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Carpenter looked at his watch. Several minutes passed. A second drop of acid dripped down with the same result. Carpenter nodded. “All right. I’ll have to adjust the tube a few times, but I estimate this will burn through the locking mechanism by around noon tomorrow, give or take an hour. Then we’ll know if Frankie’s in there.”
“Noon tomorrow,” Shane said. “Helluva lot can happen before then.”
“Like finding Casey Dean?” Carpenter said. Right. The mission. “That was my next move,” Shane lied, and headed back down the tunnel, focusing once more.
When Lisa Livia had followed a shaken Brenda over the bridge, Agnes went down to the river to see what she could do about calming a hysterical five-foot-tall pink bird with a honk like an amplified mutant duck. When she got there, Cerise looked her in the eye and honked louder, flapping her wings and going nowhere, splashing in the Blood, agitated and miserable, and Agnes began to feel for her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Whatever it is, I’m really sorry, and I will get you back home as soon as I can, I swear, and I will have that idiot Downer roasted slowly over hot coals while I’m at it, but please stop honking?—”
“She’s lonely,” Garth said from behind her, and Agnes turned to see him standing there, as gawky as before in the same dirty denim,
but now frowning with purpose, holding a bunch of papers. “I looked it up, like you said, on the Internet.”
“What?” Agnes said, dumbfounded, Garth and the Internet not compatible in her mind.
“They taught us in school,” Garth said, indignant. “Computers. I graduated elementary school and junior high.”
“Of course you did,” Agnes said, feeling awful for feeling surprised. Bad grammar did not mean bad brains, she knew that. “Uh, congratulations.”
Garth nodded. “I’d go back next year, but Grandpa says there’s no use for it.”
“Hey,” Agnes said. “There’s use for it. You go back.”
“You could talk to Grandpa about it,” Garth said, looking away. “That would be right nice of you. Like in the movies.”
“Uh,” Agnes said, wondering what the hell movies Garth had been watching. Probably something where the nice lady got shot. “Yeah. Let’s cross that bridge later. Flamingos first.”
Garth went back to his Internet printouts. “I went and Googled flamingos. And flamingos, they ain’t ever alone, they’s always in big bunches, lots of them. It ain’t right that there’s just one.”
He looked at the still-vocal Cerise with real sympathy, miserable for her, and when Agnes looked back at Cerise and saw the wildness in her eyes, her heart clutched, too.
“Fucking idiot Downer,” she said as her throat closed, and then she pulled her cell phone out and punched in Maria’s number, listening to Cerise, who wasn’t honking anymore, not to Agnes’s ears— now Cerise was moaning, “Alone, alone, alone, I’m so alone, alone, alone. ...”
“Oh, God,” Agnes said, and thought about all those damn nights in that little housekeeper’s room, waiting for that rat bastard Taylor to come out so they could move up to that lovely cool pale blue room in the attic because moving up there would mean they were starting their new life, and if she didn’t wait, if she moved up there alone, it would mean she’d be alone forever?—
Alone, alone, alone, alone ...
And before that, those lonely nights after her engagements had broken off when she’d wondered what was wrong with her that men always lied to her and left her alone, and before that those miserable days after Lisa Livia had taken baby Maria and followed her job west with her lying boss, who’d promised never to move his business, and before that those godawful holidays alone in boarding school before Lisa Livia had come along, brassy and defiant to anybody who’d tried to make her miserable and who’d brought her home to beautiful Two Rivers and Brenda for every summer and holiday after that so that for a while Agnes hadn’t been?—
“Hello?” Maria said, answering the phone.
“Get that shithead Downer to send this poor bird back where it belongs,” Agnes said, close to tears. “They’re never supposed to be alone. Her heart is breaking. She’s not supposed to be alone.”
“Oh, no,” Maria said. “I’ll kill him. I’ll get Palmer on it right now.”
“Thank you,” Agnes said, and clicked off the phone.
“I called Jimbo for some shrimp,” Garth said over Cerise’s moaning. “He should be bringing it right up to the dock any minute now. Maybe food will make her feel better.”
“Not even three pints of Dove’s Caramel Pecan Perfection,” Agnes said from experience, staring miserably at Cerise, who stared miserably back.
Alone, alone, alone ...
Lying bastards.
When Shane climbed up into the kitchen, he found a new long To Do List on the counter that was headed “Paint sprayers.” He put it in his pocket and went out to the side of the house, where he heard hysterical honking. From the front of Carpenter’s van, he could see down onto the riverbank, where Agnes and Garth seemed to be trying to feed something to a giant agitated pink bird.
Carpenter came out to join him, Rhett at his heels.
