The Pet Part 20

"I think so," he answered truthfully. "A little shaky, but I think I'm okay."

"Good," his mother said, retreating to her corner. Then there were tears. "G.o.d, I was so frightened!"

"We both were," his father said when Don reached out a hand to touch Joyce's leg. "From the moment we found you gone, we were scared to death something had happened to you."

The tone in the man's voice made him turn. "Oh," he said then. "Oh, s.h.i.+t."

"Right," Norman said, sternly but not unkindly. "I got up to get a gla.s.s of water and I saw your door open. You were gone, Donald. It was almost midnight and you were gone. You can't imagine what we thought."

"You ran away," his mother said. "I mean, that's what we thought-that you'd run away or something." Her smile was one-sided and her laugh was abrupt. "I was going to call the police, can you believe it?"

"I couldn't imagine," Norman said tightly, "where you had gone. We took the car and started to look for you. We drove around the whole neighborhood trying to figure out what the h.e.l.l you were doing to us, why you'd do something stupid like this."

186.

Don swallowed. "I couldn't sleep," he explained. "I went for a walk.""Without telling us?"

"You were asleep. I didn't want to wake you."

"You drove your mother crazy, you know that, don't you?"

I'm a hero, he thought then; I'm a hero, don't you remember?

Norman slumped back in his chair and covered his face with his hands, rubbed, pulled, then shook his head. "You could have been killed."

Joyce started to cry.

"But Dad-"

"You could have been G.o.dd.a.m.ned killed!" Norman said, his hands flat on the armrests. "We could have gotten a phone call in the middle of the night, and we would have had to tell the police we didn't even know you were gone. In our own house, our own son, and we didn't even know you were gone! Jesus Christ, Don, if you ever do that again, I'll break your neck!"

Don struggled to understand-they were mad because they were afraid for him, afraid because he was their son; yet he couldn't help the rise of his own temper when he saw the expression on his father's face, a hard and murderous look untempered by compa.s.sion or relief. A glance to his mother- she was drying her face with the backs of her hands, bravely smiling to show him he was right, and this was only their after-the-fact reaction.

Then her eye caught the hands of the clock on the mantel and she uncurled with a loving pat to his knee. "I've got to get dinner," she announced. "There's only a couple of hours before the concert and ...

oh, Lord, I'll never be ready in time. Never. Norm, would you mind peeling the potatoes. I've got to start-" She took a step toward her husband, looked at the clock again and rushed out of the room. "Lord!"

187.

she called. "Please, just three or four more hands, what do you say?"

Norman laughed indulgently and winked at his son. "It's a big night for her, you know," he said. "For all of us."

"Oh, G.o.d," Don whispered. "Oh, G.o.d, do I have to go?"

"Do you feel up to it?"

"I don't know."

"Well, if you don't, we'll understand." His fingers tented under his chin. "It would be nice, though. There are a lot of people grateful to you for what you did last night." The fingers folded into a double fist.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, "I would have thought, to be honest, you didn't have it in you." He glared then to keep Don from responding.

"You scared the s.h.i.+t out of me, son. Don't you ever do that again."

"Dad, I'm sorry."

He stood, shook off an instant of dizziness, and watched as Normanpushed himself out of the chair. They faced each other for several seconds, and Don waited for the hug.

"The potatoes," Norman said with an uneasy laugh. "Your mother'll have my hide. C'mon, give me a hand."

Don followed him into the foyer, but veered off to the stairs instead of the kitchen. When his father turned, he said, "I need to clean up, Dad."

He wrinkled his nose. "I smell like disinfectant, you know? I'll be down in time for supper, don't worry I just ..."

He gestured vaguely toward the second floor and Norman nodded, gave him a big smile, and went off, whistling.

They were afraid for you, he told himself as he took the stairs slowly; they really are proud of you, really they are.

In the hallway he hesitated, then turned into his room and stopped.

Gasped. Held on to the jamb and felt his jaw working.

"I went up to the attic after we saw you this morning," Joyce said behind him, her voice small.

188.

