She took the next exit. A sign stood at a crossroads on the flat land, pointing one way to Plain View and another to Maysvi?le. Farmhouses stood about, smoke rising from chimneys, acres of fields going on toward the far horizon. Mary kept driving, drowsy with loss of blood. On the other side of Plain View’s two streets and meager gathering of buildings, she pulled off onto a dirt road that twisted into an orchard of denuded apple trees. She cut the engine, and there she sat with Drummer cradled against her.
Her vision was fading, the world closing in on her. She was afraid of falling asleep because she might not awaken. She felt a pressure on her index finger; Drummer had grasped it, was holding it tightly. Darkness pulled at her, a seductive current. She folded her arms around the baby in a coil of protection. Sleep for just a little while, she thought. Maybe an hour or two, and then get back onto the interstate west. Just an hour or two, and she’d be all right.
Mary’s eyes closed. The baby’s fingers played with her Smiley Face button. Mary dreamed of Lord Jack sitting in a sunlit room talking to God about why he drowned in a bathtub in Paris.
On the interstate twelve miles west, Didi joined the backup of cars and trucks stopped by the wreckage. Laura was unconscious in the backseat, but every so often she gave a muffled, gasping moan that tore at Didi’s heart. The troopers and firemen were out in force, guiding the traffic onto the tire-scarred median around the wreck. A news-team van was there, minicams at work, and a helicopter buzzed overhead. “What happened?” Didi asked a fireman as she approached the wreckage at a crawl, and the man said, “Milk truck and car hit. Smokey went off the road, too.”
“You’re sure it was a car? It wasn’t a van?”
“Car,” he said. “Truck driver says some damn yuppie plowed right into him, must’ve been goin’ eighty.”
“A yuppie?”
“Yeah. One of them yuppie cars. Come on, I think you can get past now.” He waved her on through.
Didi negotiated the median. A wrecker was in the midst of the scorched metal, trying to pull part of a car free. The firemen were hosing down the pavement, and the air smelled of hot iron and clabbered milk.
She passed a tire lying in the brown grass. On its dented wheel cover was a circle cut into blue and white triangles, and the scarred letters BMW.
Didi looked away from it as if the sight had stung her. Then the Cutlass picked up speed and left the dead behind.
5
Doctor Didi
THE DARKNESS CAME.
The wind blew cold across the plains, and flurries of snow spat from the clouds. At the Liberty Motor Lodge six miles east of Iowa City, Laura lay in bed in Room 10 and alternately shivered and sweated beneath the sheet and coarse blanket. The TV was on, tuned to a family sitcom. Laura couldn’t focus on it, but she liked the sound of the voices. On the bedside table was the debris of her dinner: two plastic McDonald’s burger containers, an empty french fries pack, and a half-finished Coke. A plastic bag full of crushed ice lay at her side, useful when the pain in her hand got to be excruciating and she needed to numb it. Laura stared fixedly at the TV set, waiting for Didi to come back. Didi had been gone thirty minutes, hunting for a drugstore. They had agreed on what needed to be done, and she knew what was ahead for her.
Every so often she chewed her lower lip. It had gotten raw, but she kept chewing it. She could hear the whine of the wind outside, and once in a while she imagined she heard the sound of a baby crying in it. She had gotten up once to look outside, but the effort had so drained her that she couldn’t force herself to get up again. So she listened to the wind and the crying baby and she knew she was very, very close to the edge and it would not take much for her to open that door and go wandering in the hungry dark.
They had lost Mary Terror and David. That much was certain. Exactly how Van Diver had crashed into the milk tanker, Laura didn’t know, but Mary and David were gone. But Mary had been badly hurt, too, losing a lot of blood. She’d been weary—maybe even more weary than Laura— and she couldn’t have gotten very far. Where would she have stopped? Surely not a motel; not with blood all over her and her leg chewed up. Would she have just found a place to pull the van over and spend the night? No, because she’d have to run the engine all night or she and David would freeze to death. So that left one other possibility: that Mary had invited herself into somebody’s house. It wouldn’t be hard for her to do, not with the farmhouses spread hundreds of acres apart. How far west had Mary gotten before she’d decided to leave the interstate? Was she ahead of them, or behind them? It was impossible to know, but Laura did know one vital thing: Mary Terror’s destination. Wherever Mary was, however long she rested and let her wounds heal, she would sooner or later be back on the highway with David, heading for Freestone, California, and the memory of a lost hero.
