like a room, down on the ground floor. Off toward the side, over where it's all burned and shit." He nudged her shoulder. "Over there. That's where the water's piped in. And there's that swimming pool-there, behind the building. He busted the locks off and started filling that today." The dark water lapped at the pool's tiled edge; it sparkled, looking like a polished bit of coal from up here.

    Anne turned her head, swinging the binoculars around. She held their focus on the tiny figures of Mike and Lindy down below. Doot lifted his head, to see better.

    The two people had been sitting on the verandah steps; now Mike was standing up. He was shouting something, but Doot couldn't make out what it was at this distance. Lindy cringed back from his anger.

    Anne studied the scene. "That's the guy?"

    Doot nodded. "Yeah. We gotta be careful about him. I think he's kinda… you know… dangerous."

    She lowered the binoculars and looked at him. "And he told you he was a doctor?"

    "Yeah. That's what he said, at least."

    Anne shook her head as she raised the binoculars to her eyes again. "Sure makes you want to think twice about your career choices."

    He didn't mind her keeping the binoculars. Looking down there without them, and seeing that Mike guy stomping around, and Lindy cowering away from his shouting, was giving him a funny feeling in his stomach.

    

    

    "I just meant-"

    Mike's anger had flared out of control. Lindy had never seen him like that before, with his face all red and throwing his hands up, the fingers curled and shaking.

    "You just meant; you just meant what!" He cocked one hand back as though he were about to strike her. "A day out here in this shit pile, and you think you're fuckin' Heidi or something!"

    He shoved her aside, sending her sprawling across the steps as he stormed up them and into the building. The boards over the door slapped back into place. Lindy sobbed, feeling a hot burst of tears on her face.

    A moment later, he reappeared. She turned and looked up, seeing him standing above her with her little purse in his hand. He fished out her car keys, then threw the purse down, its contents scattering across the verandah.

    "I got business to take care of." He strode down the steps without looking at her. "I'll see you later."

    She pushed herself up on her hands, watching him go.

    

    

    Doot didn't need the binoculars to see what was going on. Mike had knocked Lindy flat, and now he was roaring off in the red 'Vette. A cloud of dust rolled behind the car as it headed down the road.

    Anne took the binoculars away from her eyes. "How bad did you say that guy was hurt?"

    "He was
all
messed up." He didn't look at Anne, but down toward the building, where Lindy was sprawled across the steps. Probably crying, he figured.

    "Yeah, well, he looked like he's feeling all right now." Anne made a scornful noise. "The sonuvabitch."

    "I told you," said Doot. "I told you that's what it does."

    Anne rolled over on her back, resting the binoculars on her stomach. She nodded as she looked at him.

    "You know, Doot-this is crazy. I mean, some kind of magic water… It sounds like a tourist attraction or something."

    "Hey-you
saw
it. You saw what it does."

    She shrugged. "I don't know… a tropical fish, and this guy out here… it's not what you'd call great scientific evidence, is it? Maybe this guy wasn't hurt as bad as you thought he was. I mean, it's not like
you're
a doctor, or something."

    He felt his face growing heated. "I've
seen
it. It's true."

    A shake of her head. "Okay, maybe it's true; maybe there's some kind of miracle water bubbling out of the ground out here. You can raise the dead with it… I don't know." Her voice went softer and lower. "What I want to know is, what's it matter to you?"

    "Huh?" The question took him aback. "What do you mean?"

    "I mean, why's it so important for you to believe all this?"

    He stared at her in amazement. "It's… it's important. It's like… a discovery…"

    "Come on." She sat up so she could look him in the eye. "There's a whole wide world out there you haven't discovered." Her voice went low again. "When we were in school, you were the one who wanted to be a doctor."

    Silent, he turned his face away.

    "You wanted to be a lot of things."

    He shook his head, staring at the ground in front of him. "Yeah, well… I can't. Okay?" He looked up at her. "I gotta help my dad with his business. There's all the paperwork to take care of while he's out on the road. And if he buys another rig… he's going to need another driver. There's all that stuff I gotta think about."

    "That's bullshit." Anne's face clouded with anger. "The town's full of unemployed drivers-he needs one, he can hire one. And he can fill out his own forms, just like he's always done. He doesn't need you to do that. You're the one who needs the excuse, so you can hang around here forever, acting like a dumb shit in front of all those so-called friends of yours. Never getting out and going anywhere, never becoming anything. Because you're afraid to."

    Doot scrambled up from the ground. He stood over her, shouting.

