Suddenly Andy began to grunt, and Bobby looked at him in time to notice white stuff shooting out of his pee-spout.
‘Winner!’ he shouted.
Bobby could think of little else for the rest of that day, but it was not what he had seen that most occupied his thoughts, as much as what he had not.
Those pictures.
There had been a thrill about seeing the other boys’ pee-spouts, but he had realised in those few moments that his curiosity about women’s bodies was even greater. The thought that there were women who would take their clothes off and allow themselves to be photographed might normally have appalled him, but that day it seemed the most exciting idea in the world. The blood rushed around his system all the faster, its noise in his head, and the voices that reminded him of what God considered sinful seemed drowned out by it.
When he got home, Bobby went to his room and unpacked his schoolbag, getting his homework books out. As he reached for his history textbook, he felt some loose sheets of paper on top and pulled them out first. He looked at his hand, and with a racing pulse saw that he was holding Andy’s dad’s pictures. Then he remembered that Andy and Jake had been called out of class that afternoon because the principal heard they were smoking cigarettes behind the school kitchen. They must have sneaked the pictures into his bag after PT and been planning to ‘discover’ them on him, but they’d been kept out of class until home-time.
Mom called him downstairs for dinner, and he stuffed them back inside the bag before going to the kitchen.
The nervous thrill returned, except a dozen times as strong. The pictures were in his bag, in his bedroom. He could look at them. He could see what he so burningly wanted to see. And he knew he would look at them, too. He could hear the other voice, the one that told him God forbade it, and he knew inside, quite definitely, that he was going to ignore it. Somewhere else he knew he’d feel guilty later, knew he’d regret it, knew he’d be punished, but he also knew nothing was going to stop him. It was as if he was possessed. He wasn’t just going to look at the pictures, either. He knew he was finally going to look at himself too, and to touch himself, the way Andy and Jake and Johnny had done.
He did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, before getting on with his homework. Then he waited, as the seconds ticked slowly by, for his mom to go to bed. He heard her click her light out, and almost immediately his pee-spout hardened as he knew his fulfilment was imminent. He waited as long as he could in his bed for when he thought she must be asleep. Eventually he could wait no more, and took the pictures from the bag, sticking them under his pillow. With an ever-quickening heart he pulled his underpants away from his pee-spout and stared at it as it bobbed free in front of him. He cupped the balls beneath, lifting them up and examining them, then moved his hand to the pulsing thing between his legs and began stroking it the way he had seen that day.
He pulled the pictures out on top of the blankets where he could see them better.
His mom burst through the door as the white stuff shot out.
Bobby remembered her grabbing hold of his old replica Winchester by the bed, with its heavy metal barrel and sturdy wooden shoulder-stock. The first blow bust his nose as he grabbed at the pictures to hide them. The next one came down somewhere on the back of his head. He fell to the floor from his bed and covered his head with his arms. His mom smashed the gun into his ribs, lifting it above her head and swinging it down with all her strength, shrieking and yelling at him as she did so.
And she wouldn’t stop.
The weighty hardwood stock bore into him again and again, into his arms and hands, his ribs, his back. He remembered his vision going swimmy, and somewhere inside the knowledge that he had to get away, he had to stop the blows.
His mom raised the rifle above her head with both hands once more, and that was when he summoned up whatever strength he had left to spring up and run for the door. She moved into his path and he barrelled into her, the pair of them bashing against the open door and rolling into the hallway. He remembered her rolling over him at the top of the stairs and then she wasn’t there any more. When he looked down the staircase, he saw her lying at the bottom. Her nightdress was pulled up to her waist and she wasn’t moving.
‘I killed her, Nathan,’ Luther told him, almost in a whisper. ‘There was no intruder that night, Uncle. It was me. I killed my mom. I murdered her.’
Then Nathan held him and started crying too.
‘I’m sorry, Luther,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I killed her. I should be in jail. And I’ll go to hell.’
‘You won’t go to hell, Luther,’ Nathan whispered. ‘You didn’t mean it. It was an accident.’
