Touchy and Feely (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

penguin.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ said Feely. ‘Penguins aren’t indigenous to the North Pole. Only the South Pole.’
    ‘Indigenous,’ Robert repeated.
    ‘That means naturally living there.’
    ‘I know what it means. I just can’t get over the fact that you can say it at eight o’clock in the morning. Let’s go get some breakfast.’
    He drove out of the railroad yard, past boarded-up sheds and rusted bogies. They had stopped here late last night after they had managed to get themselves hopelessly lost. Robert had tried to take a cutoff at West Cornwall, but they had ended up driving for three-and-a-half hours around Red Mountain and Lake Wononpakook with the snow falling so thickly that they felt they were being buried alive. Eventually they had found their way back to Route 7, only five miles north of where they had left it. Robert had sent Feely into a roadside store outside Falls Village for bread and Kraft cheese slices and Twinkies, and they had eaten a picnic in the car, with the engine running to keep them warm.
    As they drove into the center of Canaan, Robert said, ‘Let me give you some advice, Feely. You can use all the twenty-dollar words you like, but these days nobody listens, and even if they did listen they wouldn’t understand half of what you’re talking about. So you should save your breath to cool your chowder.’
    Feely said nothing, so Robert gave him a nudge with his elbow. ‘If you want people to respect you, Feely, you have to do something. And I don’t mean something pissant. I mean something cataclysmic. Now that’s a twenty-dollar word for you. Cata-freaking-clysmic.’
    Feely looked out at the snow-covered houses. ‘Are we still talking about Peary?’
    ‘No, we’re talking about anybody. We’re talking about you and me and that old geezer standing on the corner over there. If you don’t do something cataclysmic, people will never take any notice of you, and they’ll never remember you after you’re gone, like your father’s sperm never even wriggled as far as your mother’s egg, and how tragic is that? Or if they do remember you, they won’t remember the good things you did, the little acts of kindness that you never asked for any credit for. Oh, they’ll remember the times you screwed up, or the offensive things you said after fifteen Jack Daniel’s. But if you want to make any kind of impression in this world, my friend, it’s no good trying to be persuasive. You have to do something that pulls the rug right out from under people’s feet. Something that makes them go ho-o-oly shit .’
    As they neared the town center, they passed a small yellow house on a hill. It had a snow-filled yard that sloped steeply down to the road. Although it was so early, a small girl in a bright red coat was building a snowman, with twigs for arms and a carrot for a nose. Her mother was watching her from the kitchen window.
    Robert slowed down. ‘What do you think that is?’ he said. But before Feely could answer, he said, ‘Happiness, that’s what that is. Completeness. The mother. The child. Beautiful.’
    He drove on. Where the sun was falling across it, the snow was already melting, and the streets were thick with slush. Feely still hadn’t stopped shaking with cold and he urgently needed to go to the bathroom. After a few minutes, however, they reached a large Victorian railroad station on the right-hand side of the road, its rooftops covered in snow, and Robert slowed down again.
    ‘Union Station,’ said Robert. ‘This is where the Housatonic Railroad used to meet up with the Connecticut Western line. It used to be really something, this station, a grand historical monument. But there was a fire, four or five years ago, and all the timbers were soaked in oil, as a preservative. That was good thinking, wasn’t it? They were damned lucky to save anything at all.’
    Feely could see that the building had once been L-shaped, but the southern wing had been burned down