Hide and Seek Read Free

sounds wore away at everybody's nerves.
     
    Then when it was quiet again they moved in with nets and stun-pistols.
    And I had my first look inside the place.
     
    I couldn't see how they'd lived there. Once the house had been somebody's pride. I remember being told it was a hundred years old or more. There were hand-hewn beams in the ceiling, and the wood on the doors and moldings where it wasn't stained and smeared with god knows what was still good high-quality cedar and oak. But the rest was incredible. Filthy. Foul. Floors caked with dog shit, reeking of urine. Old newspapers stacked everywhere, almost reaching the ceiling in some places, damp and yellow. A couch and an overstuffed chair torn to shreds, pieces of them scattered everywhere. The refrigerator door hung open, empty. Cabinets and doors were chewed and clawed to splinters.
     
    A few of us kids stood at the front door, making twisted faces at the stink. We watched them as they brought out the dogs one by one and locked them into the ASPCA van. Many had to be carried out, they were so weak. And all. of them were pretty docile after the feeding. I wondered if they'd dropped some drugs in there too. I remember a lot of them looked sort of bewildered, dazed. They were pathetically thin.
     
    I stopped looking when they found the bodies.
     
    There were four of them. One was just a puppy. One was a Doberman.
    The other two had been medium-sized mutts.
     
    Obviously the other dogs had eaten them.
     

pretty angry. He pulled me into the car and then just sat torting, shaking his head, his face getting redder and redder. I knew he wanted to hit me, and I knew how hard it was for him not to.
     
    1 guessed I'd disappointed him again.
     
    So I told them all this over two rounds of egg creams. I had them wide-eyed.
     
    "Ben and Mary they never found, by the way."
     
    "Never?" Steven had this habit of pointing his index finger at you when he asked a question as though he were accusing you of lying. He would also dip his head a little and look at you up from under those dark eyebrows. I think he was practicing for the law. It was very astute-looking.
     
    "Never. We got some clues, though, about a week later. At least you could figure why they'd disappeared. All of a sudden the big word around town was that the bank had evicted them the month before for nonpayment of their mortgage. So it looked like they just ignored the notices for a while, and then, when Ben Murphy went out there to tell them face-to-face that they'd have to leave, they just listened and nodded and then when he was gone, they just cleared out."
     
    "Awful thing to do to all those dogs, though." Kimberley slurped the bottom of her glass through the long striped straw. "So cruel. How could you care for all those animals and then be so rotten to them?"
     
    "People do it all the time," said Steven.
     
    Casey leaned toward me. "Did they look for them? Ben and whatsername, Mary, I mean?"
     
    "Sure they did. I don't know how hard, though. The eviction business seemed to explain things well enough, so I don't know how hard anybody worried about it, really.
     
    "About the dogs, though. See, there was a lot of talk after that. My mom and dad, for one thing, were a lot more free about discussing it in front of me. And I remember being shocked at the time to hear a friend of my mother's say that Ben and Mary were brother and sister, and only in their thirties. We'd always pictured them as

withered ancients, you know and married. The evil old man and his witchy wife. Not so.
     
    "But here's the important part. They'd been raised, b< them, in the bughouse. Literally. At Augusta Mental. Till they w< in their teens.
    The schizo son and daughter of a crazy Boston combat-zone stripper, alky too I guess. So you have to wonder what kind of shape they were in to worry about a pack of dogs, you know
    "Geez."
     
    "Good story," said Casey.
     
    And it was. Good enough, certainly, to wile away an hour o\ sodas at