CHAPTER 18
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What Grover Saw
Something was going on at Hoyt McCoy’s. Grover, who was out by the street getting the mail just before dinnertime, saw two cars—one of them a police car—streaking down Trillium Street and veering left up Raven Road, and of course he followed to see where they were going. They turned in at Hoyt’s driveway. Obviously they weren’t just stopping for a friendly visit. They were going fast. Their wheels skidded on the driveway’s gravel.
Had Hoyt had a heart attack or something? Had he maybe shot himself in the foot with that rifle of his? Maybe he had shot someone else and they were going in to arrest him. Whatever was happening, Grover had to see it.
He ran up Hoyt’s driveway in the wake of the cars and stepped in among some trees at the side of the drive so he could watch without being seen. Both cars had pulled up in the open space in front of Hoyt’s awful-looking house, and from them sprang Yonwood’s policemen and Mrs. Brenda Beeson. The cops had taken their guns from their holsters and were pointing them at the front door of the house. The chief, Officer Gurney, roared in his chest-deep voice, “Hoyt McCoy! Come out with your hands up! We have you surrounded!”
Actually, they didn’t have him surrounded. They were all in front of the house. But when Gurney said that, a couple of police scurried around to the back. Mrs. Beeson, in her red baseball cap, stood behind the other two. Her fists were clenched at her sides, her nose slightly wrinkled, as if she were sniffing the air, and her eyes fixed like searchlight beams on the front door of the house.
In a moment, the door opened. The tall, stooped figure of Hoyt McCoy appeared. He had on a baggy olive green sweater and black pants, and his shaggy hair stuck together in bunches, as if he hadn’t combed it for several weeks.
“Hands up! Hands up!” yelled Officer Gurney, who must have learned his lines, Grover thought, from watching cop shows on TV.
But Hoyt did not put his hands up. He came out onto his front step and stared at the crowd in his driveway as if he thought he must be having a nightmare. Then he raised one hand, but not in surrender. He pointed a finger straight at Officer Gurney. “Off…my…property!” he shouted. “All of you. Out! What do you think you’re doing here?”
“You’re under arrest!” yelled Officer Gurney, though he didn’t take a step closer to Hoyt. “Attempted murder!”
At this, Hoyt lowered his arm and smiled. Smiled? Grover crept a little closer to make sure. Yes, he was smiling, a strange look on that long, bloodhound face of his. He smiled and shook his head slowly. He came down his front steps and approached Officer Gurney, apparently not worried that he was about to be shot. Gurney raised his other arm and took hold of his gun with both hands, as if a tank or an enraged rhinoceros were charging at him.
“Officer,” said Hoyt, “a mistake has been made, and I see the source of it standing just behind you.” He nodded at Mrs. Beeson, who didn’t move. “For some reason, this lady is determined to hound me. She sends her spies to trespass on my land. Now she accuses me of murder, which is so ludicrous that I can only smile.” He smiled again, a thin, grim smile that had no humor in it.
Mrs. Beeson stepped forward, and Grover stepped forward, too, to hear what she was going to say. It didn’t seem to matter if he came out a little from among the trees; no one was paying any attention to him.
“Attempted murder,” Mrs. Beeson said in a voice that quivered with outrage. “I have always known that you were a bad one. But now we have found you out before you could—”
“Attempted murder of whom, madam?” said Hoyt.
“A child! A little girl who had strayed onto your land and was perfectly innocently gazing at your dreadful—”
“Now, wait just a moment, dear lady,” Hoyt said. His smile vanished. His face grew dark with anger. “This is really too much! Lately my estate has been crawling with prowlers. A boy, a girl, and no doubt others I have not spotted.”
Grover knew who the boy prowler had been. But who was the girl? He didn’t know any girls who would even think of setting foot on Hoyt McCoy’s land.
