BEAST OF THE WOODS

Chapter 6

I hit her in the knees again, with all my strength. She cried out again, this time more piercing. She fell almost like a statue, straight down, as if she had no joints, the skirt settling around her like a parachute. She was slapping out at me as she fell like I was some sort of insect rather than a big, clumsy twelve-year-old with a wooden post in her hands. Even then she refused to let go of Groger, her hand clenched white against the rope. Maybe it was just a reflex, but I saw it as more refusal, more proof that Groger was in danger.

I hit her in the head. Once, twice. She gasped like all her breath was rushing out of her, tried to get up, and my anger turned to fear. If she got up, she would do to me what she was doing to Groger. And I could not let that happen. I hit her one last time.

Auntie beamer groaned and slumped and lay still while I freed Groger from the rope. His fur had been ripped off in places, revealing pink, b****y skin. There was sand and grass and dirt all over him.

"Are you okay?" I asked him, frantic as I cradled him in my arms.

But he said nothing.

You can see the photograph now, as a postcard, in antique stores and gift shops in Florida. Sometimes it comes with a funny title, like "She dealt swiftly with evildoers." It has been doctored to include shadows for both Groger and Auntie beamer. Her clothes have been colored, as has his straitjacket uniform. Because of these changes, which make the photo look even less real, there is no chance that anyone would ever believe Auntie beamer really tied a talking mole to a post and, dressed in her Sunday best, had someone take a photograph of her with the mole. No one will ever know that I was there, too, or what happened after.

I came to my senses a few minutes after I'd hit Auntie beamer for the last time. She was making little broken sounds in the dirt and had a big, bleeding dent in her forehead. Her eyes were open but glassy, as if she had already turned inward. Every couple of minutes her body would convulse. I knew that I had hurt her badly.

I'd dropped the post and was babbling to Groger as I held him against my chest. We'd escape together. We'd hide out in the orange groves, or we'd make our way to Key West and hide out there, like I'd seen in a movie once. Or maybe we'd even travel to Tampa and find the circus woman and she'd help us out. "She liked you, Groger," I remember telling him. "She'd definitely help us." As if I were an adult, or had any money, or any sense.

After a while I realized Groger wasn't answering, which to me, in that state, meant he didn't agree. Slowly, a cold, clear mood came over me, and I knew what we had to do, what we could do to survive this together.

I scuffed up the trail from the photo shoot to where Auntie beamer's body lay to make it harder to tell what had happened. I used leaves and a branch to obscure any of my footprints. I took the post with me, and later burned it. Then I went back to the bungalow, treated Groger's wounds, and put him in his cage, telling him, "No matter what questions they ask, don't say anything." I thought I saw him nod.

Then I had the operator call the foreman at the bar and told him I'd found Auntie beamer, "be

aten up by someone." The foreman called an ambulance and the police, and came barreling back in his ancient truck. I was bawling by Auntie beamer's side just like a kid of twelve would bawl if she found her aunt brutally attacked and left for dead. I did it because I had to, yes, but also because by then the madness had left me and I was truly sorry.

As the ambulance took Auntie beamer away to three months in a coma followed by brain death, the policeman on the scene asked me, "Have you see anyone you don't know around here lately?"

Through my sobs and hiccupping and snot, I told him that an old man with a face like weather-beaten leather and missing an eye had come looking for Auntie beamer, but I'd only seen him the once. I figured telling them the man was missing an arm, too, would be laying it on too thick.

"Could you identify him if you saw him again?" the policeman asked. He was in his late forties, losing his hair, and had a kindly voice that made me feel bad.

Yes, I nodded, although I knew they'd never find him.

After they'd finished questioning me, I stayed with the foreman's family for a few weeks before being picked up and sent back north to live with the cousin who hadn't wanted me before. I guess the sympathy money A. C. Pittman threw at him made me more appealing. I even got to take Groger with me, in a little cage in the backseat next to me. No one was willing to tell the girl who had suffered such a trauma that she couldn't keep her only friend in the world.

I talked to Groger the whole way up, but in the way a child might to an imaginary friend so the cousin, who smelled of too much cologne and was throwing me strange glances from the driver's seat, wouldn't get too concerned. Groger didn't answer me. That was okay, I reasoned. He'd suffered a trauma, too. It would take time for both of us to recover.

