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The white thing was a sheet of paper - a perfectly ordinary 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of typing paper. Although the
garbage cabinet was a good fifteen feet away from where Mort was standing, the few words on it were
printed in large strokes and he could read them easily. He thought Shooter must have used either a pencil
with an extremely soft lead or a piece of artist's charcoal. REMEMBER, YOU HAVE 3 DAYS, the
message read. I AM NOT JOKING.
The black thing was Bump. Shooter had apparently broken the cat's neck before nailing him to the roof of
the garbage cabinet with a screwdriver from Mort's own toolshed.
14
He wasn't aware of breaking the paralysis which held him. At one moment he was standing frozen in the
hall by the telephone table, looking out at good old Bump, who seemed to have grown a screwdriver handle
in the middle of his chest, where there was a ruff of white fur - what Amy had liked to call Bump's bib. At
the next he was standing in the middle of the porch with the chilly night air biting through his thin shirt,
trying to look six different ways at once.
He forced himself to stop. Shooter was gone, of course. That's why he had left the note. Nor did Shooter
seem like the kind of nut who would enjoy watching Mort's obvious fear and horror. He was a nut, all right,
but one which had fallen from a different tree. He had simply used Bump, used him on Mort the way a
farmer might use a crowbar on a stubborn rock in his north forty. There was nothing personal in it; it was
just a job that had to be done.
Then he thought of how Shooter's eyes had looked that afternoon and shivered violently. No, it was
personal, all right. It was all kinds of personal.
'He believes I did it,' Mort whispered to the cold western Maine night, and the words came out in ragged
chunks, bitten off by his chattering teeth. 'The crazy son of a bitch really believes I did it.'
He approached the garbage cabinet and his stomach rolled over like a dog doing a trick. Cold sweat broke
out on his forehead, and he wasn't sure he could take care of what needed taking care of. Bump's head was
cocked far to the left, giving him a grotesque questioning look. His teeth, small, neat, and needle-sharp,
were bared. There was a little blood around the blade of the screwdriver at the point where it was driven
into his
(bib)
ruff, but not very much. Bump was a friendly cat; if Shooter had approached him, Bump would not have
shied away. And that was what Shooter must have done, Mort thought, and wiped the sick sweat off his
forehead. He had picked the cat up, snapped its neck between his fingers like a Popsicle stick, and then
nailed it to the slanting roof of the garbage cabinet, all while Mort Rainey slept, if not the sleep of the just,
that of the unheeding.
Mort crumpled up the sheet of paper, stuffed it in his back pocket, then put his hand on Bump's chest. The
body, not stiff and not even entirely cold, shifted under his hand. His stomach rolled again, but he forced
his other hand to close around the screwdriver's yellow plastic handle and pull it free.
He tossed the screwdriver onto the porch and held poor old Bump in his right hand like a bundle of rags.
Now his stomach was in free fall, simply rolling and rolling and rolling. He lifted one of the two lids on top
of the garbage cabinet, and secured it with the hook-and-eyelet that kept the heavy lid from crashing down
on the arms or head of whoever was depositing trash inside. Three cans were lined up within. Mort lifted
the lid from the center one and deposited Bump's body gently inside. It lay draped over the top of an olive-
green Hefty bag like a fur stole.
He was suddenly furious with Shooter. If the man had appeared in the driveway at that second, Mort would
have charged him without a second thought - driven him to the ground and choked him if he could.
Easy - it really is catching.
Maybe it was. And maybe he didn't care. It wasn't just that Shooter had killed his only companion in this
lonely October house by the lake; it was that he had done it while Mort was asleep, and in such a way that
good old Bump had become an object of revulsion, something it was hard not to puke over.
Most of all it was the fact that he had been forced to put his good cat in a garbage can like a piece of
worthless trash.
I'll bury him tomorrow. Right over in that soft patch to the left of the house. In sight of the lake.
Yes, but tonight Bump would lie in undignified state on top of a Hefty bag in the garbage cabinet because
some man - some crazy son of a bitch - could be out there, and the man had a grudge over a story Mort
Rainey hadn't even thought of for the last five years or so. The man was crazy, and consequently Mort was
afraid to bury Bump tonight, because, note or no note, Shooter might be out there.
I want to kill him. And if the crazy bastard pushes me much more, I might just try to do it.
He went inside, slammed the door, and locked it. Then he walked deliberately through the house, locking
all the doors and windows. When that was done, he went back to the window by the porch door and stared
pensively out into the darkness. He could see the screwdriver lying on the boards, and the dark round hole
the blade had made when Shooter plunged it into the right-hand lid of the garbage cabinet.
All at once he remembered he had been about to try Amy again.
He plugged the jack into the wall. He dialled rapidly, fingers tapping the old familiar keys which added up [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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