Ash Wednesday

by Chet Williamson

  "There's no point in lying. The Reardons'."

  "Oh, my God," Kay said quietly. "Did you see him?”

  “Yes."

  "Oh, Jesus. Alice, how can you . . . I mean, you shouldn't do this."

  "We already talked about it, Kay. I've already done it."

  "All right!" she cried. "You've seen him! Now isn't that enough? Alice, you are my friend and I love you. But I don't understand this."

  "I don't either. But I will."

  ~*~

  She didn't.

  Ultimately she experienced, but she did not understand, not to the point where she could put it into words, or even conscious thoughts. The ease of it all astounded her. From the first evening when she walked into his room and sat there beside his bed and looked at him until his grotesqueness seemed natural, commonplace, it had been easy. She sat and watched and wept for the lost time, wept for his loss, wept for herself for going away when it would have been easier to stay.

  She floated on her own tears and they bore her up so lovingly and with such kindness that she thought how foolish she'd been to live all those years trying to banish the memory when it would have been so simple to accept it, to return and drink it in.

  She looked most often at his hand. Although his torso and face did not repel her, they were far from beautiful, while the hand was truly lovely. She wished that she could touch it, but when she tried, she felt nothing. Still, she frequently placed her hand under his, so that it looked as if they were holding hands once more.

  Alice Meadows then drifted into an existence that bore traces of both vampirism and necrophilia. She was the necrophiliac, but it was Tim Reardon's pale, inconsequential wraith that drank the life blood from her. She seldom left his side, only to sleep a few hours each night and to buy food and cook it. She'd started out eating three meals a day, but a short time later that had shrunk to two, and finally to one, a small repast of a sandwich and perhaps a bowl of soup taken in the afternoon.

  Alice, unlike Eddie Karl, did not talk to her dead lover. She only sat at his side, looking at his hand. She sat there for seven weeks, eating little, bathing seldom, answering the phone when Kay called to see how she was, and hanging up almost immediately. To those in Merridale who knew of her tenancy at the Reardons', she was an enigma, though most believed she remained inside for fear of coming out. No one knew she was Alice Meadows; no one had recognized her on her infrequent trips in and out of the house.

  It was the nearing of Christmas that broke the spell that bound her. Pastor Craven had organized a hayride and carol sing for the Friday evening before Christmas. There had been a heavy snow the week before that the poorly manned Merridale street crews had not been able to thoroughly expunge from the roads, so the sound of horses' hooves and heavy wooden wheels outside was as soft and delicate as the new snow that had started only an hour before. It was a new, unaccustomed sound, and Alice turned from Tim's hand and listened.

  On Christmas Night all Christians sing

  To hear the news the angels bring

  News of great joy, news of great mirth,

  News of our merciful King's birth.

  She stood and walked to the window, pushing back the curtain.

  Then why should men on earth be so sad,

  Since our Redeemer made us glad?

  When from our sin He set us free,

  All for to gain our liberty.

  It was a moment with a dark magic in it; not a magic of the childhood religion she had learned and long ago dismissed, but a magic of time and place, certain words and sounds that lifted a thick veil from her face. It was a magic of snow and dark and candlelight, young voices pure as crystal, clean as the flakes that drifted onto the glass, melting in ecstasy at the touch of warmth.

  All out of darkness we have light,

  Which made the angels sing this night;

  "Glory to God and peace to men,

  Now and forevermore. Amen."

  She peered through the pane, and when the carolers were gone, the horses' hooves silent, she saw herself in the glass and gasped, wondering for an instant who the gaunt, pale, hollow-eyed woman was who was hovering outside. Her next awareness was of her own smell, and she choked at the rank pungency. She had a sense of schizophrenia then, of knowing what she had been doing, but feeling that it had not been her at all. When she looked again at the shape on the bed, it did not repel her, but neither did it draw her as it had before.

  She left the room, stripped, and took a nearly scalding shower, staying under the spray until the bathroom was heavy with mist, as though she were trying to sweat out the poisons that had filled her the past few weeks.

