by Paul Flower
There was a loud crash from the kitchen. Elvis’ back contorted in a non-verbal scream. There was a soft thump; it was Brad the cat, he decided, looking for food. Elvis sighed. Stupid cat.
He stared at the candles flickering on the table and thought about how stupid he was. He wondered why he was home alone, why he hadn’t followed Donnel and defended his right to Lavern. He wondered how he could have killed a man without even trying. Jerry Plannenberg had something to do with it. As he thought of the faceless man and Jerry, he thought of someone else. But for the life of him, he couldn’t figure who the someone else was. The phone interrupted his thought. Elvis struggled to his feet, crossed the room slowly, and grabbed the receiver in the middle of the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Is this the Icabone residence?”
“Yeah, this is Elv...”
“Elvis Icabone?” she finished for him.
“Yes.”
“Mr. Icabone, I’m calling from Bally Memorial Hospital and I’m afraid we have some rather bad news.”
Elvis could hear his heart again. “Ye...” he said, the word tripping on its way out. “Yes?”
“Sir, are you alone?”
“Yeah, uh-huh, sure.”
“Well, um, I’m sorry, maybe we should send someone over, sir. Or do you have a minister, a friend, someone nearby that could come over right now?”
“Why’d I need that?”
“Well, sir, I’m afraid the news is extremely, well... you might want someone with you right now. If you wish, I could send a police officer over; there’s one right here with me. Why don’t I do that?”
“Why?”
“Well, it would just be best.”
“But why? Someone dead?” Elvis said loudly.
There was a long, sterile pause on the line.
“I said, ‘Someone dead?’”
“Sir, I really think we should send someone over. See, there’s been an accident.”
The thought coughed into his head. Hack. It was there. On any other day, Elvis would have ignored it. But today, it was a very reasonable thought. He remembered Donnel’s truck shimmying recklessly down the road, Jerry Plannenberg, the ponytail swinging, then someone else, a shadow of someone from long ago tottered across his field of memory. He was chilled; a cold breeze whispered over his naked chest. “My wife, she there?” he asked in a high, tight voice.
“Sir, are you sure you don’t have a priest, a minister,” the voice continued, sounding polite, sweet and helpful. “Someone we could call?”
Elvis dropped the receiver, walked across the living room, out the open door and down the three steps. He forgot that he was half dressed with dried fingernail polish on his naked back.
Halfway across the lawn, he remembered the stupid candles, stopped, turned and marched back in the house. He blew out each one then walked back through the open doorway, this time slamming the door behind him.
Brad had dashed out into the night ahead of him. He stood in the yard, under a streetlight, watching Elvis, his tail at attention and twitching.
Elvis coaxed the Cordoba to life, flicked on the lights and eased the car, its exhaust rumbling, the suspension creaking, down the street. He left the subdivision and accelerated as he passed the convenience store and drove over the Lemon Creek bridge, past the Compton’s grain elevator; it was the trip into town he’d taken a million times before.
From Blue Star Highway he could see, across the empty cornfield, the accident scene on Torchner Road. Elvis made the turn on Torchner, his heart suddenly muddy in his ears. The Cordoba slowed to a stuttering crawl, taking its place in the traffic line. Ahead, streetlights painted the scene. Red police flares sputtered in an arc, funneling drivers away from the right lane to the left. A cop with a red-coned flashlight was directing traffic; as Elvis neared, the cop was holding a hand up to the cars behind him, the ones coming from the other way, and windmilling his other arm and the flashlight—come-on, come-on, come-on—at the cars in front of Elvis. The cars were crawling along, the drivers slowly obeying the cop. A wrecker was waddling down into the ditch along the road toward the old pickup, which lay on its side in the muddy field like a rusty-brown fish bellied out of water.
As Elvis watched, the wrecker came to a stop, a door swung open and one guy dropped out. The guy slammed the door, walked around the back of the wrecker, fished in his jeans pocket for something, got it; the thing flamed up and threw a dancing light on the guy’s face as he cupped his hand around it, guiding it to the cigarette already in his mouth.
