you. I love you, I really do. But I've been living with you for five
weeks, five helpless weeks during which I've been more like a dependent
child than an adult, and I'm just not capable of going on that way. I've
got to go to Nevada. I've no other option. I've got to."
New York, New York.
A couple of blocks farther down Fifth Avenue from the Presbyterian
Church, Jack stopped again, in front of St. Thomas's Episcopal Church.
In the nave, he stared in fascination at the huge reredos of Dunville
stone behind the altar. He met the strangely portentous gazes of the
statues in the shadowy niches along the walls-Saints, Apostles, the
Blessed Virgin, Christ-and he realized that the primary purpose of
religion was the expiation of guilt, to provide people with forgiveness
for being less than they were meant to be. The human species seemed
incapable of living up to its potential, and some would be driven mad by
guilt if they did not believe that a god-be it Jesus, Yahweh, Mohammed,
Marx, or some other-looked on them with favor in spite of themselves.
But Jack found no comfort in St. Thomas's, no expiation of his sins,
not even when he left twenty thousand dollars in the charity box.
In the Camaro again, he set out to dispose of the rest of the cash from
the Guardmaster heist, not because giving it away would salve his guilt;
it would not, for redistribution of the funds was not the moral
equivalent of repayment. He had too much to atone for to expect to
shrive himself of all his transgressions in one night. But he did not
need or want the money any more, could not simply throw it in the trash,
so giving the damn stuff away was his only possible course of action.
He stopped at more churches and temples. Some were open, some locked.
Where he could gain entrance, he left money.
He drove down to the Bowery and left forty thousand dollars with the
startled night attendant at the Salvation Army Mission.
On Bayard Street in nearby Chinatown, Jack saw a sign in a second-floor
window that proclaimed, in both Chinese characters and in English: THE
ALLIANCE AGAINST OPPRESSION OF CHINESE MINORITIES. The place was above
a quaint apothecary that specialized in the herbs and powdered roots of
traditional Chinese medicines. The apothecary was closed, but a light
shone in a window of the Alliance offices. Jack rang the bell at the
street-level door, rang it and rang it until an elderly and wizened
Chinese man came down the stairs and spoke to him through a small
grille. When Jack ascertained that the Alliance's current major project
was the rescue of brutalized Chinese families from Vietnam (and
resettlement in the States), he passed twenty thousand in cash through
the grille. The Chinese gentleman reverted to his native language in
surprise
and came out into the cold winter wind, insistent upon shaking hands.
"Friend," the elderly mandarin said. "You can't know what suffering
this gift will relieve." Jack echoed the old man, "Friend." In that
single word, and in the warm grasp of the venerable Oriental's callused
hand, Jack found something he thought he had lost forever: a sense of
belonging, a feeling of community, fellowship.
In his car again, he drove up Bayard to Mott Street, turned right, and
had to pull to the curb. A flood of tears blurred his vision.
He could not remember ever having been more confused than he was now. He
wept in part because the stain of guilt, for the moment at least, seemed
an ineradicable mark upon his soul. Yet some of the tears were tears of
joy, for he was abruptly brimming over with brotherhood. For the better
part of a decade, he had been outside society, distanced in mind and
spirit if not in body. But now, for the first time since Central
America, Jack Twist had the need, desire, and ability to reach out to
the society around him, to make friends.
Bitterness was a dead-end. Hatred hurt no one more than he who harbored
it. The wine of alienation was loneliness.
During the past eight years, he had often wept for Jenny, and he had
sometimes wept in fits of self-pity. But these tears were different
from all others he had let previously, for they were cleansing tears,
purging tears, washing all the rage and resentment out of him.
He still did not understand the cause of these radical and rapid changes
taking place in him. However, he sensed that his evolution-from outcast
and criminal to law-abiding citizen-was not finished and would generate
several more surprises before it reached a conclusion. He wondered
where he was bound and by what route he would arrive there.
That night in Chinatown, hope swept back into his world like a summer
breeze stirring music from a cluster of wind chimes.
Elko County, Nevada.
Ned and Sandy Sarver were able to run the diner by themselves because
they were hard workers by nature, but also because their menu was simple
and because Ned had learned efficient food service as a cook in the U S.
Army. A hundred tricks were employed to make the Tranquility Grille
function smoothly with as little effort as possible.
Nevertheless, at the end of work, Ned was always glad that Ernie and
Faye provided the motel's guests with a free continental breakfast in
their rooms, so it was not necessary to open the diner before noon.
