Night of the Ice Storm

by Stout, David;

  “… still don’t know what happened …”

  “… probably never know why …”

  “… don’t care what they say. He was a good man …”

  “I’m really sorry,” Marlee said. What else could she say? Or want to say?

  Ed’s son, meanwhile, was standing self-consciously, just outside the orbit of his mother, Olga, who did not think to rein him in for an introduction. That was okay with Marlee: despite her pity for him, she wasn’t eager to have a brittle exchange with an awkward teenage boy.

  Marlee extricated herself from the first knot of people and slid over to the second.

  “My name is Marlee West. I worked with Ed at the Gazette.”

  “Hi! I’m Gail, Ed’s ex-wife. Jeez, I love your column.”

  “Thank you.”

  It was clear to Marlee why Ed Sperl had left Olga for Gail. The second wife was voluptuous, though far slimmer than Olga, and sensual.

  “Damn, he was a pip, God rest his soul,” Gail said. “Even after we split, we was good friends. God, he loved life so. That’s why I can’t figure …” Gail’s eyes welled with tears, and she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Marlee said.

  She backed away from Gail, turned toward the coffin, and took a step forward. She had already decided not to kneel at the prayer rail, so she just bowed her head slightly as she studied the waxlike figure that had been Ed Sperl. The funeral home had done a good job of concealing the head wound, she thought.

  Marlee prayed:

  Hi, Ed. I don’t know if you can hear me, or how much good I’m doing standing here. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but … but …

  Ed, a party was always a little more lively when you were around. Hey, don’t I know it. You were at my party not all that long ago, and I remember you drank your share. More than your share, in fact, but the younger reporters got a kick out of you. Thanks for coming, Ed. And it’s okay, that dumb remark you made about gay people.

  I’m trying not to be a hypocrite, Ed. It’s not that we were ever so super close or anything. But you know that. Still, it bothered me a lot—a knife in my heart, Ed, really—when Carol Berman called me the other day and asked me, all breathless, if I’d heard …

  Ed, I’m sorry you didn’t live a longer life. I hope the life you did live suited you all right. Hey, just the fact that you aren’t here anymore, and that I feel bad about it as I stand here, that means your life counted for something. Counted for a lot, maybe. To some people, I’m sure it did. Am I saying that right?

  Ed, that’s all I can say. Except I wish you hadn’t died and … and …

  Good luck and so long, Ed.

  Marlee turned away and found herself looking at Will Shafer. She smiled and felt her lip catching.

  “How’s Karen?” Marlee said.

  “Fine. Just fine. She stopped in earlier. Just briefly. Had to take the kids …”

  Marlee nodded without really listening to Will Shafer. She did not like being in the presence of death. But she was curious. “Can we talk for a minute?”

  “Sure thing,” Will Shafer said.

  Marlee thought Will had just put on his business-at-the-office face, one of his several uncomfortable faces. She followed him as he tiptoed past the flower arrangements (the largest by far was from the Police Benevolent Association, with those from the Gazette and the Newspaper Guild second and third) into an adjoining room lined with sofas and chairs.

  Will seemed to be aiming for a sofa close to the door to the coffin room, but Marlee wanted them to be alone, so she walked to a corner as far away as she could get from the mourners.

  She and Shafer sat in chairs, facing each other at right angles.

  “Relax, Will. I’m not going to ask for a raise.”

  The executive editor chuckled, nervously. No good, Marlee thought. He’s super tight-ass today. He’d rather be anyplace but here, because everyone knew his dislike for Ed, and Will can’t separate himself enough emotionally. I’ve got my own problems.

  “The obit for Ed was awfully nice,” Marlee said.

  “Flattering even. Practically dictated by the publisher’s office.”

  “I don’t know what to make of the gossip I hear. Can you tell me, Will?”

  Will Shafer frowned gravely. “What I know is kind of sparse, Marlee. State trooper found him in his car the other morning, early. Car was behind a Dumpster in the rear of a tavern. Little roadhouse way down near Horning. Shot in the head. His gun was on the seat.”