    "I don't even know why I bothered showing you! You don't want to believe me-that's fine. You never wanted to believe me about anything, anyway!"

    He strode down the hillside, dust kicking up around him.

    "Shit." Anne rolled onto her back and gazed up at the cloudless sky. "You really fucked that one up." A grasshopper, the only other thing to hear her voice, rasped its hind legs, then flew off.

    

    

    The road, the thin ribbon of the county highway, cut straight through the flat, dry landscape. He didn't have anything to do except aim the 'Vette for the horizon and push down the accelerator. The wind streaming over the insect-marked glass buffeted Mike's face.

    His hands gripped the steering wheel as though trying to twist it apart. Teeth grinding down hard-
that stupid cunt, fuck her, fuck all of them
-he squinted into the sun.

    A tear broke and ran down his cheek. He felt the sudden wetness and took one hand from the wheel. He dabbed at the tear.

    When he looked at his hand, his fingertips were spotted with red. He rubbed his cheek, then brought his hand away.

    His palm was smeared red.

    The sick feeling at the pit of his stomach didn't hit him. This time, he smiled.

    

    

    Her face was damp and puffy from crying. She looked up and saw the boy standing there, at the corner of the building. His jeans and shirt were coated with the hill's dust.

    Lindy sat up on the verandah's top step and rubbed her face with the palm of her hand, smearing the tears dry. With a toss of her head, she shook her hair back away from her face.

    Doot stayed where he was, yards away from her. "You okay?"

    She nodded. "Yeah. I'm fine." She made a sound that could have been a laugh, but wasn't. "Can't you tell?"

    He walked up to the bottom of the steps. "Can I get you anything?"

    "No…" A shake of her head. Her nose had reddened; she sniffed loudly. "Just don't… just don't go away…"

    He mounted the steps and sat down beside her in the striped shade of the building's overhang. There was a sweet smell that came from her. She must've put perfume on, or something like that, Doot figured. Something girls did. She had done it for that Mike guy, out here in the middle of nowhere.

    Her face was still streaked from the tears, a black smudge at the corner of one eye from her makeup.

    "He scares me," she said in a small voice. "He's all different now…"

    Doot didn't know what to say. He put his hands on his knees and pressed down hard.

    "I've never seen him like this before…"

    She laid her head on his shoulder. He felt its light weight there, a pressure and the trembling as she breathed, each breath almost a sob. He put his arm around her shoulders, and suddenly her face was against his chest, her hair trailing against his chin, and she was crying. Her body shook with the force of her weeping; he wrapped his arms tighter around her to hold it in.

    Then she pushed away from him, her hands flat on his chest, the straightening of her arms breaking his hold.

    "I can't take this shit anymore." Her face had turned into something hard underneath the tears' wetness. She rubbed with her palm again, harder this time, pushing the skin white. "I've gotta feel better than this."

    Lindy jumped to her feet. In a second, she had pulled the boards over the door aside and had slipped into the building's dark interior.

    He followed her inside. Dust hung in the building's stale-smelling air. In one of the ribbons of light, he saw her kneeling down by the blankets, pawing through the suitcase. She found what she was looking for; she slapped a trio of capsules into her mouth and swallowed them dry.

    She was breathing heavily as he stepped up behind her. Her head turned and she opened her eyes, looking over her shoulder at him. The caps were already having an effect on her, even before they could have dissolved into her bloodstream. Her face smoothed, became slack, as though the muscles beneath the skin had been sliced loose from the bone.

    A smile, wet at one corner. "Want some?" The words came out slow.

    Doot shook his head. As he watched, she sprawled back on the blanket, arms flung out.

    "I know," she murmured, "what would make me feel even better…"

    She reached up and grabbed his hand, tugging him down toward herself.

    

    

    It was a long way home. Anne still had the binoculars that Doot had brought along; she'd looped their thin leather strap over her shoulder so that they hung at her hip as she walked. She'd have to get hold of him, get them back to him sometime soon. Or maybe just go over to his dad's house and leave them on the back door handle where he'd be sure to find them. Dusty and thirsty, she climbed the steps to the trailer's screen door. She'd decided that she'd think about it later.

    The youngest of her brothers and sisters were watching something dumb on the TV, with beefy-looking guys in short-sleeved cop uniforms. She picked up the remote as she walked by them and punched up Dan Rather; they squealed in protest, and she flipped the control back over to them.

    Her mom was flaked out on the daybed, still in her white nurse's assistant uniform, the clumpy air-pillow shoes kicked off. Anne eased the door of her own bedroom shut so as not to wake her.