And that, too, was Laura’s destination, even if she had to get there on her hands and knees. Minus one finger, with scar tissue toughening her heart. She was going to get David back, or die trying.
When Laura heard the key slide into the door’s lock, she thought she might be sick. But her food stayed down, and Didi came in with snowflakes in her red hair and a sack in her arms.
“Got the stuff,” Didi said as she closed the door against the cold and double-latched it. She had found not a drugstore but a K-Mart, and she’d bought them both gloves, woolen socks, fresh underwear, toothpaste, and toothbrushes as well as the other necessities. As Didi put the sack down, Laura realized Didi had gained about twenty pounds since she’d left the motel. Didi pulled off her sweater and revealed the weight gain: there were two more thick sweaters underneath the first one.
“My God,” Laura rasped. “You shoplifted.”
“I had to do it,” Didi said as she peeled another layer off. “We’ve only got about thirty-five dollars left.” She smiled, the lines deepening around her eyes. “Shoplifting isn’t what it used to be. They watch you like a hawk.”
“So how’d you do it without getting caught?”
“You give a kid in a Quiet Riot jacket a buck to knock over a display of skiwear, and then you come out of the dressing room, put your head down, and walk. It helps to be buying other items, too. That way you don’t go out past the guard, and those cashiers don’t give a crap.” She threw one of the sweaters on the bed beside Laura, who picked it up with her right hand.
“Inferior quality,” Laura decided. It was dark gray, banded with green stripes the color of puke. Didi’s new sweater was yellow with cardinals on the front. “Did prisoners sew these?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers. Neither can shoplifters.” But the fact was that she had been careful to choose the bulkiest knits she could find. The cold of Nebraska and Wyoming would make Iowa’s weather seem balmy. Didi continued to take items out of the sack. At last she came to the wooden tongue depressors, the gauze bandages, a small pair of scissors, a box of wide Band-Aids, and a bottle of iodine and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Didi swallowed hard, getting herself ready for what had to be done. This was going to be like trying to build a house with thumbtacks, but it was the best they could do. She looked at Laura and offered another smile, the woman’s face bleached with pain. “Doctor Didi’s come to call,” Didi said, and then she looked away before her smile cracked and betrayed her.
“Do your ear first.”
“What? That scratch? Just got skin, that’s all.” Her wounded ear, hidden beneath her hair, had crusted over. It hurt like hell, but Laura needed the attention. “Oh, I got this, too.” She took a bottle of Extra-Strength Excedrin from her pocket and set it aside. “Courtesy of my fast hands.” She wished it were industrial strength, because before this night was over they were both going to need some heavy drugs. “Sorry I couldn’t get you any liquor.”
“That’s all right. I’ll survive.”
“Yeah, I believe you will.” Didi went to the bathroom, wet a washrag, and brought it out for Laura. When the pain got really bad, Laura was going to need something to chew on. “You ready?”
“Ready.”
Didi got the tongue depressors out. A little wider than Popsicle sticks, they were. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s take a look.” She peeled the covers back from Laura’s hand.
Laura watched Didi’s face. She thought that Didi did a very good job of not flinching at the sight. Laura knew it was hideous. The mangled hand—hamburger hand, she thought—was burning hot, and every so often it throbbed with a pain so intense it sucked away Laura’s breath. The stub of the little finger was still drooling some watery blood, which had soaked into a towel underneath her hand and onto the sheet. The three other fingers and thumb were curved into claws.
“What’ll my manicurist say?” Laura asked.
“You should’ve soaked in Palmolive.”
Laura laughed, but it had a nervous edge. Didi sighed, wishing to God there was someone else who could do this. It could’ve been worse, though. The dogs could’ve gotten to Laura’s throat, or torn up her legs, or chewed into her other arm. Or killed the baby. Didi looked at the wedding band and engagement ring on the swollen finger. There was no way short of cutting them to get them off.
