Orson Card - Lost Boys

"Sister LeSueur, I appreciate your advice. Now I need to finish my shopping." He swung his cart around to head down the aisle away from Mrs. Jones. But Sister LeSueur caught at his sleeve.

"Brother Fletcher, you cannot resist the Lord forever."

He turned to face her. "I ha ve never resisted the Lord in my life, Sister LeSueur, and I never will. But I'm not so hungry for dialogue with him that I have to make up his part as well as my own."

Her voice got a hard edge. "Beware of how the Lord will chasten you for your pride."

This would be the perfect moment for Mrs. Jones to pull a gun out of her purse and shoot me dead. Sister LeSueur could live off that one event for the rest of her life. But Mrs. Jones wasn't there anymore. She had slipped away while his back was turned.

"'I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children," said Sis ter LeSueur.

He pushed his cart away from her. In one moment he had played out in his mind the whole scene of his death at Mrs. Jones's hand. It had been so vivid that he could now remember moments of it as if he had actually seen them. The gun coming out of her purse, pointing at his chest-he could have reached out and touched the cold metal. Was that how Stevie's imaginary friends were to him? How Sister LeSueur's visions were to her?

Never there in reality, and yet when they came back in memory, so real-seeming.

"'Unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,"' said Sister LeSueur.

He turned the corner at the end of the aisle, leaving Sister LeSueur's vengeful doctrine behind him. He quickly propelled the cart through the store, weaving among the other shoppers as if on the freeway. It took a while before he realized that he was no longer running away from Sister LeSueur, he was looking for Mrs.

Jones. Because she had been watching him. Because she had made him think of the song. He had to know.

She wasn't down any of the aisles. She wasn't in the checkout lines. Abandoning his cart, Step rushed out of the store and scanned the parking lot. There she was, walking briskly among the cars. He hurried after her.

Perhaps he should have called to her, but he was afraid that she would run away, since she already thought he was stalking her. As it was, when he caught up with her, just as she was putting her key in the door of the Pinto, she gave a little scream.

Step made sure to stay well away from her, his hands in plain sight.

"Mrs. Jones, I wasn't stalking you. I was grocery shopping."

She said nothing.

"But are you stalking me?" he asked.

Her lip curled in contempt.

"You sent me that record, didn't you?"

Her face went blank. "What record?"

"By The Police. That song about watching. Someone mailed it to our house."

"I don't even know where you live."

"We're in the book," said Step, "so don't be absurd. Just tell me if you sent it."

She smiled. "So," she said. "You don't like knowing that some body's watching, is that it?"

"I never dealt with you anonymously Mrs. Jones."

"I didn't mail you anything, Mr. Fletcher," she said, "so it must have been one of the other people yo u're blackmailing."

"Nobody else has persecuted any of my children," said Step.

"So you think it's me. You blame one more problem in your family on a woman who isn't even your son's teacher anymore."

She's enjoying this, he thought. She loves knowing that I'm really bothered by that anonymous record. Just as with Stevie, she loves to make somebody else squirm.

"Your lawyer never called me about a restraining order," said Step.

She shrugged.

"But Captain Douglas of the Steuben police thinks that the fingerprints on the envelope the record came in should be enough to make a positive identification that will stand up in court."

"Don't be stupid," she said.

"Wore gloves, huh?" he asked. "But you didn't wear gloves when you licked the stamp and pressed it onto the envelope."

The stricken look on her face would have been answer enough. Her sudden relaxation a moment later confirmed it.

"That was a relief, I see," said Step.

"What do you mean?" she said.

"Remembering that you had the guy at the post office meter it."

Her face revealed her inner struggle. Had she really let him know that she sent it, or was he bluffing?

"You never thought I was stalking you," said Step. "You've known all along that you were the one watching me. So I'm telling you now, stop it. I've already given your name to the police as a possible sender of that record. They're watching you. So it's time for you to leave me and my family alone."

"Leave you alone!" She sounded defiant, but his mention of the police had clearly bothered her.

"We've done you no harm. I could have reported what you did to the school board and sued the school district and you personally for what you did to Stevie. Your name could have been in all the papers. Instead I tried to be decent and handle it privately. Be grateful for that and stop looking to get even."

"Grateful," she scoffed. "To you? You're so smart, Mr. Fletcher. You and your clever little boy. You can take away other people's careers. You can make them work as temps and live with humiliation and fear every day of their lives."

"Just as Stevie did," said Step.

She glared at him, opened the door of her car, turned her back on him as she slipped inside.

"I keep almost feeling sorry for you," said Step. "And then you prove to me all over again that you thrive on hurting other people. That's what evil is, Mrs. Jones. That's what you are."

She hesitated before closing the door of the car, as if searching for some final, clinching retort. Then she slammed the door and started the engine. Step watched her pull out of the parking place and, with a squeal of tires, race for the street.

At least now I know who sent the record, thought Step. It wasn't from the killer, just as Douglas said. It was from a bully. It was no worse than that.

When he got inside, someone had taken his shopping cart. No doubt a store employee was carefully putting everything back on the shelves. He sighed, pulled his list out of his pocket, and started over.

One night late in September, Step was going to be alone with the children while DeAnne was making a presentation on journalkeeping at homemaking meeting. He knew he should be helping to keep the children out of her hair as she got ready to go, but he was in the middle of a complicated algorithm that wouldn't seem to go right, and he kept thinking, In a minute I'll go help.

Robbie was walking up and down the ha ll, bouncing a ball as hard as he could, a relentless thump, thump, thump that was about to drive Step crazy. Finally he couldn't stand it anymore. He got up and went into the hall to put a stop to the bouncing. At the same moment, DeAnne emerged from the bedroom in her slip, with the same mission in mind. Poor Robbie stood in the hall between them, looking in dread from one to the other.

"Sorry," he said in a small voice.

They both burst out laughing. "Just stop bouncing the ball inside the house, Road Bug," said Step.

"OK," said Robbie. "It don't bounce good on the carpet anyway."

"It doesn't bounce well," said Step.

"I know," said Robbie, puzzled. "I told you."

Half an hour after DeAnne left for the church, the phone rang. It was DeAnne. "This is going to sound stupid, Junk Man, but would you mind asking Robbie where he got that ball?"

"He's had it for years," said Step.

"But it rolled down one of the yucky holes in front of the house the first week we lived here," she said. "I want to know how it got out again. You didn't rescue it, did you?"

"I didn't even know it was lost. Maybe I could put it back."

"Step, please find out or it'll drive me crazy for the rest of my life."