Elvis felt the Cordoba’s greasy steering wheel turn in his hands and felt the car stop on the shoulder. He felt, from far away, his hand rolling down the window. He couldn’t feel the cold air; he looked past the gawkers slowing through the accident scene.
The smoker had returned the lighter to his pocket and was directing the driver in backing up to the truck. A family rolled by in a minivan, the father driving, the mother eating an ice cream cone as the kids pawed over each other in the back seat. They looked first at the truck, then, at the last second, they twisted around to stare at Elvis. Finally, the minivan picked up speed and they got on their way, got on with their lives.
The truck was Donnel’s, for sure. All lit up by flares and the spotlight from the remaining cop car; Elvis could make out the Cherry Bomb and Harley Davidson stickers in the rear window. There were silvery chrome mud flaps, too, one with the silhouette of a naked girl on it, the other Yosemite Sam.
Elvis watched as both wrecker guys talked it over now, slouching against the side of their rig, dragging on their cigarettes. For an instant, he imagined the whole thing had nothing to do with him. He imagined yelling to them, “Hey, hear about Jubal Brown?” He could picture the two guys as they grinned and spit and said, together, “Yeah, got the shinola beat out of him,” then laughing because they hadn’t meant to say it at the same time. He could see them throwing their smokes out in the field. He imagined the butts glowing, soft, orange and reassuring against the dark.
Elvis reached under the seat and scrounged around. His trembling fingertips found the plastic bag. He had the joint in his mouth and lit before he even thought about the police car just yards away. He could see the cop behind the wheel, face illuminated by the dashboard light, writing on a clipboard. Didn’t look like the cop from work. Didn’t look like his partner either, the guy who’d told him to stay in town. Well, screw him, he thought. Screw all of them. Don’t leave town, they’d said. Stick around, they’d said. They hadn’t said a dang thing about not smoking weed.
A guy in a gray Camaro eased off the road behind him. Elvis took a long hit from the joint and held it as he slid his foot off the brake and eased his car back onto the road. He exhaled. The Cordoba hesitated before chug, chug chugging its way up to speed. He leaned out over the wheel and took another drag. The wind knifed through the open window. He hadn’t smoked dope in years. Only back in high school had he screwed around with it a little. This joint, well, he’d found it under a chair the night after the guys had been over at the house playing cards. He’d saved it for some stupid reason. He’d put it in a baggie and stuck it in his car where his soon-to-be-ex-oh-wait-now-who-knew?-dead? wife couldn’t find it. He dragged at the thing again, coughing. He could feel it swirling, loosening the nuts on the bolts in his brain. Elvis felt wrong for doing it, wrong and stupid. Wrong and stupid but dang hungry for more.
The car topped out at forty, maybe forty-five; he didn’t know for sure, since the speedometer was broken. A couple of cars passed him. Elvis glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw the outline of a vintage Camaro, now back on the road too, a quarter mile behind.
He drove past Zech’s Farm Market and past a patch of identical one-story condominiums—a new subdivision someone had plopped in a corner of farmland. The condos ticked him off. Stupid condos. Stupid fucking condo-fucking-miniums. He didn’t usually
swear. Didn’t think that way. But fuck it, he thought.
He thought the pot was smoothing the edges of the pain in his brain. He hoped it was. Yeah, that too. Hoped. Funny word, hope, he thought. Hope. Hope. Hope. He snickered. The pastor talked about hope in church all the time. Hopey hope-ity hope. What did it mean? Hope? Not a dang thing. Hope meant squat. Hope was for losers who didn’t get it. Hope was ten pounds of shinola in a five pound bag. That’s what hope was. Right now it was. When your lady’s maybe cheating and now busted up somehow or worse with your best buddy and you lost your job and people thought you killed some dude with no face, it was. Hope. Screw it. He flicked the last of the joint out the window. Fuck. It.
