Red Dragon hl-1 Read online

  The children’s embarrassment quickly passed as the rooster eluded them. But Grandmother was watching from the upstairs window…

  * * *

  Grandmother watched Queen Mother come back inside. The children went into the chicken house. Grandmother waited five minutes, then came up on them silently. She flung open the door and found them gathering feathers for headdresses.

  She sent the girl home and led Francis into the house.

  She told him he was going back to Brother Buddy’s orphanage after she had punished him. “Go upstairs. Go to your room and take your trousers off and wait for me while I get my scissors.”

  He waited for hours in his room, lying on the bed with his trousers off, clutching the bedspread and waiting for the scissors. He waited through the sounds of supper downstairs and he heard the creak and clop of the firewood wagon and the snort of the mules as Queen Mother’s husband came for her.

  Sometime toward morning he slept, and woke in starts to wait. Grandmother never came. Perhaps she had forgotten. He waited through the routine of the days that followed, remembering many times a day in a rush of freezing dread. He would never cease from waiting.

  He avoided Queen Mother Bailey, would not speak to her and wouldn’t tell her why: be mistakenly believed that she had told Grandmother what she saw in the chicken yard. Now he was convinced that the laughter he heard while he watched the wagon Ian-tern diminish down the road was about him. Clearly he could trust no one.

  It was hard to lie still and go to sleep when it was there to think about. It was hard to lie still on such a bright night.

  Francis knew that Grandmother was right. He had hurt her so. He had shamed her. Everyone must know what he had done—even as far away asSt. Charles. He was not angry at Grandmother. He knew that he Loved her very much. He wanted to do right.

  He imagined that burglars were breaking in and he protected Grandmother and she took back what she said. “You’re not a Child of the Devil after all, Francis. You are my good boy.”

  He thought about a burglar breaking in. Coming in the house determined to show Grandmother his private parts.

  How would Francis protect her? He was too small to fight a big burglar.

  He thought about it. There was Queen Mother’s hatchet inthe pantry. She wiped it with newspaper after she killed a chicken. He should see about the hatchet. It was his responsibility. He would fight his fear of the dark. If he really Loved Grandmother, he should be the thing to be afraid of in the dark. The thing for the burglar to be afraid of.

  He crept downstairs and found the hatchet hanging on its nail. It had a strange smell, like the smell at the sink when they were drawing a chicken. It was sharp and its weight was reassuring in his hand.

  He carried the hatchet to Grandmother’s room to be sure there were no burglars.

  Grandmother was asleep. It was very dark but he knew exactly where she was. If there was a burglar, he would hear him breathing just as he could hear Grandmother breathing. He would know where his neck was just as surely as he knew where Grandmother’s neck was. It was just below the breathing.

  If there was a burglar, he would come up on him quietly like this. He would raise the hatchet over his head with both hands like this.

  Francis stepped on Grandmother’s slipper beside the bed. The hatchet swayed in the dizzy dark and pinged against the metal shade of her reading lamp.

  Grandmother rolled over and made a wet noise with her mouth. Francis stood still. His arms trembled from the effort of holding up the hatchet. Grandmother began to snore.

  The Love Francis felt almost burst him. He crept out of the room. He was frantic to be ready to protect her. He must do something. He did not fear the dark house now, but it was choking him.

  He went out the back door and stood in the brilliant night, face upturned, gasping as though he could breathe the light. A tiny disk of moon, distorted on the whites of his rolled-back eyes, rounded as the eyes rolled down and was centered at last in his pupils.

  The Love swelled in him unbearably tight and he could not gasp it out. He walked toward the chicken house, hurrying now, the ground cold under his feet, the hatchet bumping cold against his leg, running now before he burst…

  * * *

  Francis, scrubbing himself at the chicken-yard pump, had never felt such sweet and easy peace. He felt his way cautiously into it and found that the peace was endless and all around him.

  What Grandmother kindly had not cut off was still there like a prize when he washed the blood off his belly and legs. His mind was clear and calm.

