William Rabkin - The Call of the Mild

Henry Spencer’s head was about to split in two. Part of it was due to the horrible high-pitched whine coming from the backyard. But mostly it was caused by the even more horrible low-pitched whining from the woman on the other end of the phone line. She’d started complaining the second he picked up, and she hadn’t stopped to take a breath in five minutes.

Finally there was a pause in her tirade. Maybe she needed air. Maybe she’d keeled over from a stroke. Henry didn’t care. He saw his opportunity and he seized it.

“You want to sue, I’ll see you in court, lady!”

He slammed down the phone receiver, then picked it up and slammed it down again. It didn’t help. His head still throbbed.

This wasn’t the first time Henry had been threatened with a lawsuit. Half the creeps he’d arrested in all his years on the Santa Barbara police force had screamed police brutality and vowed to take him to court.

But it was the first time he’d been threatened with a lawsuit because of something his son had done. Or, rather, not done.

Henry massaged his pounding skull, then shouted, “Shawn!” There was no answer, of course. And the whining kept getting louder.

Henry stalked through the kitchen and and flung open the screen door. Shawn was standing in the middle of the lawn, a radio-control box in his hand.

“Watch out!” Shawn said.

“I’m not the one who-” Henry’s sentence was cut off as a model airplane crashed into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

“Well, that’s just great,” Shawn said, flipping a switch on the control box. “You killed it.”

“Then half my work is done.” Henry pulled air into his lungs, then picked up the airplane and looked it over. It was a nice model, finely detailed. These things weren’t cheap. “Where did you get this?”

“I bought it,” Shawn said.

“With what money?”

“Money I earned,” Shawn said.

“Would that be money you earned taking care of Mrs. Calloway’s garden?” Henry said.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because she just called,” Henry said. “Apparently she paid you in advance for your work, and now all her flowers are dead because you never showed up to take care of them. She wants to sue you.”

“Good luck to her,” Shawn said. “It’s not like I have any assets, thanks to a medieval allowance policy around here.”

Shawn turned the control box upside down and banged on the bottom. The plane in Henry’s hand gave a cough and a shake, and the propeller kicked over. Henry grabbed it and held it in place until the toy stopped struggling.

“Maybe I should have said she wants to sue me,” Henry said. “But the lawsuit isn’t the important part. Hell, if she was stupid enough to pay you in advance, she shouldn’t be allowed to own plants anyway. But you said you’d take care of her garden and you killed it.”

“It was a weasel,” Shawn said.

“Oh, that’s good,” Henry said. “You took care of her flowers, but a weasel destroyed them.”

“I’m not talking about a rodent,” Shawn said. He walked over to his father and tried to pry the plane out of his hands. Henry didn’t let go. “I’m saying I didn’t lie. I told her I would take care of her plants to the best of my ability. Well, this was the best of my ability. That’s a weasel.”

Henry stared at his son, wondering as he had so many times before exactly what he had done in a previous life to deserve this. “You want to go into court and explain this weasel to a judge?”

“It’s the truth,” Shawn said.

“A weasel is not a legal defense,” Henry said. “If anything, it’s going to make a judge really angry. He’ll find a way to put you in juvie just for smarting off to him.”

Henry was pleased to see that Shawn actually looked a little nervous. “What should I do?”

“I only see one way out of this,” Henry said. “And that’s another weasel.”

“But you just said-”

Henry held up a hand to cut him off. “It’s a very special weasel, guaranteed to get you out of trouble. But you have to promise to do exactly what I say, or it’s not going to work.”

“What is it?” Shawn said suspiciously.

“Promise first.”

Shawn struggled to find a way around the requirement. Then he smiled. “I promise.”

“Right. Because I am an idiot. You have to tell me exactly what you’re promising, or it’s no deal.”

Shawn’s smile vanished. “I promise to do exactly what you say.”

“Good call, son.” Putting down the plane, Henry led Shawn to the garage and threw open the door. He poked around in his tools and came out with a long pole topped with three sets of rotating tines. “There you go.”

He thrust the tool out to Shawn, who took a step back. “I thought you said you had a weasel for me.”

“I do,” Henry said. “This is the Garden Weasel. I want you to use it to dig up Mrs. Calloway’s garden, and then I want you to replace everything that died. Is that clear?”

Shawn thought this over for a long time. Then he broke out into a grin. “Yes, sir!”

Shawn took the Garden Weasel and ran down the driveway. Henry looked after him, wondering what had just happened. He had laid down the law for Shawn, and Shawn had agreed to it. Why had he seemed so triumphant? What had Henry missed?

Inches away from Henry’s feet, the airplane’s propeller kicked twice, then started to spin. The plane taxied down the driveway. Henry dove for it, but it took off and rose out of his reach.

And then Henry knew. Shawn hadn’t agreed to do the work. Shawn hadn’t agreed to do any work. He had simply acknowledged the clarity of his father’s demands. It was another one of Shawn’s weasels.

The airplane’s whining filled the air again. But this time Henry didn’t complain about the headache it brought on. He wanted to be in as bad a mood as possible when Shawn came home. Then he’d teach him all sorts of uses for a Garden Weasel.

It was the same dream that had tormented Gus since he was seven. He was lost in the woods, whacking through thick undergrowth with only a sliver of moon to light his way. Shawn had been next to him just a second ago. Now he was gone. Gus wanted to call out for him. Or for help. Or for his mother. But he didn’t dare make a sound.

Something was hunting him. Gus didn’t know what. He couldn’t see it. But he could hear it. Crashing through brush and snapping branches as it plunged towards him. Closer and closer, until Gus could hear its ragged breathing. Feel the hot breath on the back of his neck.

Then Gus did scream. Scream and run, run blindly, barely feeling the low branches flay the flesh from his body, tripping, stumbling, until he saw the chasm opening up beneath him.

This was the worst part of the dream. Gus could see the plunge just ahead of him, the cliff falling off hundreds of feet down to a roaring river far below. There was plenty of time to stop or turn away. But no matter how hard he willed his feet to change direction, they kept pounding inexorably towards the cliff’s edge. He pummeled his thighs, tried to throw himself to the ground, to grab hold of a tree-anything to slow himself down. Nothing worked. His feet kept propelling him forwards. Even as he felt his left foot-it was always the left that went first-take that fatal, final step with only open air beneath it, he could not stop. His right foot followed its mate off the edge, and for one moment Gus was suspended in air.

That’s when he woke up every time.

Every time until now.

Because try as he might to persuade himself that he was only dreaming, Gus knew this time it was different.