40

STACEY CAME ON FROM BEHIND, STOPPING AND STARTING, wary and bent down low. There was no moon now, and Stacey was thankful for that. There was a slight breeze blowing from the northwest, and it carried the scent of the fire to them, but from this distance he still couldn’t make anything out but Penry, nearly a city block—or it could have been more—ahead of him.

He felt something larger than upset, disgusted with all of it, and with his goddamned life, and he jabbed at the water, bringing the canoe in.

They’d take a look and go back and tell Munson it was nobody, and they’d leave in the morning, and they’d get their story airtight, he wouldn’t think any further past that.

But part of him, a part he didn’t recognize in himself, but that was buddy to Penry, thrilled at their approach, felt now alert, and hard, and even powerful, hoped it was the doctor.

Penry forced the canoe off to the right. Behind him now, Stacey hissed, trying to get him to turn around, but Penry paid him no attention. The water was calm, and lucky for him, there was a rise on the east side of the island so that those at the fire couldn’t see them coming, not even if they were in the tent on the ridgeline. But when he got closer he saw that the whole upper end of the east shore was a rock face, rising from the beach, where there was a canoe now, until there was a drop of a hundred feet or more to the water, and there only a few dark cedars growing out of the fissures that broke up that stretch of stone.

But he would wait to pass judgment here, and he drew closer, and finally saw the face was unscalable, but he was too close now to go around, and so he cut left, just yards offshore, still staying out of the line of sight, and Stacey, he knew, seeing him do it, would think he was only doing what they’d planned, cutting in to get a look, and so he stayed well back but followed left again, coming under the ridge, so as not to be seen.

There was a beach, a rim of sand, that wrapped around the east and south side of the island. Stacey watched as Penry took one last stroke, the bow of the canoe sliding up onto the sand nearest the ridge, and stopping, and Penry getting out, and Stacey, from a distance, watched Penry, down low, run his hands up the gunnels, walking the canoe up to where it was on the sand and then drawing it up farther so it wouldn’t drift off.

Penry stayed low, and crouching like that, climbed along the path that bordered the ridgeline, passing the fire, until he was even with the tent, but fifty yards or so back in the dark. Someone came out. From where Stacey was on the lake, the tent just a luminous rectangle of green, whoever it was, stretched, taller, long-limbed, and Stacey recognized him, his heart pounding so violently it hurt.

It was the doctor, after all, and his girl came out after him, and Stacey was thinking, He’s seen him, Penry’s seen him, and now why doesn’t he go?

The doctor and the girl went down to the fire and sat on the logs behind it, and they were talking, just talking, and Stacey tried to swallow, his mouth suddenly dry. It all meant nothing, he told himself, just like Munson had said. That the doctor and his girl were farther west on the lake meant that they’d come in earlier, since not one of them, not Stacey himself, or Penry, or Munson, had seen or heard them go by, and all that talk about roughing up the doctor he’d thought had been just that, talk.

But Penry was back in the trees by the tent doing something now, Stacey couldn’t see what. So that Stacey broke out in a cold sweat, his whole back chilled, and a prickle running up his spine, because he knew this was going to be bad, and he was thinking about canoeing over to Munson, staying clear of the whole thing, so that when Penry came out into the light, just enough to wave him over, he said to himself, Not this time. He wasn’t up for it, for Penry. Not really.

Stacey, rocking on the water in the canoe, did not move.

What? What could Penry want?

He felt as though he were pinned down on the water, something fused in his head. Right there, his thoughts in a hot tangle, he told himself he knew what Penry was going to do, and recoiled from it. But the part of him that was buddy to Penry was thrilled.

Penry was going to do better than just scare the fucking bejesus out of the doctor.

Still, Stacey, gritting his teeth, tried to wave Penry back, but Penry was already moving.

Penry crouched behind one of the erratics on the slope down from the tent. His heart was jackrabbiting, as he thought of it before he did these things, that something in him bursting to get out. Now, in a moment, Stacey would beach his canoe and they’d get to it.

Penry fixed his eyes on the dark there. His hands were sweaty and he felt this white-hot buzz in his head, and he stoked it, getting ready, remembering insults, the cap Munson and Carpenter and Stacey had put on his head, the dunce cap, and all those things they’d said to him, and that others had said, No, Stupid, and Jesus, you idiot, Penry, and Our idiot brother, Penry, and We love you, old Pen, but boy, are you dense, bud. And his coach, What do you got in that head of yours, boy, rocks? And the first girl he’d done it with, Judy Leach, for twenty dollars, and how after, she’d said, when he asked her about himself, she’d joked, That’s why girls can’t count, since a two is a six, around guys like you, and he’d been so insulted, he’d joked about it when he was out drinking with Stacey and Munson and Carpenter later, and they’d all just sat back and laughed until tears came to their eyes, and when he’d said, What? What? I mean, Jesus! I know a two from a six! Stacey had slapped him on the back, and the others had kicked back laughing again, in hysterics, saying, What a bitch, Pen, or Aren’t girls just like that? and slapping the table, breathless with laughter, and he realized Judy had gotten him but good, only then Penry realizing there was no way to take back what he’d said about himself, through recounting to the others what Judy had said.

Which had, even that night, gotten him ten varieties of pencil-dick jokes, which had left him protesting, It isn’t like that and you know it, the others bellowing then, drunken, Show us, Pen. Show us!