“The diamond,” Laura said. “Can you work it out of the setting?”
“I don’t know.” She touched the upraised diamond and found it was already loose, two of its six prongs broken.
“Try. I’ll hang on.”
“Why do you want the diamond out?”
“We’ve got only thirty-five dollars left,” Laura reminded her. “Have we got anything else to pawn but my diamond?”
They did not. Didi grasped Laura’s bruised wrist as gently as she could and went to work with the scissors, trying to pry the diamond out. Laura was braced for agony, but none came. “That finger’s dead,” she said. In a few minutes Didi had managed to loosen a third prong. The diamond jiggled around, but it still didn’t have quite enough room to be popped out. The fourth prong was tougher. “Hurry, okay?” Laura asked in a faint voice. After two or three more minutes, Didi got the fourth prong bent enough to slide a tip of the scissors blade under the diamond and lever it out. It popped free, and Didi held it in her palm. “Nice rock. What’d your husband pay for it?”
“Three thousand dollars.” Sweat sparkled on Laura’s face. “That was eight years ago.”
“Maybe we can get five hundred for it. An honest pawnbroker’s not going to touch an unmounted diamond without ownership papers.” She wrapped the diamond up in a Band-Aid and put it into her pocket. “Okay. Ready for the big job?”
“Yes. Let’s get it over with.”
Didi began by washing the hand with hydrogen peroxide. Bloody foam hissed up from the bite wounds, and Laura moaned and chewed on the washrag. Didi had to repeat the task twice more, until all the grit was washed away. Laura’s eyes were squeezed shut, tears trickling from the corners. Didi reached for the iodine. “Well,” she said, “this ought to sting just a little.” Laura pushed the rag between her teeth again, and Didi began the awful work.
There was a pain that Laura would always remember. She had been nine years old. She’d been riding her bike, flying hell-for-leather on a country road, when the tires had slipped out from under her on loose gravel. There had been bloody holes in her knees, her arms were raw, her elbows bleeding, her chin gashed. And the worst of it was that she’d been two miles from home. There was no one to hear her cry. No one to help her. So she got up, remounted that traitorous bike, and started pedaling again, because it was the only way. “Laura!” she remembered her mother screaming. “You’ve crippled yourself!”
No, the injury hadn’t been crippling. She had grown scabs and scars, but on that day she had begun to grow up.
This pain also taught a hard lesson. It was like sticking her hand into hot charcoals, dousing it with salty water, and then back into the coals again. She shivered, the sweat rising in beads from her pores. It was a mercy that ten seconds after Didi began the task, Laura lost consciousness. When she awakened, Didi had finished the application of disinfectant and was completing the splint on Laura’s ring finger, pulling it out straight and bandaging one of the sticks along Laura’s palm and finger. Then it was the middle finger’s turn.
When Didi touched it, Laura winced. “Sorry,” Didi said. “There’s no other way.”
She began to pull the finger out straight, and Laura screamed behind the washrag.
Again Laura passed out, which was a blessing because Didi could do the work quickly, getting the splint into place and securing it with Band-Aids. She had just finished the index finger when Laura’s eyelids fluttered. Laura spat the rag out, her face yellowish-white. “Sick,” she gasped, and Didi rushed to get a trash can up to Laura’s mouth.
The ordeal wasn’t yet over. Didi splinted the thumb, another exercise in torment, and wrapped the hand with gauze bandages, the pressure again making Laura groan and sweat. “You don’t want to go through life with a claw, do you?” Didi asked as she cut the gauze and began a new layer. Laura breathed like a slow bellows, her eyes vacant and clouded with pain. “Almost got it wrapped up,” Didi said. “That’s supposed to be funny.” It wasn’t, really. In the morning the bandages would have to be changed, the wounds cleansed again, and they both knew it.
“Lucy,” Laura whispered as Didi finished the wrapping.
“What? Lucy who?”
