Lovecraft gave a sort of snort. “Shall I endeavor to enlighten the lady?” he said to Howard, as if Glory were not even there.
“Yeah, HP. What’s that book you told me about-the one about the evolution of races? Tell her some of that.”
“At your service.”
Glory settled back against the door and stretched out in the seat.
“Look, Lovey,” she said, “I’m glad to hear you’ve done a lot of reading on the subject, but I’m not in the mood to hear about all this Aryan race rubbish at the moment.”
“The Aryan race is irrefutably the one destined to be dominant on this planet, during this very epoch,” said Lovecraft, lapsing into his pedantic tone.
“The Aryans aren’t even a race.”
“And upon what authority do you base that assertion?”
“I said I didn’t want to discuss this rubbish.”
“But I am curious,” Lovecraft insisted. “How would a woman of your background have the intellectual resources to ponder coherently the complex subject of the races of man and their evolutionary hierarchy?”
“I—”
“What are you sayin’ about her background?” Howard interjected. “Don’t insult the lady, HP. She’s dog tired, on account of your odd men, and she’s been havin’ bad dreams. Let’s put a cork in the lecture till later.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Lovecraft.
A long silence ensued, and Glory noticed Howard adjusting the rearview mirror so that he could look at her occasionally when he thought she wouldn’t notice. She felt awkward and yet girlishly comfortable to have this man of simple passions wanting to be her protector.
She sighed and nestled into the folds of the jacket she had taken from her suitcase to ward off the desert chill. There hadn’t been any other traffic for nearly half an hour, and the night outside seemed to be darker than it should be. Out of the rear window, she could see the stars in the distant east slowly blotted out by an approaching cloud. Odd, she thought. The wind had been blowing from the west all day, or was she confused by the wind rushing by the car? Or perhaps it was another layer of air, higher up in the atmosphere, that carried the dust. She recalled that in the early 1880s an island called Krakatoa had exploded, and the ash from the volcanic eruption, lingering in the upper atmosphere, had darkened the whole earth for months. Her grandmother had been in Java at the time and witnessed the aftermath of the giant tidal wave that had crashed into the neighboring islands, crushing and drowning nearly fifty thousand people. “We heard an explosion like the end of the world,” she’d said. “Then we felt it in our flesh and our bones, and out on the coast it was as if the ocean had spat its guts out onto the earth. It reeked for months of rotting fish and’ death, but I must say the sunsets were spectacular for years after.”
Why am I remembering Grandmother? Glory thought, Why am I thinking of volcanoes and tidal waves when I’m out in the middle of the desert at night with two eccentric strangers who might as well be kidnapping me? Kidnapping, she thought again, and the word, with the memory of her grandmother, took her suddenly back into the nightmare she had had earlier.
It was Christmas, and she was sitting under the tree, which was a Douglas fir, a giant tree that seemed to go up and up and up forever, though it stood in the living room across from the fireplace. Her father was in his comfortable chair smoking his pipe, his legs crossed, his feet in his favorite slippers; and her mother was there, sitting on the floor with her, ready to admire the presents. Her grandmother stood by the fireplace, looking somewhat disapprovingly at the sheer number of presents in their fancy red-and-green wrappings. “Go ahead and open it,” said Father. Usually they didn’t open their presents until Christmas morning, but Father was in a good mood tonight, and it was past midnight. They had stayed up drinking eggnog and eating chocolate cake, and she had been eager to open just one present, the one wrapped in the blue cord and not the ribbon. “Go on,” said Father, “you can open that one. Just that one.” So she looked anxiously at Mother, who nodded with a smile, and she tore the package open with a cry of delight. The inside of the paper was wet, for some strange reason-water leaked out when she took the layer off-but Glory knew it was supposed to be that way. She pulled the wrapping away, and Mother gave her a paring knife to cut the cord so she could get the present out of the red box. She was so excited she was all out of breath, and by the time she had the box open she was covered in sweat, so excited it was painful, and when she reached inside, she felt something soft and round, and she shrieked in delight. It was a doll! A beautiful, perfect little doll. And she pulled it out and hugged it and wrapped it in the swaddling cloth that Mother gave her, and she looked into its perfect blue infant eyes and cuddled it so tight she thought she might crush the life out of it. Then she looked down at it and saw that the eyes were closed. They were the sort of eyes that closed when you laid the doll down and opened again when you picked it up. Sometimes they stuck a little and you had to jostle the baby a bit, but they always worked eventually, so she wasn’t worried. But when she picked the doll up the eyes stayed shut. She laid it back down again and then picked it up again and then laid it down and picked it up and then she jostled it and thumped its little back and shook it and shook it, but the eyes never opened again and the baby never woke up. And then she looked at Mother for help, but Mother was gone. She was just a ghost, and Father was a dark-eyed hollow man, and the only person who could do anything was her grandmother, and Grandmother hated her because she was going to miss school because she had been spoiled by the doll. She started to cry, and then she heard an odd voice that couldn’t really speak English. “It. Belongs. To Us,” said the voice. “We. Will. Take. It. Now,” and Glory looked through her tears to see the two lawyers in black suits standing over her, both reaching toward the doll in her arms, which had suddenly become limp and heavy like the infant it was supposed to be. Her tears suddenly became hysterical, nearly choking her, and she had woken up in the backseat of the Chevy.
“Are ya okay, Miss?” It was Howard’s voice.
“Yes,” Glory replied, wiping her eyes. “I was just thinking.”
“You never told me about that nightmare,” he said, as if he had just read her mind.
“Oh, it’s nothing you’d want to hear about. Just a silly dream with an obvious meaning. I must have had it because I’m going to visit my sister so I can see her little boy.”
“Why don’t ya tell me about it? I’m getting set to nod off here behind the wheel. And my partner ain’t doin’ much of a job keepin’ awake, neither.” He jerked his head a couple of times to indicate Lovecraft, and Glory noticed suddenly that the man must have been snoring for a while by now.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” said Glory.
“Fair enough,” said Howard, glancing at her in the mirror. “You said you lost a baby. What was his name?”
“Huh? Oh, it’s Gabriel.”
“The angel?”
“Yes, he was an angel. And now he’s with them, I suppose.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, but yadon’t sound convinced about that. You sound like a woman without much faith.”
“I only have faith in what I can touch. And that nightmare really touched a wound in me.” She sat up and leaned against the back of the front seat again, her mouth only inches from Howard’s ear. “Tell me what’s really going on, Bob. I’m tired of hearing you and your friend be short with each other. I need to know what I’m in for, though I do appreciate the ride.”
“You’ll have to ask HP when he wakes up, Miss.”