It was a small hospital, just two, two-story brick wings. He took the turn into the parking lot too hard; the Cordoba shimmied and fishtailed. In a second of stoned thinking, Elvis thought about letting it go, letting the tires slide and the back end come slowly around. He could see it in his head, the old rustbucket breaking loose like a stockcar overcranking a turn at Daytona, the thing dancing head over end, coming to a stop on its top with him maybe bleeding and happily dead inside. Something else, something hard and edgy in his brain, something that seemed new and weird—from the dope maybe?—told him to resist. Elvis squeezed the wheel harder, suddenly angry, steering against the skid, until he’d wrestled the car to a stop. He steadied himself, saw the ambulance, rear-end open and lights flashing in front of the entrance marked Emergency, and guided the Cordoba to a parking space near it.
Out of habit, he pushed his left shoulder against the door as he pulled up on the handle. At first, the door didn’t open. Stay, it said. Stay here. Elvis gave it one final, hard nudge and it creaked open, the momentum almost sending him sprawling into the parking lot.
He got out of the car and slammed the door. He took a deep breath and started toward the ambulance. Elvis glanced inside. Empty. He turned and looked through the glass doors to the Emergency Room. There was a reception window and an empty waiting area, both painted with the pulsating lights from the ambulance—red and white and red and white and red and white—like he was at a rock ‘n roll show, a concert for The Dead. He felt calm. Calm from the dope. Calm from just knowing, from the feeling in his gut that he already understood what he was about to see.
Elvis stepped on the black rubber mat in front of the double doors. Swish. They opened and the smell of the hospital whisked out. He caught a glimpse of his reflection. He was a sight to behold: naked from the waist up, hair all shaggy and wild. He looked like he’d just lost his wife, his job, his best friend and maybe had killed a man.
An old lady in a pink jacket came through the double doors labeled AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. She gave Elvis a funny look. “May I help you…” She paused, not sure what to call him. “Sir?”
“My name’s Elvis, um...” He was suddenly nervous.
“Oh, Mr. Icabone?” Her face suddenly matched her jacket. She turned around, retreating to the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY area. “Let me get the doctor,” she called over her shoulder.
“No. Wait,” he blurted out.
She turned slowly, one authorized palm flat against the doors.
“Is my wife dead?”
The old lady bit her lower lip, then again started to push through the doors. “Let me get our neuro... the doctor; you should talk to him.”
“No. Wait.” Elvis took three long strides and grabbed her by the arm. It was a skinny arm. Skinny and bony.
The lady’s head bobbed funny, like he’d smacked her, then she scowled and jerked free. “Let go of me.”
“Sorry,” Elvis said, a little surprised at himself.
“Your wife and the other gentleman,” she looked at him, her voice softening. “I’m sorry, but there were head injuries, severe trauma. Our team here worked very, very hard.”
“They didn’t make it.” Elvis said it flatly, to help her.
Her smile confirmed it; knifing through the fog of the dope and the day, that smile hurt. Oh. Oh. It hurt. His breathing grew heavy and slow. A hoarse-voice whisper of a thought, gruff and low, told him he’d seen this coming and not just on the way here. No. Part of him had known about this for a long time. Hadn’t it? Sure. Sure as shootin’. He’d felt a bad moon rising on him for a long time. The hoarse-voice thought in his head told him he deserved it. But even though he’d seen it coming, it was sure hard to have it here, staring at him.
“You’re supposed to… I mean, would you like to…” she paused again. “Come with me? I can take you to talk to the doctor who...”
Elvis frowned and pictured Lavern with head injuries and Donnel, half his face bashed in. He imagined Donnel and Lavern kissing in the truck before the truck rolled over.
“No.” Elvis felt his own voice floating away.
“But sir. The doctor... he’s a specialist from Chicago... he can explain what, why... you should really see the...”
“No,” was all Elvis could say. “Not yet, not now.”
****
A soft shower, the kind of rain that made Lavern go all oozy and romantic, had covered the hospital parking lot with a shiny skin.
