Now the nice enough fella had gone totally bonkers, and it hadn’t just happened this afternoon, when Ed had seen his wife’s name on a petition hanging from the Community Bulletin Board in the Shop) n Save. Ralph now understood that Ed’s madness was at least a year old, and that made him wonder what secrets Helen had been keep and what is behind her normal cheery demeanor and sunny sen’e, small, desperate signals-besides the bruises, that was-he might have missed.
And then there’s Natalie, he thought. What’s she seen? What’s she experienced? Besides, of course, being carried across Harris Avenue and the Red Apple parking lot on her staggering, bleeding mother’s hip?
Ralph’s arms broke out in goosebumps.
Ed had begun to pace, meanwhile, crossing and recrossing the cement path, trampling the zinnias Helen had planted along it as a border. He had returned to the Ed Ralph had encountered out by the airport the year before, right down to the fierce little pokes of the head and the sharp, jabbing glances at nothing, This is what the gee-whiz act was supposed to hide, Ralph thought.
He looks the same now as he did when he took after the guy driving that pick up truck. Like a barnyard, rooster protecting his little piece of the flock.
“None of this is strictly her fault, I admit that.” Ed spoke rapidly, pounding his right fist into his open left palm as he walked through the cloud of spray thrown by the sprinkler. Ralph realized he could see every rib in Ed’s chest; the man looked as if he hadn’t had a decent meal in months.
“Still, once stupidity reaches a certain level, it becomes hard to live with,” Ed went on. “She’s like the Magi, actually coming to King Herod for information. I mean, how dumb can you get? Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” To Herod they say this. I mean, Wise Men my ass! Right, Ralph?”
Ralph nodded. Sure, Ed. Whatever you say, Ed.
Ed returned the nod and went on tramping back and forth through the spray and the ghostly interlocking rainbows, smacking his fist into his palm. “It’s like that Rolling Stones song-’Look at that, look at that, look at that stupid girl.” You probably don’t remember that one, do you?” Ed laughed, a jagged little sound that made Ralph think of rats dancing on broken glass.
McGovern knelt beside him. “Let’s get out of here, he muttered.
Ralph shook his head, and when Ed swung back in their direction, McGovern quickly got up and retreated to the sidewalk again.
“She thought she could fool you, is that it?” Ralph asked. He was still lying on the lawn, propped up on his elbows. “She thought you wouldn’t find out she signed the petition.”
Ed leaped over the walk, bent over Ralph, and shook his clenched fists over his head like the bad guy in a silent movie. “No-No-Noo!”
he cried.
The Jefferson Airplane had been replaced by the Animals, Eric Burdon growling out the gospel according to John Lee Hooker: Boom-boom-boom-boom, gonna shoot ya right down. McGovern uttered a thin cry, apparently thinking Ed meant to attack Ralph, but instead Ed sank down with the knuckles of his left hand pressed into the grass, assuming the position of a sprinter who waits for the starter’s gun to explode him out of the blocks. His face was covered with beads of what Ralph at first took for sweat before remembering the way Ed had paced back and forth through the spray from the sprinkler. Ralph kept looking at the spot of blood on the left lens of Ed’s glasses. it had smeared a little, and now the pupil of his left eye looked as if it had filled up with blood.
“Finding out that she signed the petition was fate! Simple fate!
Do you mean to tell me you don’t see that? Don’t insult my intelligence, Ralph! You may be getting on in years, but you’re far from stupid. The thing is, I go down to the supermarket to buy baby-food, how’s that for irony, and find out she’s signed on with the babvkillers.” The Centurions! With the Crimson King himself! And do you know what? I… just… saw… red…
“The Crimson King, Ed? Who’s he?”
“Oh, please.” Ed gave Ralph a cunning look.” ’Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.” It’s in the Bible, Ralph.
Matthew, chapter 2, verse 16. Do you doubt it-? Do you have any fucking question that it says that?”
“No. If you say so, I believe it,” Ed nodded. His eyes, a deep and startling shade of green, darted here and there. Then he slowly leaned forward over Ralph, planting one hand on either side of Ralph’s arms. It was as if he meant to kiss him. Ralph could smell sweat, and some sort of aftershave that had almost completely faded away now, and something else-something that smelled like old curdled milk. He wondered if it might be the smell of Ed’s madness.
An ambulance was coming up Harris Avenue, running its flashers but not its siren. It turned into the Red Apple’s parking lot.
“You better,” Ed breathed into his face. “You just better believe it.”
His eyes stopped wandering and centered on Ralph’s.
“They are killing the babies wholesale,” he said in a low voice which was not quite steady. “Ripping them from the wombs of their mothers and carrying them out of town in covered trucks. Flatbeds for the most part. Ask yourself this, Ralph: how many times a week do you see one of those big flatbeds tooling down the road? A flatbed with a tarp stretched across the back? Ever ask yourself what those trucks were carrying? Ever wonder what was under most of those tarps?”
Ed grinned. His eyes rolled.
“They burn most of the fetuses over in Newport. The sign says landfill, but it’s really a crematorium. They send some of them out of state, though. In trucks, in light planes. Because fetal tissue is extremely valuable. I tell you that not just as a concerned citizen, but as an em Ralph, ployee of Hawking Laboratories. Fetal tissue is… more… valuable… than gold.”
He turned his head suddenly and stared at Bill McGovern, who had crept a little closer again in order to hear what Ed was saying.
“YEA, MORE VALUABLE THAN GOLD AND MOPE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES!” he screamed, and McGovern leaped back, eyes widening in fear and dismay.
“DO YOU KNOW THAT, YOU OLD FAGGOT?”
“Yes,” McGovern said. “I… I guess I did.” He shot a quick glance down the street, where one of the police cars was now backing out of the Red Apple lot and turning in their direction. “I might have read it somewhere. In Scientific American, perhaps.”
“Scientific American!” Ed laughed with gentle contempt and rolled his eyes at Ralph again, as if to say You see what I have to deal with.
Then his face grew sober again. “Wholesale murder,” he said, “just as in the time of Christ. Only now it’s the murder of the unborn. Not just here, but all over the world. They’ve been slaughtering them by their thousands, Ralph, by their Millions, and do you know why? Do you know why we’vere-entered the Court of the Crimson King in this new age of darkness?”
Ralph knew. It wasn’t that hard to Put together, if you had enough pieces to work with. If you had seen Ed with his arm buried in a barrel of chemical fertilizer, fishing around for the dead babies he had been sure he would find.
“King Herod got a little advance word this time around,” Ralph said. “That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it? It’s the old Messiah thing, right?”
He sat up, half-expecting Ed to shove him down again, almost hoping he would. His anger was coming back. It was surely wrong to critique a madman’s delusional fantasies the way you might a play or a movie-maybe even blasphemous-but Ralph found the idea that Helen had been beaten because of such hackneyed old shit as this infuriating.