“If it’s any comfort, the way I grabbed her, I’m sure Rita’s got one, too.”
“I never liked her. She was always sneaking around with David behind my back. But I’ve never hated her the way she hates me.” Then, “I haven’t really cried yet.”
“You could’ve fooled me.”
“Oh, that was nothing. I was inhibited by all the people around.”
“When you get home then-”
“When I get home I’ll have to go through the Inquisition. And then they’ll gloat.”
“I assume you’re talking about your parents?”
“Could you turn the heat on?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks. And yes, I’m talking about my parents. They’ll try to hide it. Their gloating.
They’ll say how sorry they are about him dying.
But they’ll be relieved. He won’t be around to bother them anymore. Meaning he won’t be around to bother me. Anymore. My father hated him.
Really. Deep, deep hatred. I was a virgin until I met David. He’s the only boy I’ve ever slept with. I made the mistake of telling my mom that. Supposedly in confidence.
But she told my father, of course. I really think he’s jealous. He just got crazy. He got drunk for several nights in a row and then he’d come upstairs and start screaming at me. He even called me a whore a couple of times. My mom really got scared.”
“Did he ever confront David?”
“Once. One night he got really drunk and went looking for him. My mom says he keeps a loaded forty-five-his old army pistol-in the nightstand drawer. She went to look for it but it wasn’t there. She was afraid Dad would kill him or something. The whole night was crazy. She couldn’t call Cliffie because he’d tell everybody that Dad went off with a gun looking for David. Fortunately, she didn’t have to tell Cliffie anything. Cliffie saw Dad weaving down the street and pulled him over.
Made him park the car and then brought him home.
Dad didn’t say anything about David or the gun apparently. If Dad weren’t so important, Cliffie would’ve run him in.
Anyway, he didn’t get to David.”
My headlights pierced the leafy darkness of her narrow street. The eyes of raccoons gleamed silver in the shrubs and undergrowth. The family dog began yapping before I was even halfway up the drive.
When I pulled up, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “I wish you were younger or I were older.” She was all coppery hair and heartbroken smile. Egan had been a fool.
“Or you were shorter or I were taller.”
“We’re a pair.” Then, “You know what I’m doing, don’t you?”
“Stalling for time before you have to go inside.”
“You’re very perceptive.”
“What scares you the most, facing your parents or being alone in your room?”
“Being alone. Because I’m going to fall apart.”
“Maybe that’s what you need,” I said.
“Falling apart. Then when you wake up you’ll be stronger.”
“Rita could’ve stopped him tonight. This is her fault, you know.”
“Kiddo,” I said, not up for another flaying of her romantic rival, “it’s time for you to go inside.”
I drove around for an hour. This time Saturday night there would still be kids out cruising.
The hard drunks would be done for the night, passed out or punched out or puked out. Only the melancholy ones would be left. They’d had dates and the dates had to be home at midnight and now they were cruising alone, melancholy for the girls they’d just dropped off, because they loved them so damned much; or melancholy because they were so damned afraid they would lose them, secretly reviewing all their inadequacies and just hoping the girls never found out about them for themselves.
They would hit the highway and turn up the rock and roll and let the moon shine on them with its ancient solitary soothing truths.
The local Tv stations always signed off at midnight, even on weekends. Nothing’s lonelier than the keen of a test pattern.
I climbed into bed shortly after one, read six pages, and fell thankfully into a deep and dreamless sleep. I went through all the usual tussles with the cats, Tasha deciding at some point during the night to examine my face the way a dermatologist would, her purring almost as loud as her snoring; little Crystal head-butting my arm so I’d give her a sleepy scratch; and Tess biting my foot when I made the mistake of trying to move it so I could get comfortable. I’d slept with my boyhood dog for years so I knew all about how to sleep with, around, and through the experience of pets in the same bed.
It was darktime when the phone woke me. No particular time or place or world. Just darktime.
My weary hand reaching out for the telephone on the nightstand. My weary ear feeling the cold receiver against it. My weary mind trying to make sense of the words. He or she was stingy with words. A regular haiku master. I say he or she because it was either a female talking through a handkerchief or a male talking through a handkerchief and sliding his voice up an octave, not quite falsetto.
“It wasn’t an accident.”
No emotion. No elaboration.
“You hear me? It wasn’t an accident.”
Thirteen
Next morning, I went out there even though there was no reason to do it. I went up to the edge of the crevice where the bridge had ripped away and I just stood there. It was a cool, sunny, autumn Sunday and even this far away from the center of town you could hear the bells of the Catholic church. The red limestone wall on the opposite side of the river was like a bulletin board of bits and pieces of Egan’s Merc, bits and pieces that were strewn everywhere. A chrome headlight rim, bent and busted, caught the sunlight. A foot-long length of tire was somehow adhered to the wall. What appeared to be a section of bumper stuck straight out. The front of the car had left an outline in the limestone. Parts of the display were oily from impact. There were violent rents and deep gouges but they didn’t leave any discernible pattern.
I had no idea what I was looking for.
Maybe I wasn’t looking for anything. Maybe that phone call had made me suspicious enough to come out here, even though the chances were it was a prank.
There are people who enjoy making miserable events even more miserable for those involved. I don’t understand people who admire communism, I don’t understand people who hurt children, I don’t understand people who rob and cheat old people, I don’t understand White Sox fans.
And I especially don’t understand people who find human grief something to exploit for laughs or profit. Someday I’m going to build my own private death row and I’m going to put all these people in it. Except for the White Sox fans.
Following that team is punishment enough. No incarceration required.
I drove back down to the starting line. The blue air was alive with pheasants. You could watch them take fragile flight, their elegant colors vivid above the cornfields and the meadows. In another week it would be legal for hunters to put their rifles and shotguns on them and blow the shit out of them. From all the gunfire in the surrounding hills it sounded as if at least a few of the brave and intrepid hunters were already blasting away. Those damned pheasants are mean.
The area around the starting line was a mess of crushed beer cans, crumpled cigarette packages, pop cans, smashed bottles, empty potato chip packages. But when you looked away from the debris, looked up at the smoky autumn hills, everything was clean and coherent, and the death of a young man last night seemed not obscene but impossible.
I wasn’t looking for it when I found it. I walked right past it, recognizing it for what it was, of course, but not connecting it to Egan or last night.
I was just walking back to my car when I happened to see the trail of it glistening there, a gleaming snake that had already claimed its victim -a gleaming trail of oil.
I walked over to the snake and measured its lengths in steps. The snake extended well beyond my desire to count off its length. I wasn’t sure what it meant. There might be a harmless explanation. Or a harmful one.