Offspring (10 page)

First Stolen liked to pretend that because he was the eldest male he was leader. But First Stolen had no caution and could not plan. He had never been leader. He could never be. It was only pride and foolishness that made him walk one step ahead of her as he did now, his ax slung across his shoulder. In many ways First Stolen was still a child.

Second Stolen, walking naked beside her, was wiser.

There was a calm about Second Stolen, an acceptance of things. An ability to wait and reason.

It had not always been that way. For the entire cycle of the first moon of her captivity, the Woman had been forced to keep her tied in the dark in a hole at the back of the cave and had beaten her each day because she cried so often for her mother—though, strangely, never for her father—even though she already had six summers by then and should have been stronger.

Over time the crying stopped. And then it was as though she had always been there.

The Woman gazed out to sea. It was high tide now, as it had been the night her family fled the island.

That family was gone, destroyed. And now it was back again.

She had rebuilt them. They were strong.

The children ranged across the beach to either side of her. Rabbit—the best hunter among them despite his stupidity about other things, in the lead—then the twin males, followed by the Girl, Eartheater, the
Boy with the clouded eye. Only the infant had been left behind.

She felt the power of them swell and surge inside her.

Her family had been like the seaweed at low tide—Shriveled by the sun, black with ruin, dry almost to the point of breaking. Then the sea rose up again, filling them, turning them green and supple and alive.

The sea was blood.

The night crashed with surf, in her ears a brilliant thunder.

“It’s no good,” Manetti said. “It’s gotten too damn dark. Somebody’s just going to wind up busting his skull on these rocks here.”

He was right, thought Peters. The search was hampered by high tide now, the beach shrunk to a narrow strip of sand, forcing them back toward the granite cliffs and the erosion spill of rocks beneath, which were already slippery from the spray of surf. The waves filled crevices and tide pools. They were stepping around them, stepping over them. Peters’ hair and clothes were damp with spray. He tasted salt on his lips. The men were exhausted.

Enough was enough.

At this angle, having to stand this close to the rock face, they weren’t going to find a damn thing anyhow. You couldn’t tell what was a cave—never mind how deep a cave, whether it was deep enough to live in—and what was just a fissure or a cleft in the rock.

The troopers had provided them with heavy, three-foot-long Maglite Six-Cells—which went for forty dollars a pop thank you very much—but their bright beams just slashed straight up the sea-wall, and everything looked pretty much the same as everything else. It was like looking for a nail hole in your bedroom wall with your face pressed up against the baseboard. You just couldn’t do it.

“Might as well call it in all across the board,” said Peters. “I don’t guess anybody’s having much more luck than we are.”

“Damn!” said Harrison. He’d been scanning the rock face and walking at the same time. He’d stepped into a tide pool, and now his shoe was full of seawater.

In Peters’ boyhood they’d called it a soaker.

Manetti took out his radio and made the call. All units proceed to stage-two planning. Effective immediately.

Stage two was house-to-house.

It would take some time to get organized—hell, it would take them a while just to get off the beach—but each unit had its own territory mapped out already all along the coastline. They had orders not to alarm anybody but to alert
everybody
. Stay indoors, keep telephone and radio lines open, keep doors and windows locked, and call the police to inform them of anything unusual whatsoever.

They’d probably be at it all night.

He’d been up since half past three this morning and by now he was beyond tired, even beyond exhausted,
he was into some realm of autopilot wherein half of what he looked at just didn’t look right. It was as though he were this close to getting lost all the time, saying to himself, okay, now where the hell am I? Even though he knew this coast like he knew his own front porch.

He kept seeing things move out of the corner of his eye, people-sized things, and when he turned and looked there was nothing there.

It wasn’t the booze. That was long gone.

There was a spare bottle left in the glove compartment of his car, half-full, that he kept there for emergencies but the car was home and they were heading for Manetti’s cruiser. He wondered if Manetti’d want to make a pit stop. He sort of doubted it.

