“Here we are,” she said. “This should help.” He thanked her and took the cup, sipping from it as though the act hurt him. She drank the coffee, watching. Finally she asked it. “Where’s your wife?”
His mouth wrinkled, and he didn’t answer immediately. “That’s why I was drinking tonight.”
“She … left?”
He nodded, grimacing. “Yes. Today.”
“I’m sorry.”
He tried to shrug. “It wasn’t like she didn’t warn me.” After a moment he added, “I shouldn’t have let her go.”
“Sometimes you have to let people go.”
“You sound like you know.”
She shook her head. “Just an observation.”
“No. You know.” He sipped more milk. “Do you want to know why she left me?”
“No. I’d rather know how you got like that.”
“Basically the same reasons,” he said with a grin. “Who I am and what I’ve done.”
“That’s a broad reason,” she said, smiling back. “Who we are and what we do are all the reasons any of us have for what happens to us.”
“Do you want me to pour out my life story, then? It’s not wholesome, or even particularly entertaining.”
“The not wholesome part I can believe—but not entertaining? From a man who gets abandoned and beat up on the same day? Now that has the stuff of tragedy in it.”
“No. Melodrama at best.”
“I like a good melodrama.”
“I really don’t think I’m up to it just now.”
She got to her feet nervously, remembering his injuries. “I’m sorry. You must be exhausted.”
“Yeah. I’m tired.” He set down the milk and tried to rise, but slumped back into the sofa.
“Let me help,” she said, slipping an arm around him. Together they got to the bedroom, and Jim collapsed across the quilted spread. She started to tug off his wet shoes when he stopped her.
“Listen,” he said sleepily, “unless you’re a nurse, I can undress myself, okay?”
She didn’t believe him. He seemed incapable of fluffing up a pillow. “I am a nurse,” she lied.
“Come on …”
“No, really, at Lansford General. I was visiting relatives today in Merridale.”
She wasn’t sure if he believed her, but after a moment he said, “All right, all right, I can use the help.… Will you bill me?”
“The coffee’s payment enough.”
With her help, he stripped to his underwear, and she pulled the covers over him. He looked like a little boy with only his head sticking out from beneath the sheet, and she could not help touching his forehead, pushing his fair hair back gently.
“Thanks,” he murmured, almost asleep. She stepped to the door and turned out the light. “You’re not a nurse,” his voice said from the darkness. “When you patched me up, you said you’d never done it before.”
“Oh … I …”
“Never mind. You may be a liar, but you’re a beautiful one.” With the next words his voice drifted into silence. “I’m glad you were there.” Only soft breathing followed.
She closed the door and walked back into the living room, sat, finished her coffee. When it was gone, she did not leave.
She was there when he woke up in the morning.
CHAPTER 19
“Hello?”
“Hi, Kim.”
“Dave!”
“Surprised to hear from me?”
“Why haven’t you called me?”
“I did. You’re never in.”
“Jesus, I’m always in.”
“That’s not what Mr. and Mrs. Davison say when I call.”
“Those bastards! I’m in all the time.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Dad doesn’t want me to. He’s crazy about this Merridale thing. He doesn’t want anything to do with the town, and he doesn’t want me seeing anybody who lives there.”
“Holy shit.”
“He’s closing on a house in Lansford next week.”
“Kim, I’m not gonna let you go like this. I love you.”
“And I love you. So what are we gonna do?”
“Hello, Thornton here.”
“Mr. Thornton, this is Marie Snyder.”
“Yes. Hello.”
“Mr. Thornton, I was thinking that we should have a little chat.”
“A chat.”
“Yes. You know, I have a bit of a reputation for being gossipy. I don’t know if you realize that.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I’m afraid you’re just being polite.… Are you all right? I can hardly hear you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Oh, that’s better. I guess you just weren’t speaking up. Anyways, I put two and two together out of something that happened today, and I was just wondering if maybe you’d like to know how I got four?”