  He should do something about the nightshirt. Better hide it under the sacks in the smokehouse.

  * * *

  Discovery of the dead chicken puzzled Grandmother. She said it didn’t look like a fox job.

  A month later Queen Mother found another one when she went to gather eggs. This time the head had been wrung off.

  Grandmother said at the dinner table that she was convinced it was done for spite by some “sorry help I ran off.” She said she had called the sheriff about it.

  Francis sat silent at his place, opening and closing his hand on the memory of an eye blinking against his palm. Sometimes in bed he held himself to be sure he hadn’t been cut. Sometimes when he held himself he thought he felt a blink.

  * * *

  Grandmother was changing rapidly. She was increasingly contentious and could not keep household help. Though she was short of housekeepers, it was the kitchen where she took personal charge, directing Queen Mother Bailey to the detriment of the food. Queen Mother, who had worked for the Dolarhydes all her life, was the only constant on the staff.

  Red-faced in the kitchen heat, Grandmother moved restlessly from one task to the next, often leaving dishes half-made, never to be served. She made casseroles of leftovers while vegetables wilted in the pantry.

  At the same time, she became fanatical about waste. She reduced the soap and bleach in the wash until the sheets were dingy gray.

  In the month of November she hired five different black women to help in the house. They would not stay.

  Grandmother was furious the evening the last one left. She went through the house yelling. She came into the kitchen and saw that Queen Mother Bailey had left a teaspoonful of flour on the board after rolling out some dough.

  In the steam and heat of the kitchen a half-hour before dinner she walked up to Queen Mother and slapped her face.

  Queen Mother dropped her ladle, shocked. Tears sprang into her eyes. Grandmother drew back her hand again. A big pink palm pushed her away.

  “Don’t you ever do that. You’re not yourself, Mrs. Dolarhyde, but don’t you ever do that.”

  Screaming insults, Grandmother with her bare hand shoved over a kettle of soup to slop and hiss down through the stove. She went to her room and slammed the door. Francis heard her cursing in her room and objects thrown against the walls. She didn’t come out again all evening.

  Queen Mother cleaned up the soup and fed the old people. She got her few things together in a basket and put on her old sweater and stocking cap. She looked for Francis but couldn’t find him.

  She was in the wagon when she saw the boy sitting in the corner of the porch. He watched her climb down heavily and come back to him.

  “Possum, I’m going now. I won’t be back here. Sironia at the feed store, she’ll call your mama for me. You need me before your mama get here, you come to my house.”

  He twisted away from the touch on his cheek.

  Mr. Bailey clucked to the mules. Francis watched the wagon lantern move away. He had watched it before, with a sad and empty feeling since he understood that Queen Mother betrayed him. Now he didn’t care. He was glad. A feeble kerosene wagon light fading down the road. It was nothing to the moon.

  He wondered how it feels to kill a mule.

  * * *

  Marian Dolarhyde Vogt did not come when Queen Mother Bailey called her.

  She came two weeks later after a call fro
m the sheriff inSt Charles. She arrived in midafternoon, driving herself in a prewar Packard. She wore gloves and a hat.

  A deputy sheriff met her at the end of the lane and stooped to the car window.

  “Mrs. Vogt, your mother called our office around noon, saying something about the help stealing. When I come out here, you’ll excuse me but she was talking out of her head and it looked like things wasn’t tended to. Sheriff thought he ought to get ahold of y’all first, if you understand me. Mr. Vogt being before the public and all.”

  Marian understood him. Mr. Vogt was commissioner of public works inSt. Louisnow and was not in the party’s best graces.

  “To my knowledge, nobody else has saw the place,” the deputy said.

  Marian found her mother asleep. Two of the old people were still sitting at the table waiting for lunch. One woman was out in the backyard in her slip.

  Marian telephoned her husband. “How often do they inspect these places?.. They must not have seen anything… I don’t know if any relatives have complained, I don’t think these people have any relatives… No. You stay away. I need some Negroes. Get me some Negroes… and Dr. Waters. I’ll take care of it.”