Saturday evening, while he grilled hamburgers and made French fries and
served chili-dogs, Ned Sarver glanced frequently at Sandy as she worked.
He still could not get used to the change in her, the sudden flowering.
She had added ten pounds, and her figure had acquired an appealing
female roundness it never possessed before. And she no longer shuffled
slump-shouldered through the diner, but moved with a fluid grace and a
jaunty good humor that Ned found enormously appealing.
He was not the only man who had eyes for the new Sandy. Some of the
truckers watched the roll of her hips and the flex of her buttocks as
she crossed the room with plates of food or bottles of cold beer.
Until recently, although Sandy had been unfailingly polite to the
customers, she had not been chatty. That changed, too. She was still
somewhat shy, but she responded to the truckers' teasing and even teased
them in return, and came up with some damn good quips.
For the first time in eight years of marriage, Ned Sarver feared losing
Sandy. He knew she loved him, and he told himself that these changes in
her appearance and personality would not also change the nature of their
relationship. But that was precisely what he feared.
This morning, when Sandy went to Elko to meet Ernie and Faye at the
airport, Ned had worried that she would not come back. Maybe she would
just keep going until she found a place she liked better than Nevada,
until she met a man who was handsomer, richer, and smarter than Ned. He
knew that he was being unfair to Sandy by harboring such suspicions,
that she was incapable of infidelity or cruelty. Maybe his fear lay in
the fact that he'd always thought Sandy deserved better than him.
At nine-thirty, when the dinner cr
owd thinned to seven customers, Faye
and Ernie came into the Grille with that dark, good-looking guy who had
caused a scene earlier in the evening when he had wandered through the
door as if in a dream and then had turned and run out as though hell
hounds were at his heels. Ned wondered who the guy was, how he knew
Faye and Ernie, and whether they knew their friend was a little weird.
Ernie looked pale and shaky, and to Ned it seemed as if his boss was
taking considerable care to keep his back to the windows. When he
raised a hand in greeting to Ned, there was a visible tremor in it.
Faye and the stranger sat facing each other across the table, and from
the looks they gave Ernie, you could see they were concerned about him.
They didn't look so good themselves.
Something peculiar was going on. Intrigued by Ernie's condition, Ned
was briefly distracted from thoughts of Sandy leaving him.
But when Sandy stopped at their table, she was so long taking their
order that Ned's concern rose again. From his post behind the counter,
with a hamburger and a pair of eggs sizzling noisily on the griddle, he
could not hear what they were saying over there, but he had the crazy
notion that the stranger was taking undue interest in Sandy and that she
was responding to his slick patter. Jealous nonsense, of course. Yet
the guy was handsome, and he was younger than Ned, closer Sandy's age,
and apparently successful, just the kind of guy she ought to run off
with because he would be better for her than Ned could ever be.
In his own view, Ned Sarver was not much to brag about. He was not ugly,
but certainly not handsome. His brown hair had receded from his
forehead in a deep widow's peak; unless you were Jack Nicholson, such a
hairline was not sexy. He had pale-gray eyes that perhaps had been
startling and magnetic when he was a young man, but with the passing
years, they merely made him appear tired and washed-out. He was neither
rich nor destined to be rich. And at forty-two, ten years older than
Sandy, Ned Sarver was not likely to be gripped suddenly by the driving
need to make something of himself.
All of this dismaying self-criticism roiled through his mind as he
watched Sandy finally leave the stranger's table and come to the
counter. With an odd and troubled expression, she handed the order slip
to him and said, "What time we closing? Ten or ten-thirty?"
"Ten." Indicating the few customers, Ned added: "Two profit hanging
around tonight."
She nodded and went back to Faye, Ernie-and the stranger.
Her brusqueness and her speedy return to the stranger aggravated Ned's
worries. As far as he could see, he had only three qualities that gave
Sandy any reason to stay with him. First, he could always make a decent
living as a short-order cook because he was good. Second, he had a
talent for fixing things, both inanimate objects and living creatures.
If a toaster, blender, or radio went on the blink, Ned set to work with
a tool kit and soon had the appliance back in operation. Likewise, if
he found a panicky bird with a broken wing he stroked it until it grew
calm, took it home, nursed it back to health, then sent it on its way.
Having the talent to fix things seemed important, and Ned was proud of
it. Third, he loved Sandy with all his body, mind, and heart.
Preparing the order for Faye, Ernie, and the stranger, Ned glanced
repeatedly at Sandy, and he was surprised when she and Faye started
moving around the room, lowering the Leyolor blinds over the windows.
