Twilight Page 7

  “Ten.”

  “Five.”

  Ray paused, probably not sure how to divide the difference to keep arguing, and Cal pushed the bar up, expelling his breath as he did. It had not been that long since he’d worked out with the guys on the line. Though he never developed much bulk, he did possess a natural strength and musculature, inherited from his dad.

  He managed a set of ten before he hooked the bar and rolled off the bench. His left shoulder joint popped, and he rotated it, releasing the strain. The blood vessels in his arms stood up like snakes. It was an ugly business.

  Ray slipped a weight off the ends. “Now shoulder press.”

  “No thanks.”

  “You chicken?”

  “No. Me tired.” Cal shook his arms to loosen the muscles. “Listen, it’s getting hard to breathe in here. You want to walk with me?”

  Ray’s face sagged. “It’s dark.”

  “So?”

  Ray stood sullenly. “I don’t like the woods at night.”

  “Suit yourself.” Cal loved the woods at night. Especially the time just between the day’s glory and the splendor of the starlit night. That mysterious unformed twilight. When Sadie was around they had taken many twilight walks and romped long after dark under the stars through rain, snow, or what have you. Even when her hips had grown so stiff that he had to carry her up the stairs, she had never missed a walk in the woods.

  The trees were mostly bare against the low November sky, their long, arthritic fingers clashing together in the chill wind. But the underbrush was still dense, some of it up to his shoulders. Cal turned up his collar and shoved his hands into his pockets. His pace was as brisk as the night, though he did not head anywhere in particular.

  Once inside the shadow of the trees, he slowed because he could see only a little space ahead. The slice of moon faded in and out of the clouds. To his right an owl hooted its throaty call, then whooshed from its perch after some prey it had heard in the fallen leaves. Whatever it was would never hear it coming.

  Cal circled back to the house but stopped mid-step, one boot grinding on the toothed edge of the metal stair as Mildred motioned through the window. He pushed open the lower-level side door obediently. He knew that expression.

  “You know, Mildred, Ray’s here to do whatever it is—.”

  “Ray does what Ray does. I need you to figure out the thump in my furnace.” Her face said she wouldn’t be talked out of it.

  “I don’t know the first thing about furnace thumps. I’ll call you a repairman.” He started for the phone.

  “Hmmph.”

  He stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No way. That was a meaningful hmmph.”

  Mildred shrugged. “You with all your training and lecturing.”

  “I don’t lecture on furnace repair.” A detail that obviously meant nothing.

  “Keynote speaker at the city council banquet …”

  Cal started for the furnace. “Show me what it’s doing.” He pulled open the panel and studied the guts of the heater. Everything looked in order as far as he could tell. The pilot was lit, the parts were relatively clean. “So what’s the trouble?”

  “It thumps.”

  “So you said, but I don’t hear anything.”

  “It thumps when it blows.” To prove her word, the furnace drew a long breath through the intake vents and the blower came on with a thump.

  “Here it is. Whoever serviced your furnace missed the groove on the filter. Nothing serious.” He refitted the filter. “But you’d think a repairman …” He glanced up at Mildred. “Uh, did Ray change these out for you?”

  “Thanks for your time.”

  He stood. “Sure.” They clumped up the stairs and found Cissy on the couch, smiling broadly. In contrast to her sister, she was gladly talked out of anything—except Wednesday and Saturday morning vacuuming.

  “Well, you’re set.” Cal rubbed his hands.

  Mildred grunted.

  Cissy patted the pillow. “Why don’t you join us? I have chocolate on the stove and corn in the popper.”

  “No thanks, Cissy. Another time.”

  “I haven’t seen Laurie back.” Mildred spoke before he could make his escape.

  Cal turned. He’d expected as much. They’d lured him in, but he edged toward the door. “Nope.”

  “Did you scare her off?”

  “Mildred …”

  “Just as well. You’re not in any condition for entanglement, and from the looks of her, she’s not in any condition for you.”

