Rides of the Midway
Page 29
“You did it?”
“I thought you already knew. I thought everybody in town knew that I did it, that I unplugged him.” Amber leaned farther into the window. She did this with unabashed pleasure, like someone telling a scary story around a campfire. The first thing she said was, “I’ve never told anybody this before, except doctors, and they don’t count.”
The night it happened, Amber explained, she had been sleeping on the cot in Ross’s hospital room—something she did a lot—but on that particular night she’d had this dream. “Me, you, and Ross were walking around the hospital room unplugging all those machines. It was like a game the three of us were playing. Just a game. We were laughing and all, and singing some song I can’t even remember now. Then, after everything was unplugged, Ross kissed me goodbye and flew out the window. And that’s when I woke up. I woke up because some alarm was going off. I turned on the light and then I went around the whole room, just like in the dream, unplugging everything until the alarm finally stopped beeping. And then I went back to sleep and didn’t wake up again until the next morning when the nurse found Ross dead.”
“You didn’t murder him,” Noel said after a moment.
“I know I didn’t. It took me a long time to figure that out, though. That it wasn’t murder at all. For years I thought it was, but now I know better. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done in my whole life that I’m proud of.” Amber had tears on her cheeks, but she wasn’t really crying. Her voice was level and her eyes were bright and happy. She wiped the tears away then looked at her hand and said, “It feels so good to finally tell someone. Someone who counts.”
“You never told the police either?”
“No. But I think they kinda knew I did it. I kept expecting to get arrested. Every day of my life. Day after day. I just kept waiting and waiting and it never happened. And now I finally know why they never arrested me.”
“Because they didn’t want you to go to jail? Because they knew you were just a kid and you hadn’t done anything wrong?”
“No, that wasn’t it. I thought that too for a long time, but then just a couple of weeks ago my mom told me the real truth. They didn’t tell me before because it was too . . . spooky, I guess. At least to them it was.”
“Spooky?”
“Yeah, to them. The reason they never arrested me is because of fingerprints. When I unplugged everything, I didn’t use gloves or anything, but the next morning, guess whose fingerprints they found all over those plugs.”
“Mine?”
“Yours? How could they be yours?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ross’s,” she said. “A little kid’s fingerprints.”
“Your brother’s?”
She nodded and smiled and made her eyebrows dance. Then she said, “It freaked the cops out so bad, they never arrested anybody.”
“Jesus.”
“In my dream it was Ross doing all the unplugging. Me and you, we were just walking around the room with him, just playing the game. We were all real happy. It was a beautiful dream.”
She waited until Noel’s face had tried on sufficient expressions of disbelief, then she said, “Why don’t you come back inside with me? We’ll go back in there together.”
Noel shook his head, then asked her what today’s date was. After she told him, he nodded severely and repeated the date out loud.
“Ask me where I’m gonna be a year from today, Amber.”
“Where?”
“First, I’m gonna work my ass off bartending for my uncle, save up for a whole year. My uncle owns this Vietnamese restaurant down in the Keys. Then, a year from today—” He frowned. “Why are you crying?”
“Nothing. I always cry at funerals.”
“Guess where I’m gonna be, Amber, a year from today.”
“Where?”
“A year from today I’m gonna be on a plane to France. You ever known anybody that’s been to France?”
She took out a tissue and shook her head no.
“Then, as soon as I get there, I’m heading straight to one of those naked beaches they got there, and I’m gonna take off all my clothes and throw them in the damn ocean. You think I’m lying?”
“No. I know you’re not.”
“You get inside this car right now, I’ll take you with me.”
Instead Amber knelt down so that her arms were folded on top of each other along the window’s edge, her chin resting on top of her hands.
“We’re praying for you, Noel.”
“You’re what?”
“Praying for you. We all are, everyone at my church is. I’ve been saved, Noel. Can’t you tell? I’ve been born again.”
He examined her face a moment, then shook his head and asked if she knew how people in France said goodbye.
“They don’t. They just kiss.”
She leaned in the window again and they kissed. As she pulled herself free, she took Noel’s left hand and placed it under her right arm against the side of her breast. Noel could feel her heartbeat. Her face became very intent, then she smiled and said, “‘Onward, Christian Soldier.’”
“Huh?”
“Listen.”
“Oh. That.” He removed his hand and put the car in neutral and twice tapped the accelerator. “I’m gonna ask you one last time, Amber.”
“We’re all praying for you, Noel.”
“They been doing that for years.”
“I’m praying for you now.”
“Good. You can. You got my permission.”
“Goodbye, Noel.”
“Say-La-V, Amber.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I got no idea, but it’s all the French I know ain’t something dirty.”
As the car began edging away, Amber stood very straight and cupped her hands to her mouth and waited for him to get far enough away to merit the gesture, then she cried out, “Jesus loves you, Noel. No matter what you do.”
He honked the horn.
At the first gas station he tore off his tie and pumped the tank full and got a large black coffee to go. Back on the highway, he flicked on the radio to some static-eaten zydeco gospel about a heart like a wheel and he blasted the accordion music over the roar of wind and engine, and then he reached into the back seat and one by one fed the red hymnals to the open window and watched them take flight in the rearview. He finished his coffee, then released the trembling cup to the wind and lost himself in the pureness of acceleration, in the shallow grace of not being the one left behind.