Salem Falls

  Jack's arms were released. He scrambled upright to find Mountain buttoning his jeans and looking at him speculatively. "I seen that show. Ain't no one smart enough to get them questions all right." He crossed his arms. "I don't want coffee if you lose."

  "Fine. I'll buy you a chocolate bar instead."

  Mountain's hands were on his shoulders in an instant, drawing him to his feet. "You get those answers right tonight, then tomorrow I'll leave you be. But you play again next night, and the next. And the minute you fuck up, you're mine." He touched Jack's jaw, the pads of his fingers soft. "You lose that game, and you come to me like you want it."

  Jack froze. He watched Mountain leave the barn, then his legs gave out beneath him. Pants still down around his knees, he sat in the straw, trying to draw in air.

  "You okay?"

  Until he'd spoken, Jack had completely forgotten that Aldo was standing there. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and nodded. "Thank you."

  "The only thing Mountain likes more than a piece of ass is new entertainment." A bright flush worked its way up Jack's neck and face as he righted his clothes. "It's no big deal," Aldo said, shrugging. "We've all been there."

  Jack felt himself begin to shake uncontrollably, a delayed reaction from what had nearly happened. In jail, you gave up everything--your possessions, your job, your home. The thought that any man might take even more from an inmate--something as irreplaceable as dignity--made Jack so angry his blood ran faster.

  He could not let Mountain Felcher win.

  Jack won. And like Scheherezade, he gained a reprieve for several nights. His days took on a frenetic quality: he'd work eight hours, then grab as many books as he could from the prison library and carry them to his bunk. He read before dinner, during dinner, after dinner ... until the familiar strains of the television game show filled the common room. He went to sleep thinking of the ingredients in a Tom Collins; he woke imagining the history of the Sino-Russian War. But soon, he wasn't doing it alone. Prisoners who at first were angry that they hadn't gotten the coffee they'd expected had come to root for Jack, having realized that self-esteem packed just as much of a high as caffeine. Eager to help, they took books out from the library, too, and fashioned questions for him. They'd quiz Jack as he brushed his teeth, bused his cafeteria tray, made his bunk.

  After a week, all of Grafton County Correctional Facility knew about Jack's bet with Mountain Felcher. The guards wagered with each other, a pool for the day that Jack would eventually stumble. The maximum-and medium-security pods followed his wins through the jail grapevine. And at 7 P.M., every TV in the prison would be tuned to Jeopardy!

  One night, as had become the custom, Jack sat to Mountain Felcher's left, his eyes riveted on the television screen overhead. The leading contestant was a woman named Isabelle with wild curly hair. "Quotable Quotes for six hundred," she said.

  The historian Cornelius Tacitus said these beings are "on the side of the stronger." The other inmates stared at Jack, waiting. Even the correctional officer on duty had given up on his crossword puzzle, and he stood nearby with his arms crossed. Jack felt the response bubbling up from his throat, easily, carelessly. "The angels."

  In the next breath, he realized he'd given the wrong answer. "I meant--"

  "The gods," said the contestant.

  A bell rang and $600 showed up in Isabelle's account. The common room grew so quiet that Jack could hear his pulse. He'd grown so sure of his skill that he hadn't even stopped to think before he spoke. "The gods," Jack repeated, licking his dry lips. "I meant the gods."

  Mountain turned to him, eyes flat and black as obsidian. "You lose," he said.

  Out of sympathy, the others left Jack alone. When he threw up in the bathroom, when he stalked in silence to the cafeteria, they pretended not to see. They thought he was terrified past the point of speech, and it was something they could understand--by now, everyone knew that the forfeit of the bet was Jack's free will. It was one thing to be raped; it was another thing entirely to offer yourself as a sacrifice.

  But Jack wasn't frightened. He was so angry that he could not utter a word, in case his fury spilled out. And he wanted to keep it inside him, glowing like a coal, hoping to burn Mountain Felcher and scar him as deeply as Jack himself was sure to be scarred.

  The night that Jack lost the bet, Aldo's voice drifted to him as he lay on his bunk. "You just do it, and then you put it behind you and never let yourself think about it," Aldo said quietly. "Kind of like jail."

