Twisted: The Collected Stories - 1

  And so she'd come up with a plan of her own.

  Sandra May now opened the bottom drawer of the desk and took out a bottle of small-batch Kentucky bourbon and poured a good three fingers' worth into the iced tea. She sat back in her husband's former chair, now hers exclusively, and gazed out the window at a stand of tall, dark pine trees bending in the wind as a spring storm moved in.

  Thinking to Ralston and Loretta: Never did tell you the rest of Mama's expression, did I?

  "Honey," the old woman had told her daughter, "a Southern woman has to be a notch stronger than her man. And she's got to be a notch more resourceful too. And, just between you and me, a notch more conniving. Whatever you do, don't forget that part."

  Sandra May DuMont took a long drink of iced tea and picked up the phone to call a travel agent.

  The Kneeling Soldier

  He's out there? Again?"

  A dish fell to the tile kitchen floor and shattered.

  "Gwen, go down to the rec room. Now."

  "But, Daddy," she whispered, "how can he be? They said six months. They promised six months. At least!"

  He peered through the curtains, squinting, and his heart sank. "It's him." He sighed. "It's him. Gwen, do what I told you. The rec room. Now." Then he shouted into the dining room, "Doris!"

  His wife hurried into the kitchen. "What is it?"

  "He's back. Call the police."

  "He's back?" the woman muttered in a grim voice.

  "Just do it. And Gwen, I don't want him to see you. Go downstairs. I'm not going to tell you again."

  Doris lifted the phone and called the sheriff's office. She only had to hit one button; they'd put the number on the speed dialer ages ago.

  Ron stepped to the back porch and looked outside.

  The hours after dinner, on a cool springtime evening like this, were the most peaceful moments of the year in Locust Grove. The suburb was a comforting thirty-two miles from New York City, on the North Shore of Long Island. Some truly wealthy folk lived here -- new money as well as some Rockefeller and Morgan hand-me-downs. Then there were the aspiring rich and a few popular artists, some ad agency CEOs. Mostly, though, the village was made up of people like the Ashberrys. Living comfortably in their six-hundred-thousand-dollar houses, commuting on the LIRR or driving to their management jobs at publishing or computer companies on Long Island.

  This April evening found the dogwoods in bloom and the fragrance of mulch and the first-cut grass of the year filling the misty air. And it found the brooding form of young Harle Ebbers crouching in the bushes across the street from Ron Ashberry's house, staring into the bedroom window of sixteen-year-old Gwen.

  Oh, dear Lord, Ron thought hopelessly. Not again. It's not starting again...

  Doris handed the cordless phone to her husband and he asked for Sheriff Hanlon. As he waited to be connected, he inhaled the stale, metallic scent of the porch screen he rested his head against. He looked across his yard, forty yards, to the bush that had become a fixture in his daydreams and the focus of his nightmares.

  It was a juniper, about six feet long and three high, gracing a small municipal park. It was beside this languorous bush that twenty-year-old Harle Ebbers had spent much of the last eight months, in his peculiar crouch, stalking Gwen.

  "How d'he get out?" Doris wondered.

  "I don't see what good it'll do," Gwen said from the kitchen, panic in her voice, "to call the police. He'll be gone before they get here. He always is."

  "Go downstairs!" Ron called. "Don't let him see you."

  The thin blonde girl, her face as beautiful as Lladro porcelain, backed away. "I'm scared."

  Doris, a tall, muscular woman exuding the confidence of the competitive athlete she'd been in her twenties, put her arm around her daughter. "Don't worry, honey. Your father and I are here. He's not going to hurt you. You hear me?"

  The girl nodded uncertainly and vanished down the stairs.

  Ron Ashberry kept his gaze coldly fixed on the figure next to the bush.

  It was a cruel irony that this tragedy had happened to Gwen.

  Conservative by nature, Ron had always been horrified by the neglect he saw on the part of families in the city to which he commuted every day. Absent fathers, crack-addict mothers, guns and gangs, little girls turning to prostitution. He vowed that nothing bad would ever happen to his daughter. His plan was simple: he'd protect Gwen, raise her the right way, teach her good moral values, family values -- which, thank God, people had started talking about again. He'd keep her close to home, insist that she get good grades, learn sports, music and social skills.

