that brought back the unpleasant sense that his mind was uncoupling itself. He pushed it away. It didn't want to go. He pushed harder, telling himself he was simply not going to think about it anymore until Bobbi woke up and told him just what was going on around here.
He looked down at his arms and saw that he was sweating.
8
Gardener took his drink out back, where he found more evidence of Bobbi's almost supernatural burst of activity.
Her Tomcat tractor was standing in front of the large shed to the left of the garden - nothing unusual about that, it was where she most commonly left it when the weatherman said it wasn't going to get rained on. But even from twenty feet away Gardener could see that Anderson had done something radical to the Tomcat's motor.
No. No more. Forget this shit, Gard. Go home.
There was nothing dreamy or disconnected about that voice - it was harsh, vital with panic and scared dismay. For a moment Gardener felt himself on the verge of giving in to it ... and then he thought what an abysmal betrayal that would be - of Bobbi, of himself. The thought of Bobbi had kept him from killing himself yesterday. And by not killing himself, he thought he had kept her from doing the same thing. The Chinese had a proverb: 'If you save a life, you are responsible for it.' But if Bobbi needed help, how was he supposed to give it? Didn't finding out begin with trying to find out just what had been going on out here?
He knocked back the end of the drink, set the empty glass on the top back step, and walked toward the Tomcat. He was distantly aware of the crickets singing in the high grass. He wasn't drunk, not squiffy, as far as he could tell; the booze seemed to have shot right past his entire nervous system. Gave it a miss, as the British said.
(like the leprechauns that made the shoes tap-tap-tappety-tap while the cobbler slept)
But Bobbi hadn't been sleeping, had she? Bobbi had been driven until she dropped - literally dropped - into Gardener's arms.
(tap-tap-tappety-tap knock-knock-knockety-knock late last night and the night before Tommyknockers Tommyknockers knocking at the door)
Standing by the Tomcat, looking into the open engine compartment, Gardener didn't just shiver - he shuddered like a man dying of cold, his upper teeth biting into his lower lip, his face pale, his temples and forehead covered with sweat.
(they fixed the water heater and the Tomcat. too there's lots of things the Tommyknockers do)
The Tomcat was a small working vehicle which would have been almost useless on a big spread where farming was the main work. It was bigger than a riding lawnmower but smaller than the smallest tractor Deere or Farmall had ever made, but just right for someone who kept a garden that was just a little too big to be called a plot - and that was the case here. Bobbi had a garden of about an acre and a half -beans, cukes, peas, corn, radishes, and potatoes. No carrots, no cabbages, no zucchini, no squash.
'I don't grow what I don't like,' she had told Gardener once. 'Life's too short.'
The Tomcat was fairly versatile; it had to be - even a well-off gentleman farmer would have trouble justifying the purchase of a $2,500 mini-tractor on the basis of a one-acre garden. It could roto-till, mow grass with one attachment and cut hay with another; it could haul stuff over rough terrain (she had used it as a skidder in the fall, and so far as Gardener knew Bobbi had gotten stuck only once), and in the winter she attached a snow-blower unit and cleared her driveway in half an hour. It was powered by a sturdy four-cc engine.
Or had been.
The engine was still in there, but now it was tarted up with the weirdest array of gadgets and attachments imaginable - Gardener found himself thinking of the doorbell/radio thing on the table in Anderson's basement, and wondering if Bobbi meant to put it on the Tomcat soon . . . maybe it was radar, or something. A single bewildered bark of laughter escaped him.
A mayonnaise jar jutted from one side of the engine. It was filled with a fluid too colorless to be gasoline and screwed into a brass fitting on the engine head. Sitting on the cowling was something that would have looked more at home on a Chevy Nova or