Shine - Lauren Myracle [55]
“Robert Wayne Boxberger, you go inside and wash out your mouth with soap,” I told him.
“Who’s gonna make me? You?”
“Good Lord,” I muttered, heading back toward the house.
“Cat! Wait!”
I climbed on my bike and pushed off. Rocks popped up and dinged my fenders.
Robert ran after me. “Don’t you wanna hear what I got to say?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll tell you, I swear. And you ain’t a bitch, okay?”
“Gee, thanks,” I kept pedaling, and eventually I escaped the pounding of his sneakers. All I heard were the bumps and crunches of my tires on the dirt road, blending with the dark noises of the forest. But it wasn’t the forest that scared me. It was the people who lived and prowled within them.
CHURCH WAS A MISERY.
Something happened last night at the hospital, that’s why. Verleen had the most information, because her sister was married to Deputy Carl Doyle. She told a circle of ladies all about it before the service started, her shellacked hairdo bobbing as she spoke.
“A perpetrator jimmied open the window to Patrick’s room,” she said. “He sliced the screen too. Carl said it hung off the window frame like a flap of skin.”
“Oh my,” a church lady named Dottie said, putting her hand to her heart.
“Uh-huh. Carl don’t know why someone was trying to break in, just that they was. The only reason they didn’t make it was because of the night nurse doing her rounds. She musta scared him off, Carl says.”
“Well my goodness, Verleen. That is just terrible,” Dottie said.
“Uh-huh. It is. Now Carl has to do round-the-clock surveillance, sitting outside that boy’s room with his pistol in his holster.” Verleen pursed her lips. “I reckon I’ll bring him a ham sandwich later on.”
I felt ill standing on the fringes of the crowd and listening in, but I couldn’t make myself leave. Verleen said the reporters were back in flocks now, milling around the hospital and hunting for information. Only, there wasn’t much to go on. There was a single set of footprints in the dark soil below Patrick’s window, but no fingerprints, and no hints as to what the perpetrator had in mind to do if he’d gotten in.
The worst part was that all the commotion affected Patrick’s “stability.”
“Carl heard that from Dr. Granville,” Verleen said. “People in comas can be aware of their surroundings, you see.”
Hannah, the young mother from Coonesville, nodded. “That’s why you’re supposed to talk to them. Same with plants.”
“The doctor said he won’t wake up if he don’t feel safe,” Verleen said.
Dottie clucked her dismay.
“That poor boy,” Hannah said. “I wish they’d caught him, that fella at the window. I wish they’d just catch him and put him away.”
“I wish Patrick hadn’t gotten himself into this mess in the first place,” Verleen said. “Can you imagine poor Aurelia having to deal with such a mess?” Aurelia was Mama Sweetie’s given name.
“It woulda killed her if she weren’t dead already,” Dottie said. “Bless her heart.”
The ladies gave a moment of silence to Mama Sweetie’s memory.
A middle-aged woman spoke up. She was in the choir, but I couldn’t recall her name. She had a birthmark the size of a stinkbug under one eye. It pooched out like a mole, only it was the reddish-purple of the grape juice we drank at communion.
“Could have been anyone who attacked him,” she pronounced. She nodded at Verleen. “I know your Carl thinks it’s an out-of-towner, but I wouldn’t stake the farm on it.”
“Carl is doing the best he can,” Verleen said, giving the choir woman a look.
“Well, of course, he is. We all know that.” The choir woman patted Verleen’s arm. “I’m just saying—“She broke off and scanned the room. “Well, you know what I’m saying. You all do. And to think that here we are, talking about it in the house of the Lord.”
The ladies tutted. I wanted to smack them all. I wanted Aunt Tildy to smack them all, or break up the group in some other way, like by telling them that in that case, they shouldn’t be talking about it in the house of the Lord. But Aunt Tildy was busy in the church