‘But I will. I still killed her. And maybe deep down I did mean it. I killed my mom. It’s the worst sin. The Fifth Commandment.’
Nathan took both of Luther’s hands, holding them tight, and looked deep into his eyes.
‘You won’t go to hell, Luther. Listen to me. You’re right – the Fifth Commandment is the worst one to break. But sometimes . . . sometimes . . .’
He swallowed, then squeezed Luther’s hands again.
‘You were protecting yourself, son. Your mom was a good woman, Luther, a good, good woman. Things were hard on her. She didn’t mean to hurt you – she loved you, loved you more than anything. But she did hurt you. She lost control of herself. She needed help and, God forgive me, I wasn’t there for either of you. She lost control and . . . and she would have killed you. And then look where we’d be. You’d be dead, and she’d be a murderer, condemned to bum for ever, and she didn’t deserve that. You saved her from that, Luther. You saved your mom’s eternal soul.’
‘But now I’m a murderer.’
‘No you’re not, son. You did what was right. God sees that. Sometimes the rules ain’t so straightforward, and this was one of those times. You saved your mom from what she would have done, what she would have become. And more than that, you saved your own life, and what a life that’s going to be. You’ve a gift, Luther, a real gift. A gift for teaching God’s word. You’re already more of a preacher than I’ll ever be and you’re still a boy. You’ve the gifts to spread God’s word further and save more souls than any preacher this land has known. But if you hadn’t done what you did, then you’d never have got the chance to use those gifts, and those souls would never be saved.
‘The Lord said Thou Shalt Not Kill. But sometimes it ain’t that simple. Sometimes there’s more at stake than the life that would be taken.’
Blink. Blink. Blink.
Soon after that, Nathan asked Luther to address the congregation in place of himself at the regular eleven o’clock service, and this was to become a regular feature, second Sunday of every month. Nathan noticed and approved of how much care Luther took about his appearance before these guest sermons – his hair, his clothes and such – and one day he gave Luther the money to buy a really good new suit.
‘You’re starting to look more like a businessman than a preacher,’ he remarked when he saw Luther’s dapper purchase.
‘Preaching is a business, Uncle,’ he replied. ‘It’s God’s business, and God’s businessmen should look as smart as any other.’
Nathan had looked the same to Luther as long as he could remember: kind of old, but in an energetic and approachably eccentric way. He’d always worn the same sort of shirts and pants, always had that thick shock of white hair flowing backwards over his head and down to his neck. He looked like a frontier preacher, mellowed by years but still able to crank up the furnace when he felt the occasion demanded it. But Luther knew that all Nathan’s frontiers had been crossed a while back, and suspected Nathan knew it too. His uncle knew a different challenge was looming on the frontiers of a changing America, and it would take a man of the new generation to meet it.
Which was why Luther had no difficulty recruiting Nathan’s influence to borrow Pete Arthur’s radio transmitter in the winter of ’61.
There had been storms for w
eeks, winds and rains with a ferocity few could remember in that part of the state, and a lot of the people – especially the older folks – who lived out of town were finding it tough to get into Bleachfield for worship on a Sunday. Luther knew that Pete Arthur, who ran the hardware store, had been a radio operator during the war and still owned a transmitter (although reports differed as to whether it was a damaged one he’d been allowed to hold on to and had subsequently repaired, or whether the US Marines just didn’t realise they were one radio short the day after Pete Arthur was demobbed). Luther suggested to Uncle Nathan that they could broadcast a Sunday message for folks who couldn’t make it to church: all they’d need to do was tune their Marconis and listen in.
Nathan made one phone call, and the very next day Pete drove over with his transmitter wrapped in tarpaulin in the back of his Dodge. Pete helped them set up the equipment in Nathan’s study, and relayed it to a signal booster he had rigged on the church steeple.
Nathan phoned the folks who’d been having difficulty reaching Bleachfield in the bad weather, but Luther went a little further. He passed out flyers at school and got storekeepers to place them in their windows, so that word got round to everybody about the impending broadcasts.