  Then, when she turned eighteen, he'd give her freedom. She'd be old enough then to make the correct decisions -- about boys, about careers, about money. She'd go to an Ivy League college and then return to the North Shore for marriage or a career. This was serious work, hard work, this child rearing. But Ron was seeing the results of his efforts. Gwen had scored in the ninety-ninth percentile on the PSATs. She never talked back to adults; her coaches reported she was one of the best athletes they'd ever worked with; she never snuck cigarettes or liquor, never whined when Ron told her no driver's license until she was eighteen. She understood how much he loved her and why he wouldn't let her go into Manhattan with her girlfriends or spend the weekend on Fire Island unchaperoned.

  And so he felt it was utterly unfair that Harle Ebbers picked his daughter to stalk.

  It had begun last fall. One evening Gwen had been particularly quiet throughout the evening meal. When Ron had asked her to go pick a book out of his library so he could read it aloud, Gwen just stood at the kitchen window, staring outside.

  "Gwen, are you listening to me? I asked you to get me a book."

  She'd turned and to his shock he saw she was crying.

  "Honey, I'm sorry," Ron'd said automatically and stepped forward to put his arm around her. He knew the problem. Several days ago she'd asked if she could take a trip to Washington, D.C., with two teachers and six of the girls and boys from her social studies class. Ron had considered letting her go. But then he'd checked out the group and found that two of the girls had discipline problems -- they'd been found drinking in a park near the school last summer. He'd told Gwen she couldn't go and she'd seemed disappointed. He'd assumed this was what troubled her today. "I wish I could let you go, Gwen --" he'd said.

  "Oh, no. Daddy, it's not that stupid trip. I don't care about that. It's something else..."

  She'd fallen into his arms, sobbing. He was filled with overwhelming parental love. And an unbearable agony for her pain. "What is it, honey? Tell me. You can tell me anything."

  She'd glanced out the window.

  Following her gaze, he'd seen, in the park across the street, a figure crouching in the bushes.

  "Oh, Daddy, he's following me."

  Horrified, Ron had led her to the living room, calling out, "Doris, we're having a family conference! Come in here! Now!" He'd gestured his wife into the room then sat next to Gwen. "What is it, baby? Tell us."

  Ron preferred that Doris pick up Gwen at school. But occasionally, if his wife was busy, he let Gwen walk home. There were no bad neighborhoods in Locust Grove, certainly not along the trim, manicured route to the high school -- the greatest threats were usually aesthetic: a cheap bungalow or a flock of plastic flamingos, herds of plaster Bambis.

  Or so Ron had believed.

  That autumn night Gwen had sat with her hands in her lap, staring at the floor, and explained in a meek voice, "I was walking home today, okay? And there was this guy."

  Ron's heart had gone cold, hands shaking, anger growing within him.

  "Tell us," Doris had said. "What happened?"

  "Nothing happened. Not like that. He just like started to talk to me. He's going, 'You're so pretty. I'll bet you're smart. Where do you live?'"

  "Did he know you?"

  "I don't think so. He acted all funny. Like he was sort of retarded, you know. Kind of saying things that didn't make sense. I
told him you didn't want me to talk to strangers and I ran home."

  "Oh, you poor thing." Her mother embraced her.

  "I didn't think he followed me. But..." She bit her lip. "But that's him."

  Ron had jogged toward the bush where he'd seen the young man. He was in a curious pose. It reminded Ron of one of those green plastic soldiers he'd buy when he was a kid. The kneeling soldier, aiming his rifle.

  The boy saw Ron coming and fled.

  The sheriff's office knew all about the boy. Harle's parents had moved to Locust Grove a few months before, virtually driven out of Ridgef ord, Connecticut, because their son had targeted a young blonde, about Gwens age, and had begun following her. The boy was of average intelligence but had suffered psychotic episodes when younger. The police hadn't been able to stop him because he'd only hurt one person in all his months of stalking -- the girl's brother had attacked him. Harle had nearly beaten the boy to death but all charges were dropped on the grounds of self-defense.