  The doctor with an orderly in white arrived in forty-five minutes, followed by a panel truck bringing Marian’s maid and five other domestics.

  Marian, the doctor, and the orderly were in Grandmother’s room when Francis came home from school. Francis could hear his grandmother cursing. When they rolled her out in one of the nursing-home wheelchairs, she was glassy-eyed and a piece of cotton was taped to her arm. Her face looked sunken and strange without her teeth. Marian’s arm was bandaged too; she had been bitten.

  Grandmother rode away in the doctor’s car, sitting in the backseat with the orderly. Francis watched her go. He started to wave, but let his hand fall back to his side.

  Marian’s cleaning crew scrubbed and aired the house, did a tremendous wash, and bathed the old people. Marian worked alongside them and supervised a sketchy meal.

  She spoke to Francis only to ask where things were.

  Then she sent the crew away and called the county authorities. Mrs. Dolarhyde had suffered a stroke, she explained.

  It was dark when the welfare workers came for the patients in a school bus. Francis thought they would take him too. He was not discussed.

  Only Marian and Francis remained at the house. She sat at the dining-room table with her head in her hands. He went outside and climbed a crabapple tree.

  Finally Marian called him. She had packed a small suitcase with his clothes.

  “You’ll have to come with me,” she said, walking to the car. “Get in. Don’t put your feet on the seat.”

  They drove away in the Packard and left the empty wheelchair standing in the yard.

  There was no scandal. The county authorities said it was sure a shame about Mrs. Dolarhyde, she sure kept things nice. The Vogts remained untarnished.

  Grandmother was confined to a private nerve sanatorium. It would be fourteen years before Francis went home to her again.

  * * *

  “Francis, here are your stepsisters and stepbrother,” his mother said. They were in the Vogts’ library.

  Ned Vogt was twelve, Victoria thirteen, and Margaret nine. Ned and Victoria looked at each other. Margaret looked at the floor.

  Francis was given a room at the top of the servants’ stairs. Since the disastrous election of 1944 the Vogts no longer employed an upstairs maid.

  He was enrolled inPotterGerardElementary School, within walking distance of the house and far from the Episcopal private school the other children attended.

  The Vogt children ignored him as much as possible during the first few days, but at the end of the first week Ned and Victoria came up the servants’ stairs to call.

  Francis heard them whispering for minutes before the knob turned on his door. When they found it bolted, they didn’t knock. Ned said, “Open this door.”

  Francis opened it. They did not speak to him again while they looked through his clothes in the wardrobe. Ned Vogt opened the drawer in the small dressing table and picked up the things he found with two fingers: birthday handkerchiefs with F.D. embroidered on them, a capo for a guitar, a bright beetle in a pill bottle, a copy of Baseball Joe in the World Series which had once been wet, and a get-well card signed “Your classmate, Sarah Hughes.”

  “What’s this?” Ned asked.

  “A capo.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “A guitar.”

  “Do you have a guitar?”

  “No.”

  “What do you have it for?”Victoriaasked.

  “My father used it.”

  “I can’t understand you. What did you say? Make him say it again, Ned.”

  “He said it belonged to his father.” Ned blew his nose on one of the handkerchiefs and dropped it back in the drawer.

  “They came for the ponies today,”Victoriasaid. She sat on the narrow bed. Ned joined her, his back against the wall, his feet on the quilt.

  “No more ponies,” Ned said. “No more lake house for the summer. Do you know why? Speak up, you little bastard.”

  “Father is sick a lot and doesn’t make as much money,”Victoriasaid. “Some days he doesn’t go to the office at all.”

  “Know why he’s sick, you little bastard?” Ned asked. “Talk where I can understand you.”

  “Grandmother said he’s a drunk. Understand that all right?”

  “He’s sick because of your ugly face,” Ned said.

  “That’s why people didn’t vote for him, too,”Victoriasaid.