  “And there’s no doubt it was his gun?”

  “Oh, no, none. I knew he carried one. He had a permit.”

  “So they’re certain it was a suicide?”

  Will shrugged. “I don’t know if they’ve made it official yet, but sure, that’s what the police think.”

  “No note?”

  Shafer shook his head no.

  “And what was he doing way over near Horning?”

  “Who knows? It’s a pretty drive, I can tell you that. Well, you know. And we both know Ed spread himself around pretty good when it came to taverns and women.”

  “But why, I mean, why no note? And why drive all that way? It’s like …” Marlee didn’t finish her thought: that Ed Sperl might have been going to meet someone.

  Marlee thought Will Shafer looked uneasy. “You know,” he said, “it’s hard to predict with people who drink to excess. They’re apt to do most anything.”

  The Duke of Platitudes, Marlee thought as she looked at her editor. But in one sense he was right: Marlee had seen Ed Sperl drunk enough times for her to think it might have affected his mind.

  Something occurred to her. “What about the reunion? I bet Ed wasn’t finished writing the program.”

  “That’s right. I may have to do some of it myself. And the publisher wants me to write a little tribute to Ed.”

  “Oh, dear …” Marlee pitied Will Shafer in that moment. She knew he would have to rewrite it three or four times until it sounded as cloying as the publisher wanted it. God, was it worth it to be the editor?

  “So,” Will said, rising and looking back toward the coffin. “That’s about it. I really don’t know any more. You coming to the funeral?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, maybe. You?”

  Will chuckled, darkly. “I guess I’d better,” the executive editor said. “The publisher handled most of the arrangements because, you know, Ed’s two ex-wives couldn’t cope that well and so on. And he volunteered me to be a pallbearer.”

  “Oh.” Marlee was embarrassed for Will.

  “I guess I should go back in,” he said.

  Marlee put her hand comfortingly on his shoulder, and that seemed to stop him in his tracks. He half-turned to her.

  “You know, Marlee,” Will said, “people like Ed, they use up a lot of the goodwill that other people have. They just use it up. And then they wonder why—”

  That was it; Will bit off his thought and was gone without another word. Marlee thought he had come as close as he ever had to revealing his true feelings.

  Instead of going back into the room with the coffin, Marlee went through a door that led down a side set of stairs, toward the rest rooms. Instead of going to the bathroom, she used the main stairs to come back up into the main corridor. She saw a couple of people from the Gazette and managed to nod and smile. Then she fetched her coat and went out to the rain.

  The gravel of the cemetery path glistened, and Marlee walked slowly, so she wouldn’t twist an ankle. The breeze threatened to turn her umbrella inside out as it splashed rain in her face.

  In the end, she wasn’t sure why she had gone to the funeral. Not out of love for the deceased, certainly. Maybe she had gone because she hadn’t been in a church for a while.

  Oh, Marlee, don’t be silly. Hymns and prayers and candles will only take you so far. To heaven, maybe? No, I don’t want to think about that yet.

  There: maybe that was why she had come. Someday she would be lying in a metal box,
next to a gash in the earth, as Ed Sperl was now, and someone would be standing over her. If she was lucky, the words uttered next to her grave might ring clear and bright in the sunshine. She would like it if birds sang in the background.

  Or maybe the words would be tumbled in the wind, punctuated by the rain splattering on the tent.

  “ …the body of thy servant, Edmund Sperl, O Lord …”

  The priest was young—liberal and tolerant, Marlee figured from his brief, compassionate sermon. The kind of man who would have worn long hair and sideburns and been an antiwar protester in the days of Marlee’s long-ago youth. The priest had been in grade school then.

  The pallbearers had had a rough haul: a couple of times, carrying the coffin up a tiny rise, there had been a real danger that someone’s feet would slip in the mud. They had managed all right, as it turned out, and now they stood solemnly by the pit that would soon welcome the Lord’s servant, Ed Sperl.