  Cal stopped. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s written all over her. That woman’s been hurt, and she’s afraid.”

  Cal frowned. “She just doesn’t open up right away.”

  Mildred huffed. “Show’s what you know.”

  He knew better, but his fighting spirit flared anyway. “I know a lot.”

  “Maybe his vision’s clouded.”

  They both spun on Cissy, and she blushed a queer shade of purple and sank into the couch.

  “If his vision’s clouded, that’s all the more reason he shouldn’t get involved.”

  “I’m not involved. Laurie’s a friend from way back.” And even that was pushing it now.

  “That’s deadly.”

  “What?”

  “I said that’s deadly. Was she your first love?”

  Cal swallowed, then turned for the door, but not before he caught the knowing look Mildred and Cissy exchanged as he slipped from the room. After mounting the inside stairs, he crawled into his den to lick his wounds. He knew better than to take Mildred on. But he suspected she would have had her say whether he’d taken the bait or not.

  He was still morose when the phone rang an hour later. “Yeah?”

  “Cal?”

  He leaned on the counter. “Hi, Laurie.”

  “I wasn’t sure I should call.”

  He said nothing.

  “Is it a bad time?”

  “No.”

  “I kept waiting to hear from you.”

  Had she really expected it? “Laurie …”

  “I understand why you haven’t called, but, Cal, it doesn’t matter.” He swallowed the dryness in his throat. “What doesn’t?”

  “Whatever caused you to react as you did. It hardly warrants an end to our friendship.”

  Cal rubbed a hand over his face. “Laurie, I’m not sure where to go with this. I think it would be simpler if we just let it ride.” She was quiet a long time, but he didn’t make jokes or try to get her attention.

  “Does that mean you don’t want to see me again?”

  “It means we’ve gone eight days without speaking and survived it.” Mostly.

  “I see. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

  The line went dead in his hand, and he lowered the handpiece to its bed. Mildred would be proud.

  Laurie hung up the phone. So that was that. She shoved away the hurt. It was better anyway. She didn’t need him. It was time she stood on her own. But her legs betrayed her, and she stiffened the muscles. The mistakes, the decisions, the responsibilities—did she have it in her? Or was she just the failure Daddy thought her? Had her abilities been criticized, corrected, and denied right out of her?

  Laurie pictured her father. Oh yes, she called him Daddy. But had she ever thought of him so? Wasn’t Daddy someone you snuggled up with, ran to with your latest discovery, whose arms scooped you up when you scraped your knee …

  She sighed. Was there even one time Daddy had praised her without adding “however”? However, if you had done it this way, if you had listened, if you weren’t so emotional, stubborn, difficult … She had tried so hard to please him. Maybe it wasn’t in her.

  If Mother had once stood up and admitted he was a difficult man. If she had once let on that she herself despaired of pleasing him, once given Laurie permission to be herself … Grams had. Oh, Grams! And Cal had. He had taken her so much for who she
was, it terrified her.

  Seeing her affinity, he talked her into taking art, though Daddy said it was a waste. She fell in love with pottery, with creating things from raw material with her own hands. Mother refused to consider a potter’s wheel in the house because of the mess, the smell. Besides, the pots she brought home from school were lopsided. Never mind that they were first attempts.

  Laurie gave them to Cal. He still had them on his bookshelf, holding who knows what. She had seen them the other night. It was embarrassing. Over the college years she had improved greatly. But she guessed Cal didn’t see the imperfections. He took things as they were, especially her.

  Daddy despised him. The son of a cabinetmaker with only a high-school education, a disrespectful cutup destined for nowhere. The worst part, the part that made her ashamed to this day, was that she saw him that way too. As much as she had thrived on being with him, a little voice niggled inside that he was nothing, would be nothing, would go nowhere.

  And he hadn’t. He could have been anything. He could tally numbers in his head faster than she could press them on a calculator. He was bright, creative, good with his hands. He could succeed in any field he put his mind to, but here he was, a clown in Montrose, Missouri. Nowhere.

