Charles Grant - Night Songs

He waited for several minutes, standing there listening, then took a deep breath and let himself grin. A grin that banished Warren and Lilla and the fog and the island. His doubts were gone as he turned from the window and headed for the couch. His fears for the time were smothered by a buoyant growing bubble that expanded in his chest and made him feel giddy, making him wish he were back at the cottage so he could throw his arms up and shout.

Boots and socks off, shirt and jeans laid across the coffee table, the blanket pulled to the hollow of his throat, his ankles propped on the armrest, his head on the pillow. He was going to have a stiff neck in the morning, but for the moment he didn't care. For the moment he would deal with murder and madness and shuffle them back to, the bottom of the deck.

He reached up awkwardly and switched off the light.

The room settled into pale gray from the spray of the streetlamp.

There was a chill from the night that made him shiver once and draw the blanket higher. But he was warm, and he liked it, and he hoped Peg would let him be there when she told Matt the good news.

A slow exhalation to beckon sleep from the corners, and just as his eyes closed the streetlight went out.

PART THREE

October: Saturday

ONE

"Here," Colin said, shifting on Matt's bed and taking up a red pencil from the pile scattered over the quilted spread. "What you want to do, see, is give the bird not exact detail so much as the illusion of detail. If you want pictures, get out a camera, otherwise you…" He studied the sketch pad in his hands, cocked his head and put the pencil to work. Matt sat Indian-fashion on the mattress beside him, frowning just as intently, every so often leaning almost nose to paper to see what Colin had done to make the gull look as if it would realize where it was at any moment and break free into the room.

"It's the wrong color, of course, unless it has a sunburn."

Matt nodded.

"But what the hell, right?" He glanced up, then, and put a finger to his lips. "Sorry. I'm not supposed to talk like that in front of you."

"Yeah," the boy said solemnly. "I'm too young."

"Right."

Matt giggled and covered his mouth with a palm.

Colin yanked at his hair and handed him the pencil. "You try it. Nothing special, mind. Just…" He reached out and held the boy's wrist with thumb and two fingers, guiding it gently.

Matt's tongue poked between his lips. "You and Mom are getting married, aren't you?"

Colin leaned back, startled, suddenly realized he was on the edge of the bed and snapped out a hand to keep himself from falling. The mattress rippled, and Matt's pencil skittered across the paper.

"That was close," he said.

"Well, aren't you?"

The sheet was torn from the pad, crumbled, and tossed to the floor onto a shallow pile of other sheets similarly discarded. They had been there since breakfast two hours ago, Colin studying the pictures Matt had done outside school. He'd grown excited as he spotted the tempering of raw talent the boy seldom showed him in his homework, saw it in the eye for detail and the imagery that did not always match what a camera might capture. What was missing was guidance, formal work, and the only thing Colin was unable to give him-experience. Living. A growing that altered the consciousness that was reflected on the paper, on the canvas, in stone and marble. The boy was naive; with growth he might become a Romantic.

Matt looked up at him, large eyes unblinking.

Colin cleared his throat. "Well… it's crossed our minds, yes."

"Would you live here?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I guess so."

Matt pulled the pad over his knees and began doodling birds, small dogs, and elaborately-trimmed, sleek cars. "Mom says I'm the man of the house, so I have to take care of her." A pause. "That's silly. I don't need a babysitter, but Mom's really the man of the house." He paused again, then giggled. "If Mom's the man of the house, you'll have to wear a dress."

"There aren't any my size," he said.

"I'll get one of hers for you."

"You try it, m'boy, and I'll shave that pointy head with a dull toothbrush."

Matt stared at the pad, pushed it away and slipped off the bed. Colin stood as soon as he could get his own legs untangled, watched as the boy headed for the doorway. When he turned, there was a brief, Peg-like decisive nod.

"I think… it's okay, Mr. Ross."

Colin smiled. "Thanks, Matt."

"My father's dead, you know."

He nodded.

"He was killed. In the car. The one that exploded."

"Yes. I know."

"You'll be my new father, then?"

His cheeks puffed, deflated, and he whistled softly. "I'll be your mother's husband, for sure, but I hope we'll still be friends. Anything else is up to you."

"Okay," Matt said, grinning suddenly. "C'mon, we're gonna be late."

The boy was gone before he could move, feet pounding on the stairs as he shouted for Colin to hurry. He whistled again, wondering at the way children always seemed to know more than they let on, more than they seemed to want anyone else to know. Then he looked around the room and tried to remember what his own room had been like. He certainly hadn't had a television set, but he seemed to recall an old Emerson radio his father had threatened to leave in the dump. It had loomed, a grilled walnut cabinet in the corner by his bed, and he'd listened to it at night, to the last of the serials and adventure shows before they were taken off in favor of what some claimed was music.

