She was on her right side, facing him, just as she always was except when they turned her carefully each day to reduce the unavoidable bedsores. Her face was lined with a maze of wrinkles, the flesh looking yellowed, waxy ... not human. The eyes stared blackly, blankly, bulging slightly with some terrible internal pressure or the sheer frustration of not being able to convey the thoughts which lay behind them. She was drooling, and Mike took one of the clean towels laid out at the foot of the bed and gently wiped her mouth.
He checked to make sure that she did not need to be changed-he was not supposed to join his sisters in this job, but he watched over Memo more than all of them combined, so the needs of his grandmother's bowels and bladder were no secret to him-found her clean and dry, and sat on the low chair to hold her hand.
"It was a pretty day out, Memo," he whispered. He didn't know why he whispered in her presence, but he noticed the others did, too. Even his mother. "It really feels like summer."
Mike looked around the room. Heavy drapes across the window. Tabletops littered with medicine bottles, while the other surfaces were covered by the tintypes and sepia photos of her life when she had been alive. How long had it been since she had been able to turn her eyes toward one of her pictures?
An old Victrola sat in the corner, and now Mike put on one of her favorite records-Caruso singing from The Barber of Seville. The high voice and higher scratches filled the room. Memo did not respond-not so much as a blink or twitch-but Mike thought that she could still hear it. He wiped saliva from her chin and the corner of her mouth, set her more comfortably on the pillow, and sat on the stool again, still holding her hand. It felt like something dry and dead. It had been Memo who had told Mike "The Monkey's Paw" one Halloween when he was little, scaring him so badly that he'd needed a night-light for six months.
What would happen, he wondered, if I wished on Memo's hand? Mike shook his head, banishing the unkind thought and saying a Hail Mary for penance.
"Mom and Dad are at the Silverleaf," he whispered, trying to sound bright. The singing around them was soft, more scratches than human voice. "Mary and Peg are off to the movies. Dale says that they're showing The Time Machine at the Free Show tonight. He says it's about a guy who goes into the future or something." Mike broke off and watched carefully as Memo seemed to move slightly: a slight, involuntary twitch of the hip, a stirring of the bedclothes. There was a soft sound as she broke wind.
Mike spoke quickly to cover his embarrassment. "Sort of a weird idea, huh, Memo? Going into the future? Dale says people'll be able to do it someday, but Kevin says it isn't possible. Kev says it isn't like going into space like the Russians did with Sputnik . . . remember when you and I watched that go over a couple of years ago? I said maybe they'd send a man next, and you said you wished you could go?
"Well, anyway, Kev says it isn't possible going up or back in time. He says it makes too many para-" Mike struggled for the word. He hated to appear stupid in front of Memo; she was the only one in the family who hadn't thought he was stupid when he flunked fourth grade. "Para-Paradoxes. Sort of like, what would happen if you went back in time and accidentally killed your grandfather..." Mike shut up when he realized what he was saying. His grandfather-Memo's husband-had been killed at the grain elevator thirty-two years before when a metal door had given way and dumped eleven tons of wheat on him while he was cleaning the main bin. Mike had heard his father tell other men that old Devin Houlihan had swum in the rising whirlpool of grain like a dog in a flood until he'd suffocated. An autopsy had shown his lungs filled solid with dust, like two bags packed with chaff.
Mike looked down at Memo's hand. He stroked the fingers, thinking back to one fall evening when he was six or seven and Memo had been rocking in this same parlor, talking to him while she sewed. "Michael, your grandfather went when Death came for him. The man in the dark robe just walked into that grain elevator and took my Devin by the hand. But he put up a fight-oh, my dear, he put up a fight! And that is just what I will do, Michael dearest, when the man in the dark robe tries to get in here. I won't let him in. Not without a fight. No, Michael, not without a fight."
Mike had imagined Death as a man in a dark robe after that, and had always imagined Memo swatting him the way she had swatted the mad dog. Now he lowered his face and looked in her eyes, as if mere proximity could make contact. He could see his own face reflected there, distorted by the lens of her pupils and the flickering of the kerosene lamp.
"I won't let him in, Memo," Mike whispered. He could see where his breath stirred the pale hairs on her cheek. "I won't let him in unless you tell me to."
Between the drapes and the wall, he could see darkness pressing against the windowpane. Upstairs, a board creaked as the old house settled. Outside, something scratched against the window.
The record ended, scraping along blank grooves now, rasping like claws on slate, but Mike continued to sit there, his face close to Memo's, his hand firm on hers.
The bats seemed a laughable thing, distant and already half-forgotten, as Dale Stewart sat next to his brother in Bandstand Park and watched The Time Machine. Dale had heard this might be the movie-Mr. Ashley-Montague often brought films that closed a few days before in the theater he owned in Peoria-and Dale had been dying to see the movie since he'd read the Classic Comic the year before.
A breeze rustled the trees in the park as Rod Taylor saved Yvette Mimieux from drowning in the stream while apathetic Eloi watched without expression. Lawrence sat on his knees-as he always did when he got excited-and chewed on the last of his popcorn, occasionally taking a sip from the bottle of Dr Pepper they had bought in the Parkside Cafe. Lawrence's eyes were very wide as he watched Rod Taylor descend into the underground world of the Morlocks. He edged closer to his older brother.
"It's all right," whispered Dale, "They're afraid of light and the guy has matches."
On the screen, the Morlocks' eyes burned yellowly like the fireflies in the bushes on the south end of the park. Rod Taylor lit a match and the monsters backed away, shielding their eyes with their blue forearms. The leaves continued to rustle and Dale looked up, noticing that the stars had been occluded by clouds. He hoped that the Free Show wasn't going to be rained out.
Mr. Ashley-Montague brought two extension speakers in addition to the one built into the portable projector, but the sound was still tinnier than it would have been in a real theater. Now the shouts of Rod Taylor and the cries of the enraged Morlocks blended with the rustling of leaves in the rising wind and the leathery flap of wings as dark shapes darted through the trees above the park.
Lawrence shifted closer, getting grass stain on his Levi's and forgetting to munch his popcorn. He'd pulled off his ballcap and, as he often did when he was nervous, was chewing on the bill of it.
"It's OK," whispered Dale, gently tapping his little brother on the shoulder with his fist. "He gets Weena out of the caves."
The colored images continued to dance as the wind rose.
Duane was in the kitchen having a late snack when he heard the truck turn into the drive.
Normally, in the basement with his radio on, he wouldn't have heard the truck, but the screen door was open, the windows were up, and it was quiet except for the incessant summer sounds of crickets, tree frogs out near the pond, and the occasional bang of the metal self-feeding door on the hog trough.
The Old Man's home early, he thought and realized in the same instant that the engine noise hadn't been right. This was a bigger truck ... or at least a bigger engine.