  “Get out,” Francis said. When he turned to open the door, Ned kicked him in the back. Francis tried to reach his kidney with both hands, which saved his fingers as Ned kicked him in the stomach.

  “Oh, Ned,”Victoriasaid. “Oh, Ned.”

  Ned grabbed Francis by the ears and held him close to the mirror over the dressing table.

  “That’s why he’s sick!” Ned slammed his face into the mirror. “That’s why he’s sick!” Slam. “That’s why he’s sick!” Slam. The mirror was smeared with blood and mucus. Ned let him go and he sat on the floor.Victorialooked at him, her eyes wide, holding her lower lip between her teeth. They left him there. His face was wet with blood and spit. His eyes watered from the pain, but he did not cry.

  Chapter 28

  Rain inChicagodrums through the night on the canopy over the open grave of Freddy Lounds.

  Thunder jars Will Graham’s pounding head as he weaves from the table to a bed where dreams coil beneath the pillow.

  The old house aboveSt. Charles, shouldering the wind, repeats its long sigh over the hiss of rain against the windows and the bump of thunder.

  The stairs are creaking in the dark. Mr. Dolarhyde is coming down them, his kimono whispering over the treads, his eyes wide with recent sleep.

  His hair is wet and neatly combed. He has brushed his nails. He moves smoothly and slowly, carrying his concentration like a brimming cup.

  Film beside his projector. Two subjects. Other reels are piled in the wastebasket for burning. Two left, chosen from the dozens of home movies he has copied at the plant and brought home to audition.

  Comfortable in his reclining chair with a tray of cheese and fruit beside him, Dolarhyde settles in to watch.

  The first film is a picnic from the Fourth of July weekend. A handsome family; three children, the father bull-necked, dipping into the pickle jar with his thick fingers. And the mother.

  The best view of her is in the softball game with the neighbors’ children. Only about fifteen seconds of her; she takes a lead off second base, faces the pitcher and the plate, feet apart ready to dash either way, her breasts swaying beneath her pullover as she leans forward from the waist. An annoying interruption as a child swings a bat. The woman again, walking back to tag up. She puts one foot on the boat cushion they use for a base and stands hip-shot, the thigh muscle tightening in her locked leg.

&nb
sp; Over and over Dolarhyde watches the frames of the woman. Foot on the base, pelvis tilts, thigh muscle tightens under the cutoff jeans.

  He freezes the last frame. The woman and her children. They are dirty and tired. They hug, and a dog wags among their legs.

  A terrific crash of thunder clinks the cut crystal in Grandmother’s tall cabinet. Dolarbyde reaches for a pear.

  Thesecond film is in several segments. The title, The New House , is spelled out in pennies on a shirt cardboard above a broken piggy bank. It opens with Father pulling up the “For Sale” sign in the yard. He holds it up and faces the camera with an embarrassed grin. His pockets are turned out.

  An unsteady long shot of Mother and three children on the front steps. It is a handsome house. A cut to the swimming pool. A child, sleek-headed and small, pads around to the diving board, leaving wet footprints on the tile. Heads bob in the water. A small dog paddles toward a daughter, his ears back, chin high, and the whites of his eyes showing.

  Mother in the water holds to the ladder and looks up at the camera. Her curly black hair has the gloss of pelt, her bosom swelling shining wet above her suit, her legs wavy below the surface, scissoring.

  Night. A badly exposed shot across the pool to the lighted hous; the lights reflected in the water.

  Indoors and family fun. Boxes everywhere, and packing materials. An old trunk, not yet stored in the attic.

  A small daughter is trying on Grandmother’s clothes. She has on a big garden-party hat. Father is on the sofa. He looks a little drunk. Now Father must have the camera. It is not quite level. Mother is at the mirror in the hat.

  The children jostle around her, the boys laughing and plucking at the old finery. The girl watches her mother coolly, appraising herself in time to come.

  A close-up. Mother turns and strikes a pose for the camera with an arch smile, her hand at the back of her neck. She is quite lovely. There is a cameo at her throat.