Luther selected an appropriate gospel reading and wrote a homily for Nathan about the need to spread God’s Word far and wide with the new tools of communication He had given mankind. But when the Sunday evening came, Nathan froze. They were both sitting in the study after dinner, the Bible and the homily on the table in front of the microphone, the minutes ticking down until their announced broadcast time.
‘I can’t do it,’ Nathan said, shaking his head, his hands trembling.
‘Of course you can, Uncle,’ Luther told him. ‘You’ve been preaching God’s Word to the people of this town for years, every Sunday. Just close your eyes and pretend you’re in your pulpit downstairs, and they’re all assembled before you, with Miss Kent finishing off the hymn on the organ.’
‘Okay,’ he said, closing his eyes and nodding. ‘Okay.’
‘It’s your voice they need to hear, Uncle.’
Nathan took a deep breath and began introducing the broadcast, nervous and unsure, his voice lacking all of its familiar character and authority. His delivery improved a little when he started reading aloud from the Bible, God’s power no doubt flowing into him through His divine words, but he still didn’t sound himself. He concluded his reading and reached for the sermon Luther had written, his hand shaking as he grasped the sheets of paper. Then he thrust them into Luther’s lap and leaned back towards the microphone.
‘I would now like to welcome my nephew Luther St John, a fine young man you all know very well, to continue our first radio service with some thoughts he has written especially for the occasion.’
He looked imploringly at Luther and gestured him to pull his chair closer to the table. Luther sat up straight, cleared his throat and took a quick gulp from a glass of water.
‘Good evening ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters,’ he began.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
II
mere anarchy
Suffering will beget suffering.
Sacrifice will beget sacrifice.
Billy Franks
eleven
When Larry woke up that morning he found that the bedroom TV was still on, he and Sophie having fallen asleep watching it the night before. It was tuned to HBO. Bill Murray was reaching across a double bed to find that Andie MacDowell was no longer there, Sonny, Cher and two DJs telling him once again that it was Groundhog Day. Larry was doing the same as Bill, Sophie unusually having gotten up before him. It was one of Larry’s favourite movies, and each time he watched it he could never help but wonder how he’d cope with living the same day over and over again. Pretty good, he figured, long as it wasn’t the day his son died.
He didn’t know it yet, but the next twenty-four hours weren’t likely to get his nomination either.
Larry looked at the clock. It was six thirty. The alarm hadn’t gone off yet, so it must have been the noise of the TV that woke him. Sophie didn’t normally rise for another hour, but she wasn’t beside him, and the sheets were too cool for her just to have got up to pee.
Christ, he hoped she wasn’t sick. He thought of last night’s take-out shrimp tempura, of which he had eaten heartily too. Sophie always brought bad food up the next morning, but Larry’s system was less alert. If she was in there chucking her guts up, that meant he’d be running to the can all day until his ass felt like it had been in a Tabasco bidet.
He got up and pulled some shorts on, enjoying the commingled ache and pleasure of a quick stretch, then walked out towards the stairs, where he saw that the bathroom door was open. He was about to go downstairs and look for Sophie in the kitchen when he heard the sniff.
‘Ah, shit,’ he said softly to himself.
He opened the door to David’s room slowly and gently, cushioning his barefoot steps as he entered. Sophie was sitting on the rug in her nightdress, her knees up against her chest, her arms around her thighs and shins, her head slouched against one leg, eyes wide with dried tears and tiredness. She’d have been there for hours, he knew. She was rocking slightly, staring into nothing, and hadn’t looked up when he came through the door. He might have entered the room, but he wasn’t in yet, not where she was.
Between both hands she clutched a doll, a plastic action figure in a green-and-white-hooped soccer kit, that had been David’s favourite. Their friend Jack had sent it to David ‘on the express understanding that he treats it extremely badly and with very little care for its condition’. Jack’s note said the doll’s name was Paranoid Tim. David had done his imaginative best to meet the conditions and to justify the moniker, but the doll had proven stubbornly indestructible.
Dolls don’t get meningitis.