  Will Shafer looked wet, miserable, and—what? Who could tell with him.… Lyle junior seemed to be trying consciously to keep his face blank, as if the emptiness of his expression would show how little he cared for the man whose body he had just borne. The other bearers were the brothers of Olga and a stranger Marlee didn’t recognize. Maybe a cop friend of Ed’s, she thought.

  Finally it was over, the flower petals tossed by Ed’s kin sticking to the glistening metal of the coffin. The people walked away from the grave, some more sad than others, going their separate ways.

  Marlee had tried to catch Will’s glance at the graveside, but he had kept his eyes to the ground. Did he feel too much like a hypocrite, and did he think the people from the Gazette would have contempt for him, just because he was a pallbearer and everyone knew he didn’t like Ed?

  Oh, Will, it’s all right, for crying out loud. Think of it as doing a dead man a favor. We understand.

  She saw Will heading toward his car, so much in a hurry that he left the gravel path for a shortcut across the slippery grass.

  “Will!” she called after him. But her call was lost in the sound of cars starting up, and in the same wind and rain that had tumbled the words of the priest.

  “Will!”

  Too late. She saw him get into a car—his own car, she realized. Ah, he had been so eager to get away from the funeral business that instead of riding back to the funeral home in the limo with the other pallbearers, he had had his wife pick him up.

  For such a tight-ass guy, Will could be such an odd duck. Especially when something was bothering him.

  Nineteen

  Will Shafer lay next to his sleeping wife. He was happy, more happy than he had been in a long time. The sex had been good tonight, for both of them. Yes, he was starting to understand what Dr. Hopkins had meant when he told him to relax and “let it happen.” This night he had, and it had worked.

  I love you, he whispered into the dark toward his sweetly snoring Karen. I do love you. God, it was good to have her home. It was so lonesome when she was gone, even for a couple of days.

  He could make out her snores over the air conditioner. Tears came into his eyes, and for a moment he was overwhelmed by a desire to put his arms around her shoulders and hug her and bury his face in her hair. But that would wake her, and she deserved to sleep.

  The feeling passed, and he propped up the pillow on the headboard, sitting up a little. He could see her shape in the dark. I love you, he whispered again.

  What had Dr. Hopkins said about the therapy? Like peeling away the skin of an onion. Strip away a layer and there’s another beneath and another and another, until—

  And Will remembered his reply: “It feels more like being skinned alive.”

  From down the hall he heard a soft cry, then a muffled moan, then innocent snoring. His son had had a nightmare, awakened for a moment, then realized where he was—safe in his own bed—and fallen happily back to sleep. How lucky he was.

  How lucky I am, Will Shafer thought. Thank you, God, if you’re listening.

  Now Will realized he was more wide-awake than he had been a few minutes before. At least if he lost sleep this night it would not be to anger and sorrow and … guilt.

  Will got up, put on his robe and slippers, tiptoed down the hall to the kitchen. He turned on the low light over the sink, poured a small glass of milk. Then he had another thought. He tiptoed into the dark dining room and took the bottle from the cabinet. Just the thing for the middle of the night: a glass of milk laced with brandy.

  He turned off the light over the sink, slid open the door to the deck, went outside. Light from the half moon shimmered on the water in the pool, and crickets sang contentedly in the grass. Any man could be happy with this, he thought as he sipped his drink.

  He had been spending a tremendous amount of energy suppressing a memory—that was what the doctor had told him. It was amnesia, of a sort, but the doctor had said that when he faced whatever it was, he would find that it had been there all along. Then his headaches (and some of his other problems) would probably stop.

  Will felt a headache coming on right now. He would still finish the milk and brandy; he needed to sleep.

  The crickets were so happy in the grass. Probably because I haven’t cut it in a while, Will thought. No, it hasn’t been all that long; it’s just grown so much in the rain. For a while there, it was raining every day, from the time Ed Sperl—

  He felt a throb of pain in his temples. No more brandy and milk. He went inside, poured the contents of the glass into the sink, went to the bathroom, and swallowed two aspirins and tiptoed back to bed.

  “What’s new, Will?” Dr. Hopkins puffed on his pipe and crossed his legs.