  Jack stood in the shadows of the barn, watching Mountain's arms bunch and tighten as he lifted another bale of hay onto the stack he was making in an alcove. "Cat got your tongue?" Mountain asked, his back still to Jack. "Oh, no. That's right. I got your tongue. And the whole rest of you, too."

  Mountain stripped off his work gloves. Sweat gleamed on his forehead and traced a line down the middle of his T-shirt. "I had my doubts about you paying your debt." He sat on a bale of hay. "Go on, drop those pants."

  "No."

  Mountain's eyes narrowed. "You're supposed to show up wanting it."

  "I showed up," Jack said, keeping his voice even. "That's all you get."

  Mountain jumped him and set him in a headlock. "For someone who thinks he's so smart, you don't know when to shut your mouth."

  It took all the courage in the world, but Jack did the one thing he knew Mountain wouldn't expect: He went still in the man's hold, unresisting, accepting. "I am smart, you asshole," Jack said softly. "I'm smart enough to know that you're not going to break me, not even if you screw me three times a day for the next seven months. Because I'm not going to be thinking what a tough guy you are. I'm going to be thinking you're pathetic."

  Mountain's grip eased, a loose noose around Jack's neck. "You don't know nothing about me!" In punishment and proof, he ground his hips against Jack from behind. Denim scraped against denim, but there was no ridge of arousal. "You don't know nothing!"

  Jack blocked out the feel of Mountain's body behind his, of what might happen if he pushed too hard and sent the man over the edge. "Looks like you can't fuck me," he said, then swallowed hard. "Why don't you just fuck yourself instead?"

  With a roar that set three sparrows in the rafters to flight, Mountain wrenched away. He had never tried to force someone who had given in yet refused to give up. And that one small distinction made Jack every bit as mighty as the bigger man.

  "St. Bride."

  Jack turned, his arms folded across his chest--partly to make him look relaxed and partly because he needed to keep himself from falling apart.

  "I don't need you when there's a hundred others I can have," Mountain blustered. "I'm letting you go."

  But Jack didn't move. "I'm leaving," he said slowly. "There's a difference."

  The black man's head inclined just the slightest bit, and Jack nodded in response. They walked out of the barn into the blinding sunlight, the foot of space between them as inviolable as a stone wall.

  Mountain Felcher's sentence for burglary ended three months later. That night, in the common room, there was a buzz of interest. Now that Mountain was gone, the program lineup was up for grabs. "There's hockey on, you moron," an inmate cried out.

  "Yeah, and your mother's the goalie."

  The footsteps of the guard on duty echoed as he hurried down the hall toward the raised voices. Jack closed the book he was reading and walked to the table where the two men threw insults like javelins. He reached down and plucked the remote from one's hand, settled himself in the seat just beneath the TV, and turned on Jeopardy!

  This Hindi word for prince is derived from Rex, latin for King.

  From the back of the room, an inmate called out: "What is Raja?"

  The two countries with the highest percentage of Shiite Muslims.

  "What are Iran and Saudi Arabia!" Aldo said, taking the chair beside Jack.

  The man who had wanted to watch hockey sank down behind them. "What are Iran and Iraq," he corrected. "What are you, stupid?"
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  The guard returned to his booth. And Jack, who held the remote control on his thigh like a scepter, knew every answer by heart.

  Late March 2000

  Salem Falls,

  New Hampshire

  Every day for the past three weeks, Jack had awakened in Roy Peabody's guest room and looked out the window to see Stuart Hollings--a diner regular--walking his Holstein around the town green for a morning constitutional. The old man came without fail at 5:30 A.M., a collar fitted around the placid animal, who plodded along like a faithful puppy.

  This morning, when Jack's alarm clock went off, he looked out to see a lone car down Main Street, and puddles of mud that lay like lakes. Scanning the green, he realized Stuart and his animal were nowhere to be seen.

  Shrugging, he grabbed a fresh T-shirt and boxers--the result of a Wal-Mart shopping spree he'd gone on with his first paycheck--and stepped into the hall.

  Coming out of the bathroom, Roy startled when he saw Jack. "Aw, Christ," he said, doing a double take. "I dreamed you died."

  "That must have been awful."

  Roy walked off. "Not as awful as it felt just now when I realized it wasn't true."

