Jay picked the stamp up and closed his eyes nervously, waiting. Waiting for it to come, for echoes of death to come, but nothing of the sort came. Just the numbers floated around in his consciousness. The two numbers, 32 and 25,511.
Chewing on them, on thoughts of what the numbers were, of what they could mean, Jay left the service counter and went the few steps to another counter, one meant for customers to address their letters, and affix their stamps, but he suspected he had given it the bulk of its use in his time in Plainview. How many times had he bellied up to it? he wondered. More than 32 and less than 25,511, to be certain. That number plus one for right now as from his back pocket he took the unsealed envelope, and briefly removed the letter within to give it one last look, folding back just the top third where he’d put the date, that morning, Wednesday August 6, 1997, and the time, 7:12 a.m. (Not a 32 or a 25,511 in there, no), the exact moment when he’d taken his pants from the chair in his room, unintentionally by the leg, and had spilled a few coins left in his pocket from his previous day’s collecting, and had watched them fall to the floor by his bare feet, spinning and rolling and wobbling until all came to rest, all tails. All tails, and death came soon from that.
But not before he scrawled on the paper now in his hand, and marked it with the time, and put it in an envelope before the agony gripped him. An envelope he now returned the letter to, and sealed, and laid flat on the high counter as he took the old pen in hand, dragging its flimsy chain across the surface as he put the address in its place. No return address, because what did that matter? Just ‘who to mattered’. And the who was:
Occupant
PO Box 12
Plainview , Missouri 65600
That done, Jay put the stamp to his tongue (a 32 on it, yes, but that was not the meaning, no, not the meaning at all) and then pressed it onto the upper right corner of the envelope and dropped it through the slot cut in the wall nearby. And at that moment, as he always did, he flashed back to the bum and his can, and the slitted lid through which people had blindly pushed hundred dollar bills. Every time (more than 32, less than 25,511) he mailed a letter, those scenes would come to him. Those scenes that were giving and taking in one.
And then he would think of that time no more. Would force it down in his memory like he was right then, and go to the wall of small metal boxes, as he did right then, and take the small silvery key from his shirt pocket and slip it into the lock to open his box.
And like all the other times there was something inside. Some things inside. Two letters, each addressed to Occupant, PO Box 12, Plainview Missouri, 65600. Two because Sunday had been a bad day. Change at the Plainview Grill, and later some spied where it had been accidentally dropped in the dusty gutter by some poorer soul, shining pretty and sinister beneath the afternoon sun. An observation tower at a fair in Kansas, gone, dropped to the ground when a motor home carrying a family of ten plowed into it, and a glass bottomed boat in the Florida Keys, thirty people aboard mesmerized by a school of sharks that were far less interesting and far more terrifying when the boat strayed to close to the shoals and settled into the drink under a blue and sunny sky.
A bad day, yes. He’d fallen before, too many times to recall, but the sharks were a first. One had grabbed him and pulled him down within sight of a tangle of floating debris that one might have clamored onto. Might have, but never would, because hundreds of vicious little daggers had torn into his calf and shook him violently as he was dragged away from the light, from the air, until the burning in his chest and the wild stinging in his leg faded to that nothingness that was no reprieve.
Jay took the letters from his box and closed it. Tomorrow there would be a new letter inside, one written that morning. One foretelling the death of two dozen barge workers at a port on the Mississippi. A gas barge that had exploded. Fire on the water. Jay had burned, and then drown.
But now, now what would happen? What would come of this knowing? Of knowing these plain old numbers that could not be so plain? Jay walked toward the post office door and wondered this in silence.
32
25,511
Two numbers. From heads returned. Two numbers.
And more than that, he knew.
In time, he thought, it would come, the meaning, knowing from experience that ‘time’ could mean drunken hours sitting in the dark at an old and scratched and wonderful table in the dining room (the dining gloom, he recalled, but put that memory away as well), or a terrifying gasp of seconds at an uptown party with your drink crashing at your feet and death screaming in your head. Yes, in time. At any time. At least whatever might come next could be no worse than endless curtain calls at the grim reaper dinner theater. He hoped not. God, he hoped not.
