picking us off one by one. People would be walking along and the ground would give way beneath them, swallow them up.”
“Yeah, I thought.
“And from that moment on—I even remember the taste of the lemon drops I was sucking on, and the bristly fabric of the couch—I’ve never been far from awareness that the depths are there, with the thinnest of membranes covering them. Any moment, the membrane can give.”
“This from someone who puts people to sleep for a living.”
“Most of them wake up.”
He shifted on the bench as his pager went off. “Nothing is ever what it seems. A realist is someone who thinks the world is simple enough to be understood. It isn’t.” The beeper went off again as he was checking it. “In my head I was the kid, of course, right up there on the screen, in the movie. When I saw it again years later, I had to wonder if, consciously or not, the adults didn’t know the kid was right. That if they admitted it, the world would unravel around them.”
Gordie stood. “And Bo Sanders may unravel if I don’t get up there. Wouldn’t put it past the new kid surgeon—the one that looks like, I don’t know, fourteen with a bullet? and so, so eager?—to start cutting on poor Bo without me.”
I went in for one last graze before heading officeward. Bobby remained sedated, but vitals were good and the lab work, given the circumstances, was well within bounds, no cause for concern.
Sheriff Hobbes sat outside the room, covering for a deputy who was seeing to a traffic accident. He stood to poke at the cushion on the chair as I approached. “Damn thing’s got Sam’s buttprint stamped in here for good.” He told me that Agent Ogden had taken herself off to the crime scene (meaningful pause here) again. I called Maryanne to say I’d be in soon and swung over to that side of town.
I knew the house. Seth Addison was likely the oldest person in these parts, around when the town started up. After he died, the house went empty save for frequent break-ins inspired by rural legend that Seth never had any use for banks, that all the money he’d made in his ninety-plus years on earth was hidden there.
Overgrown railroad tracks lead you to a patch of rusted, ancient farm machinery and from there up a rut-bedeviled hill to what’s left of the house, sheets of plywood bowing away from doors and windows over which they had been nailed. Along one side are scars where decades ago a balcony got torn away. One side droops as though the house suffered a stroke.
Theodora Ogden sat at a thirty-degree tilt on the lowest porch step picking splinters out of her butt.
“Old wood,” I said. “Musician friends tell me it’s the best.”
“Sure they do.”
“If that’s evidence …”
“Only of my stupidity. I hope you’re not here because—”
“Bobby’s fine. Should be awake and vocal by early afternoon. What are you looking for? Surely the scene’s been gone over.”
“Inspiration, maybe.”
“And all you found was rotting wood.”
“Well, it is quiet out here.”
“Quiet’s a thing we’ve got our share of.”
“I turned the cell phone off, drove out. No real agenda, and I didn’t think there’d be anything to see. Maybe just needed quiet.”
“Or to be alone.”
“Alone is good.”
“I could leave …”
She motioned to the step beside her and I sat, saying that chances were good we’d have to desplinter one another when we were done, but I was a doctor, after all, so she needn’t be shy.
“Alone scares people,” I said. “A lot of them.”
“My mother always had the TV on, early morning, late at night, during meals. Rarely looked at it, couldn’t have told you what show was on, but there it was, this visitor that never left.”
“People need the space around them filled. It’s the pressure.” A cat came from under the house, looked at us without curiosity, and went on its way. “You know what my father did.”
“Of course.”
“I can’t tell you how
“Yeah, I thought.
“And from that moment on—I even remember the taste of the lemon drops I was sucking on, and the bristly fabric of the couch—I’ve never been far from awareness that the depths are there, with the thinnest of membranes covering them. Any moment, the membrane can give.”
“This from someone who puts people to sleep for a living.”
“Most of them wake up.”
He shifted on the bench as his pager went off. “Nothing is ever what it seems. A realist is someone who thinks the world is simple enough to be understood. It isn’t.” The beeper went off again as he was checking it. “In my head I was the kid, of course, right up there on the screen, in the movie. When I saw it again years later, I had to wonder if, consciously or not, the adults didn’t know the kid was right. That if they admitted it, the world would unravel around them.”
Gordie stood. “And Bo Sanders may unravel if I don’t get up there. Wouldn’t put it past the new kid surgeon—the one that looks like, I don’t know, fourteen with a bullet? and so, so eager?—to start cutting on poor Bo without me.”
I went in for one last graze before heading officeward. Bobby remained sedated, but vitals were good and the lab work, given the circumstances, was well within bounds, no cause for concern.
Sheriff Hobbes sat outside the room, covering for a deputy who was seeing to a traffic accident. He stood to poke at the cushion on the chair as I approached. “Damn thing’s got Sam’s buttprint stamped in here for good.” He told me that Agent Ogden had taken herself off to the crime scene (meaningful pause here) again. I called Maryanne to say I’d be in soon and swung over to that side of town.
I knew the house. Seth Addison was likely the oldest person in these parts, around when the town started up. After he died, the house went empty save for frequent break-ins inspired by rural legend that Seth never had any use for banks, that all the money he’d made in his ninety-plus years on earth was hidden there.
Overgrown railroad tracks lead you to a patch of rusted, ancient farm machinery and from there up a rut-bedeviled hill to what’s left of the house, sheets of plywood bowing away from doors and windows over which they had been nailed. Along one side are scars where decades ago a balcony got torn away. One side droops as though the house suffered a stroke.
Theodora Ogden sat at a thirty-degree tilt on the lowest porch step picking splinters out of her butt.
“Old wood,” I said. “Musician friends tell me it’s the best.”
“Sure they do.”
“If that’s evidence …”
“Only of my stupidity. I hope you’re not here because—”
“Bobby’s fine. Should be awake and vocal by early afternoon. What are you looking for? Surely the scene’s been gone over.”
“Inspiration, maybe.”
“And all you found was rotting wood.”
“Well, it is quiet out here.”
“Quiet’s a thing we’ve got our share of.”
“I turned the cell phone off, drove out. No real agenda, and I didn’t think there’d be anything to see. Maybe just needed quiet.”
“Or to be alone.”
“Alone is good.”
“I could leave …”
She motioned to the step beside her and I sat, saying that chances were good we’d have to desplinter one another when we were done, but I was a doctor, after all, so she needn’t be shy.
“Alone scares people,” I said. “A lot of them.”
“My mother always had the TV on, early morning, late at night, during meals. Rarely looked at it, couldn’t have told you what show was on, but there it was, this visitor that never left.”
“People need the space around them filled. It’s the pressure.” A cat came from under the house, looked at us without curiosity, and went on its way. “You know what my father did.”
“Of course.”
“I can’t tell you how
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