Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital Read Free Book Online

one of them sets foot on my porch,” Cobb’s father regularly announced, “I’ll shoot him dead.”
    “You know you don’t mean that, Mr. Slaughter,” Leela said.
    Cobb felt winded whenever she spoke to his father. This was her primary offense, an act of blasphemy and insurrection on a monumental scale: she never took Calhoun Slaughter seriously. Such disregard endowed her with awesome power in the eyes of Cobb, but it also enraged him. Whatever sort of drunken buffoon his father could be, Cobb never could afford to take him lightly.
    Something else: no other living person had the right to take him lightly. Cobb knew what he knew about his father. He did not forgive those who did not hold his father in high esteem.
    Cobb was slight in build. There was something in his eyes, something that reminded people of his mother, some reflex of flinching in his muscles that invited taunts. Once, in the fourth grade, Leela intervened between Cobb and a clutch of older boys. Her ferocity was greeted with astonished glee and her underpants were pulled off for punishment and brandished like a flag.
    “Just wait, Cobb,” Leela promised. “We’ll get them.”
    “Leave me alone,” he said, shamed.
    But she never left Cobb alone. She was, in fact, immensely curious about both Cobb and his dad. That was the problem. She asked if his father had nightmares about Vietnam. She wanted to know what the military discharge was about. Dishonorable , were the whispers that snaked around Promised Land. She asked Cobb point-blank: Was that true?
    No, Cobb said. It was not true.
    Cobb said his father was a hero, and if she didn’t believe him—
    She believed him, she said. She knew his father was afraid of nothing. She knew demons chased Calhoun Slaughter. She had heard him shouting at them, she had seen him fighting back.
    She told Calhoun Slaughter himself that his demons could be cast out if he trusted in the Lord. She asked him what his demons looked like. She asked him if the pulpy hole in his cheek gave him pain. How had it happened? What did he take for it? She was dangerously curious. She was a threat, although she never did ask about Mrs. Slaughter’s death.
    Once, long ago, Cobb had seen Leela’s face at their window, after dark, spying. He was mortified. It was his twelfth birthday and festive days were always dangerous because his father drank in high celebration until the moment—the werewolf moment—that always came. Cobb was expert at divining when that turning point was on the way and at coming up with reasons for leaving the house unobtrusively before the metamorphosis began. On his twelfth birthday, he sensed the moment settling in like a change in the weather and he moved toward the front door and was stunned to see Leela’s face at the window. I was bringing you a present, she told him later, but she threw his timing off. He had never forgiven her, in spite of—because of—the stricken look in her eyes and the way she flinched at each lash.
    That particular time, Cobb’s hands splayed against the wall, his thumb had been broken. He wore a splint and a bandage for weeks, though both were somewhat inexpertly applied by Cobb himself. His thumb never set quite straight and he acquired a cleft nail. Pigfoot was one of his nicknames at school, Split Corncob another.
    Mark of the Beast , ran the schoolyard murmur. Cobb’s got a cloven paw. His father shot prisoners in the back of the head, the rumor ran. His father beat up on his mother till she killed herself. On nights when the moon is full, you can hear her weeping and you can hear Cobb’s father howl like a wolf. One day Calhoun Slaughter will kill his son.
    Or possibly, a parallel whisper warned, Cobb will kill the Old Man.
    Don’t make Cobb angry, children whispered.
    Don’t go near the Slaughter house after dark.
    Neither Leela-May nor Cobb ever spoke of the night of his broken thumb. He knew that his disfigured hand, not Leela, bred the stories. After all, they