“You think you can really do it, Kim?”
“Well, if you won’t …”
“I can’t. He watches the odometer like a hawk. Forty thousand miles on the damn thing and he still figures his mileage.”
“Mom could put thirty miles on it as easy as anything. He’d never know.”
“But without them hearing you?”
“I’ll let it drift out onto the road.”
“That’s an interesting theory, Mrs. Snyder.”
“I just thought you might like to hear it, Mr. Thornton.”
“Yes. Well.”
“I was thinking that since I found it so interesting, other folks might find it interesting too.”
“Uh … I don’t know if they would. Maybe you could keep it a secret.”
“Some secrets are valuable, Mr. Thornton. How valuable do you think this one is?”
“Oh, sure, I can sneak out okay.”
“I’ll meet you on the corner of Park and Spruce, then. Around twelve-thirty.”
“That’s good, good. I love you, Kim.”
“I love you, Dave.”
“Look, that’s just unreasonable. I mean, there may be nothing to this.”
“Maybe not, Mr. Thornton. Only you know for sure. And only you know what it’s worth to you.”
“It’s too much, dammit!”
“All right, then—I’ll have to hang up. I have some other calls to make. Big calls. Important ones.”
“Wait! Do you know who you’re dealing with here?”
“You don’t frighten me, Mr. Thornton.”
“Not me, not me … bigger interests.”
“I’m not scared of them either. Besides, I don’t think you’d want them to know that you were so stupid as to let a nosy old woman know what was going on, now would you?”
“I … no …”
“Then why don’t you come to the newsstand Sunday afternoon. I close at one, so come after that. That gives you until tomorrow to find the money. All right?”
“I’ll see you Saturday night.”
“I’ll see you Sunday afternoon.”
CHAPTER 20
The rage had not left him.
If only, he thought, Callendar had responded in some other way, gotten angry and tried to fight back, or had tried to get away, crawling and staggering on hands and knees. But he had gotten to his feet, over and over again, like the Lamb of God ready to taste death as many times as was necessary to take away the sins of …
Whose sins? Surely not the world’s. His own, then? And Brad’s too? But Brad would not let him. If he was not capable of paying for his own sins, then he would bear them alone as well, even if it brought the agony he now felt. Had Callendar done it on purpose? Had he let him hit him repeatedly because he knew that only in that way would Brad find no release in the beating?
He suspected, but he didn’t know. All he knew was that the rage was still there, eating inside him, not with the slow stealth of a cancer, but with the rapid, careless ravening of a weasel gnawing at his entrails, or the constant alimentary torment that drives on the s
hark to his incessant feeding until only death gives him rest.
Shivering from the cold, he looked through the windshield at the sky. The snow had stopped, and the stars shone crisply out of the stark blackness. He turned on the ignition and ran the heater once more until the car was warm.
Three o’clock. Three o’clock on a Saturday morning in the town of the dead. He gripped the steering wheel and pulled out into the street, headed for the Anchor. Threw him out. They threw him out like a dog, and for what? A little noise. Well, he’d give them more noise, and maybe after that, maybe he could rest.
Getting inside was easy. There were no alarms, no watchdogs, and even the lights around the outside were dim. After all, there were no burglaries in Merridale, were there? He broke a pane of glass with a gloved fist, reached through, and opened the door.
The lighted Budweiser sign gave the bar its only illumination, but it was enough for Brad, who moved slowly and leisurely, trying to decide what to do first. One by one, he took the bottles from the bar, unscrewed the caps and poured the contents over the bar, on the floor, around the padded seats. Cutty Sark, Drambuie, anisette, lime vodka, Beefeater, each and every one mixed in an ultimate cocktail that flowed into every corner, while hundreds of drips and trickles made the room sound like some rain forest, thick with verdant moisture. It was a quiet, gentle sound, which, combined with the heady odor that suffused the air, made Brad feel magically, dreamily intoxicated.