  And she had told him as much when he asked her to forget her studies at UCLA and marry him. She hadn’t known she belonged to him, that their lives were grafted together. He called her a snob; she called him a loser. He accused her of social climbing; she said he was stagnating in the cesspool of Middle America. She was sure that she had hurt him more than he hurt her—because he accepted her even though he knew her for what she was … and she rejected him.

  Laurie closed her eyes. Her hand still gripped the phone in its cradle. She wanted to pick it up and tell him she accepted him, no matter what his trouble was, no matter what had caused his overreaction, no matter what had happened in the years they’d been apart, she accepted him. But would he believe her? Did she believe herself?

  She drew a long breath and released the phone. Anyway, it didn’t matter. Cal was right. They’d gone eight days without speaking, and she, too, had survived. She would make it on her own. She had fled Brian’s world. She had taken nothing but the children and what she could fit into the Lexus, and the Lexus was in her name.

  When Cal got into work the following day, Frank O’Connor motioned him into the drab room that doubled as office and conference room. Reaching to the corner of the desk, Cal lifted the pink head on a black plastic base that read Stress Head. Cal squeezed. The vinyl features mashed together, then ballooned slowly back to their normal form.

  “Great, isn’t it?” Frank grinned, tonguing the gap between his front teeth.

  Cal put the head down. “If you’re into mashing faces.”

  “Good therapy, anyway.” The red rushed to Frank’s face as he sputtered away from his use of that word. “Sit down, Cal.”

  Cal sat.

  “I guess you’ve noticed I got people dropping like flies.”

  “Flu?” The local news had carried the story last night. Much of Montrose was sniffling, hacking, and shaking with fever.

  “So the doctors say. Some germ from hell.” Frank ran a hand over the tuft of red hair that sprouted from the center of his rounded head like the mayor of Munchkin Land. “Now Rob’s down with it, and you know him. He’ll be out till spring. Fact is, I’m running awful short.” He strained back the springs of his chair.

  Cal fingered the head again, poking the nose in like a skull. It mutely reformed its blank features.

  “I need you active.”

  “No.”

  “I know what you can do, and there’s no one I’d rather have at my back.” Frank peeled a stick of gum and folded it into his mouth. “This other stuff is fine, but it wasn’t meant to be permanent or exclusive.”

  The entire head collapsed inside Cal’s palm. “Things change.”

  “If you let ’em.”

  Cal stood. “You’ve got twenty-four volunteers.”

  “Half of ’em down sick.”

  Cal replaced the head on the desk. “Sorry, Frank. You don’t want to see my act if it really gets hot.” He passed through the doorway in two strides.

  In the middle of the night Regg ie Douglas woke. His eyes opened to the darkness and Suanne’s soft breathing. He felt her warmth and soft curves against his side and almost reached an arm around and snuggled back in. But there it was again, the urging. Okay, Lord. You got the reasons; I got the time.

  He pushed back the covers and slipped out of bed, dropping to his knees. It was nothing new, God putting someone on his heart so strongly it called him to action. Even the name was familiar. Cal. God had plans for that man. Cal just didn’t know it.

  Reggie’s thick knees could hold up as long as it took, though. He’d seen harder cases than Cal fall like timber. Trouble was, Cal always landed on his feet. Even in the psychiatric center, when you’d think he’d been brought low, he didn’t hit bottom. He still found something inside himself to fight back with.

  Rita saw that strength and fed it. But that was psychiatry. He’d pray for her tonight, too. But right now, God’s call was for Cal. He didn’t know if Cal had a bottle in hand, if he’d suffered a recurrence of the post-traumatic stress, or if he was simply at a critical point as he’d been the other night. All Reggie knew was that God called him to wrestle for Cal’s soul, and that he would do.

  He bowed his head. Ah, Lord … Suddenly the night was fresh, and Reggie could go on forever. Cal Morrison had better watch out when that Holy Ghost power started to flow.

  5

  A DOG TEACHES A BOY FIDELITY,

  PERSEVERANCE, AND TO TURN AROUND

  THREE TIMES BEFORE LYING DOWN.