Hoyt railed on. “Why, a person would like to know? Why? I happen to be intensely busy at the moment—busy with matters of great importance, matters that could alter the world’s future—and yours, madam. And yet you send spies to pester me.” He shook his finger at Mrs. Beeson. “And when I call out at them, when I rightfully demand that they leave the premises, I am accused of attempted murder? It is quite beyond belief.”
All this time, the police remained in a half-crouching position, like runners at the start of a race, ready at any second to leap forward and wrestle Hoyt McCoy to the ground. Hoyt didn’t seem to be alarmed by this. He glared straight past them and fixed his eyes on Mrs. Beeson.
She glared back. “You trained a rifle on a little girl,” said Mrs. Beeson in a breathless, furious voice. “A rifle. She saw it, and she saw you lower it—to point straight at her! She heard you—you threatened her. You—” Here she seemed to run out of both words and breath. Her face was as red as her cap.
Officer Gurney took a bold stride forward. “Come quietly now,” he said to Hoyt. “We’re taking you in.”
But an expression of great amusement slowly spread across Hoyt’s face. “Ah,” he said, ignoring Gurney. “Now I understand. Look up there, ladies and gentlemen.” He pointed upward and backward, over his shoulder. “There’s your murder weapon.”
Grover looked up. So did the cops, and so did Mrs. Beeson. In a gable window above the second story, the barrel of a rifle pointed at the sky. At least, it looked to Grover like a rifle, although it was bigger than the rifle his father had, and its shape was slightly different. Maybe it was actually a shotgun. That would explain why it was pointed at the sky—Hoyt was using it to shoot birds, when he wasn’t shooting trespassers.
“That,” said Hoyt, “is not a gun. That is the telescope with which I scan the skies.” He turned back to glare at Mrs. Beeson again. “And also scan my property for trespassers. I wish to be left alone. But you, Brenda Beeson, send one spy after another. Why? Why? Why cannot a person be left in peace?”
It was an interesting moment. Grover held his breath, waiting to hear what Mrs. Beeson and her men would say. Everyone waited. Mrs. Beeson, too, seemed to be waiting, perhaps for a cue from God. Grover could see her face tightening—eyes narrowing, forehead furrowing. Really, he thought, she ought to be relieved. She ought to be saying, Oh, good, no crime has taken place after all! My mistake! Very sorry!
Instead she told Officer Gurney to take one of his men and go upstairs to make sure that Hoyt McCoy was telling the truth. “And look around as you go,” she added. “In case—you know—there might be—”
“Absolutely,” said Officer Gurney.
“What!” cried Hoyt. “You assume you may come barging into my house without a search warrant?”
“It’s a matter of security,” Officer Gurney said. “In times like these, a threat to security changes the rules.”
“Outrageous,” said Hoyt. “But I won’t take the trouble to stop you. You will find nothing in my house that has the faintest whiff of criminality.”
He went inside with the two men, and they were gone for about fifteen minutes—a very boring fifteen minutes for Grover, who didn’t want to draw attention to himself by walking away. The cold from the ground was seeping up into his feet. Mrs. Beeson got into her car and sat there waiting. She looked cross and huddled, as if she were the suspect about to be taken in. Grover thought this was rather funny. He didn’t really favor one side over the other in this dispute. He hadn’t enjoyed being yelled at and scared by Hoyt McCoy the day he crossed his property. But he didn’t care much for Mrs. Beeson, either. These days she was seeing something wicked everywhere she looked.
The police came out of the house, finally, and Hoyt stood on his step with his hands on his hips and watched them triumphantly as they got back into their car.
“Your timing was excellent,” he said. “If you’d come tomorrow, you’d not have found me here, as I am about to go away for a few days on a mission of more importance than you can imagine. You might have tried to interfere with my trip, which would have been a very bad decision. As it is, we’ve got this little matter out of the way and I hope never to have the pleasure of your company here again.”
The men weren’t bothering to listen to him. “Weirdest place I’ve ever seen,” Grover heard Officer Gurney say before he slammed the car door. “Messiest, too. The guy’s a nutcase.”