Which he did the night after, at Donna Lee’s on Lake, in Minneapolis, and in the room, the door locked, he’d swung the girl around and taken her from behind, no fooling, and he’d been doing it like that since, and most of the girls wouldn’t go near him, and so he had to pay all the more for it, for being like that, and always someone seeming to laugh at him, or there to humiliate him, but here there was no one but the doctor, and Stacey, whom Penry was going to use now.

Ninny Stacey, who never knew what he was thinking or what he wanted, or was whining about one thing or another. But who was . . . excitable .

Who knew the drill.

They’d driven off more than a few of the Mexicans this way, would drive off more. It was all drill now, but he was excited, with something deep down and dark in him, something that wanted out. Really out this time.

You couldn’t understand the sole of my fucking shoe.

The doctor’d pay for saying that. He would. Penry’d make him understand, and after, after he sent Stacey away, he’d get what the doctor had taken in the phone booth.

He could see things at Dysart all working out, but he had this here, now, to finish first.

Stacey came around the east shore, beached the canoe, and climbed the hump of granite, but stayed low behind the white pine and erratics. The fire lit the trees, and Stacey came on, his legs trembling.

He couldn’t put Penry off now, he thought, because he had to get Penry back with him, or it would all be over, their plan for dealing with Jack, and it was this goddamn doctor’s fault, and so when Penry nodded, Do it, he came out of the trees as Penry strode down from the tent, and the doctor stood to ward off Penry, reached for the hatchet at his feet, and Stacey stepped up behind him and hit him hard across the back of the head, and the hatchet flew from his hand, and Stacey punched his hands up and under the doctor’s arms and got him in a headlock, and held him.

Just as he’d held the Mexicans, waiting for Penry to start punching. Like with the wetback who had started this whole mess. When they had them, Penry usually telling them what he thought, You piece of wetback shit, You fuck, You filth! You take my job or go to somebody about this, I’ll kill your kids!

And it was always the mention of the girl, or boy, that broke them.

And sometimes, later, Penry would look them up, or tail people, threaten to kill a close relative, and when all the hitting and shouting was over, Penry, with the bloodshot eyes, saying, You think you and your Mex pals can come after us? Ten to one, asshole. Get out of town! And they’d walk whoever it was up some dark alley, kicking him in the breadbasket and kidneys, in the testicles, and heave him into some dark yard.

But this huge something blossomed in Stacey’s head now, like an explosion. No, he thought, thinking to turn Penry away, to run off to the canoes, but the doctor was stronger than Stacey thought he’d be, and Penry was swinging around, running after the girl, who was bolting for the trees, Stacey thinking Penry just meant to stop her screaming, her scream so sharp, he grit his teeth against it.

Then Penry caught her, in her purple down jacket and flowered pants, clapped his hand over her mouth, and she bit him, and he dragged her by the back of her jacket to the doctor, and Penry forced her down on the ground.

And here Stacey felt himself draw back, this was not part of the drill, and the doctor, in that moment, drove an elbow into Stacey’s ribs, and he felt a fierce heat there, and terrible pain, but hung on, his head whipped side to side, and just when the doctor had broken his grip, Penry swung on him, a roundhouse, smacking him across the side of his head, and Penry shouted, “Kick him! Kick his feet down, goddammit! Kick his feet out!”

Stacey kicked at the doctor’s feet, but he wasn’t going down. He was a powerful man, and Penry hit him again, and Stacey hung on for all he was worth, then got his legs kicked out in front of him, Stacey barely able to keep him down, his ribs burning something awful, so that every time the doctor struggled, he nearly lost him, the doctor jabbing with his elbows and not staying put at all, as Penry, time and again, caught the girl and dragged her back, and pressed her down in the dirt, the girl kicking, and Stacey shouting, when he saw what Penry meant to do, “Pen! Pen! What the fuck are you—”

Penry swung around with a block of firewood, hitting the doctor alongside his head, but the doctor just kicked all the harder for it, and Stacey bore down on his neck, the doctor had almost gotten his hand on the hatchet, down on the ground the way he was, and he jabbed at Stacey’s ribs again, something broken there, so all Stacey could do was hang on, in his head this bloodred haze of pain.

“Pen! Goddammit!” he shouted. “Stop it! Stop it, Goddammit, Pen!”

Pen had the girl pinned down, and in one vicious move he yanked the girl’s pajama bottoms off.

“See this, asshole?” Penry said, glaring at the doctor.

The doctor tore at Stacey’s arms, the hatchet was right there on the ground.

Penry had a thick, short penis, had his pants down.

Stacey said through his teeth, “Penry—no!”

The doctor gave one last desperate kick, nearly sending Stacey over backwards, and Stacey wrenched at his neck, Stacey breathless, and fading, forcing the doctor down, who shouted now, “So help me God, I’ll kill you! Every last one of you, I’ll kill you, you touch her!”

Penry spit in his face, roughly spreading the legs of the girl with his knee, the girl crying, and thrashing under him.

Stacey, seeing Penry was going to do it, reared back, wide-eyed, dragging the doctor with him, away from the hatchet.

“Goddammit, Penry!” he bellowed. “Don’t you do it, don’t you—DON’T YOU DO IT—”