  Weeks? The past twelve years, she thought, lifting her face to the spray. I'm leaving this town. I have done everything I could for him, and I've been able to do nothing. What did I expect?

  What did I expect?

  She had hoped for, and expected, forgiveness, redemption. Instead, she had found only self-flagellation. Ultimately there had been no purpose for her return, and knowing that, she could go back to New York. She had done what she could. What more could be expected of her, even from herself? A snatch of melody from her childhood, inspired by the caroling, ran through her mind:

  Come home, come home,

  Ye who are weary, come home.

  She toweled herself dry, fixed her hair, and put on makeup for the first time in weeks. Then she stood naked in front of the full-length mirror in the Reardons' bedroom. She wondered if she had ever been this thin before. Most of her ribs were visible, and her stomach was perfectly flat, having lost the womanly rondure she disliked, but which her infrequent lovers had treasured. Even her breasts looked smaller, as if fat had dropped from them as well. Her hands came up to her face and framed it.

  So gaunt. So pale. I could play Camille.

  The only bit of pleasure she found from her weight loss was the fact that her cheekbones were now starkly prominent, like a Vogue model's, but the hollowness of her cheeks and lankiness of her neck made the total effect cadaverous.

  She rubbed some of the lighter makeup from her cheeks, and fixed her hair so that it framed her face more, easing the harshness of bone. Then she dressed in a medium-green pantsuit, which lovingly complemented the lush redness of her hair.

  I'm going to the Anchor, she thought. I'm going to have a few drinks and eat a huge dinner with lots of appetizers and a dessert, and then I am going to a motel and sleep, and tomorrow I am going home.

  The thought made her smile as she stepped into the hall, and she kept smiling even when she saw that she had left Tim's door slightly ajar. She walked to it and closed it without looking in, thinking, I loved you, I loved you, but that's over now. That's dead.

  She had rented a small car to go back and forth to the supermarket, and turned its key gleefully. As she drove over the packed snow that crunched beneath the Ford's weight, she sang carols to herself until she reached the Anchor. Colored lights were strung just under the single-story roofline, and on the porch, a plastic, illuminated Santa stood six feet tall, his red hat melting the falling snowflakes the instant they touched him, so that he gleamed wetly.

  Shouldn't he be blue? Alice thought with grim humor. Stop it. Not tonight. No ghosts tonight.

  She entered through the bar, which was filled except for a few stools at one end next to a large packing case that was nailed to the floor. Three steps brought her down into the restaurant area, where a chubby girl in her twenties showed Alice to a small corner table next to the coffee station. Alice drank a Manhattan on the rocks, and scanned the menu ravenously, ordering oysters on the half shell, clam chowder, and a medium-rare filet with a side of spaghetti. She had had far better meals at least twice a week in the city, but thought that it was the most delicious she'd ever tasted. When she'd finished, she was delighted to find that the bar stocked Dry Sack, and ordered a glass, feeling at peace with herself, with Tim Reardon, with Merridale and the world in general.

  The sherry was almost gone, warmi
ng her stomach with its gentle fire, when she heard the voice raised through the fisherman's netting that separated the dining room from the bar.

  CHAPTER 17

  They were both, they felt, men betrayed: by themselves, a long time before; by their women, only recently. It was sorrow and anger and self-pity and self-disgust that drove them to the Anchor bar, to find in liquor and a thick, smoky atmosphere what they could not find in their own homes.

  Jim Callendar was the first of the pair to arrive. After Beth had driven away, he had roamed the house like a caged animal, feeling the house's emptiness the same way he had in the first week after his son had died. Only then Beth had been there. Now there was no one, and he thought he might go mad. His life had shattered like a mirror when the bus had wrecked, and one by one the pieces had fallen away until even Beth was gone, and only one sharp-edged shard remained, small enough to reflect back only his own tired, sad face and nothing, no one else.