The cars started up their engines and drove off down the driveway. Hoyt stood where he was, watching until both cars had turned onto Raven Road. Grover waited for him to go back inside, but he kept standing there, and finally Grover realized that Hoyt was looking right at him.
“I see my trespasser is back,” Hoyt said. There was no anger in his tone.
“I’m leaving,” said Grover. “I just wanted to see what was going on.”
“Since you’re here,” said Hoyt, “let me tell you something.”
Uh-oh, thought Grover. Now I get yelled at. But he stood his ground. At least no one was shooting at him.
Hoyt came down the steps, stalked over to Grover, and stood right in front of him. There were grease stains on his sweater, Grover noticed, and his pants were unraveling at the cuffs. He smelled like burned toast. “What Lady Brenda doesn’t know,” Hoyt said, “is that she has the wrong information. Heaven is my territory. I know what goes on there. I know what the universe has in store for us.”
“You do?” said Grover. Not being yelled at surprised him so much that he answered as if they were having a normal conversation.
“As well as anyone,” said Hoyt.
“Well,” said Grover, “what does the universe have in store?”
“Ceaseless marvels,” said Hoyt McCoy. “Infinite astonishment. But only for those who care to pay attention.”
“I saw a crack of light over your house,” Grover said.
“Aha,” said Hoyt. He narrowed his eyes and looked hard at Grover. “Never mind about that,” he said.
“Why?” said Grover. “Is it a secret?”
Hoyt McCoy ignored his question. “If you were to simply ring my doorbell like a civilized person instead of sneaking around my property, I might show you a few things. Assuming you were interested.”
But Grover wasn’t nearly interested enough for that. “Maybe sometime,” he said. “But right now I have to go.” He moved backward a few steps.
“Let me tell you one more thing,” said Hoyt, raising his voice. “You may tell this to your Mrs. Beeson, if you like, who likes everything to be neat and clean and normal. I am not particularly neat or clean; I am certainly not what anyone would call normal. But I am as good as anyone else.”
And very loony, thought Grover. He murmured a few more polite words and made his exit, trotting down the gravel drive and heading home with a great sense of relief.
Grover couldn’t sleep that night. Thoughts swarmed through his mind; he couldn’t shut them off. So he got up, being quiet so he wouldn’t wake his brothers. He put his clothes on and went outside. He would take a short, fast walk—just up the hill to Main Street, down a few blocks, and back home. He’d done it before when he couldn’t sleep, and it usually helped.
He wasn’t afraid. There was nothing in Yonwood that could hurt him, unless that terrorist was roaming around town again. And if he was, Grover could watch him from some safe place and see what he was up to and turn him in. The thought was invigorating. Grover started off. He climbed the hill at a rapid pace, breathing in cold night air, looking up at the stars, wondering why he didn’t do this more often. Being out alone at night made him feel free.
He went up Trillium Street, around behind the Cozy Corner (no terrorists there tonight), and down Main Street, where the streetlamps were out, as they were all over town. He saw nothing stirring—not a night watchman or an alley cat or even a spider—until, as he passed the dark windows of the grocery store, he happened to glance up Grackle Street and saw someone about a block away. Whoever it was didn’t walk purposefully but drifted a little this way, a little that way, as if lost or looking for something. Was it a sleepwalker? Grover stopped and stared. He was too far away to be sure who he was seeing, but suddenly he thought he knew. It must be her; it was the right street. Why would she be outside? She seemed to be wearing—what? A nightgown? Something pale and floaty. He started in that direction. But before he’d gone more than a few steps, another figure appeared, a skinny girl, who dashed up behind the lost-looking one and took her arm and led her back into the house.
Grover turned downhill and headed for home. What he’d seen had given him a sad, shaky feeling. Poor Prophet, he thought. It must be awful to have God speak to you and turn your mind to ashes.