Part 1 (2/2)

”You can keep your secret name. They'll always call you Alexander, and I'll call you Alex. Three names. Three lives. What do you want to talk about today?”

”Nothing,” Alex said vehemently. ”You're the one who wants me to talk. Ask questions.”

”Let's talk about art. You're pretty good, you know.”

Late that night in his study, Dr. Minick finished his notes about Alex and leaned back in his chair. He had no business taking on a new patient; he was trying to wrap things up, finish the cases he already had, too many, far too many to add anything else.

”It's a mess, Sal,” he murmured, and heard the words in the air. For almost a year he had caught himself now and then speaking out loud to his dead wife, telling her the kinds of things he always had confided. She never had blamed him for their son's death, but he knew better. Too busy with his practice, too un.o.bservant, too remote, just not there when he was needed. He knew. And now Alex.

”He'll do it, Sal,” he said. ”He doesn't want to live. And his parents don't want him to live, either. They'll put him away and take him pretty presents, but he'll be dead for them.”

For the next hour he brooded about Alex, talked to Sal, and brooded again. There had been violent episodes when Alex had trashed his room; once he had trashed Dolly's room. The violence was still there, as visible to Dr. Minick as if a green patina covered the boy. He didn't believe in auras, but Alex emanated shock waves of edginess, hostility, self-hatred. He had been blessed with a good brain, and cursed with a demonic face. He was smart enough to know what he was up against. When he had been beaten by the gang of thugs, he had not fought back but had protected his head as best he could. That was the only hopeful sign that Dr. Minick had seen.

It was all right to talk to Sal, he had decided nearly a year before. If she ever started to answer, then he would be in trouble. Before her cancer they had planned their future. He would retire when he was sixty, and they would go to her home state of Oregon, where she would continue to do the lovely hand-bound books she was so good at. He would write a couple of books on juvenile crisis management. And he would see if he could still paint; there hadn't been enough time in years even to think about such a pointless activity. They would explore the state, travel, relax.... They had gone to Oregon and found a house, bought it, closed the deal one month before her cancer was diagnosed. The house was there, and now he would retire to it alone. And after his books were written, then what? He had no answer, and he could sympathize with Alex.

That night he dreamed that he and Sal were emerging from a deep forest into a meadow carpeted with many out-of-place flowers. Ahead of them a boy raced from plant to plant examining the erratic flowers-orchids, roses, trilliums, fantasy flowers. The boy kept his back to them; he wouldn't turn to look although they called to him repeatedly.

”She wants to send me to a school or something,” Alex said.

They were in their usual places, Alex at the window facing out, Dr. Minick across the room gazing at a poster of a galaxy.

”She thinks I don't know what they talk about, what's on their minds, but I do. A school for people like me! There aren't any such schools! I won't stay in a place like that!” He sounded very young. Looking the way he did, he could not simply run away, and that left only one other escape route.

”Let me tell you about a place I know,” Dr. Minick said.

”There's a house, four bedrooms, a woodstove and a fireplace, on twelve acres of wooded land, with a dense forest behind it, and out front, across a country road, a little flas.h.i.+ng stream. Opal Creek. Next to it on one side is another parcel with nothing but trees, and on the other side there's an intermittent waterfall. It runs during the snowmelt and heavy rains, that's all. Not a tourist attraction that way, but nice when there's water splas.h.i.+ng down. On the first day of April, I'm heading out for that place, home for the rest of my life. I bought a van with room to pack the gear I'll need right away, and I'll have other stuff sent; I'll drive across the country to the West Coast, Oregon. Want to go with me, Alex?”

In the silence that followed he felt almost buoyant, as if a weight he had no recollection of picking up had now fallen off his back. Second chance, he thought in wonder. Sal had spoken after all, had shown him the way.

”Why?” Alex asked finally in a choked voice. ”What's in it for you?”

”I'll want to do a lot of exploring-mountains, the high desert, the ocean, camp out, hike, maybe do a little prospecting. I understand there's gold in many of the creeks out there. And it would be good to have company, someone to help with camp ch.o.r.es, to bulls.h.i.+t with around a campfire. Besides, I'd make your folks pay dearly for my expertise as a psychologist and tutor. If they'll agree to it, that is.”

”They'd agree to send me to the moon,” Alex said. His voice sounded different, excited perhaps. ”And, Dr. Minick, whatever you thought you'd charge them, double it while they're still relieved that their prayers have been answered.”

His voice was different, Dr. Minick realized, because his back was no longer turned; the boy was looking at him. Slowly he drew himself up from the chair and swung around to face his patient. The photographs had prepared him, and yet not really. He knew intellectually how misshapen the boy was, how grotesque, but he was not prepared for the surge of pity mixed with revulsion that swept him. And even less prepared for the wave of compa.s.sion that swiftly followed.

”If we're going to be together, you might as well get used to me,” Alex said. The left side of his face was smiling slightly, a bitter smile that twisted his thin mouth even more than fate had done.

”I'll work at it,” Graham said. ”Can you hang in there until the first of April?”

”April Fool's Day,” Alex said. ”I'll spend my time flying around the city.”

”I'll go talk to your mother.” Dr. Minick went to the door, where he was stopped by Alex's voice.