The same newspapers that had ignored Auntie beamer when she'd tried to sell them on a talking mole, now splashed the details of her injuries all over their pages, referring in lurid tones to the mysterious man I'd described for the police. They even interviewed the photographer, whose account of that day didn't include the fact that he'd witnessed Groger talk. But the man did leave the strong impression that Auntie beamer had been both a fool and a witch. Then it all died down, and Auntie beamer passed on without them having caught her murderer, and I imagine life went on in the orange groves much as it had before for the migrant workers and the foreman and whomever Pittman got to look after his house full of expensive junk.

It's been many, many years since that day captured by the photograph, and in most ways there's been nothing special about my life. I grew up, went to college, mostly on money it turned out Auntie beamer had kept for me in a trust fund. I left my cousin's house as soon as I could, became an accountant, and did well enough to come back to the small town in Minnesota where I'd been born and have a respectable career, live a respectable life. I found religion and lost it again. I dabbled at children's stories but never found the right voice. I fell in love on a cruise and married my husband John two years later. He's an attorney, and we have two kids, Bobby and Sandy, who've left home already for families and lives of their own. I used to go to a lot of PTA meetings and high school football games. Now I've retired from accounting, serve on the city council here, and do a bit of gardening. My marriage has had the highs and lows you'd expect, but there are some things you can't tell anyone, and the possibility becomes more remote every year. In short, there's nothing unusual about me. I could be anyone, anyone you know, and think after meeting her, "She's a nice older lady, but a little boring." I am more a ghost in my life now than as a presence beyond the edge of that postcard.

But even while I listen to some citizen talk about storm drains at a city council meeting, or w**d the garden, I am still having conversations with Groger in my head. So many conversations that I don't know what to do with them sometimes, don't know how to distinguish between what's been said and what's always been left unsaid, so that there are moments when something rises inside of me, unable to get out but unable to rest. Useless questions. Useless thoughts.

That third dinner, the night before the photo shoot, Auntie beamer made a fuss, wanted it to be formal and "just right." She'd suffered what I thought of as a change of mood that I found suspicious; she seemed almost giddy, almost happy. We waited at the foot of the stairs while Auntie beamer brought down a silver serving set. She claimed Pittman had bought it in Paris and kept it hidden in a cupboard on the second floor.

Auntie beamer had put on one of her best dresses: a silvery, shimmering thing that caught the light at odd angles so that one moment it was drab, lifeless, and the next it seemed full of tiny shooting stars. She'd taken special care with her makeup so it wasn't so thick or approximate, and she'd wrapped her hair up into a bun. A silver bracelet matched a silver necklace, both of which, up close, consisted of tiny dragon heads. I could smell her sickly sweet perfume from the bottom of the stairs as she came lurching down the steps in her black high heels. Groger could smell it too; his nose twitched like crazy. But, I have to say, I liked her then. There was a sense, for a moment, of an Auntie beamer I barely knew.

With exaggerated care she swept by us with her serving set, giving us a smile of benevolent regard, and saying, "Groger, I just know you will love this dinner. You will love it."

Groger said nothing.

She disappeared into the kitchen that abutted the dining room. Interesting smells and sounds had been coming from the kitchen for hours.

The table had already been set. The cutlery gleamed in the fractured light from overhead lamps. I arranged Groger atop his pillows again, to the left of Auntie beamer's place at the head of the table. I sat next to Groger, in case he needed help.

"It smells good," I said to Groger.

Groger made a sound between a grunt and a sneeze.

Auntie beamer brought out the first dishes, which were to be served, buffetstyle, in silver bowls. Squash and broccoli and green bean casserole, and potatoes au gratin with cheese crisped in frozen waves on top.

We ate silently because it was delicious and we were starving, Auntie beamer smiling at us from time to time from her newfound "shining city on the hill" as the church preacher might've put it.

Groger didn't eat much, but this didn't seem to bother Auntie beamer. Mostly, Groger had a sense of watchful waiting about him. But I ignored that, just as I put aside any misgivings about Auntie beamer's cheer.

Finally, Auntie beamer disappeared once more into the kitchen and came out wearing oven mittens and carrying a huge silver bowl, twice as large as the others, with an ornately etched lid.

She placed it on the table in front of us, and produced a ladle. A stillness had come over her, a kind of grand anticipation.

"This is something extra special for you, Groger," she said. "I hope you like it."

With a flourish, Auntie beamer uncovered the bowl. Steam rose, and with it a smell familiar to me. mole stew.