  Robert Benchley

  LIKE CLOCKWORK, the twenty-fourth of November brought snow Midwestern style. The local news was calling the event “Old Faithful,” since that day had seen the first real snow for the last three years. Though deep, wet, and more than he wanted to tramp through on a cold afternoon after a frustrating day of inspections, Cal nonetheless did, because he had hit on the tracks that he thought might explain last night’s whining.

  At first he had thought by the yelps outside that Mildred’s cat, Sienna, had attracted a hound. But when he went down, she was in her usual spot on the hearth, and neither Mildred nor Cissy had stirred from their sleep. The snow was coming too thickly for him to see far, and he’d shrugged it off and gone back to bed. He hadn’t had time to search it out that morning, but when he got home from work there was clear evidence around the stairs and across the yard.

  The tracks were three paw prints with a line running beside, which could mean the dog was dragging a hind leg. He followed the trail into the forest. Maybe one of Fred’s hounds had strayed and been injured. He stopped. The snow was crushed down in a circular pit, and he bent to examine a tuft of reddish gold hair.

  Straightening, he followed the track as it dipped into a dense thicket of redbud and chokecherry. The snow was falling again in wet clumps as he edged through the bracken. A whine encouraged him, and he pushed aside the branches to find the dog, a retriever mix by the look of her. She rolled to her side, exposing her lighter-colored belly.

  “Hey, girl.” Cal reached forward slowly, let her sniff his hand, then ran it over her head and throat. She had no collar. Carefully he felt down her side, and she yelped when he reached her hip. “What’s happened to you?” He guessed she’d met a car, though the highway wasn’t busy out this way.

  She struggled to rise. He backed out, encouraged the dog to follow, and stiffly she did, holding the hind leg just at the top of the snow as he’d guessed. When they were in the clear, he examined her again. “What are you doing out here, huh?” She nuzzled his face as he stroked her and gave his chin a weak slurp with her tongue.

  “Well, come on, then.” He led her back to the house. She was just about played out by the time they reached it. He gathered the dog into his arms, carried her up
the stairs, and laid her on the foot of the bed. Then he toweled her dry, gently avoiding the problem areas, and set a bowl of water beside her. She lapped it onto his spread. He first placed a call to Second Hope Animal Shelter, where a lost dog might be reported, then called Fred Higgins, who knew every dog in the area.

  “Nope, can’t say as I recognize the description,” Fred said. “Davises got retrievers, but they ain’t mixed, and none’s got a white chest like you say.”

  “Would you mind taking a look at her?”

  “Be over shortly.”

  Cal hung up and looked at the dog. “You have a home around here, girl?”

  She wagged her tail but didn’t move.

  “Well, since you don’t have tags, I’ll have to call you something. How about Annie? You like that?”

  She nuzzled his hand. Her ears raised as Fred clumped up the back stairs, and Cal let him in. Fred shuffled over. His overalls smelled of cigar smoke and grease. His nails were outlined in black, but his hands were gentle as he ran them over her limbs. “Her leg ain’t broke. I don’t think she’s been hit. More like she jumped or got thrown from a moving vehicle.”

  “Do you recognize her?”

  “Can’t say I do. She ain’t from this end. No collar neither. I’d guess she’s been dumped.”

  Cal’s excitement grew. “Who would dump a dog like her?”

  “Who’d do anything? People got reasons.”

  “How bad is she, do you think? I couldn’t feel anything broken, but she’s sore.”

  “She’ll mend. You keeping her here?”

  “Until I hear different.” Cal knew she had come to him, just as Sadie had, just as all the good things in life came when he wasn’t looking. He thought of Laurie and frowned, then stroked the velvety ears and bony head of the dog. He’d handled that last phone call poorly. A knee-jerk reaction. He watched the mour nful roll of Annie’s eyes.

  Fred pulled the orange hunting cap down over his ears and headed for the door. “I’ll keep my ears open.”