The boy said, ”I call myself Xander when I fly away.”

2.

The community of Opal Creek was no more than a school district in the middle of filbert orchards east of Springfield, Oregon. A general store with gas pumps in front offered fis.h.i.+ng and camping supplies, bait, an odd a.s.sortment of groceries, and recently had added a fast-food grill and cold sandwiches and picnic tables for the tourists. A few houses were nearby, and the Opal Creek elementary and middle-school complex. The locals shopped at a sprawling mall twelve miles to the west or a short distance farther in Eugene.

The school complex consisted of two frame buildings with a large playing field between them, and a playground for the small children. It was raining and cold that May day; no one was out playing. In the office of the middle school Hilde Franz, the princ.i.p.al, and Nola Hernandez, the school secretary, were at a window watching a girl climb into the pa.s.senger seat of a car.

”There she goes,” Nola said, her lips tight with disapproval.

Nola was in her forties; she had raised two daughters and, she often said, she had not allowed them to paint themselves like circus clowns and go out with older boys.

Well, Hilde thought, Rachel Marchand did paint herself outrageously, and it was obvious that she did go out with older boys. Rachel was thirteen.

Hilde watched as the car turned toward Old Opal Creek Road.

A bad sign, she thought when the car crossed over the bridge and turned left. There were only two houses that way, and a lot of woods.

”I'll give her mother a call,” Hilde said. ”Maybe the girl had to go somewhere and they just forgot to send a note.”

Nola made a rude sound and returned to the front desk, and Hilde walked on into her own office. No trouble with Gus Marchand now, she prayed, not with only three more weeks of this school year to get through.

Hilde was fifty-three and had been princ.i.p.al here for eight years and fervently hoped to put in two more years and then retire with thirty years of teaching and administration behind her. One more go-around with Gus Marchand could curdle the cream, she thought. Three different times they had tangled, and although she was still here, he seemed as determined to get rid of her as she was to stay. Now, if they were having a problem with Rachel, he would blame her, blame the school.

She had a great deal of sympathy for the middle-school children, subjected to the same temptations as any adult and too immature to be allowed to act on their impulses, too young to satisfy their needs, however artificially such needs had been created.

She knew about Rachel, knew that she arrived at school as clean as a convent acolyte and went straight to the restroom, where she took off a knee-length skirt concealing a miniskirt, and applied far too much makeup. Probably she cleaned off every smidgen before she got home again. She wasn't the first adolescent to do that, but she had crossed the line: cutting cla.s.ses to go joyriding with a boy had to be discussed with her parents. Parent, Hilde corrected herself; possibly she and Leona Marchand would handle this between them and not involve Gus. She especially did not want to talk about birth control with Gus and was very much afraid that the topic would have to be raised. Rachel was a beautiful, fully developed girl.

Gus Marchand was in the orchard with Harvey Wilberson, a horticulturist the Filbert a.s.sociation had hired to inspect the trees; a particularly virulent blight had been spotted in several orchards. The infected trees had to be destroyed, as well as those in close proximity, and a new variety put in. It was an expensive and time-consuming job, but a necessary one.

Gus was forty-seven, a hardworking man who hired help only at harvest time. He and his family handled the ch.o.r.es the rest of the year. Summer and winter, rain or scorching heat, nothing kept him from his tasks, which were many. He had forty acres of filbert trees to tend, and he tended them well; his orchard was a model of cleanliness and order. White Dutch clover covered the ground, and his trees were as perfect as filbert trees could get. He was a stocky man, muscular and strong with rather short legs, spa.r.s.e graying hair and pale blue eyes that had started to bother him. He would not wear eyegla.s.ses, and he was certain the Lord had not intended people to put things in their eyes. He squinted a lot and held the newspaper farther away than he used to, but he could live with that.

”You're okay,” the inspector said when they finished strolling through the trees. A light rain had become harder as they walked; he seemed to be in a hurry to finish up here and get dry. ”Poor Joel Demarest should be so lucky. Half his orchard gone.”

Joel was a pig who deserved it, Gus thought, but he didn't voice his judgment. He had seen a red Camaro pa.s.s by on Old Opal Creek Road again, for the third time in the past week or so.

Opal Creek Road had been rerouted twenty years earlier; the old road was hazardous with sharp curves and several very steep places. The new road without a curve was now on the other side of the creek, and the old road, which fronted Gus Marchand's property, had only two houses from the junction to the spur to the school. The folks who lived up beyond the school always made their turn there to get on the new road. Practically no one came this way except Gus and his family, Doc Minick and his freak, and the mail carrier, who drove in as far as Minick's driveway, then turned and headed back out. No red Camaro had any business on his road.

As soon as the inspector left, Gus hurried to his house, where Leona had already started making supper. Rachel was at the kitchen table doing her homework.

Gus pulled off his poncho and rain hat and went to his daughter, sniffing. ”Girl, you've been smoking,” he said.

Leona stopped peeling potatoes but didn't turn to look.

”No, Daddy. Never! I promise you I haven't.” Rachel looked up at him, then quickly back to the paper before her. She was very pretty, with long black hair, good bones, brown eyes like her mother's, and beautiful lashes and peaked eyebrows.

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