Edward Lee: Ghouls

She couldn’t divorce Lenny, not now. She was convinced of the logic of her reasons.

The house was very quiet now. All she could hear was the steady tick of the glass and gold carriage clock on the mantelpiece. Nine o’clock and all’s well. At least until my dearest hubby gets home. Just then it dawned on her that she was sitting in the dark. Night had bloomed fully without her ever realizing it. It was nice like that, dark and quiet and nice, and she hoped to God that Lenny didn’t come home all boned up and drunk, and destroy it all for her.

Just as the tears were beginning to dry, she inched her foot forward and touched something furry with her toe.

Brutus. Oh, Brutus, why can’t you just be sleeping?

She stood up, stepped over the dead animal, and felt her way across the room to the kitchen. She flinched at the sudden, disrupting whiteness when she opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of soda. She went back to the couch and sat staring. The still carcass on the floor reminded her that she’d soon have to take care of things. She supposed there was some county office she could call, but she couldn’t bear the thought. They would probably incinerate the collie and use him for bone meal or something. No, she would tend to it herself.

Her whole body jerked when the kitchen door to the garage opened. The lights flicked on, an intruding block of glare. Lenny set his big Eveready spotlight down on the counter, and didn’t even notice Vicky sitting there until he was three steps into the living room. He stopped, squinting, and said, “How come you ain’t at work?”

“It’s my day off.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s right, I forgot.” He fixed his eyes on her and threw his head back to get the hair off his brow. “You got something going with Morris?”

“Who?”

“Morris, that pencilneck cop.”

Vicky frowned and reached for her cigarettes. “No.”

“Tell me the truth, girl.”

“I haven’t seen Kurt in weeks. What makes you think I ‘got something going’ with him?”

“I ran into him today, and he was givin’ me a hard time, as usual, the weed. He’s always askin’ shit about you.”

Vicky smiled within herself. “Well, I told you. I haven’t seen him.” She lit a cigarette, leaned back on the couch, and drew. “Where have you been all day?”

“Huntin’, with Jory and Mac.” This, of course, was a lie. He’d only been hunting for the last hour or so. Lenny did all his hunting at night.

“One day you’ll go too far, Lenny,” she said. “Deer season ended in December. And besides, there’s a difference between hunting and poaching.”

”Aw, it’s a dipshit law, anyway. This way, we save a bundle on food expenses. Wait’ll you see the ten-point buck I got. I’ll bet that sucker weighs close to two hundred. We just got done dressing it.”

Lenny smirked. It was obvious that Vicky didn’t share in his delight over bringing home a deer. He stood still, and was squinting at her again in the white, cold light from the kitchen. He noticed, finally, the dried tears that streaked her cheeks. “What you been cryin’ about?”

She looked away from him and swallowed. “Brutus died.”

She expected a fake response from him at least. Lenny had always been indifferent about the collie; he’d never gone out of his way to be nice to Brutus, but then he’d never been mean to the animal, either. He said nothing. He looked at the shape of the animal’s corpse at Vicky’s feet, then reached down to pick the dog up.

“What are you going to do?”

“Gotta get him outa here,” he said. “I’ll take him behind the bowling alley and leave him in the dumpster.”

“You will not. That dog’s been with me for fifteen years, and if you think you’re going to toss him into some damn garbage dumpster, then you better think again.” More tears began to fill her eyes, and she felt a rare kind of rage that was dangerous in that house. “Sometimes I just can’t believe you, Lenny. You’re a miserable, insensitive bastard.”

“You better watch that mouth, girl,” he said, and pointed a finger at her. “I got a mind to clout you upside the head.”

“Well, do it then, I don’t give a shit!” she shouted at him, and the tears were flowing freely now, her words hollow and stilted. She knew he would hit her under any other circumstance but wouldn’t now because her defiance and grief had reduced the threat to something feeble. “I’ll get rid of him myself,” she heard herself say a few seconds later.

He remained there a while longer, perhaps puzzled that anyone could harbor such feelings for a dog. “Now I’m sorry your dog died, but you gotta be re-listic about all this. You take care of it soon; we don’t want the house full up with flies. You hear?”

Her head between her knees, Vicky nodded.

“Okay, then,” he said. He disappeared up the stairs.

Vicky continued to sob faintly. Her face was swollen and red around the eyes, and she realized she was crying not only for the loss of her pet, but also for the graceless plummet her life had taken. She picked the dog up heavily in her arms and pushed through the screen door to the backyard. The night air was cool and crisp, the darkness, again, comforting. The grass underfoot felt strangely moist, like cool oil. She took the animal to the limits of the yard and continued a few steps into the woods itself, where she laid the dog down on the forest ground. She took a moment to breathe in the night scents of the woods. Then she plodded back toward the toolshed to search for the shovel.

— | — | —

CHAPTER THREE

One good thing about the four-to-midnight shift was the luxury of sleeping late. Generally, Kurt turned in at one in the morning and got up at eight or nine, so the luxury was more or less false; but he enjoyed the principle. He simply got up when he’d had sufficient rest, eliminating any need for alarm clocks—things he’d been known to demolish back in his college days. Once he’d winged a Baby Ben out of his dorm window, a six-story trip onto cement. A week later his roommate had retrieved it, and it still worked.

Kurt got out of bed and stood up, stretching, wearing only briefs. At the height of his stretch, the door opened, and his twelve-year-old cousin, Melissa, leaned in, grinning like an evil kewpie doll. “Brad Pitt you ain’t,” she said.

“Roachface! Get out of here!” he yelled. “Can’t a guy even stand around in his underwear without being eyeballed by little stinkbugs like you? Next time knock…and then don’t come in. I could’ve been nude.”

“Too bad you weren’t. Then I could take pictures with Daddy’s camera and blackmail you.”

“Blackmail, hell. With my terrific body, you’d be able to sell them for a hundred bucks apiece.”

“Yeah, in Monopoly money.”

Kurt wished for a can of whipped cream. That would teach her. “Now that you’ve successfully invaded my privacy, what do you want?”

“I just came to tell you that breakfast is ready. Pardon me.”

Kurt brightened; never before had Melissa cooked him breakfast. “Oh, okay,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”

After a shower and shave, he put on his traditional off-duty garb—bleach-spotted jeans, jogging shoes (though he never jogged), and a golf shirt from Crofton Country Club (though he’d quit golf years ago when it became apparent he’d never break 110; he broke a lot of clubs, at any rate).

He rented the north bedroom of his uncle Roy’s house, an old, big ramshackle place with gables and ivy trellises, situated down on the south end of the Route. Right now, Uncle Roy was away for two weeks, bear hunting in Canada. Uncle Roy went bear hunting in Canada every spring, for as long as Kurt could recall, and not once had he ever shot or even seen a bear. Kurt wondered if they even had bears in Canada, and was by now seriously doubting that they did.