He smiled to himself wistfully. The perils of advancing middle-age-nostalgia for the good old days which were, if he remembered correctly, damnably boring.

A quick stride and he was at the window, looking out at the trees that formed an evergreen wall at the back of the small yard. The sky was overcast, though the morning was sun-bright. He hadn't been outside yet, but he suspected the air had finally regained its sharp touch of autumn. It would be cool at the cliffs. Peg, however, had said nothing about postponement, so he assumed the picnic would go off as planned.

Listen, she'd said to him quietly just before she'd left for work, he knows. Don't ask how. He knows.

As he walked toward the stairs he marveled again at the powers of children, and at the relief he felt that Matt seemed to accept him. Though Peg was positive there'd be no trouble, too many times he'd seen the trauma of remarriage visited on sons, on daughters, on the innocent bystanders of lives gone wrong. Matt, was special, though, and Colin suspected strongly that his work being displayed at the Whitney would be insignificant indeed to the day the boy first called him Dad.

"C'mon."

Matt was already at the door, wicker basket in hand, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other. He sighed as Colin reached for his jacket, fumbling with a sleeve turned inside out. When he'd finally pulled it right, he grabbed the cuff and pumped it as though he were shaking a man's hand.

"What was that for?"

"Nothing," Colin said. "A superstition. It's supposed to keep your good luck from getting away." When he saw the frown, he pursed his lips and stroked his chin. "So. I guess you're not superstitious. Okay, then it was just an ancient prayer to the gods of sunny days."

Matt peered anxiously at the overcast weather. "I think- they're sleeping. Do you believe in God, Mr. Ross? Mrs. Wooster-she's in Philadelphia, you know-she says God lives on a mountain in the sky. Is that true?"

They took the steps together and headed for his car. "Well-"

He stopped with his hand on the door as someone called his name. He looked up and across the street, first at Hattie Mills' place, then to the right when he heard it again. It was Rose Adams standing on her porch, wrapped in a flowered silk bathrobe that glistened without the sun. Her long, graying hair was hastily coiled into a bun, and he could see a glint of red on her nails.

"Hey, Rose!" he called with a smile as Matt clambered into the car and pulled the door shut. He walked around the front, keeping the smile on when she hustled down the steps and crossed the lawn toward him. He held back his relief when she stopped at the far curb.

"Going on a picnic, Colin?"

"Yup," he said loudly, so she could hear him. Rose was slightly deaf, her own voice naturally loud and carrying.

"Thought so."

He looked up. "Not a great day, but it'll do."

"Could be worse. Could get that storm, but I doubt it, I really doubt it." She smiled but it was forced, and he could see the makeup pancaked on her puffed cheeks gleaming like suede worn too long. "Say, I wonder if you could do me a favor."

"If I can." He avoided looking at Matt. "What is it?"

Her hands, as puffed as her face, retreated into the robe's deep pockets. "It's my little boy." She shook her head sadly. "He didn't come home last night that I know of. I've been calling Garve all morning, but he must have better things to do with his time than chase after someone's lost child."

He guessed then she hadn't heard about Warren.

"Well, I-"

"Of course, Mitchell is hunting him now, but you know how he is. He'll have the child strapped to within an inch of his life if he catches him before I do. Mitchell," she said with a saint's forbearance, "has a temper when it comes to protecting his own."

"I can imagine," he said, the smile beginning to strain. "But I'll do-"

"I'd appreciate your keeping a sharp eye out, then," she continued. "Maybe, if you pass by, you could stop in at Garve's and leave him a note if he's not there."

He opened the door and hefted the basket into the back seat. "I'll do that, Rose."

The hands left her pockets and clasped at her waist. "Oh, thank you, Colin, you're a dear."

"I try, I try."

"And if you should see that… that Carter Naughton-"

"I'll ask around, Rose," he promised, and ducked behind the wheel, closed the door and rolled down the window. Matt was deliberately looking the other way, and he poked the boy with his forefinger before firing the ignition and sweeping the car into a U-turn that ended in front of Mrs. Adams. She leaned down and smiled expectantly.

"Open the window, Matt," he said, and poked the boy again.

"I've talked to Denise, of course," Rose said, the pancake at close range cracked and peeling, "but she's just like her father. She's loyal. Very loyal. Of course, if something happened to Frankie she'd tell me in a minute. That's why I'm not worried. She hasn't even gotten out of bed. But it's Saturday, and a day off, I always say, is a day well spent sleeping till noon."

Colin smiled and slowly lifted his foot from the brake.

"You tell Garve I'll be around later," she said, raising her voice as the car drifted from the curb. "Around one or so, if I can make it."

Colin nodded and lifted a hand to wave. When he checked the rearview mirror she was still there, silk bathrobe, red nails, distance smoothing the pancake and taking twenty years from her face.

"Tommy says she has liquor in her purse," Matt confided once they'd reached the corner. "Does she really?"