They were trudging across a strip of sand. It was a welcome relief from the slick rocks. Harrison and the four troopers were leading now, Manetti and Peters a few feet behind. Manetti looked at him.
Here we go again
, he thought. He knew what he looked like.

“You want to call it a night, George, I’ll understand.”

“I want like all hell to call it a night. But I don’t guess I will just yet. I guess if I slip into a coma you can just leave me in the cruiser.”

“What’s your guess? You figure they’ll stay home tonight, watch television? Or are they out hunting again?”

“I’d say hunting. Why waste a moon like that in front of the TV?”

They walked quietly for a long time.

Then there it was again. A figure moving alongside of him
.

The little man who wasn’t there.

He needed a second wind right about now and needed it bad.

Peters sighed. “Our territory’s the Point, right?”

“Right.”

“Listen. That’s by my house. Mind dropping me off a minute? I’d feel a little more comfortable with the .38 around.”

Worth a try
, he thought.

Manetti just looked at him again. He’d caught his own tone of voice and knew he wasn’t fooling anybody. But Manetti wasn’t calling him on it. He nodded.

“Sure, George.”

It was a big concession, he knew. Cops weren’t supposed to drink on duty. Civilians weren’t supposed to drink and carry handguns.

Peters wasn’t exactly a cop anymore. But at the moment he wasn’t exactly a civilian either. He wondered if that meant he was breaking two laws or none. He guessed Manetti had judged it to be none. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to judge it at all
.

And how do you judge it?
he thought.

He was much too tired. He came up empty.

Miles Harrison found the path. He turned to Peters and smiled.

“We used to come down here as kids,” he said. “Light fires on the beach. Neck. Have a beer or two.”

“I know,” Peters said. “I used to come down here to arrest you.”

Harrison laughed. “You never did, though.”

“I never wanted to. I just wanted you off the beach.
What did you think we came parading down here waving lighted flashlights for?”

“I guess we just figured the cops were pretty dumb.”

“We were. And now you are. All cops are dumb, remember?”

“We always came back a night or two later.”

“And we’d chase you again. I know.”

They were on the uphill path now and Peters’ breath was coming hard, he was puffing.

“I always thought we were just lucky,” Harrison said. “Not to get caught I mean.”

Peters stopped and looked at him, took a breath.

“You were lucky,” he said.

Damn lucky
, he thought.
Luckier than you know, given what was out here
. They proceeded up the mountain.

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I can’t . . .”

“Get into
bed
, Luke. Now!”

There was always trouble around bedtime and obviously tonight was going to be no exception.

Claire didn’t know whether to throw up her hands or throttle him
.

The fact that the room was new to him didn’t help. He’d scattered his guys—his Turtle guys, his Dick Tracy guys—all over the place playing up here tonight, and now he couldn’t find anything.

So he stood there in his pajamas, scowling.

Getting him into
those
had been a major event too. He’d insisted on wearing the same dirty T-shirt he’d been wearing all day, his favorite, the Post Nukes T-shirt he’d picked out for himself in California, a skeleton riding a surfboard against a lurid flaming red sky.

Then there were five full minutes of Did You Brush Your Teeth.

And now he stood there jiggling his legs back and forth as though he had to go to the bathroom. He didn’t. He’d already gone.

It was just bedtime. No matter what time it rolled around it was always too early for him. He was wired to the gills. Half-whiny, half-tyrant.

Eight-year-old boys
, she thought.
Give me strength
.

“I can’t help it! I gotta find
Flattop!
I’m not getting into bed until I find him. You can’t make me. It’s not my fault . . .”

Mouth going a mile a minute. She wondered if he even knew what he was saying when he got like this.

The child from hell.

She normally let him play himself to sleep. Once he got under the covers it didn’t take long for him to drift away. The problem was getting him horizontal
.

“You can live without Flattop for tonight, Luke. Get into bed.”

“No, see, I gotta . . .”

“I’m not going to say it again.”

