Free Whisper in the Dark by Joseph Bruchac Page A

for that person in your mind the right way, and then you hear a voice calling your name.
    “Maddy.”
    Mr. Patel leaned the whole top half of his slender body out of the window of his cab and waved at me with both hands as he called my name a second time. In the five years I’ve known Mr. Patel, ever since he came here from Bombay, I’ve never seen him completely outside of his taxicab. I’ve never even seen him open his driver’s-side door. It’s not like he can’t walk. It is just that he prefers doing the most amazing contortions through his window to actually opening the door and getting out. I remember one day when he slid out his window with the boneless ease of an acrobat to open the back door and then help me wrestle a big box into the back-seat. It was only later that I realized, while thinkingback on it, that he had done it with one leg on the street and the other still inside the taxi. I’ve heard, though it may not be true, that he is a yoga teacher in his spare time.
    “Come on, you two,” Mr. Patel said, gesturing toward the back door of his cab with hands as fluid as those of a temple dancer. “Your humble chariot awaits you.”
    I had to smile. “Let’s go,” I said, poking Roger in the side to get him moving. He was sitting there as if hypnotized.
    “Maddy,” Roger whispered to me. “Is it safe to ride with this guy again? You didn’t see how he just drove up here. He was steering with his bare feet and his hands behind his head.”
    “It’s okay. I think he’s the safest driver in Providence. He even uses turn signals.”
    Roger got up. “All right then,” he said.
    The turn signals remark, which was true, had made an impression on him. Roger had been back in Rogue Island long enough to become fully aware of another of the idiosyncrasies of our peculiar little state. Almost nobody ever uses their turn signals. There is even a famous cartoon I have seenthat shows a Rhode Island used-car salesman with a customer. “And the turn signals on this are just as good as new,” the caption reads. Rhode Islanders roar when they see the cartoon, but out-of-staters just shake their heads in confusion.
    Mr. Patel reached his long arm back to shut the door after us, then spun around to face us. “So, so, so,” he said, “it is good to see you so soon again. How is your Bootsie?”
    For a few seconds, I’d forgotten about the awful things that had happened or seemed about to happen. But his question brought it all back, and it showed on my face.
    “Oh,” he said, “I am sorry. The news is bad?”
    “No,” I said quickly. “Bootsie is fine. Dr. Fox is going to keep her for a couple of days.”
    “Ah, ah,” Mr. Patel said. “Wonderful.” He flicked his turn signal, looked to his left, and then pulled out from the curb. “Library?”
    “Yes, that’s where we’re going.”
    Mr. Patel pulled up smoothly to the light, looked both ways, flipped his right turn signal, and eased the cab around the corner. I looked over at Roger and he nodded back at me. I hadn’t been exaggerating abouteither Mr. Patel’s driving or his use of turn signals.
    “At last some good news about this attacking of dogs and domestic animals,” Mr. Patel said. “Now if they would only catch the miscreant. But such disturbed persons are often hard to apprehend. If indeed this one is disturbed and not following some darker purpose. In some ways it puts me in mind of a Thug, one of those awful people we used to have in India who killed and stole for the goddess Kali as a part of their religious practices. But then”—Mr. Patel flicked his left turn signal and eased his way into downtown Providence—“they murdered their human victims by strangling with a silken cord, not by cutting off heads.”
    A shiver ran down my back. “Excuse me,” I said, “did you say cutting off heads?”
    “Oh my, yes,” Mr. Patel said. “Did I not mention it before? All of the other unfortunate animals that were attacked were