He didn't jump. He only nodded. And he walked slowly in with a grin on his face, giving silent greetings to his pets back on their shelves, to the panther on the wall over his headboard, and the elephants that once again flanked his door. There was a bit of dust on the bobcat, and a cobweb on hawk, but he didn't care as long as they were back where they belonged.

"Don, I'm sorry."

She hadn't come into the room, waiting in the hall as if for an invitation. He turned and smiled at her, ducked his head and shrugged.

She was expectant, her hands twisting around her hairbrush, waiting for his reaction, waiting for absolution.

Then he looked to the desk and the empty s.p.a.ce above it.

"Where is it?" he asked, more sharply than he'd intended. "I had a poster up there too. Where is it, Mom?"

"What?" Joyce came in, looked, and nodded. "Oh. Well, I wasn't sure about that one, so I took it down and put it in the hall closet. I'll get it if you want."

"But why?" he said plaintively as she started up the hall.

She stopped, returned and swept an arm through the air. "Well, with all these animals and things around, I ... well, I didn't think you really wanted a picture of just some trees."

189.

Eight.Dinner was a hasty affair. Joyce spent more time waving her hands about and babbling than eating, Norman lost his temper more than once in aneffort to be patient, and Don ate everything on his plate, had seconds, and seriously considered third helpings to satisfy his sudden, ravenous appet.i.te. Yet his stomach bubbled acid, and a tic refused to leave the corner of his left eye. It was nerves, he decided, aggravated by his mother's self-propelled ascent into near hysteria over her partic.i.p.ation in the opening ceremonies at the park tonight, and goaded by the return of his father's waspish tongue. The closer the time for leaving came, the more surly Norman grew, until Don finally excused himself and rushed upstairs to dress.

With the door closed behind him he switched on the light and forced himself to look at the poster retrieved from the closet and returned to its place.

The running horse was gone.

He checked it only once, could not look at it again without seeing the stallion charging across the ball field, green eyes, green sparks, heading for Falwick because Don had commanded.

190.

When he looked out the window, he saw only the night.

"Don," his mother called as she sped past the door. "Hurry up, dear, or we're going to be late."

His fingers refused to work his b.u.t.tons, tie his laces, do anything with his hair; his lips quivered as he warded off a sensation of wintercold that stiffened his arms and made bending over a ch.o.r.e; and his eyes were pocked with grains of harsh dust that sent stabs of white fire into his skull, fire that swirled and coalesced and formed a flame-figure of a horse.

A dash into the bathroom emptied his meal into the toilet.

Kneeling on the carpeted floor, hands gripping the porcelain sides, he heard Joyce bleating in the hall about something spilled on her dress, heard Norman complaining that the photographers would make him look like a corpse if he wore, as she insisted, his good black suit.

Another surge of bile, and the acid tears that came with it before he gulped for air, flushed the toilet, and grabbed for a towel. From his position on the floor he dumped the terry cloth into the sink and turned on the cold water, waited, pulled the towel out and slapped it over his face. His s.h.i.+rt was soaked, but the shock was a comfort; his throat was raw, but when he staggered to his feet and scooped a palmful of water into his mouth, the expected reaction didn't happen. The water went down, stayed down, and he smiled sardonically at his reflection, his face and hair dripping, and his eyes turning bloodshot.

"Big hero," he mumbled. "You look like Tar after a three-day drunk."

He dried himself quickly, brushed his teeth, and combed his hair; back in his room he changed his s.h.i.+rt and slacks, found a sports jacket he could wear, and hurried downstairs to wait, standing in the living room and looking out the window.

The street was dark, and a light wind taunted the last leaves on the trees. A couple pa.s.sing by huddled close191 together though they weren't wearing heavy coats. Mr. Delfield from across the road argued with his dachshund, who didn't want the leash, and when the dog slipped its collar, the old man shambled after it, one hand raised in a doom-laden fist while the other whipped the leash angrily against the sidewalk. The red convertible sped past, the top up and music blaring. The wind gusted, and there was movement in the gutters, an acorn rolled along the walk and dropped into shadow.

Where are you? he thought, feeling the cold through the pane.

- There was no answer, and he had no time to ask the question again.

Joyce was in the foyer, rattling the car keys and calling up to Norman, telling Don to leave on one light so they wouldn't break a leg when they got home, and wondering aloud what she had forgotten, what would go wrong, what people would think if the celebrations began with a thud, not a bang.