  Jack grinned as he went into the bathroom. When he'd moved in it was immediately clear that it had been some time since Roy had had a roommate ... unlike Jack, who had eight months of practice living among other men. Consequently, Roy did what he could to keep Jack from thinking this was truly his home. He made Jack buy his own groceries--even ketchup and salt--and mark them with his initials before putting them into the refrigerator or the cupboard. He hid the television remote control, so that Jack couldn't just sit on the couch and flip through the channels. All this might have begun to wear on Jack, if not for the fact that every morning when he came into the kitchen to find Roy eating his cereal, the old man had also carefully set a place for Jack.

  Before joining Roy for breakfast, Jack glanced out the window.

  "What are you looking for?"

  "Nothing." Jack pulled out his chair and emptied some muesli into his bowl, then set up the box like a barrier. A cereal fort, that was what he'd called it as a kid. Over the cardboard wall he saw Roy take a second helping of Count Chocula. "That stuff'll kill you."

  "Oh, good. I figured it was going to be cirrhosis."

  Jack shoveled a spoonful of cereal into his mouth. He wondered if Stuart had gone on vacation. "So," he said. "How did I die?"

  "In my dream, you mean?"

  "Yeah."

  The old man leaned closer. "Scabies."

  "Scabies?"

  "Uh-huh. They're bugs--mites--that get right under your skin. Burrow up inside your bloodstream and lay their eggs."

  "Thanks," Jack said dryly. "I know what they are. But I don't think they kill you."

  "Oh, sure, wise guy. When's the last time you saw someone who had them?"

  Jack shook his head, amused. "I have to admit ... never."

  "I did--in the navy. A sailor. Looked like someone had drawn all over him with pencil, lines running up between his fingers and toes and armpits and privates, like he was being mapped from the inside out. Itched himself raw, and the scratches got infected, and one morning we buried him at sea."

  Jack wanted to explain how following that logic, the man had died of a blood infection rather than scabies. Instead, he looked Roy right in the eye. "You know how you get scabies," he said casually. "From sharing clothing and bed sheets with an infected person. Which means if I had really died of scabies, like in your dream, you wouldn't be that far behind me."

  Roy was silent for a moment. Then he stood and cleared his place. "You know, I've been thinking. There isn't much point in both of us buying milk when we can't each get through a half-gallon in a week. Might as well do it so you buy the milk one week and the next week it's my turn."

  "Seems economically sound."

  "Exactly." Roy rinsed his bowl. "You still wash your own sheets, though."

  Jack stifled a grin. "Well, of course. You never know what you're going to catch from someone else's laundry."

  Roy eyed him, trying to decide whether Jack was being sincere. Then he shuffled toward the living room. "I knew I liked you for a reason," he said.

  Roy, who categorically refused to work in the kitchen, manned the cash register under the watchful eye of his daughter. Addie let him out of sight only briefly, and even then with warnings: "It should only take you ten minutes to run to the bank, Dad, and I'm going to be counting." Mostly he sat and did crossword puzzles, trying to pretend he wasn't looking when Darla, the relief waitress, bent down to tie her shoe and her skirt rode up.

  It was nearly 11 A.M.; a time that was slow for the waitresses but frenetic for the kitchen staff. Roy could hear the oil in the deep fryer heating up infinitesimally, degree by degree. He would sometimes remember how he was once so good he could cut inch-long segments from a carrot with a cleaver, blindfolded, and end the last slice a half inch from the hand that held it in place.

  A coin rang onto the Formica beside the cash register. "Penny for your thoughts," Addie said, stuffing the rest of her tip into her pockets.

  "They're worth a quarter."

  "Hustler." Addie rubbed the small of her back. "I know what you were thinking, anyway."

  "Oh, you do?" It amazed him, sometimes, how Addie could do the most ordinary thing--blink her eyes or fold her legs beneath a chair--and suddenly Roy would swear that his wife had come back. He looked at his daughter's tired eyes, at her chapped hands, and wondered how Margaret's losing her life had led Addie to throw away her own.

  "You're thinking of how easy it is for you to slide back into this routine."

  Roy laughed. "What routine? Sitting on my butt all day?"

  "Sitting in the diner on your butt all day."