But he could not control it, no more than he could understand it, this gift bum had given him. A gift that had been sweet, and then sour, and now...a wicked mystery.
A mystery that he could not solve by flipping mental switches, but one that nonetheless flitted about his head as he passed through the open front door and paused in the thick yellow light of day, squinting up at the sky that seemed all fire right then. No blue, just a hot and miserable brilliance that made Plainview feel the center of something Dante might have dreamed up. Away from the bright sky he looked and slipped both of the letters into his back pocket, and then from near the front door where he’d left it he hefted a bulging gunny sack from the sidewalk and over his shoulder. Bottles rattled and clinked within—more than 32, he thought, and less than 25,511. He would have to save these—a goodly collection of empties gathered along Traction Avenue where it headed out to Route 87—for Monday, when he’d make the five mile walk to the library to meet the recycling truck (the machine at the Super Suds was on an exclusively aluminum diet) that came that day once each week, except holidays, of course, when it would come the next day. These longnecks, and shortnecks, and squatnecks, and completely-broken-offnecks would just sit in the corner of the room he kept above a closed retail shop on Todd Street just off of Wells Road. The next day he might rinse them, and the pile they’d be added to, in the old and rusty claw foot tub that was less one foot and dipped harshly at the end where one put their head. That would take the smell off of them, an aroma that, after a few days of soda and beer and wine remnants mixing and stewing, would lighten your head and make you wish the only window in the room wasn’t nailed shut.
Yes, thinking about it, he would probably clean them. That window wasn’t going to open unless he did a number on it.
Or two numbers, he thought as he walked slowly up Charles Street, the sun gleaming off the windshields of the county road crew trucks lining the curb, the workers probably in town for a cold one at the Grill, maybe two or three considering how hot it must be out on Route 87 where a new skim of blacktop was being laid. Yes, one truck, two trucks, three trucks, four trucks (less than both 32 and 25,511), each one with a number stenciled on its fender. And others on the sides of their beds. Weights, and registration numbers, and psi ratings, and on and on. Number after number on truck number 35, and on trucks number 677, 83, and 65a. Numbers that Jay eyed curiously, scanning lazily for digits that might be of meaning, but knowing that none would show. If ‘truck number 32’ weighing ‘25,511 pounds gross tonnage’ was the intended meaning of the coins, of whatever pulled their strings (and his, he knew), it would have presented itself to him. He wouldn’t have to go looking.
“Thirty two,” he said to himself as he stepped between trucks 35 and 677 to cross the street. “Twenty five, five one one. I’ll be waiting for y—”
The rest never made it past his lips, because as he stepped from between trucks 35 and 677 and into Charles Street’s normally deserted lanes of traffic, the lane he had entered with nary a glance was not deserted at all, being occupied at that instant by a 1985 Honda Civic, blue, bearing New Jersey plates and missing its right rear hubcap. Nearly a ton of dated Japanese engineering that, doing twenty seven miles per hour, he barely saw as the sound of screeching tires drew
his eyes left, catching sight through the windshield of a face that was not grinning at all, but which was swelled with shock as the car’s front bumper caught his left leg and sent him sprawling to the black pavement, his head thudding hard and the white hot day going dark and cool as someone screamed, as someone screamed, as someone...
Twenty Eight
Blue Eyes
They’d wanted him to stay, the doctors and nurses, but all the hospital’s clean white walls and beeping machines and sterile aloofness did was remind him of what doctors and nurses and all their gadgets could not do, and had not been able to do when he was eleven. And those memories needed no urging forth again, so he’d gone home, despite protestations that concussions could be serious, and a fresh fracture needed rest, calling a taxi from the emergency room pay phone and paying for the ride from Jefferson City to Plainview with the money he’d made on cans that morning, his cut and bloody jeans in a bag and a hospital gown wrapped ‘round his waist like a skirt. The crutches they gave him were third hand at best, no pad in one’s pitrest and the adjustment screw frozen in place (too short) on the other, but then he had a bill in his shirt pocket that was stamped ‘indigent’, so he could expect little more than that—that and the pain pills some county medical bureaucrat would write off as ‘service to poor’.
