Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4), Nick Pirog [classic children's novels .TXT] 📗

long sigh. “If I hadn’t stopped to flip through that magazine, I would have been out of there before Lowry came in. I would have been on my way home, getting ready to bake another batch of cookies.

“I was next in line to check out when Neil Felding came in. Right behind him was Lowry. Lowry had a gun in his hand and he started waving it at Odell, the manager, screaming that he shouldn’t have been fired. Then he forced all of us back to the back freezer.”

“Who is us?” I asked, though I knew the names already.

“Dr. Lanningham, he was the town veterinarian; Peggy Bertina, who I didn’t know personally; Will Dennel, a nice looking kid who worked over at the lumberyard; Neil Felding, who I didn’t know all that well, but had just moved back into town; Odell, the store owner; and me.”

“Did you ever think about making a run for it?”

“Of course. But then I figured that would get me killed for certain. I still thought there was a good chance Lowry was just gonna give us a scare then let us go.”

“Why did you think that?”

“Just that it was Lowry.”

“You knew him?”

“He cut my lawn for five or six years when he was younger. He even stayed the night at my house a couple times when he needed to get away from his old man.”

“You didn’t think he was dangerous?”

“No. I mean, he did some stupid stuff. The things that landed him in jail. Boozing mostly, but that ran in his family, so it wasn’t a surprise.”

Her eyes glazed over, which was possibly due to the vodka, and she said, “I still remember one time when he was cutting my lawn. He found a dead fawn in the leaves. He was sixteen, maybe seventeen years old, but he was crying like the dickens. He dug a hole and buried her, then planted some flowers on top of her.”

“People can change a lot in ten years.”

She was silent for a couple moments, and I prodded, “So he took the lot of you to the back freezer?”

“Yes.”

“Was he talking?”

“Not much. Just giving orders. He made us sit down on the cold concrete.”

“Did you say anything to him, you know, since you sort of knew him?”

“Yeah, I said, ‘Lowry this isn’t you’ or something like that, and he told me to ‘shut up.’” She took a breath, then added, “That’s when I started to think maybe things—”

I finished for her, “—things were going to end badly?”

She nodded.

“Then what?”

“Then he started shooting. Just going down the line.” She shook her head from side to side. “I just remember screaming, then...” She paused, took a breath, “…then pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.”

“Where did you get hit?”

“One in the shoulder, one in my left hip.”

That would account for the limp.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I played dead.”

“Then what?”

“Lowry left. I waited another couple minutes, then I got a cell phone out of Peggy’s pocket and called the police.”

She continued, “It seemed like it took them hours to arrive, but it was only three or four minutes. Once I saw the first police officer crash through the door, everything gets cloudy. I remember them putting me on a stretcher. Then the hospital. I was pretty drugged up for the next few days.”

I’d been there. In the clouds. Floating. Little montages fighting their way into your consciousness. A face. Lights. Lucid dreams.

“How long were you in the hospital?”

“Five days. I made them discharge me so I could go to the funeral.”

“Did they have a big collective one?”

She nodded. “At the high school.”

“Did the entire town show up?”

“And more.”

“I’m guessing they had private family burials afterward.”

Without answering, I knew she went to all five. I imagined her watching Wheeler give her father’s eulogy.

Suddenly, I found myself furious.

That was stage two.

Stage one: Curiosity.

Stage two: Fury.

I checked the time on my cell phone.

I needed to feed the piglets.

I stood and said, “Thank you for reliving that for me. I know I’m a total stranger and you didn’t have to.”

Her eyes looked heavy. The story and the martini had exhausted her. She gave the slightest of nods.

I saw myself out.

Chapter Eleven

I pushed the door open.

I waited for Harold and May to attack me with oinks and kisses, but they didn’t come.

“Harold! Ma—”

She was sitting in the rocking chair in the living room. She was wearing a low-cut purple dress. Her blond hair was teased and curled onto her shoulders. A glass of white wine shimmered in her left hand.

It took me a long second to remember her name.

Carol?

Karen?

Caroline.

“Hope ya don’t mind,” she said. “I made myself comfortable.”

“I can see that.”

“I thought—”

I cut her off. “Where are the piglets?”

“Those beasts?”

Beasts?

“Yes, where are they?”

“Outside, of course.”

“You let them out?”

“They were in your house,” she exclaimed.

I turned on my heel and ran outside. “Harold! May!”

I could hear Caroline push through the door behind me. I turned back and watched as she navigated the three porch steps in black heels. She didn’t spill a drop of the wine still in her hand.

I took off toward the pigpen, praying that’s where they were, praying they were rolling around in the mud.

They weren’t.

I checked the barn.

Then the chicken coop.

Finally, I returned to the house.

Caroline was standing right out front. She hadn’t moved.

“Did you see them?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“How long ago did you let them out?”

She took a sip of wine and pondered the question.

I put up my hands.

Finally she said, “I don’t know, maybe an hour ago.”

“An hour!?”

They could be anywhere.

“Please help me look for them,” I pleaded.

“Oh, okay. Yeah, I can do that.”

She looked at me, then walked—no, clomped—a couple feet toward the large oak. She leaned down, the dress pulling taut around her backside, and yelled, “Come here, pigs!”

If her desired effect was to take my mind off my two escaped piglets, she only half accomplished it.

I shook my head and took off into the high brush.

Thirty minutes later, still having not found them, the reality that