Sophie had done this a few times, but not for a couple of months now. She went in there in the dark and stayed until morning. Larry knelt down on the floor behind her and placed his hands softly on her shoulders. She kept rocking. He moved forward until the back of her head touched his chest, and pulled his arms around hers. She rocked against him some more, then gradually leaned back into him and let him hold her, her arms falling away from her knees.
Sophie wasn’t selfish in her grief; Larry was grateful for that. He couldn’t have handled it if she shut him out, like it was something he couldn’t understand. He did understand. David was his son too. But reciprocally neither did Larry try to intervene or coax her out of it, like it was a habit that needed to be broken or an ailment that could be cured. Sophie wasn’t the only one to be found in there in the darkness some nights, picking up toys and clothes and crying silently. She needed her grief, and so did he. Sad-smiling memories might come in time, but right then the pain of missing gave its own strange comfort, like it was the only emotion that rendered enough of David’s presence to feel him again. Widow. Orphan. There wasn’t even a word for this.
It had been the same every time. Larry didn’t talk to her, just moved in behind her and touched her until he was in there with her and she knew he hadn’t come to drag her out. He’d crouch there with her until she was ready to leave. Sometimes it would only be a few minutes. On a few occasions it had been nearer two hours.
This was the first time since he started back at work, at the new precinct. The routine of getting up and going out to meet other responsibilities had been a distraction, something else to occupy his mind, giving him a break from thinking about their pain and loss. However, finding Sophie in there once more made him realise the wounds hadn’t healed much while he’d been looking the other way.
Holding her on the floor again, crying for their son again, it brought back the feeling that nothing else mattered, but he knew that that soothed and repaired little either. Everything else mattered. Otherwise they might as well end it all together right here on this rug with his service revolver.
Everything else mattered. He loved his wi
fe and she loved him, and he wanted so much for there to be a future beyond that open bedroom door. They deserved a future.
‘Sorry baby,’ Sophie said quietly.
‘Shhh,’ he told her, stroking her hair. ‘We’re gonna make it. We’re gonna make it.’
When he came out of the shower Sophie handed him a coffee, which he placed on the bedside table as he got dressed. She kissed him and patted his chest, then went into the bathroom herself. Larry swallowed down the espresso and pulled on a shirt and pants, strapping on his holster as he went out into the hallway where he could hear the splash of the shower through the bathroom’s open door.
‘Honey, I gotta run,’ he said. ‘Expectin’ a prelim call from Forensics this morning bright and early, so I better be there. Gotta call Maria Arazon too. You be okay?’
‘Sure, sure,’ she called. ‘I’ll be all right. You have a good one, you hear? Maybe you’ll catch a break and there won’t be a bomb hoax at the Pacific Vista today.’
‘Yeah, well, that would be nice.’
He grabbed his jacket from the rack at the front door and went out to his car.
She said she’d meet him on the roof, the enduringly unpopular elevated swimming-pool being both scenic and private. In fact, as Steff learned in conversation with one of the hotel staff, just about the only time people went up there was to do shoots, usually swimwear stuff for fashion mags. Most of the models drew the line at taking a dip, however, not without a new clause in the contract. Anyone who actually fancied a swim went to the Beachview pool downstairs.
Steff stood by the rail and looked out to sea, the bright morning sun rendering all the colours sharp and vivid. The Pacific looked calm and inviting, its surface sparkling in a melody of blues to bely the fact that you’d need asbestos boots to paddle in its toxic waters. He could see the vessel hired by Moonstar leaving its widening wake as it headed out to sea, full of chirping execs in designer shorts, all dressed down for their day off. The guests were welcomed aboard by two leggy blondes in vaguely maritime outfits, evidencing more of the navel than the naval, probably hired by Moonstar along with the boat. Before it left Steff had glanced at his watch and told himself he wasn’t looking down at the hotel’s pier for Madeleine Witherson, wasn’t half expecting to see her climb that gangplank and be kissed hello by lots of shiny movie people.
Not the End of the World Page 21
