Wade Miller - Kitten With a Whip

Chapter One

You COULD always blame it on the heat....

The weekend dawned hot and still, the sun suddenly near and pregnant with fire through the glassy blue air. It was September in Southern CaSfomia. The "unusual weather" that struck every year at this time had arrived. Over the plains a thousand miles to the east a mammoth high pressmre squatted like an octopus and sent its tentacles of scorching air groping for the Padfic, holding back the faithful sea breezes so the earth could sear. The mountain rocks baked and the weedy hills of the back country lay brown and tinder dry, ready for the fire sirens and headlines. In the suburbs, and the small towns that bordered on them, flowers drooped and lawns turned hard and britde. And in downtown San Diegowell, you could look forward to tonight's paper carrying the gag picture of the leggy girl in shorts trying to fry an egg on the sidewalk. Everywhere animals hunted shade ana lay panting, and the wild ones crept closer to civilization, hunting water.

Tlie heat touched the people too, turning some of them a htde wild. Some were awakening amorous, to snuggle against their perspiring mates. Omers were awakening unrested and vengeful, looking for injustice and ready to snap angrily at it. The yoimg of a certain age lay daydreaming ciuiously and children awoke peevishly, armed with whines. The old, akeady prepared to die, didn't care so much on a day hke this.

Everybody was going to turn on their hoses and sprinkling systems and curse when the water pressure went down. It was goiug to be an ideal weekend for too many long cool drinks and love and murder.

Blame it on the heat. Everybody said so.

David Patton awoke early that Saturday with no thought that he would ever have to blame anyone or anything. He awoke with no tendencies to passion or violence, but with the eerie sensation that he was not alone in his house.

He lifted his head, listened, heard nothing. He lay back again, tongueing out his dry mouth, and decided the hallucination was left over from some dream. He kicked off the sweat-damp sheet and wriggled around, hoping to find a comfortable position for those few more minutes of sleep that are the ultimate in luxury.

His eyes drifted shuttoo late, his brain was aroused now. "What lousy weather," he mumbled. The bedroom was already overheatedwhat a jerk he had been to biuld a house with the master bedroom on the southeast comer where it got the full blast of the morning sun. "Oh, hell.'* With a sigh, he rolled over on his back and stared at the ceiling. Wliat could he find to do with himself today?

I wish Virginia were here, he thought. And Katie. Tm not cut out for this bachelor life.

At that instant the haunted sensation returned. He was not alone. He held his breath and listened.

He heard only the noises that he always heard in Knoll Valley, so familiar that he had to concentrate to listen to them. The mockingbirds on the telephone wires, the children already at play in the swimming pool up on the lull, the poimd of a hammer down the street at the house that fellow was building on weekendsnothing strange about those. The hum of the freeway a mile off sounoed a httle more anxious this morning as people rushed to the beach. It all helped make up for fiie silence of his own house. Ordinarily, David Patton was used to noises closer at hand. But this week he wasas Virginia had pointed out and they had joked about it a bachelor' again. Virginia had flown to San Francisco a few days before to nurse her ailing mother, and she had taken along their daughter, Katie, who would be six next month. It was Virginia's third such trip this year.

Again he heard the sound that must have disturbed his sleepthe soft pad of a bare foot. This time the noise gave him a surge of pleasure and he swung out of bed quickly. For it came from Katie's bedroom and that meant that Virginia and Katie had come back home ahead of schedule. He didn't expect them until Monday but something good had happenedMother Fisk had made a fast recoveryand they had flown down to surprise him. He could picture them out there now, expectant grins on their pretty faces, waiting to pounce on him the minute he stuck his head out of tne bedroom. David grinned himself as he stood up slowly so the in-nerspring would give no warning.

He was a man of average height but barrel-chested and big-boned. In high school he nad been something of an athlete. But now he was thirty-three, spending most of his time on his engineer's stool at the aircraft plant. He was an R and D manResearch and Development; his specialty was stress. So he weighed fifteen pounds over his college weight, and none of it was additional muscle. David made desultory passes at exercise; he played handball every Monday night, and working around the yard helped. But he was the first to admit that he was out of condition. His black hair had thinned a bit, too, forming a definite peninsula over his high forehead. He didn't mind losing the hair so much, ^ut with every good look in the mirror it reminded him that time was slipping by. And he hadn't done anything yet.

Sure, he was happy with his life, as he'd tried to explain it once to Virginia, but sometimes there sneaked up on him an awful ache of despair that he couldn't quite analyze.

"Like I was waiting for something to happen. Or more like I missed the boat somewhere along the Hne," he had told her.

"Oh, Dave. Things happen all the time."

And she was right; they led a full life. And a stress engineer was exactly what he wanted to be, not a soldier of fortune or an explorer. So he couldn't explain the longing to Virginia, and he never tried again, because he couldn't bring it injocus to his own eyes. But that didn't chase the phantom away. In fact, when it had been decided that Virginia and Katie would fly north again, leaving him behind, he had been conscious of a mild excitement. Not that he ever expected any actual adventures to come his way, but it was a break in the routine and you never can tell.... He could tell now. Life without his womenfolks was pretty much the same as life with them, except for the inconvenience of getting his own meals and doing his own dishes and having no one to talk to in the silence that pressed down heavier every evening. As always, he couldn't think of any place he wanted to go by himself, so he had gotten red-eyed from too much television and midnight reading. His boldest stroke, the very first day, had been to stock up thoroughly on bourbon and gin and triple-diy vermouth. He'd thought it would give him a party feeling to have that much stuff in the house until he made a new discovery about himselfthat he was essentially a social drinker and it bored him stiff to drink alone.

Well, he wasn't alone any more and David was delighted. He hadn't realized how highly he prized his home life. And Virginia and Katie. He hadn't thought consciously for some time of how much he loved them and how close they all were.

He crept stealthily out of the bedroom and along the hall carpeting to Katie's room. He hitched up his pajama trousers and tried to straighten his face but he was grinning Hke a kid as he stepped around the doorjamb, a yell of "Surprise!" all ready in his mouth.