-6-

When he heard Sadie barking and clawing at the living room window, his first thought—because he was still groggy from dozing off in front of his TV (he had been watching a recording of Cab Driver)—was that the police had finally come to take away the body lying at his doorstep. But then he remembered that they had already come. His next thought, even more irrational, was that the boys had stolen back the body again somehow, to leave it at his door a second time. Or was it another body entirely (third irrational thought)? As Board got up to shush the dog, he finally settled on the idea that it must be a cat she was looking out at, this time.

Then over Sadie’s barking, he heard the screaming at last.

It was the voice of a child, in terror or pain. Board tried to nudge his dog aside but she was rigid in her stance, so he pressed in beside her instead. He saw no one out there in his short, desolate street—not even a passing car, as usual—but then he heard the voices.

“Get out of here!” a man bellowed.

“Go on, throw it, you old fart!” roared a familiar voice, though Board didn’t know which of the two bike-riding neighborhood boys it issued from. It was amazing, frightening, how the boy could make his voice rasp like that to increase its fury and to compensate for its youth.

“Come here and I’ll blow your head off!” shouted the adult voice in response, trying to summon the same level of bravado, but sounding just a touch shaken.

Board left the window, moving toward his door. Sadie jerked her head in his direction and realized what he was doing too late; by the time she leapt from the sofa he was already out in front of his house without her, slamming the door behind him.

One boy flashed by on his bike then, from left to right. The other whizzed past a moment later. They were both so fast that their faces were a blur to him, so fast that they didn’t see him, either. They had to have already noted earlier that the corpse had been removed, or they certainly would have glanced over at his dead house now.

Board looked off to his left and saw a disheveled man with a silvery beard standing on the corner of the street from which the bikes had emerged. The bearded man was glaring after them, clearly the adult with whom the kids had been arguing. Board could only assume the rest. That the child he’d heard screaming was this man’s child. That he had stopped the two boys on the bikes from hurting his child—or worse. That the man had threatened to throw a rock from his garden or some other heavy object after the boys. He had either done so already (Board saw nothing in his hands) or had dropped the object, his threat an empty one.

Board turned his attention back in the direction the boys had gone off in, then. And he made an impulsive choice. One option had been going over to the bearded man and asking him what had happened; if he thought that maybe they could join forces, go to the police together about these two kids. The other option was to follow after the boys immediately, to see if he could find out where they lived. And though Board was on foot, and had little realistic chance of tracking them down, that was the option he went with. His feet were already moving briskly beneath him by the time he realized he’d made the decision. He didn’t take his dog to lead him as she might well lead him astray). He didn’t take his car; it might save him time, ultimately, but his only thought at the moment was that going back inside to retrieve his keys and coming out again to start his vehicle would cause him to lose the scent. And also, he didn’t bring the gun he always wore for protection when he ventured out into the open. There just wasn’t time…

Board’s shoes smacked the sidewalk decisively. He walked smartly past lawns shorter and greener than his own, Technicolor flowers planted in front of insect houses that were painted aqua and pink and robin’s egg blue. At the corner where the boys had vanished, where a white-painted picket fence half-drowned in vines or ivy formed a right angle, he turned. He walked through the restless blue shadows of oak trees. He heard a church bell ringing the hour, but though he wasn’t listening to it closely he could swear it rang too many times.

As he walked, he had begun to fear the obvious: that the boys had outdistanced him long ago. That they would fly and fly, down this street and that, without returning to their house until supper time, hours from now. But in fact, he didn’t end up walking far. He was only just beginning to feel the sweat running down his sides, trickling in the small of his back, and only just beginning to experience shortness of breath when he saw the two bikes lying on their sides on one of the plastic-green lawns.

Board strode up its brick path, bordered by flowers. A porch had been affixed to the front of this insect (obviously one which didn’t rotate in its foundation, not that his did anymore). Board mounted the front steps, entered the shade of the porch. His footsteps clumping across it sounded hollow, disturbing, as if it were a high wooden scaffold. There was a black circle tattooed next to the front door, and when he prodded it with his finger, the huge insect made a buzzing noise inside its body that Board could even hear out here.

After a few moments, a man approached. Board could see him through a screen door that made him look staticky like a poor TV image. The man pushed it open on squealing hinges and looked out at him. “Yeah?”

“Do you have two sons?” Board panted. His heart was chugging from the sheer exhaustion of the walk. Not fear. His voice had been firm, like a policeman’s.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Your kids…those boys…” What? Had just beaten or even tried to murder another child? He hadn’t witnessed it. But he knew what they’d done to him. The Asian woman. “Your boys found a corpse over in the abrasive factory’s parking lot…”

“Yeah, I know…they told me they saw one.”

“Well, they not only saw it…they were playing with it. Doing…bad things to it. And when I told them to stop, they left it on my…”

“That was you?” the man cut in, taking a step across his threshold. “You’re that crazy old man who shot a gun at them?”

“I didn’t shoot it at them…I just shot it in the air to get their…”

The man moved forward again, but this time followed through with his momentum, had a hold of Board’s polo shirt, still kept moving forward, driving Board backwards across the wooden porch, back to its front steps.

“You ever shoot at my kids again I’ll fucking kill you, you hear me you old fart? I’ll fucking blow your head off!” So saying, the father of the bike-riding boys let go of Board with a final thrust forward. Board half-flailed in empty space for a split-second, a comic pratfall from some movie, and then was falling backwards, down the porch’s steps. When he landed, it was sprawled on his back, almost upside-down on the stairs, his head on the sidewalk and his feet propped above him. “Get out of here!” the man bellowed down at him, and then he stomped back to the screen door and slammed it behind him. Board heard more roaring inside, raspy and furious, though whether the man was berating his sons or complaining to the police on the phone Board didn’t know.

He was in too much pain for clear thought. His back had struck against the edges of the steps, and though he had reflexively tried to draw his head forward, he had still managed to crack the back of his skull against the pavement.

First he rolled his legs to the left, off the steps. Then he rolled onto his side, curled in a partial fetal position. The movement caused him to suck in his breath sharply. It felt as though a railroad spike had been driven between his shoulder blades. His lower right back, just above his hip, felt bruised to the bone. His right elbow was wet; bleeding, he realized. Rolling onto his knees, now, made him feel like his whole spinal column was being pulled through his mouth along with the sound of his groan. But he rose to his feet, staggering back a step. Straightened. And turned his head toward the cloudy metal web of the screened door.

It still sounded as though a monster were raging inside. Had the boys’ two voices joined in? It was a hellish, horrifying sound. A cacophony from Cerberus’ three heads…

For almost a minute, Board stood at the foot of the steps, clutching his gouged elbow in his hand, paralyzed with anger too great to articulate or even act upon. But there was also a fear he had to admit to. It made the anger worse.

When he was finally able to move again, it was away from the house with the porch. Back the way he had come. Still poisoned with his anger, like that man with the beard…but like him, he had let go of his rock.