  Around five o'clock it had begun to snow, slow, heavy lumps of cold that seemed to explode as they landed, like bubbles of tar under hot sun. He wanted a drink, wanted many drinks, wanted to drink and drink until he was insensible, incapable of remembering. But he was also afraid, because if liquor could not push him into oblivion, he did not know what else he could do. At last he decided to try it, but by that time being alone was unbearable, so he got into the '72 Mustang Beth had left, and drove to the Anchor through the dark December evening.

  There were only a few seats at the bar, and he took one near the door, where the chill wind swept past him from the entryway whenever a patron came in or left. He ordered scotches neat with a water chaser, and drank, and nibbled peanuts, and once got up to go to the bathroom. No one spoke to him but the bartender, but on the other hand no one paid him the kind of negative attention he had come to expect before the specters had appeared. It seemed there were weightier concerns in Merridale than a several-year-old accident.

  Jim Callendar drank, and drank more, looking about edgily at times, so that the bartender wondered if he was meeting someone he didn't particularly look forward to seeing. Expected or not, the man soon came.

  ~*~

  Brad Meyers took a more circuitous route to the Anchor than did Jim Callendar. The first thing he did when he had finished with Christine was to get in his car and drive to the town park. He took the basketball that he always carried in his trunk, walked through the foot-deep snow to the outdoor courts, and began shooting baskets. It was something he did from time to time during better weather, though he wasn't very good at it, sinking only one out of three shots. But he enjoyed it, playing alone, declining any suggestions to go one on one. He had never played in the snow before, but Chris had never cheated on him before.

  The nets were down, but the hoops remained, and the ball stayed where it fell, lodged in white pockets. He could not dribble, only shoot, and he did so over and over again until his shoes were filled with snow and the legs of his jeans were soaked through to the skin. Passing cars slowed, including one police car, which Brad gave only a fleeting glance. Playing basketball in the snow was not illegal.

  Finally he stopped, panting for breath. Despite the cold, he could feel wet warmth under his arms as the perspiration sank through his T-shirt into his wool sweater. He plodded back to the car and drove the fifteen miles to Lansford, where he ate at a McDonald's and went to see movies in a mall with five mini-theaters. It made no difference to him what they were. He simply paid, sat down, watched one to its close, and moved on to the next.

  By the time he left the third film, it was dark, and the snow had begun. He stood for a long time under the mercury-vapor lights in the mall's parking lot, letting the wet flakes fall on his forehead as if they could ease the pain he felt. He thought about Christine, about himself, about Vietnam, about promises, about honor.

  It was about honor, he thought, all about honor. Doing the right thing, the ethical thing. He had tried to live with that thought foremost in his mind his whole life, and he had failed at times. But everyone fails, he knew that. Everyone cheats or lies or even worse, and they accept it and live with it. But Brad had within him the soul of a time in which you didn't lie, in which you tried to ferret out lies and show them for what they were, and in his eyes his sins loomed far greater than they might have to others, and the sins of others were magnified as well.

  Truth still lived in him. Honor rode his back, spurred his ribs, reminding him, always reminding him that he had sold his soul for life in a thick, wet jungle, had spilled blood and worse to keep his own blood in his veins. He had yielded his manhood in order to be a man.

  I didn't have to eat the heart. . . .

  The thought came unbidden, and he pressed it back, tears forming. It came seldom, but when it did, it was lightning fast and deadly, like a snake coiled in his brain. Twice only had he put it into words, once many years ago to Bonnie, who had not heard him.

  The second time was after Frankie died in the accident. He had thought that he might go insane then. He had loved the boy deeply, despite the sudden flarings of cruelty that he could not seem to control. He didn't take full advantage of his visitation rights because it hurt too much when the boy left to go back to his mother. When the accident occurred, he was devastated. This initial grief was followed by a hot anger toward Jim Callendar, which was intensified by Callendar's behavior at the hearing. Brad had quite simply wanted to kill Jim Callendar, and one night sat in his car outside the Callendars' house watching as lights and shadows moved behind the curtains and the house finally went dark, figuring where the bedroom was, thinking that since he didn't care if they caught him, he could let the wife live.