Something unusual was going on. Returning to Ernie's table, Sandy
leaned forward in earnest conversation with the goodlooking stranger.
It was ironic that he was worried about losing Sandy, for it had been
his talent for fixing things that contributed to her transformation from
duckling to swan. When Ned first met her at a diner in Tucson, where
they worked, Sandy was not just bashful and self-conscious but painfully
shy, fearful. She was a hard worker, always willing to lend a hand to
other waitresses when they got behind in their orders, but she was
incapable of interacting with anyone on a personal level. A pale,
scuttling girl (twenty-three, but still more girl than woman), she was
reluctant to open the door on friendship, for fear she would put her
trust in someone who might hurt her. She had been drab, mousy, meek,
beaten by life-and the instant Ned had seen her, he had felt the need to
fix things for her. With enormous patience, he began work on her, so
subtly that, at first, she was not aware that he was interested in her.
They were married nine months later, although his repair work on her was
far from finished. She was more badly broken than any creature he'd
encountered before, and there were times when, in frustration, he felt
that, even with his talent, he would be unable to fix her and would
spend the rest of his life tinkering endlessly without much effect.
During their first six years of marriage, however, he had witnessed a
slow healing in her, maddeningly gradual. Sandy had an indisputably
bright mind, but she was retarded emotionally; she learned to take and
give affection only with tremendous effort, much as a dim-witted child
struggles mightily to learn to count to ten.
The first indication Ned had had that major changes were taking place in
Sandy was the sudden marked improvement in her sexual appetite. The
turnaround had come in late August, two summers ago.
She'd never been a hesitant lover. She exhibited extensive carnal
knowledge, but she made love more like a machine than a woman, with a
joyless expertise. He had never known a woman as silent in bed as Sandy
had been. He suspected something in her childhood had stunted her, the
same thing that had broken her spirit. He tried to get her to talk
about it, but she was adamant about letting the past stay buried, and
his persistence was the one thing that might have caused her to leave
him; so he asked about it no more, though it was difficult to fix
something when you could not get at the part of it that was broken.
Then, in August of the summer before last, she came to the conjugal bed
with a noticeably different attitude. Nothing dramatic at first. No
sudden release of long-imprisoned passions. Initially, the change
involved only a subtle new relaxation during the act of love. Sometimes
she smiled or murmured his name as he made love to her.
Slowly, slowly, she blossomed. By that Christmas, four months after the
change began, she no longer lay upon the bed as if she were made of
metal. She strove to find and match his rhythm, searching for the
fulfillment that still eluded her.
Slowly, slowly, she freed the erotic power chained within her. Finally,
on April 7, last year, a night Ned would never forget, Sandy had an
orgasm for the first time. It was a climax of such power that for a
moment it frightened Ned. Afterward, she wept with happiness and clung
to him with such gratitude, love, and trust that he wept as well.
He thought her orgasmic breakthrough would finally enable her to speak<
br />
of the source of her long-hidden pain. But when he cautiously inquired,
she rebuffed him: "The past is past, Ned. Won't help to dwell on it. If
I talk about it . . . that might just give it a new hold on me."
Through last spring, summer, and early autumn, Sandy gradually achieved
satisfaction more often until, by September, their love-making nearly
always brought her fulfillment. And by Christmas Day, less than three
weeks ago, it was clear that her sexual maturation was not the only
change in her but was accompanied by a new pride and self-respect.
Concomitant with her sexual development, Sandy learned to enjoy driving,
an activity she had once found even less pleasurable than sex.
Initially, she expressed the modest intention of driving to work from
their trailer out near Beowawe. Before long she was lighting out in the
truck on solo spins. Sometimes Ned stood at a window and watched his
uncaged bird soar off, and he viewed each flight with delight but also
with an uneasiness he could not explain.
By New Year's Day, just past, the uneasiness became dread and was with
him twenty-four hours a day, and by then he understood it. He was
afraid Sandy would fly away from him.
Maybe with the stranger who'd come in with Ernie and Faye.
I'm probably overreacting, Ned thought as he put three hamburger patties
on the griddle. Fact is, I know damn well I'm overreacting.
But he worried.
By the time Ned prepared cheeseburgers with all the fixings for the
Blocks and their friend, the other customers were gone. As Sandy served
the loaded plates, Faye locked the door and switched on the CLOSED sign
that was visible from I-80, though it was shy of ten o'clock.
Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers Page 52
