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The dogs had all found spots to lie
nearby and were strewn about in various relaxed positions, waiting. She
ran all the way home in the twilight.
 here was he living?
Most of the next morning was spent looking. Surely he was recharging his
laptop's battery in the kennel. She knew he was feeding the dogs Milk-Bones
since the dogs cookie jar was empty every morning. That did not explain
where he was sleeping. The kennel was a cinder block building on a cement
floor. In summer, the dogs slept on wooden pallets.
She looked in the woods. From the
field the forest sloped up so abruptly it seemed unlikely that anyone
lying down would be able to keep from rolling downhill. He wasn't sleeping
there but he was certainly eating there. Trash was everywhere. Bags, cans,
wrappers all strewn wherever she looked. Some still contained remnants
of food. From the shredded condition of most of the paper, it was clear
that the garbage had attracted raccoons and skunks.
Apparently, he would eat anything.
Every kind of junk food was represented in the debris. Where was he getting
it? How was he bringing it all here? And where was he sleeping?
She answered the last question after
lunch. In the crawl space under her house she found a rude little camp
consisting of a ground sheet, a sleeping bag and a pillow. There was no
light. Probably he hid it outside so he could light his way in after dark.
The crawl space could be accessed from the front and back of the house.
He would have seen her go under the house and so probably would not return.
She took the things up on the front porch and stared at them for a few
minutes. They were so new, it was hard to tell they had been used at all.
He would want them back. She put them in a metal trash barrel at the kennel
and burned them.
 t looked like rain
the following day. Midmorning, she drove over to the local Post Office
to get her mail. She ran into some people she knew and lingered, chatting.
The rain began as she was driving home.
In her absence, Henry had raided her
kitchen. Everything in a sealed bag or container was gone. It seemed that
he would not eat unwrapped food. Things like fruit and bread were not
taken. On her grocery list, written in block letters were the words ‘Fudgesicles’
and ‘Nutty Buddys’. She sat at her kitchen table looking at
the writing and trying to decide if she would laugh or cry. Doodling absentmindedly,
with the list, she changed it to ‘Fudgesicko’and ‘Nutty
Butthead’. She had a feeling she knew what else he had taken. Sure
enough, the pillow and comforter were gone from her bed.
Opening her bureau drawer, she considered
her .38 caliber pistol. There would be the small matter of homicide to
consider. A judge was unlikely to be swayed by her claim that Henry was
not human. Judges heard that from women all the time.
Anyway, she couldn't do anything without
seeing him. He knew when she was about to look at him, he said.
Like a beam of light in the night, he was aware of her eyes sweeping towards
him. What would it be like to feel a person's gaze approaching? Was it
like an oncoming rain squall or a wave in the ocean? When it found you,
was it cold like rain or hot like a dragon's breath? How would she know
her friends if she never looked them in the face?
cont. on page seven
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