He eyed the empty bottles he had left on the bar, but dismissed the thought of breaking them. He was now in too tranquil a mood for that. So he turned to the beer taps, connected them, and one at a time drained them. The bubbling froth added a new, jubilant tone to the sea of alcohol that had turned the bar and its stools into islands, and the mixture began to cascade over the few steps to the restaurant below.
“Lovely,” Brad whispered, smiling, “lovely.”
He stepped to the Seeburg jukebox in the corner, plugged it in, and, his gloves still on, clumsily dug a quarter from his pocket. He pushed it into the slot, and the machine illuminatingly offered him three selections. “Something old,” he said, pushing D5, “Amazing Grace.”
“Something new.” Q7, Kim Cannes’s “Dying for a Living.”
“Borrowed and blue.” It took a while, but at last he found A4 “Shake,” performed by the Blues Brothers.
The machine engaged, gears ran, there was a soft pop, and the music started, but so low as to be nearly inaudible, Brad heard, barely,
Amazing grace,
How sweet the sound …
The words were intelligible only because he knew them from long ago, and he frowned, looking at the back of the machine for a volume control.
… that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost …
“Shit,” he said softly, running his fingers over the back of the jukebox.
But now am found …
“Dammit!” Only smooth metal, then ridges, rents …
Was blind but now I see …
“SHEE-YIT!” Pounding now on the back, drowning out the whispering rivulets of booze, the tiny, tinny guitar riff somewhere deep inside the yard-wide grille.
“You fuck fuck, fuck, fucker!” he brayed as he hugged the top of the machine and heaved outward, toppling it onto the floor with a wet, metallic smack. Something hissed and crackled, and the lights went out on the jukebox, in the Budweiser sign on the wall, pressing blackness on the room.
Brad froze, stunned into inaction. Then a primal fury at being blinded took over, and he swung about, fists smashing into whatever would yield—bottles, stools, tables that rocked and toppled, sending ashtrays, salt shakers, sugar bowls, skittering onto the booze-wet floor. A gurgling scream began to force itself from his throat, and he blundered through the room, the fishnet tangling in his outstretched fingers, falling from the pegs that held it to bind him for a terrifying minute before he struggled from beneath it. Then over and across the bar, bruising his thighs as the beer taps snapped from their stems; legs tangled in stools as he came off the other side, falling and landing on a box, feeling its rough wood, something to kick, to hit, to splinter, and he did, and suddenly, as the wood broke, there was no longer darkness.
There was light. Bright, radiant, blue light.
He had fallen onto and destroyed the packing case that had been nailed to the Anchor bar floor, the packing case that Emeric Jemey had told everyone hid an old man who had died so long ago that no one even remembered who he was. But Emeric Jemey had lied. It was not an old man.
It was a woman, young and not unattractive despite the deep patina of death that coated her features. She was on her back, legs spread wider than Brad would have believed possible, and he felt certain that whatever bound legs to hips in her was broken. Her vagina gaped roundly, as though some unseen cylinder dilated it, and her pelvis jutted upward, supported invisibly from beneath. There were scratches on her neck and large breasts, one of which seemed compressed, smaller than its companion, and as Brad looked closely he could see five round marks in the fatty tissue, and wondered if that were the hand of her killer, or of someone holding her down, or of someone who’d already had a dip and just wanted a quick feel to remember before he slunk home.
Because her face was peaceful, he thought at first that she hadn’t been forced. But the idea that she’d been willing didn’t fit the broken bones, the thin scratches. Passed out, then. Oh, yes, passed out near to closing, and the good bartender and the upright burghers of Merridale unable to pass up a pass-out, and who would know? But somebody got a little rough, and somebody got a little rougher, and before they knew it the good burghers were not only rapists, but killers.
Where did she lie now? he wondered. The bottom of the river? In some unknown grave in all the acres and acres of woods? It could have happened years ago; those who had done it might all be dead.
