We didn’t want to wake Crystal.
Later, for appearance’s sake, Lucy returned to her own room so she’d be there when Crystal got up.
I slept like the dead.
Forty-six
It was three minutes after one in the morning when Dwayne Rogers stepped out of Knight’s, one of Promise Falls’ seedier downtown bars that had been down on Proctor Street since God was in short pants, into the cool night air. He dug into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He hadn’t smoked in years, but the last couple of weeks, he’d found himself falling back into the habit. Calmed him, at least briefly. The whole ritual of it. Unwrapping the cellophane on the package, tapping the pack against his fist to eject the cigarette, putting it between his lips, opening the matchbook and striking a match, watching it flare briefly, putting it to the end of the cigarette, watching the warm glow as the tobacco ignited.
He’d been drinking more lately, too. You did what you had to do in tough times. Told Celeste he needed to get some air. He’d felt ashamed, crying like that in front of Celeste. Then her brother-in-law shows up, peeking through the window, seeing him that way. Dwayne confronting him and acting like a real asshole.
Celeste gave him proper shit after Cal left. Dwayne didn’t realize, until after Cal was gone, that he’d been burned out of his home. Dwayne thought maybe he could have handled that a little better.
He said he needed to go out to think about things. What he didn’t tell Celeste was that he’d already been planning to go out.
He had somewhere he had to be at a certain time.
He’d been at the bar only about five minutes — he hadn’t even ordered a beer yet — when he went back outside. Before he left, he said hello to a couple of people he recognized, gave the bartender a friendly wave. Said to him, “Have you seen Harry around?”
“Don’t think so,” the bartender said.
“Well, if you see him, tell him Dwayne was here,” he said.
“Sure thing.”
Once he was back on the street, he lit up his cigarette and waited. He wasn’t the only one out there. A young couple was leaned up against a lamppost, making out. Three men were huddled together debating which was better: NASCAR or horse racing. Occasionally, someone went into or came out of Knight’s.
Proctor Street ran downhill from north to south. When Dwayne was younger, he used to skateboard down the length of it late at night or early Sunday morning, when there was hardly any traffic.
As he looked to the north, he saw something coming, but it was not a kid on a skateboard.
It was a bus. A Promise Falls Transit bus, with a big baylike window at the front.
The buses didn’t typically run this late, at least not anymore. They once crisscrossed town until the bars closed, but since the town managers went hacking away at the budget, you couldn’t get a bus after eleven.
This didn’t look like a bus anyone would want to board, anyway.
It was on fire.
The inside of the bus was aglow with flames. They were flickering out the windows on both sides.
Rolling down the center of Proctor, with increasing speed, the bus looked like a comet. Proctor ran dead straight, but the bus looked like it was coming down on a slight angle, and pretty soon was going to crash into cars parked along the curb.
Dwayne stood, rooted to the sidewalk, mesmerized by the spectacle, as the bus got closer.
The men debating the merits of fast cars versus fast horses spun around and stared, mouths agape, as the fireball approached.
“Son of a bitch!” one yelled.
“Fucking hell!” said another.
As the bus flew past Knight’s, it became obvious to everyone that there was no one behind the wheel. Nor were there any passengers.
As the rocket of flame continued to barrel on down the street, the back end of the bus was illuminated every few seconds as it passed below streetlamps.
The number 23, in numerals three feet high, adorned the back of the bus below the window.
“Look!” said the young man who’d been making out with his girlfriend. “It’s him!”
“Who?” the girl asked.
“The guy the cops were talking about! Mr. Twenty-three!”
“What?” she said.
The bus sideswiped several parked cars on the other side of the street, setting off multiple alarms and flashing taillights, but the collisions did little to slow the vehicle down.
Proctor T-boned with Richmond about a hundred yards on. The flaming bus raced through the intersection, smashed through two cars parked on the street, and barreled into the front window of a florist shop.
“Wow,” Dwayne said.
The sound of the crash brought others out of the bar. “What the hell happened?” someone asked.
“That bus!” Dwayne said. “Went flying past, all on fire! Jesus!”
A growing crowd spilled out into the street. The bar emptied. Across Proctor, customers poured out of an all-night diner to see what was going on.
The man who’d read something into the number on the back of the bus started shouting: “It might have a bomb in it! It’s the guy who blew up the drive-in!” He grabbed his girlfriend by the arm and started running up Proctor the other way.
The others on the street exchanged looks, as though pondering what they should do. They seemed torn between moving in for a closer look at what happened — the flower shop’s burglar alarm was whooping loudly and the blaze was spreading from the bus to the building — and running for their lives.
Several of them started to run.
Dwayne heard heavy footsteps coming from the north and turned. It was a male jogger in his mid — to late twenties. He came to a stop next to Dwayne.
“What the hell happened?” asked the jogger, his shirt soaked with sweat.
“Beats me,” said Dwayne. “Thing just flew past here like a space shuttle on reentry.” He gave the jogger a closer look. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”
“Don’t think so.”
“You were in the bar the other night, kinda mouthing off at everyone.”
“Yeah, that mighta been me. Had a bit too much. Sorry if I said anything to you — what’s your name?”
“Dwayne.”
“Well, sorry, Dwayne. I’m Victor, by the way.”
“Hey.”
Victor Rooney gazed down the street at the fire with something approaching awe and wonder. “Not the sort of thing you see every day, is it?”
Forty-seven
Derek Cutter had set the alarm on his phone for six, but his eyes were open five minutes before it went off. Early-morning sunlight was filtering through the blinds into his bedroom. He could have lain in another five minutes, even a few more after six, but he wanted to get going.
He was excited.
And surprised. Surprised that he was excited.
Marla Pickens had invited him to come over first thing this morning to have breakfast with Matthew and her. Matthew was her ten-month-old child. Matthew was also, as it turned out, Derek’s ten-month-old child.
Derek was stunned to learn that he was a father, but Marla was also somewhat stunned to learn she was a mother.
More than a year ago, he’d known he was going to become a dad, and he was certainly not excited about the news at the time. Scared shitless was more like it. He and Marla, a woman he’d met at the Thackeray pub, had gone out a couple of times, slept together, and even though that was the kind of activity that he was aware could lead to babies, he was dumbstruck when Marla told him she was pregnant.
He didn’t want a kid, and he didn’t know what the hell to do with one when it arrived. He didn’t know whether Marla even wanted him involved. All he knew was that she intended to have the baby.