He arrived home near six in the evening, hopping awkwardly up the straight flight of stairs to his room, crutches and all tucked under one arm. Once inside he ditched the gown and grimaced as he slipped into a pair of cutoff gray sweats. The air was sweltry after a day of baking in the closed off space. It felt almost infected, and the old metal fan mounted high on one wall only seemed to move the pustuous air from this place to that when Jay switched it on, one worn blade ticking sharply every now and then against the cage that confined it—brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-TICK-brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-TICK-brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-TICK. The sallow shade still hid the top half of the window, waning light spilling through the waves of the ancient pane beneath that. Wavy glass, people had called it. There had been some in the windows of his parents’ barn, but that was there no more, he guessed. Probably a two story box among many that Realtors were calling houses. But enough of that, yes, enough of that because he didn’t need that hurt. There was enough of one physical humming in his leg.
He sat on the bed and thought, pain pills. Where were they? he asked himself, realizing that his own thoughts were a bit ‘wavy’ right then. Get tossed to the ground and knocked out ‘til you wake up in an ambulance and, well, you got what you asked for. He wondered if the person—a woman, he recalled somewhat foggily from the brief flash through the windshield—had been arrested. But then, who had stepped out from between those trucks? Who indeed. But enough of that person, that woman. He needed those pain pills. He wanted them, because the hum was starting to throb, and if he didn’t get something soothing down his gullet pretty soon there was going to be a drum section playing on the hunk of plaster encasing his left leg, and a chorus of screams—his screams—to accompany it.
The bag, he thought. They’re in the bag. The small bottle of Darvon was in the bag with his ruined jeans, and when he scanned the room he saw the clear plastic sack riding low in the old wingback’s sagging cushion. He pushed himself up and hobbled to where the chair rested in permanence by the window, snatching the bag before twisting half way ‘round and plopping down into the cushion’s severe trough, grimacing as the heel of the cast smacked to the floor. The extra weight on his left leg was going to take some getting used to, he realized, and hastily undid the rubber band securing the neck of the bag in a tight gather and took his pills out. One every four hours as needed for pain, it said. Or was it a suggestion? he wondered, then dry swallowed two of the tablets and let his head settle back against the faded and gaudy burgundy leaf upholstery. Sweat trickled down his face, stinging a raspberry abrasion that Charles Street had ground into his cheek. He closed his eyes and listened to the fan tick.
In five minutes he was fast asleep and dreaming of things cool, a wintry scene where carolers outside in the snow sang songs of numbers. Songs of only two numbers.
* * *
Twenty minutes later he was jarred quick awake by a knocking on his door.
His head swung side to side, and up and down, quite fast. Too fast, as his head felt suddenly superior to the forces of gravity. It floated, his thoughts swimming in a rush of painkillers and the pain they had not yet killed, only wounded, and it took another set of rapid knocks and fingers pressed hard to his temples to rise out of the fog.
“Who is it?” Jay asked the door loudly.
“Mr. Grady?” a woman asked. At least a woman’s voice, or a man with one low testosterone count. “Is this where Mr. Grady lives?”
Mr. Grady? Who the hell was Mr. Grady? He had been a true Mister once, long ago, and the unnamed rotund woman that morning had called him ‘mister’ repeatedly, disdainfully, though she had probably been told in some moronic government training course to just ‘call them mister or ma’am and hold your tongue and that’ll fix everything’. But who was this now that thought he was a ‘mister’? Who was it that knew his name? Who was it that had reason to come to him at all?