  The Ebbers family had at last fled the state, hoping to start over fresh.

  But the only change was that Harle had found himself a new victim: Gwen.

  The boy had fallen into his obsessive vigil: staring into Gwen's classrooms at school and kneeling beside the juniper bush, keeping his eyes glued to the girl's bedroom.

  Ron had tried to get a restraining order but, without any illegal conduct on Harle's part, the magistrate couldn't issue one.

  Finally, after Harle had stationed himself beside the juniper bush for six nights straight, Ron stormed into the state mental health department and demanded that something be done. The department had implored the boy's parents to send him to a private-care hospital for six months. The county would pay ninety percent of the fee. The Ebbers agreed and, under an involuntary commitment order, the boy was taken off to Garden City.

  But now he was back, kneeling like a soldier beside the infamous juniper bush, only one week after the ambulance had carted him off.

  Finally Sheriff Hanlon came on the line.

  "Ron, I was going to call you."

  "You knew about him?" Ron shouted. "Why the hell didn't you tell us? He's out there right now."

  "I just found out about it myself. The boy talked to a shrink at the hospital. Apparently he gave the right answers and they decided to release him. Keeping him any longer on a dicey order like that, there was a risk of liability for the county."

  "What about liability for my daughter?" Ron spat out.

  "There'll be a hearing in a few weeks but they can't keep him in the hospital till then. Probably not after the hearing either, the way it's shaking out."

  Tonight as mist settled on the town of Locust Grove, this beautiful spring night, crickets chirped like greaseless gears, and Harle Ebbers was frozen in his familiar pose, dark eyes searching for a delicate young girl whose father happened to be deciding at that moment that this couldn't go on any longer.

  "Look, Ron," the sheriff said sympathetically, "I know it's tough. But --"

  Ron slammed the phone into the cradle, nearly tearing it from the wall.

  "Honey," Doris began. He ignored her and as he started for the door she took his arm. She was a strong woman. But Ron was stronger and he pulled away brusquely. Pushed open the screen door and started across the dewy lawn to the park.

  To his surprise, and pleasure, Harle didn't flee. He stood up out of his crouching position and crossed his arms, waiting for Ron to approach.

  Ron was athletic. He played tennis and golf and he swam like a dolphin. One hundred laps a day when the country club pool was open. He was slightly shorter than Harle but, as he gazed at the boy's prominent eyebrows and disturbingly deep-set eyes, he knew in his heart that he could kill the young man. With his bare hands if he had to. All he needed was the slightest provocation.

  "Daddy, no!" Gwen screamed from the porch, her voice like a high violin note, resonating through the mist. "Don't get hurt. It's not worth it!"

  Ron turned back, hissed to his girl, "Get back inside!"

  Harle was waving toward the house, "Gwennie, Gweenie, Gwennie..."a frightening grin on his face.

  Neighbors' lights came on, faces appeared in windows and doorways.

  Perfect, Ron thought. He makes the least gesture toward me and I'll kill him. A dozen witnesses'll back me up. He stopped two feet from Harle, on whose face the grin had fallen away.

  "I got sprung. They couldn't make it stick, could they? Make it stick, make it stick, couldn't make it stick. So I. Got. Sprung."

  "You listen to me," Ron muttered, fists balling at his side. "You're real close. You know what I mean? I don't care if they arrest me, I don't care if they execute me. You don't leave her alone, I'm going to kill you. Understand?"

  "I love my Gwennie, I love her, love her, loveher, loveher, lover, loverloverlover. She loves me, I love her she loves me I love she loves I love she loves she loves sheloves shelovesshelovesshelovessssss..."

  "Come on. Take a swing at me. Come on. Coward! Haven't got the guts to mix it up like a grown-up, right? You make me sick."

  Harle uncrossed his arms.

  Okay, here it comes...

  Ron's heart flexed and an ocean crashed in his ears. He could feel the chill adrenaline race through his body like an electric current.

  The boy turned and ran.

  Son of a bitch...

  "Come back here!"

  He was racing down the street on his lanky legs, disappearing into the misty dusk, Ron close behind him.

  For a few blocks.

