Flame, he thought, and he remembered those cases of “spontaneous combustion” that had occurred when a newly dead person experienced an emotional trauma. In a number of the cases, the person had been drinking alcohol.
He put down the cup. “I’m too old for tequila,” he said. He inhaled, feeling again the chill of the fast-evaporating alcohol in his mouth. “I’ll be regretting even just that one sip.”
Edison took another swallow from his glass. “Well, I’m eighty-four years old, but I’m working with an eleven-year-old stomach. The boy will probably sleep through until morning, so another drink or two will do no harm. I’ve got something to celebrate anyway.”
Too weary to speak, Bradshaw raised his eyebrows.
“I received a Bachelor of Science degree on Sunday.”
Bradshaw couldn’t imagine what Edison was talking about, but he nodded ponderously as he reached for the bottle to refill Kootie’s glass. “That’s good.” He sucked air into his lungs. “A college degree can make all the difference in the world.”
THERE WAS a broader lake in a shallow green meadow on the north side of the cemetery lane, and its water was still enough that Sullivan could clearly see the vertical reflections of the tall palms on the far shore. There were two more palm trees reflected in the water than there were standing on the shore.
Marble benches stood here and there on the grass slope, and there seemed to be figures sitting on every one. Some stared at Sullivan and Elizalde, while others silently went through the motions of talking or laughing, and a couple were bent over notebooks, perhaps writing poetry. Sullivan supposed that one or two of them might be living people who saw this place as solitary.
Past the urns and markers and statues he hurried, holding Elizalde’s free hand as they made their way down the slope. Around the north curve of the shore, only a few hundred feet ahead, he could see another rectangle of broken white stones, and he was sure that his father’s grave was very near there.
He and Elizalde were striding along the shoreline now to stay away from the ghosts on the slope, though the animate palm fronds swam in closer to them, creaking woodenly in eerily good imitation of the grumble of ducks. Rope-wide grooves were curled and looped across the muddy bottom of the shallow lake, as if big worms had been foraging earlier in the day.
Sullivan blinked around at the marble-studded slopes, and he sniffed the chilly jasmined air—then realized that it was a sound that he had become aware of, a low vibration as if a lot of people hiding behind the nearer stones and trees were humming the same bass note.
Clustered red water lilies hid the lake floor at this north end of the lake, and his father’s grave was just on the far side of a bushy gray-green juniper that overhung the water.
“Got to go back up the slope for just a few steps,” he said tightly, “to get around this shrubbery.”
“I’d rather wade across,” whispered Elizalde.
He thought about the worm tracks, and for a moment he wondered if there even was a bottom right here, under the blanket of water lilies. “It’s just a few steps,” he said, tugging her uphill around the juniper. Two ghosts were pirouetting on the Cecil B. DeMille crypts, but no one was paying any evident attention to Sullivan and Elizalde.
Back down beside the water on the far side, he saw that a knee-high white statue of the Virgin Mary had been propped up on the rectangle of white stones, with red flowers in the little stone hands and a black cloth hood tied around the head.
Jayne Mansfield’s etched pink cenotaph lay at the feet of the stone Virgin; the surface of the marker had apparently once had a reproduction of Mansfield’s face bonded to it, but the image had been crudely chipped off. In the shadows under the juniper Sullivan could see a couple of empty cans of King Cobra malt liquor and a dozen white candles in a clear plastic bag.
Off a few steps to the east of Mansfield’s marker lay a low black-marble square that, from the way its placement jibed with his thirty-three-year-old memories, must be the one that would have his father’s name on it.
KOOTIE’S HEAD seemed to be bobbing in time to a slow pulse, and Bradshaw stood up and fetched a jar from the kitchen. It was a Smucker’s orange-marmalade jar, scraped nearly empty.
“How’re you doing,” he said as he plodded back into the office with it. “Mr. Edison.” Kootie was frowning intently, and the expression made him even look like an old man, in the dim sunlight that filtered in through the lantana branches clustered outside the windows. “I’m afraid,” he said with evident care, “that I’ve stuck poor Kootie with…what I trust will be…the first hangover of his life.”
Bradshaw knew that if his flesh had still been alive, his hand would have trembled as he held out the marmalade jar. “Best thing for the boy would be,” he said. There was no heartbeat in his chest, but it should have been knocking. “For you to get sick now, while the booze is still. Undigested. Cough yourself out into this jar. The boy will feel better for it.”
“There never has been a vacuum produced in this country that approached anywhere near the vacuum which is necessary for me,” said Edison, articulating each syllable meticulously with Kootie’s mouth. “A hundred-thousandth of an atmosphere was enough to let the filament burn. I need to find my vacuum.”
“This jar is evacuated,” said Bradshaw. “Hop in. You’ve had too much to drink. Carry the hangover into the jar. To free the boy.”
“Physicists and sphinxes in majestical mists. Nothing wrong with my…sibilant syllables.” Kootie’s eyes were half closed.
“Dammit,” said Bradshaw. “Mr. Edison. Exhale yourself. Get in the jar.”
But Kootie’s chin wobbled downward, lifted once with a questioning whine, then dropped to his chest. A hoarse snore blew out through the boy’s lips, but Bradshaw knew it was just breath, not Edison’s ghost.
“Mr. Edison,” said Bradshaw, his voice droning flatly as he tried to speak louder. “Wake up. It’s just a hop, skip, and a sigh. To bed.”
Kootie was unconscious, though, and didn’t stir even when Bradshaw reached out to nudge his head with the empty jar.
Bradshaw’s face was immobile, but a red tear ran down his gray cheek as he set the jar carefully on the cleared-off desk.
Horribly, there still was something he could do.
ARTHUR PATRICK SULLIVAN
“And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”
1898-1959
Sullivan waved a circling gnat away from his face and stared down at his father’s gravestone. He was tightly holding Elizalde’s hand.
His father’s stone had a picture attached, too; a playing-card-sized greened-brass plaque with an engraving of the old man’s face etched on it. Sullivan recognized the smiling likeness; it was from a Fox Studios publicity still taken in the forties.
The breeze paused, and when it came back it was chillier. The palm-frond swans scudded away toward the ring of fountain jets that stuck up above the surface of the water; Sullivan had at first glance thought the nozzles were a cluster of baby ducklings, and perhaps they still appeared so to the creaking frond-birds.
Sullivan released Elizalde’s hand, crouched, and touched the inset plaque—and it was loose, simply resting in the shallow rectangular recess in the stone. He pried it out with a fingernail and stood up again, tucking it into his shirt pocket and retaking hold of Elizalde’s hand.
Sullivan’s mouth was dry and tasted of pennies. When he began to speak, he found that his voice had a rusty flippancy: “So where are you, Dad?” he asked, aware that Elizalde was listening. “We want to be on the road before the evening traffic gets heavy.”