Night Moves: Dream Man/After the Night by Linda Howard

member of the family came home. Pa came home first. He was drunk, of course, having gotten such an early start on the process, but for once he didn’t bellow for a supper that he wouldn’t eat anyway. Faith listened to his progress as he stumbled and lurched toward his bedroom. Moments later came the familiar, labored snoring.
    Jodie came home about eleven, sullen and pouting. Her evening must not have gone as she had planned, Faith thought, but she lay quietly on her cot and didn’t ask. Jodie took off the yellow dress, wadded it up, and threw it into a corner. Then she flounced onto her own cot and turned her back.
    It was an early night for everyone. The boys rolled in not long after, laughing and raising a ruckus, waking Scottie as usual. Faith didn’t get up, and soon things quieted down again.
    They were all home, all except for Mama. Faith cried silently, wiping her tears with the thin sheet, and soon dozed again.
    A huge crash brought her upright in the cot, confused and terrified. A bright light flashed in her eyes, blinding her, and a rough hand hauled her out of the cot. Faith screamed and tried to tear away from the painful grip on her arm, tried to dig in her heels and brace herself, but whoever it was jerked her off her feet as if she weighed no more than a child, and literally dragged her through the shack. Over her own terrified screams she could hear Scottie’s shrieks, hear Pa and the boys cussing and yelling, hear Jodie sobbing.
    There was a semicircle of piercingly bright lights arranged out on the dirt yard, and Faith had a blurred impression of a lot of people, moving back and forth. The man holding herkicked open the screen door and shoved her outside. She tripped over the rickety steps and sprawled on her face in the dirt, her nightgown riding high on her legs. Rocks and grit skinned the hide from her knees and palms, and scraped a raw place on her forehead.
    “Here,” someone said. “Take the kid.” Scottie was roughly deposited beside her. He was screaming hysterically, his round blue eyes blank and terrified. Faith scrambled to a sitting position, shoving her nightgown down over her legs, and gathered him into her arms.
    Things were flying through the air, crashing and thudding all around her. She saw Amos, clinging to the doorframe as two men in brown uniforms bodily hauled him out of the house. Deputies, she thought, dazed. What were deputies doing out here, unless Pa or the boys had been caught stealing something? As she watched, one of the deputies cracked Amos’s fingers with his flashlight. Amos cried out and released the frame, and they tossed him into the yard.
    A chair came sailing out the door, and Faith ducked to the side. It hit the ground right where she had been, and splintered. Half crawling, with Scottie’s arms locked around her neck and dragging her down, she struggled toward the shelter of Pa’s old truck, where she huddled against the front tire.
    Stunned, she stared at the nightmare scene, trying to make sense of it. Things were being tossed out windows, clothes and pots and dishes flying. The dishes were plastic, and made a huge clatter as they landed. A drawer of flatware was emptied out a window, the cheap stainless steel flashing in the lights of the patrol cars.
    “Clean it out,” she heard a deep voice growl. “I don’t want anything left inside.”
    Gray! The recognition of that beloved voice froze her, crouched there on the ground with Scottie clutched protectively to her. She found him almost immediately, his tall, powerful form standing with arms crossed over his chest, next to the sheriff.
    “You ain’t got no call to do this to us!” Amos was bawling, trying to grab Gray by the arm. Gray shook him off with no more effort than if he’d been a pesky little dog. “You can’tthrow us out in the middle of the night! What about my children, my poor little retarded boy? Ain’t you got no feelin’ at all, treatin’ a helpless child like that?”
    “I