  “Nothing much.”

  Dr. Hopkins puffed and stared at him through the smoke. Waiting, Will thought.

  “Actually, that’s not quite true,” Will said. “Karen and I made it last night, and it was all right.”

  “Ah.” The doctor sucked on his pipe and nodded pleasantly. Still waiting. Finally, he said, “How is work, Will?”

  “Couldn’t be better.” Will laughed bitterly.

  “I’m glad.” Puff, puff. Smile. “But I have the feeling-correct me if I’m wrong—that you’re still not sharing everything with me.”

  “Oh? Really?”

  “Really. Do you want to share anything about last night, Will?”

  Will waited for the pain in his temples to subside. “We made it—nothing unusual—and it was … okay.”

  “Did you fantasize at all?”

  “Damn it. I knew you’d ask that. Yes.”

  “Ah. Was it …?”

  “Yes, yes. Okay? I fantasized about that lovely young creature in my office. Okay. Jesus, you’ll have me feeling like a junior high kid.”

  “That might not be all bad, Will. Do you care to tell me …”

  “I fantasized that I made this lovely young woman happy, which I probably couldn’t do in real life.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Don’t I? And that she, that she enjoyed being with me. Okay? Let’s go on to something else.”

  “You weren’t able to sleep afterward? Many people sleep quite well. What did you do?”

  “I got up and mixed a little brandy and milk and went out on the porch deck.”

  “And what did you think about?”

  “I thought … I looked at the moon, the way the light reflected on the kids’ pool, and I …”

  The doctor puffed, puffed. Finally he spoke, softly. “Listen to yourself, Will. You’re holding back. Tell me one thing you thought of on the porch deck. Just one.”

  “I … There were things I felt lucky about. Karen, the kids, the house. All of it. But there was something else. I was—” More suddenly than ever, the pain stabbed into his temples, like huge, strong fingers squeezing through the bone into the tissue beneath.

  Will closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, praying for the throbs to subside. When he opened his eyes, a paper cup full of water had materialized on Dr
. Hopkins’s desk. Next to it lay a tissue on which rested two aspirins. Will swallowed the aspirins gratefully and drank the water.

  “It’s powerful, Will. Whatever it is.”

  “Is it possible that I’m just going insane?”

  “I dislike that term, even when it’s used in a forensic sense. But no, I don’t think so. You’re blocking something, that’s for sure. I have a hunch you’re bumping right up close to it sometimes.”

  “Maybe it’s not just one thing.”

  “Ah. There’s an interesting thought, Will. Let’s talk—”

  “I was a pallbearer a few days ago.”

  “Really? Relative or close friend?”

  “Neither. I couldn’t stand the son of a bitch. God rest his soul.” Will laughed and laughed and laughed. Self-disgust contaminated his mirth, but he went on and on, tears flowing down his cheeks. He wiped his face with his handkerchief and saw that the doctor was studying him intently.

  “How did you wind up being a pallbearer for someone you dislike, Will?”

  “The usual way. Publisher thought it would be nice. The deceased worked at the paper.”

  “Well, then. We both know why it bothered you. It has to do with control of your own life. Remember how angry you were about getting stuck with the reunion planning? So now you’re forced, more or less, to carry the body of a man you disliked.”

  “No!” Will hissed with a sudden fury that flung spittle from his lips and startled the doctor as well as himself. “I didn’t dislike Ed Sperl. Okay? I hated him, more than I can possibly tell you. I hated the dirty cocksucker.”

  Will’s temples throbbed anew with pain so intense he thought he might vomit. His throat was sore from his hissing. He felt degraded by his outburst.

  “It’s all right, Will,” the doctor said gently. “You can say anything you want in here. That’s the rule.”

  Will Shafer nodded. His eyes were closed, not just against the pain but against scalding tears.

  “Was there something about this man’s death, Will? Something that bothered you more than it might have ordinarily?”

  “Maybe.” Will was trying not to cry, but it was no use. “He was shot. Down near Horning. Looked like a suicide.”