The dog began to bark again. It sounded no closer, but it sounded no farther away, either. Its owner wasn’t hunting birds, that was for sure; no hunter would have anything to do with such a canine blabbermouth. And if dog and master were out for a simple afternoon walk, how come the barks had been coming from the same place for the last five minutes or so?
Because you were right before, her mind whispered. There is nomaster. This voice wasn’t Ruth’s or Goodwife Burlingame’s, and it certainly wasn’t what she thought of as her own voice (whatever that was); it was very young and very scared. And, like Ruth’s voice, it was strangely familiar. It’s just a stray, out here on its own.It won’t help you, Jessie. It won’t help us.
But that was maybe too gloomy an assessment. After all, she didn’t know the dog was a stray, did she? Not for sure. And until she did, she refused to believe it. “If you don’t like it, sue me,” she said in a low, hoarse voice.
Meanwhile, there was the question of Gerald. In her panic and subsequent pain, he had kind of slipped her mind.
“Gerald?” Her voice still sounded dusty, not really there. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Gerald!”
Nothing. Zilch. No response at all.
That doesn’t mean he’s dead, though, so keep your fur on, woman-don’t go off on another rip.
She was keeping her fur on, thank you very much, and she had no intention whatever of going off on another rip. All the same, she felt a deep, welling dismay in her vitals, a feeling that was like some awful homesickness. Gerald’s lack of response didn’t mean he was dead, that was true, but it did mean he was unconscious, at the very least.
And probably dead, Ruth Neary added. I don’t want to piss onyour parade, Jess-really-but you don’t hear him breathing, do you? I mean, you usually can bear unconscious people breathing; they take thesebig snory, blubbery snatches of air, don’t they?
“How the fuck would I know?” she said, but that was stupid. She knew because she had been an enthusiastic candystriper for most of her high school years, and it didn’t take long for you to get a pretty good fix on what dead sounded like; it sounded like nothing at all. Ruth had known all about the time she had spent in Portland City Hospital-what Jessie herself had sometimes called The Bedpan Years-but this voice would have known it even if Ruth hadn’t, because this voice wasn’t Ruth; this voice was her. She had to keep reminding herself of that, because this voice was so weirdly its own self.
Like the voices you heard before, the young voice murmured. Thevoices you heard after the dark day.
But she didn’t want to think about that. Never wanted to think about that. Didn’t she have enough problems already?
But Ruth’s voice was right: unconscious people-especially those who’d gotten unconscious as the result of a good hard rap on the noggin-usually did snore. Which meant…
“He’s probably dead,” she said in her dusty voice. “Okay, yeah.”
She leaned to the left, moving carefully, mindful of the muscle which had cramped so painfully at the base of her neck on that side. She had not quite reached the farthest extent of the chain binding her right wrist when she saw one pink, chubby arm and half of one hand-the last two fingers, actually. It was his right hand; she knew this because there was no wedding ring on his third finger. She could see the white crescents of his nails. Gerald had always been very vain about his hands and his nails. She had never realized just how vain until right now. It was funny how little you saw, sometimes. How little you saw even after you thought you’d seen it all.
I suppose, but I’ll tell you one thing, sweetie: right now you can pulldown the shades, because I don’t want to see any more. No, not one thing more. But refusing to see was a luxury in which she could not, at least for the time being, indulge.
Continuing to move with exaggerated care, babying her neck and shoulder, Jessie slid as far to the left as the chain would allow. It wasn’t much-another two or three inches, tops-but it fattened the angle enough for her to see part of Gerald’s upper arm, part of his right shoulder, and a tiny bit of his head. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she could also see tiny beads of blood at the edges of his thinning hair. She supposed it was at least technically possible that this last was just imagination. She hoped so.
“Gerald?” she whispered. “Gerald, can you hear me? Please say you can.”
No answer. No movement. She could feel that deep homesick dismay again, welling and welling, like an unstanched wound.
“Gerald?” she whispered again.
Why are you whispering? He’s dead. The man who once surprised youwith a weekend trip to Aruba-Aruba, of all places-and once woreyour alligator shoes on his ears at a New Year’s Eve partythatman is dead. So just why in the hell are you whispering?
“Gerald!” This time she screamed his name. “Gerald, wake up!”
The sound of her own screaming voice almost sent her into another panicky, convulsive interlude, and the scariest part wasn’t Gerald’s continued failure to move or respond; it was the realization that the panic was still there, still right there, restlessly circling her conscious mind as patiently as a predator might circle the guttering campfire of a woman who has somehow wandered away from her friends and gotten lost in the deep, dark fastnesses of the woods.
You’re not lost, Goodwife Burlingame said, but Jessie did not trust that voice. Its control sounded bogus, its rationality only paint-deep. You know just where you are.
Yes, she did. She was at the end of a twisting, rutted camp road which split off from Bay Lane two miles south of here. The camp road had been an aisle of fallen red and yellow leaves over which she and Gerald had driven, and those leaves were mute testimony to the fact that this spur, leading to the Notch Bay end of Kashwakamak, had been used little or not at all in the three weeks since the leaves had first begun to turn and then to fall. This end of the lake was almost exclusively the domain of summer people, and for all Jessie knew, the spur might not have been used since Labor Day. It was a total of five miles, first along the spur and then along Bay Lane, before one came out on Route 117, where there were a few year-round homes.
I’m out here alone, my husband is lying dead on the floor, and I’mhandcuffed to the bed. I can scream until I turn blue and it won’t do meany good; no one’s going to hear. The guy with the chainsaw is probablythe closest, and he’s at least four miles away. He might even be onthe other side of the lake. The dog would probably hear me, but the dogis almost certainly a stray. Gerald’s dead, and that’s a shame-I nevermeant to kill him, if that’s what I did-but at least it was relativelyquick for him. It won’t he quick for me; if no one in Portland starts toworry about us, and there’s no real reason why anyone should, at leastfor awhile…
She shouldn’t be thinking this way; it brought the panic-thing closer. If she didn’t get her mind out of this rut, she would soon see the panic-thing’s stupid, terrified eyes. No, she absolutely shouldn’t be thinking this way. The bitch of it was, once you got started, it was very hard to stop again.
But maybe it’s what you deserve-the hectoring, feverish voice of Goody Burlingame suddenly spoke up. Maybe it is. Because you didkill him, Jessie. You can’t kid yourself about that, because I won’t letyou. I’m sure he wasn’t in very good shape, and I’m sure it would havehappened sooner or later, anyway-a heart attack at the office, or maybein the turnpike passing lane on his way home some night, him with acigarette in his hand, trying to light it, and a big ten-wheeler behindhim, honking for him to get the hell back over into the right-hand laneand make some room, But you couldn’t wait for sooner or later, could you?” Oh no, not you, not Tom Mahout’s good little girl Jessie. Youcouldn’t just lie there and let him shoot his squirt, could you? CosmoGirl Jessie Burlingame says “No man chains me down.” You had to kickhim in the guts and the nuts, didn’t you? And you had to do it whilehis thermostat was already well over the red line. Let’s cut to the chase,dear: you murdered him. So maybe you deserve to be right here, handcuffedto this bed. Maybe-