“But I
need
Flattop!”

“One.”

“Mom!”

Close to tears now.

“Two.”

Crying.
My god!
she thought. The drama!

“You
hate
me!”

“I do not hate you, Luke. But if I reach the number three and you’re not in bed you will not see daylight for a week. Do you understand me? Now what number did I just say?”

“Two.”

Just standing there. Pushing it right to the limit.

“All right. Th . . .”

Then flinging himself into bed. She hoped they weren’t listening to this downstairs. She hoped they had good bedsprings.

“Three. Thank you very much, Luke. Thank you for making that so very easy.”

That sardonic little smile
.

He enjoys this
, she thought.
He’s having some kind of weird power-game good time
.

While she felt frazzled.

“I love you, Mommy. I hate you, Mommy.” He laughed. “Just kidding.”

Claire sighed. She sat down on the bed beside him.

“Listen to me, Luke. I want us to have a nice day tomorrow. I want you to be a good boy just like you were almost all day today, and not give me, or David, or Amy, a hard time. I want you to be cooperative. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

“And no more of this like tonight. If we go through this again tomorrow night you’re grounded. No television. No playing outside. Clear?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay. Your guys are right here on the floor. Give me a kiss, honey.”

He smiled and kissed her. A nice little boy again. The weirdness and wiredness gone.

Jekyll and Hyde, Jr
.

She gave him a hug.

“I love you, honey.”

“Love you too, Mommy.”

She got up and turned out the light. The light in the hall, though it was dim, would be all he’d need to play by.

“I’ll be right next door, okay? And you know where the bathroom is, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

She closed the door a little. Not too much.

“ ‘Night. I love you.”

“ ‘Night.”

She heard him scoop his guys off the floor and begin his night’s scenario, speaking softly in strange voices behind her.

She walked next door to her room and sat on the bed. The urge to sleep was strong. But David and Amy were downstairs, holding a movie for her on the VCR. They’d watched it halfway through already but Claire barely knew what it was about. It wasn’t the movie’s fault.

It was waiting for Steven.

Thinking what to say.

Wondering whether she should wake Luke up or not.

That was why she’d wanted him to go to bed so badly in the first place. This way at least she had control—she had a choice.

She looked at her watch. It was twenty after nine.

It probably wouldn’t be long now.

She felt completely unprepared for him.

She already had a headache.

She’d brought some aspirin. They were around here somewhere. It made her aware that she was in a strange room too, just like Luke.

She pictured Luke on the bed. That look. Testing her.

I love you, Mommy. I hate you, Mommy
.

Just kidding
.

The problem was that he wasn’t kidding. Or that he was kidding less than he knew.

Of course he loved her. And of course he hated her, too. From his point of view she had to be at least one-half the reason they weren’t a family anymore. And because she was still there and Steven wasn’t, hers was the half that grated. He could forget about Steven for long stretches of time. He couldn’t forget about her so easily. Day by day she was there to remind him that somehow their family had failed, and by extension that
he
had failed—to be important enough to link them all together—that he had no power, ultimately, to affect his future. She was the image of his disenfranchisement.

Yet he loved her. Sometimes to both their distractions. She’d read that even kids from solid, happy families focus very strongly on their mothers at his age, demanding much. Constant attention, constant
conversation
, continual approval.

Haunting her
.

And at the same time resisting her.

She got up and found the aspirin in the side pocket of her suitcase. She swallowed three of them, wishing they were Advil instead. The aspirin tasted grainy and bitter
.

With Luke the anger could surface like a sudden storm.

A few weeks after his birthday he’d wanted her to buy him some new Turtle guy at K-Mart. She was pinching pennies that week just to come up with the
grocery money. And he’d just had a birthday after all, with plenty of presents. She said no. So Luke started shrieking about her not loving him and not caring if he was happy or unhappy, overreacting like crazy, and even after she got him quiet and got herself quiet, it hurt that the thought had even crossed his mind.