“Lucy and Ethel.” She swallowed, her throat parched. “When they were…wrapping the candies…and the candies started coming faster and faster off the conveyor belt. Did you see that one?”
“Oh, yeah! It’s a scream!”
“Good show,” Laura said. Her hand was a seething mass of fire and anguish, but the healing process had begun. “They don’t…make ’em like that anymore.”
“I liked the one where Lucy was in Las Vegas and she had to walk down a staircase with that big headdress on. Remember? And the one where she puts too much yeast in the bread and it shoots out of the oven like a freight train. Those were great.” She cut the gauze and taped it down with a couple of Band-Aids. “It always killed me when Lucy tried to get a part in one of Ricky’s shows, and he blew up at her in Spanish.” Didi rested Laura’s bandaged hand against the ice pack. “I watched those with my mom and dad. We had a TV with a round screen, and the damned thing was always shorting out. I remember my dad on his knees trying to fix the set, and he said, ‘Didi, the guy who can figure out how to keep these things working is going to make a lot of money.’”
“Why?” Laura asked weakly.
“Why what?”
“Why did you join the Storm Front?”
Didi rolled the remainder of the gauze up and closed the box of Band-Aids. She put the scissors and the other items atop the room’s cheap dresser. Beyond the window, Didi could hear the high waspish whine of the freezing wind. “What do you expect me to say?” Didi finally asked when she saw Laura still watching her. “That I was a bad kid? That I pulled the legs off grasshoppers and beat kittens with baseball bats? No, I didn’t grow up like that. I was president of the home economics club in high school, and I made the honor roll every semester. I played piano for the youth choir at my church.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t a monster. The only thing was, I didn’t know what was growing inside me.”
“What was that?”
“A yearning,” Didi said. “To be different. To know things. To go places my folks only read about. See, you take Lucy: if you only watched shows like that on TV, night after night, soon you’d start thinking that’s all the world had to offer. My folks were afraid of real life. They didn’t want me out in it. They said I was going to make a fine wife for some local boy, that I’d live maybe three or four miles from their front door and raise a houseful of kids and we’d all get together for pot roast on Sundays.” Didi opened the curtains and looked out the window. Snowflakes spun before the light; the cars in the parking lot were frosted over. “They were amazed when I said I wanted to go to college. When I said I wanted to go to college out of Iowa, it was the first day of a long cold war
. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to stay put. I was a fool, they said. I was breaking their hearts. Well, I didn’t understand this then, but they needed me between them or they wouldn’t have any common ground. They didn’t want me to grow up, and when I did…they didn’t know me anymore. They didn’t want to.” She let the curtains fall. “So I guess part of why I left home was to find out what my folks were so afraid of.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, I did. Like any generation, they were terrified of the future. Terrified of being insignificant and forgotten.” She nodded. “It’s a deep terror, Laura. Sometimes I feel it. I never got married—oh, bourgeois disease!—and I never had a child. My time for that is over. When I die, no one’s going to cry at my funeral. No one’s going to know my story. I’ll lie under weeds near a road where strangers pass, and no one will remember the sound of my voice, the color of my hair, or what I gave a damn about. That’s why I’ve stayed with you, Laura. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“I want you to get your baby back,” Didi said, “because I’m never going to have a child of my own. And if I can help you find David…that’s kind of like he’s mine, too, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Laura answered. She could feel herself drifting away from the world, on waves of raw pain. It was going to be a long, terrible night. “Kind of.”
“It’s good enough for me.” Didi got Laura a cup of water and gave her two aspirin. The fever sweat glistened on Laura’s face again, and she groaned as her hand pulsed with white-hot agony. Didi drew a chair up beside the bed and sat there as Laura fought the pain as best she could. What was going to happen tomorrow, Didi didn’t know. It depended on Laura: if she was well enough to travel, they ought to be heading west again as soon as possible. Didi got up after a while, and took the plastic bag out to the ice maker for a refill. While she was there, she found a newspaper vending machine, and used her last change to buy an Iowa City Journal. Back in the warm room, the smells of iodine and sickness thick in the air, Didi got Laura’s hand situated on the ice pack and then sat down to read.
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