  It was impossible to tell Addie what he really thought: that this diner meant nothing to him, not since Margaret's death. But Addie had gotten it into her head that keeping the Do-Or-Diner open would give him a purpose he wouldn't find at the bottom of a bottle of vodka. What Addie didn't understand was that what you had could never make up for what you'd lost.

  He and Margaret had closed the diner for a week each summer to take Addie on a family vacation. They had driven by car, to towns with names that drew them: Cape Porpoise, Maine; Egypt, Massachusetts; Paw Paw, Michigan; Defiance, Ohio. Roy would point out a flock of Canada geese, a looming purple mountain, a sunlit field of wheat--and then he'd glance in the back to find his daughter asleep on the backseat, the whole world passing her by. "There's an elephant in the lane next to us!" he'd call out. "The moon is falling out of the sky!" Anything to make Addie take stock of her surroundings.

  "The moon is falling out of the sky," Roy murmured now.

  "What?"

  "I said, yes, there are advantages to being here."

  A customer came in, ringing the bell over the door. "Hey," Addie called out, her smile set firmly in place like a child's Halloween mask. As she went to seat the woman, Jack poked his head through the double doors.

  "Roy," he whispered. "Did Stuart come in today?"

  "Stuart, the old guy?" Roy said, although he himself couldn't have been much younger than Stuart. "Nah."

  "I, uh, I'm worried about him."

  "How come?"

  "He hasn't missed breakfast a single day since I've been working here. And I didn't see him out with the cow this morning, either."

  Addie walked up to the two men. "What's the matter?"

  "Stuart," Roy explained. "He's gone missing."

  She frowned. "He wasn't in today--you're right. Did you try calling his house?"

  Jack shook his head. "I don't know his last name."

  "Hollings." Addie dialed a number, her expression growing tighter with each ring. "He lives by himself, in that old farmhouse behind the pharmaceutical plant."

  "Maybe he just went away for a while."

  "Not Stuart. The last trip he went on was to Concord, in 1982. I'll go check on him. Dad, don't let Chloe s
neak any snacks before lunchtime, no matter how much she says she's starving." She reached around her waist to untie her apron, her breasts thrusting forward in the process. Jack didn't want to notice, but he did, and he grew so flustered that it took him a moment to recognize her intentions. "Here," she said, tossing the apron and order pad at him. "You've just been promoted."

  Stuart's farmhouse sat at the crest of a hill, snowy pastures draped around it like the settling skirts of a debutante. Addie parked in a hurry and got out of her car. His cow was lowing angrily from the barn--something that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck, since nothing meant more to the old man than caring for that cow.

  "Stuart?" Addie let herself into the barn, empty save for the swollen cow. She raced up the path to the house, calling his name. The front door was unlocked. "Stuart, it's Addie. From the diner. Are you here?"

  She moved through the puzzle of the unfamiliar house until she reached the kitchen. "Stuart?" Addie said, and then she screamed.

  He was lying on his side in a pool of blood, his eyes open but half of his face curiously wooden. "Oh, God. Can you speak to me, Stuart?"

  Addie had to lean close and focus hard to understand the mangled word that crawled from Stuart's slack mouth. "Sauce?" she repeated, and then she realized that the spreading red had come from a broken jar and smelled of tomatoes.

  The phone was an old 1950s wall-mounted rotary. It took forever to dial 911 and get an ambulance dispatched. She returned to the pantry and got to her knees right in the puddle of spaghetti sauce. She stroked the fine silver hairs that glimmered over Stuart's scalp. To how many deaths would she have to bear witness?

  Roy untied the strings of the waitress apron and handed it back to his daughter. "How come you were waiting tables? Didn't I ask Jack to do it?"

  "He was a mess. Practically broke out in hives every time he had to go over to a customer. He's shy, you know, not nearly as charming as me, so I decided to put him out of his misery." He nodded toward the swinging doors. "You gonna tell him about Stuart?"

  Addie was already heading toward the kitchen. Delilah and Jack both looked up as she entered. "He's okay," Addie said without preamble. "Wallace is with him now."

  "Thank the good Lord." Delilah rapped the spoon twice on the edge of the pot and set it down. "Heart attack?"