“Just a minute,” Jay told his unknown caller, then got to his feet with some difficulty, and once there had to grab hold the knob of the bathroom door to keep from keeling over. He breathed deep as his body wobbled, the mix of the drugs and getting up as fast as he had doing a number on his equilibrium. But it ebbed after a few seconds, enough that he was able to hop slowly to the door, balancing with one hand against the solemn brown walls of his room, his palm scraping over the split wallpaper seams as he traveled the ten foot distance. At the door he put his hand on the knob, then hesitated, and took a look down at himself. He was in the same shirt he’d been wearing when hit. A good sized tear had been opened on the right shoulder, and it clung to his body over a skim of sweat. His shorts were old and hadn’t been to the Super Suds in a good while. And his face, hell, he couldn’t see it—didn’t really want to hop back to the bathroom for a gander in the mirror—but all indications were that the big scrape on his cheek was likely not the only mark his meeting with the street had left him. Overall he figured he looked like crap, but then who could it possibly be on the other side of the door that he would care how he looked? And so with a twist of the dull brass knob he opened it inward.
And nearly fell over at who was on the landing atop the stairs. It was her. The face. The face behind the windshield. The face that had been shocked. That had not been grinning, though only a small and distant part of himself had, at that instant, thought even that possible. The face was here. She was here. Standing outside his door and looking at him with the bluest eyes he had ever seen, Caribbean waters and Montana sky blended to sapphirine perfection.
“Are you Mr. Grady?” the woman asked, then caught sight of the cast on his leg and shook her head, feeling obviously stupid. “Of course you are.”
“You?” Jay said, his shoulder pressed to the edge of the half open door for balance. “It’s you.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “I hit you.”
He stared at her, sampled her gaze, one that seemed as blue as her eyes. The blue of sadness.
“I didn’t see...” She paused, then restarted. “I wasn’t paying...” And then she quieted, and looked down at the threshold, and snugged down the cuffs of her long sleeve sweatshirt, gripping the mildly frayed ends as she crossed her arms tight. A white tee shirt peeked out from beneath the blue sweatshirt at the collar, and the blue jeans she wore were faded and seemed a size too big, maybe more. Her shoes had once been white tennies, but now sported that aged dirtiness of a pair rediscovered at the back of the closet. A crumpled looking something held her dark brown hair in a tail that jutted out a few inches from the back of her head before tailing down and ending in a narrow fan upon her neck. A utilitarian do it was, not fashion at all, the easiest of ways to groom when grooming was not a concern.
She looked, Jay thou
ght upon consideration of the parts as a whole, like she had been through rain and wringer. Or maybe pain and wringer. Worn from both outside and in.
“You know,” Jay began, and she looked up. “I was the one who stepped in front of you.”
She shook her head. “But I should have seen you. I wasn’t paying attention. I was just...I wasn’t thinking.” Her eyes went to his cast again, then surveyed the minor damage to his face, and her expression sank from mere sadness to true sorrow. “I hurt you. I’m so sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Jay told her as her eyes began to puddle. “I was the one not thinking.” At least not thinking about the things one should be when crossing a street, unless the numbers 32 and 25,511 had been made items every safety conscious pedestrian was expected to know. “I was off in some other place and I walked right in front of you.”
She sniffled and considered him, his sincerity. Her arms drew tighter still across her chest. “I still should have—”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No. It was my fault. Mine. You tried to stop. I heard your brakes screeching.”
“If I’d had newer tires I might have stopped short of you. And those brakes..”
“No, you didn’t have time. It was my fault.” He felt sorry for her, mostly because she felt responsible for something his stupidity had caused. But also because of those eyes, and the sadness swimming in their beauty. “Okay? My fault.”
She did not agree verbally, but gave a small nod and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Did I hurt you bad?”
“You didn’t hurt me.” He tapped his cast against the door, and regretted it almost instantly as a spike of pain volleyed between his knee and ankle. One every four hours? Hell, two hadn’t even done the trick. “And it’s not so bad.”
She winced with him. “It hurts.”
The Donzerly Light Page 21