He was cold. Just before he’d stepped into the miserable night, a nurse had come out and begged him to stay, and when he’d refused she’d offered to find a surgical smock, something, anything, for him to wear. He was sorry he hadn’t taken her up on it. When she’d made the offer, Elvis had felt like she was stalling him for some reason. He’d been in a hurry to get out of there. Sorry, no, he’d said. Now his tired brain veered off on another path, imagining how a nurse in that situation would come up with a smock; he pictured her having to poke her head in some operating room and say, “Borrow your smock, doc?” He pictured a surgeon who looked like that guy on the oatmeal commercials, putting down his rib spreader and Styrofoam cup, sloshing a little coffee on the operating table. Elvis pictured another nurse lifting the patient’s arm so the pale brown coffee pool could run down the stainless steel and trickle onto the tile floor. The surgeon would wipe his hands on the smock, smearing the blood on it like he was a grease monkey. He’d undo the string at the back of his neck and say, chuckling, “Got a cold one out there?” to the nurse, then he’d hand the smock to her. She’d laugh and nod, like this wasn’t the first time she’d had to interrupt him for a cold one.
Something told him to stop, to turn around, go back and find this doctor who had looked at Lavern and Donnel; it was some kind of brain doctor, the nurse had said as he was leaving. He knew he should talk to the guy and ask to see the bodies so he could haul the sheets off them and hug them or say good-bye, but Elvis hated the idea of dead people. Besides, he kept picturing Donnel and Lavern as lovers, sitting close together in that stupid truck, nuzzling each other. He saw, in his head, the faceless man on the floor at work.
This was all too much. Too, too much.
Elvis thought he could hear someone yelling to him from the entrance of the Emergency Room, but he didn’t turn around. He reached the car, wrestled the door open, got in and rolled up the window. After starting the engine, he flicked on the lights, slipped the car into gear, eased it around in the parking lot and slammed on the brakes. Wait a second, he thought. Where’m I going?
Home, he answered with a shiver. Go there and get into something warm, like your favorite flannel shirt, the blue and black one. Drink something hot and sort this out.
But going home would be like visiting hell. Elvis couldn’t think very clearly, but he knew one thing. He couldn’t shower and change clothes and relax with the devil looking over his shoulder.
He couldn’t go to the house, not yet anyway—maybe, he thought, not ever again.
Chapter Eleven
The roads were empty at this hour. Good, he thought, steering with his knee. The headlights swooped over the centerline as he fumbled with the cap on the bottle. Steadying the wheel with his scaly left hand, he took a
drink, choked and cursed. The whiskey was cheap crap. He sat forward in the seat, searching for his turn; he was desperate to get back to the house, maybe smoke the rest of the joint.
The scene at the hospital, just a few minutes past, had been surreal. His brain was flipping it, playing it over and over, worrying and wondering over it. What the heck were Lavern and her fat black friend up to? Emily? Had she? Yes. Yes. Somehow, she and some of her nurse friends probably had helped them. Maybe. But how? Why?
He rubbed the back of his hand against the stubble on his face. This was going wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. Calm down. Calm down. Now. Freaking out won’t help. Where was the turn to the house? Focus on that. It was up ahead. There? No. Maybe, he thought, he should talk to Mom. Why? Who knew? But sure. Maybe. There, there it was. He hit the brakes and cut hard to the right, bouncing down off the main road onto the gravel lane. He hit the gas and aimed the car toward the driveway, the tall grass in the lane singing an uneven tune on the undercarriage of the car. Maybe Mom, maybe she’d had something to do with this, this stupid, stupid situation. The plan to come back to this stupid town and do all this had been a lousy one to begin with. Had Mom suggested it? Had it been her concept? Maybe she’d fed it to him sometime, somehow and it was all a damn setup.
Everything. Unreal.
He pulled the Mercedes into the garage, killed the engine and flipped on the dome light. After re-reading the note from Lavern, he took out his wallet and stuck it in there, threw the wallet on the passenger’s seat, then flipped the light off and slouched in his seat. Calm down, he told himself. Calm. Down.
Back at the beginning, way back, right after the thing, he had tried to convince himself that Elvis would stay quiet forever. Jesse had killed his father on Saturday, and by Wednesday, he was thinking about baseball and the Tigers again; he was listening to Ernie Harwell doing the play-by-play on the transistor radio while his brother tossed and turned in his sleep. But Jesse now had to admit that Elvis—what Elvis knew and the nagging possibility that Mom was underestimating Elvis—had always had been there, eating at his brain, worrying him.