  Athletic, yes, but a forty-three-year-old's body doesn't have the stamina of someone's half that age and after a quarter mile the boy pulled ahead and disappeared.

  Winded, his side cramping fiercely from the run, Ron trotted back to the house, climbed into his Lexus. Gasping, he shouted, "Doris! You and Gwen stay here, lock the doors. I'm going to find him."

  She protested but he ignored her and sped out of the drive.

  A half hour later, having cruised through the entire neighborhood and finding no sign of the boy, he returned home.

  To find his daughter in tears.

  Doris and Gwen sat in the living room, the shades down and curtains drawn. Doris held a long kitchen knife in her strong fingers.

  "What?" Ron demanded. "What's going on?"

  Doris said, "Tell your father."

  "Oh, Daddy, I'm sorry. I thought it was best."

  "What?" Ron strode forward, dropping onto the couch, gripping his daughter by her shoulders. "Tell me!" he cried.

  "He came back," Gwen said. "He was by the bush. And I went out to talk to him."

  "You did what? Are you crazy?" Ron shouted, shaking with rage and fear at what might have happened.

  Doris said, "I couldn't stop her. I tried, but --"

  "I was afraid for you. I was afraid he'd hurt you. I thought maybe I could be nice to him and ask him please just to go away."

  Despite his horror, a burst of pride at her courage popped inside of Ron Ashberry.

  "What happened?" he asked.

  "Oh, Daddy, it was terrible."

  The feeling of pride faded and he sat back, staring at his daughter's white face. Ron whispered, "Did he touch you?"

  "No... not yet."

  "What do you mean, 'yet?" Ron barked.

  "He said..." Her tearful face looked from her father's furious eyes to her mother's determined ones. "He said that when it's the next full moon, that's when women get a certain way because of their, you know, monthly thing. The next full moon, he's going to find me wherever I am..." Her face grew red in shame. She swallowed. "I can't say it, Daddy. I can't tell you what he said he'd do."

  "My God."

  "I got so scared, I ran back to the house."

  Doris, her strong-jawed face turned toward the window, added, "And he just stood there, staring at us, kind of singing in this sick voice. We locked the doors right away." She nodded at the knife, setting it on the table. "I got that from the kitchen just in case."
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  She loves me, I love her she loves me I love she loves I love she loves she loves...

  His wife continued. "Then you came back and when he saw the car lights he ran off. It looked like he was headed toward his folks' house."

  Ron grabbed the phone, hit the speed dial.

  "This is Ron Ashberry," he said to the police dispatcher.

  "Yessir, is it the boy again?" she asked.

  "Hanlon. Now."

  A pause. "Hold, please."

  The sheriff came on the line. "Ron, what the hell's going on tonight? I've had four calls from your neighbors about this thing, shouting, people running around."

  Ron explained about the threats.

  "It's still just words, Ron."

  "Goddamn it, I don't care about the law! He said the night of the full moon he's going to rape my little girl. What the hell do you people want?"

  "When's the full moon?"

  "I don't know, how would I know?"

  "Hold on a second. I've got an almanac... Here we go. It's next week. We'll have somebody at your house all day. If he makes a move, we'll get him."

  "For what? Trespass? And he'll be out in, what, a week?"

  "I'm sorry, Ron. It's the law."

  "You know what you and your law can do? You can go straight to hell."

  "Ron, I've told you before, if you take things into your own hands, you're going to be in serious trouble. Now good night to you."

  Ron jammed the phone into the cradle hard again and this time it flew from the wall fixture.

  He shouted to Doris, "Stay here. Keep the doors locked."

  "Ron, what are you going to do?"

  "Daddy, no..."

  The door slammed so hard a pane cracked and the fissure lines made a perfect spiderweb.

  *

  Ron parked on the lawn, narrowly missing a rusting Camaro and a station wagon, lime green except for the front fender, which was the matte color of dried-blood-brown primer.

  Pounding on the scabby door, he shouted, "I want to see him. Open up!"

  Finally the door swung open and Ron stepped inside. The bungalow was small and it was a mess. Food, dirty plastic plates, beer cans, piles of clothes, magazines, newspapers. A strong animal pee smell too.