And anyway, what did it matter now?
The question was unanswerable, and he looked at the still, sad, closed eyes and stood up. “Love ya to death,” he said with an angry smile. “They loved ya to death.”
He looked around in the blue light at the ruin he had made of the Anchor, and decided to leave the woman exposed for them to find in the morning. He wondered how quick Emeric and Leo would be to call the police if they had to show them that. He left by the door he had come in, closing it gently behind him. A feeling of peace swept through him as he drove home, as though the shark were fed and happy at last. Yet it had not been perfect. The woman had made it bittersweet, for she had made him remember more than he had wished to.
It was 4:00 A.M. when Brad arrived back at his apartment. A light was on in the living room, but when he went into his and Christine’s bedroom, she was not there. The bed was made. Her purse was gone.
He opened the door of Wally’s room. The boy was, as usual, buried beneath the covers, looking not so much like a sleeping child as a pile of laundry before sorting. “Hey,” Brad said, but the boy did not stir. “Hey, Wally,” he called louder, and a muffled response came from beneath the blankets. Brad crossed to the bed and flipped back the covers.
The boy gave a startled gasp, and his eyes blinked open, though he remained curled fetally.
“Where’s your mother?”
“I … dunno,” he said sleepily.
“What do you mean you don’t know? You mean she just went out and left you alone?”
“I guess so.”
The boy looked fragile, vulnerable, and Brad felt a sudden surge of tenderness toward this child who was not his own. He pulled the covers up to Wally’s shoulders and sat on the bed next to him. “Did she say where she was going?”
“No.
“When did she leave?”
“After supper.”
“She didn’t put you to bed?”
“She said I go to bed when I’m sleepy. So I did.” He looked at Brad with a fearful resignation. “You mad?”
Brad sighed. “Not at you.” He put a hand on the boy’s head. �
�I don’t know if I’ve ever been mad at you.”
“You hit me. Sometimes.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“You mad at me then?”
“I’m mad, Wally. But not at you.”
“At Mommy?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes at myself.”
The boy frowned as though the concept was too foreign for comprehension.
“Sometimes,” Brad tried to explain, “big people get mad at themselves for things they do that they shouldn’t have, or maybe for things they didn’t do that they should have. But when you get mad at yourself, there isn’t much you can do. You can’t hurt yourself, so sometimes you hurt other people. Sometimes even people you love.”
“Do you love me?”
Brad stared expressionless at the boy. “As much,” he answered finally, “as anyone.”
Wally half smiled, not fully understanding, but content just the same.
“You go back to sleep now. I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“ ’S’okay. G’night.”
“Good night.” He closed the door and lay down in his own bedroom. Maybe he could do something with Wally tomorrow. Sledding perhaps. They could go to the five-and-ten and buy a sled, maybe one of those saucer ones. He wondered if they still made sleds like they did when he was a kid—Flexible Flyers, Snow Kings, how fast they went down Cherry Street, best street in town for sledding. A boy needed a sled.
A boy needed a father too.
He had never felt like a father to Wally. Even if he and Christine got married, which seemed more and more unlikely, he wondered if he could show the warmth toward the boy that he often felt but hardly ever expressed. Was it because Wally was not his own son, or did it go deeper than that? Had he, he mused, lost the capacity for love?
He glanced at the bedside clock, then closed his eyes. It was too late for questions.
CHAPTER 21
Pastor Craven’s sermon, delivered that Sunday morning two days before Christmas, was not one of his best. Christmas, to him, was a gentle time of birth and love, and try as he would, he could not relate that theme to the brooding reminders of death that littered the town. So he preached as though nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened in Merridale, of the promise of Christ’s birth and what it meant to man. The majority of the crowded congregation found it moving and refreshing in its utter ignorance of the phenomenon. But there were those who heard nothing, whose thoughts were purely and impurely of themselves, what they had seen, had done, and would still do.
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