  The next day he called the Veterans Administration and asked to be referred to a psychiatrist, something that Bonnie had often urged him to do, but which he had always angrily dismissed. This time was different. He had never wanted to kill anyone before, and it frightened him. The psychiatrist he was assigned was stationed at Fort Susquehanna, a cluster of yellow frame buildings that over the years had housed horse cavalry, World War II enlistees, Cuban refugees, and National Guardsmen.

  Dr. Danvers was tall and fortyish, with a boyish face aged only slightly by a bushy moustache. "What bunch were you with?" was the first thing he said when the office door closed.

  "Pardon?"

  "In 'Nam, right?" Brad nodded. "What division?"

  "Ninth Infantry."

  "No kidding. Me too. Cobra Gunship. You want to sit down?"

  "No couch?"

  "That's for the movies and Park Avenue. What brings you here?"

  Brad sat in a cushioned chair next to Danvers's desk. "I've been worried about myself lately."

  "Worried."

  "Yeah, I, uh"—Brad gave a half laugh—"I think I'm in danger of becoming a cliché." Danvers said nothing, so Brad went on. "I mean, I look at myself in the mirror and I see this character from central casting. Your typical whacked-out Vietnam vet. You know . . . uh . . . long hair, beard, old fatigue jacket."

  Danvers smiled. "Do you have a jacket that says, 'When I die I'm going to heaven 'cause I spent my time in hell'?”

  “I'm not that far gone yet."

  "Have any other Hollywood symptoms?"

  "Kind of. I've been feeling . . . inclined to violence lately."

  "How so?"

  "I get angry fast. My temper's been pretty shiny ever since I got back from 'Nam."

  "Outbursts?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Ever feel like carving people up?"

  Brad laughed uncomfortably. "I get pretty mad."

  "Any run-ins with the law?"

  "A few."

  "You enjoy it? Having hassles with the cops?"

  "Are you asking if I hate authority?"

  "I asked what I asked, that's all. You don't have to read anything into it."

  "No, I don't enjoy it."

  Danvers sat quietly for a moment before he spoke again. "So you're afraid of becoming a TV movie villain, then." Brad didn't r
espond. "Is that right?"

  "I guess so."

  "What specifically brought you in here? The last straw that made you pick up the phone."

  Brad told Danvers about the accident, Frankie's death, waiting outside Jim Callendar's house. "I wanted to kill him," he said. "Maybe he's not at fault at all, but I wanted to kill him just the same."

  "That's not unnatural. You feel he's responsible for your son's death."

  "He is responsible! If you'd seen him . . . you'd have known. He had guilt written all over him! And I know about guilt," he rattled on. "I know all about guilt."

  "Maybe so," said Danvers quietly. "Listen, Brad. That cliché . . . about the wild-eyed Vietnam vet taking potshots at people. A cliché is all it is, just like Archie Bunker is a cliché of the working class, or Sanford and Son were clichés of American blacks. Sure, there are people like that, but most Vietnam vets are good guys. They've gotten back into the mainstream of American life, they've got jobs and families they don't beat, they pay their taxes and vote and go to church, and not one in a million skewers babies on bayonets."

  "Then why the hell don't they show that in the movies?"

  "Because that wouldn't sell tickets. Look, I admit, Vietnam was not pleasant for anybody, and for a lot of us it was goddamn ugly, and I can't pretend that there haven't been some guys who did go off the deep end—over a third have been arrested for one thing or another, and that's much higher than the general population. But that means that there are two thirds who've lived exemplary lives. And so can you. You don't have to live a worn-out image of what nonvets expect of you." Danvers sat back, tapped his desk top with a pen. "I think there's a lot of rage bottled up in you, but if you want me to, I think I can help you get rid of it. I'm sure that there's nothing that you brought back from 'Nam that you can't escape from."

  "That's what you think, is it?" Brad's voice was cold, reptilian, and Danvers tensed slightly, as though expecting an attack.