He followed them out, and took a deep breath, saw Mr. Delfield rus.h.i.+ng back to his house with his dog wriggling under his arm, and took the backseat without any prompting.

He watched the street as they drove over and parked on the north side because there were no ready openings on the boulevard, Joyce complaining because they should have started earlier to get a decent spot.

At the gates-similar pillars of stone that marked the other entrance-he hesitated and listened, and could hear nothing but the murmuring of a patiently waiting crowd, the slam of a car door, the heels of his mother's shoes cracking on the path.

Folding chairs had been placed in orderly half-moon rows facing the bandstand. The lights were bright and focused on the orchestra that took its place to a smattering of applause that grew, swelled, had people on their feet with smiles and whistles and proud looks for their children.

A television news crew was off to one side amid a clutch of newsmen who 192.

scanned the front rows, discounting the mayor and the community leaders who couldn't keep from glancing surrept.i.tiously at the cameras.

Don sat between his parents, not liking the way he was looked at, pointed at, highlighted by smiles that claimed him as their own. The Quinteros sat behind him, and he spent as much time as he could whispering to Tracey about how silly this all was as he returned a nod or a wave when it came in his direction.

The bandmaster climbed to his stand, and the audience settled down; he turned to the microphone set up to his left and cleared his throat, causing a squeal to rip through the clearing. He laughed nervously; the audience laughed with him. He thanked them for coming, and introduced Mayor Garziana, who spent fifteen minutes orating Ashford's history in such a way that the back rows began squirming and the front rows froze their smiles.

A moment, then, in dramatic pause before he introduced each of the Ashford Day Committee members, the princ.i.p.als of the two high schools, and a dozen others who had worked to bring the town together for itsbirthday.

Norman and Joyce stood together, and Don winced when his father turned to the crowd and waved.

Then the mayor paused again, spoke again in a voice so soft no one dared sneeze for missing a word. He alluded to the Howler, and introduced Don.

Don didn't move though the applause was loud.

"Go on," Joyce urged him with a hugging grip on his arm.

He couldn't. The cameras were watching, and the mayor was beaming, and the police chief in his dress uniform had climbed to the bandstand with a package in his hand.

"Go, Donald," Norman hissed, poking his ribs harshly.

He couldn't.

Where are you?

193.

Tracey leaned forward and pulled a strand of his hair. "Go for it, Vet,"

she said into his ear.

He grinned, shook his hair loose and stood. Hand smoothed his jacket, his throat went dry, and the walk across the infield through the flare of the spotlights was long and slow and filled with the sound of his soles striking the ground.

Hollow. Booming. Iron striking iron.

The applause started again when he positioned himself between the police chief and the mayor, and he smiled shyly, unable to see anything beyond the wall of white light.

The mayor said something-Don heard Amanda's name and heard the silence that followed-and said something else before shaking his hand vigorously; and suddenly there were people right in front of him, kneeling, crouching, cameras working, flashbulbs exploding, mouths working as they ordered this pose and that, b.u.mping into one another, crowding together, a hydra with white fire-eyes that made his own water.

The police chief said something, and handed him the package. His medal, and a certificate, and the grateful thanks of a town he had saved from further grief.

The applause punched his ears, the mayor slapped his back, and the chief pumped his hand without once seeing his face.

Then he was standing in front of the mike, and it was quiet. Only the whirr of a camera forwarding its film, only the scuffle of feet on the gra.s.s and the creak of a few chairs.

It was quiet, and it took him a moment to realize they wanted him to speak. Say a word. Tell them all how a kid had beaten a murderer to death.

A voice broke through the white wall from somewhere in the dark: "Hey,Duck, tell them the giant crow did it!"

He looked up sharply, searching for the voice and the derisive laughter that followed.

"I ...".

194.

He wasn't close enough to the mike, and only the mayor heard him start; but the laughter was still there, and spreading through the crowd, feeding on his nervousness, sympathetic at his plight and trying to tell him there was only good cheer out there and the grat.i.tude hadn't died.

But they laughed, a few of them, and Don held the velvet-covered box close to his chest.