Page 236 - Some Dance to Remember

206 Jack Fritscher

embarrassed that the law had been called, but to the killer triplets, depu-
ties in real life were no more startling than they were on a TV series.
Thom had commanded platoons in Nam, but his family was beyond
his control. The storm trapped them all together in the ranch house. Thom
cornered Ryan. “Please,” Thom said, “you’ve got a way with kids. Do
something. Maybe they’ll listen to you.”
“A fine mess this is,” Ryan said. “What can I do?” Ryan could hardly
keep up, weekend to weekend, with their antics. The information was too
garbled. Their program changed too fast. They spoke no English. They
spoke sitcom. They lived television. Video had penetrated their brains.
Cathode rays had driven them to believe that life was a continuing series
with a new situation dragged out, built to a climax, and resolved in half-
hour segments. They lived on twelve acres of land and at any given moment
they all crowded together fighting for territory to keep warm in the five
square feet in front of the television.
They were a family of idolaters punished for their idolatry by the very
idol they worshiped.
“The three of them,” Thom said, “trapped Sandy in our bedroom last
Wednesday morning. She wouldn’t come out until I came home from
work. Our own son and daughters! They said they were tired of child
abuse. They told Sandy they wanted to abuse her so she’d know what it
felt like. Their own mother!”
“The little darlings,” Ryan said. “Have you thought of rolling Valium
into their meatballs?”
“This isn’t funny,” Thom said.
“Maybe we could think up some game to distract them.”
Ryan winked at me. “Something like you played last weekend.”
“That only worked for a while,” Thom said.
The Sunday before, Thom had dressed in his green camo fatigues and
taken up a position on the living-room couch. He had thrown open the
window and aimed his rifle out into the yard.
“You people,” he shouted out to the triplets, “when I say go, I want
you girls to throw that cracked corn around on the grass. Abe,” he com-
manded, “while Bea and Sie spread the corn, your orders are to open up
the chicken coop and chase the old biddies out onto the lawn.”
Thom, sailing on double Percodans and black coffee, was oblivious to
us watching him from the kitchen.
“Aren’t you going to stop him?” I asked Ryan.
“How do you stop a man who has a foxhole dug next to the back
deck?”

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