Praying for Sleep

didn’t clean up very well this week’ or ‘How dare you wear that low-cut blouse’? Then lifts up your skirt and leaves those darling little welts on you? The willow tree’s still in the backyard, I see. If I’d moved here, that’s the first thing that would’ve gone. I’d’ve chopped that son of a bitch to the ground in ten seconds flat.
    “Tell me, Lis, how did you explain the marks in gym class? You probably changed into your uniform with your back to the locker. I told everybody I had an older lover who tied me up and jerked off while he whipped me. Oh, don’t look so horrified. You talk about love. . . . Love? For Christ’s sake, if we grew up in such normal circumstances, how come you hide away in this Neverland and why’m I the easiest fuck on East Seventy-second Street?”
    Lis buried her head in her arms, the tears streamed.
    Her sister said, “Lis, I’m sorry.” She laughed. “Look what being back here does. It makes me crazy. I’ve had more of a dose of family than I can deal with. I knew I shouldn’t have come on the picnic. I shouldn’t’ve come tonight.”
    Lis touched her sister’s knee, observing that Portia was once more wearing her gaudy silver rings, and the flecked crystal, like a huge grain of salt, again hung from her neck. A moment passed and Portia lowered her hand onto her sister’s toughened, ruddy fingers but offered no pressure and soon withdrew it.
    Then Lis too took back her hand and looked out the window, staring at the rain snaking down the glass. Finally she stood up. “There’s something I have to do. I’ll be back in a minute.”
    “Do?”
    “I’ll be right back.”
    “You’re going outside?” Portia sounded frightened, mystified.
    “The padlock on the basement door. I have to see about it.”
    “No, Lis. Don’t. I’m sure Owen checked it.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    Portia shook her head and watched Lis take the gun from her pocket and awkwardly pull the slide to put a bullet in the chamber. “Lis . . .”
    “What?”
    “Nothing. I . . . Nothing.”
    Carefully pointing the muzzle toward the floor, Lis dons the bomber jacket. She pauses at the back door, looking back. The old house is dark, this house three stories high and filled with flowers and books and the spirits of many dead. She thinks how odd it is that we’re awed by our mortality only during the small moments—when we think of painted fingernails, or a passage of music, or the proximity of sleeping bodies—never at mean, ruthless times like these. She flicks off the safety catch of the gun and feels no fear whatsoever as she steps into the rain-drenched yard.
     
    Owen Atcheson, every inch of his skin wet, in agony, ducked against the muddy embankment of the drainage ditch and cringed like a child as a shaft of lightning engulfed the sky above him. The thunder shook his teeth and sent spasms of pain through his left arm.
    After all this, he thought, please don’t let me get electrocuted.
    He looked along Cedar Swamp Road, down which the Jeep had vanished five minutes before, sending rooster tails of dirty rain into the air behind it. He’d recognized it as Will McCaffrey’s. He supposed the old coot had worked overtime at the mill and was finally heading home.
    Owen sank back into the dirty, foaming water. This unpleasantness didn’t bother him. On hunting trips, he’d endured leeches, mosquitoes and temperatures of 110 degrees and 30 below. Tonight, he carried only his pistol and twenty rounds of ammunition; on other occasions he’d borne not only his weapons but an eighty-pound pack and, more than once, the body of a fallen comrade as well.
    These hardships he could cope with. Far more troubling was the question—where the hell was his prey?
    Owen surveyed the terrain for the dozenth time. Yes, he supposed, it’d be possible for Hrubek to avoid the road completely and reach the house through the forest. But that would require a compass and hours of time, and would force him to swim the lake or skirt the shore, which was thickly overgrown and virtually impassable. Besides, Hrubek had shown a strong preference for roads—as if his impeded mind believed that people could be connected only via asphalt or concrete.
    Roads, Owen reflected. Cars . . .
    The Jeep . . .
    McCaffrey, he recalled, didn’t live north of town. His bungalow was on the west side. He’d have no need or occasion to take Cedar Swamp, certainly not to reach his house. The only reason someone who