The Day I Died

by Lawrence Lariar

“My mind is pretty well adjusted to it,” Coyle said.

  “That’s what you think. You think it now because you can’t imagine what you’ll be thinking later. I don’t like to hear you sound off with that kind of double talk.” Joey put a hand on Coyle’s arm and tried to jerk Coyle out of the mood. Was it doing any good? Did talking help any? Coyle was out there in the darkness somewhere, lost in the measureless distances of his personal mania. It annoyed Joey to realize that he might never be able to break through to his old friend. “Jesus, Tommy boy, don’t let yourself go off half-cocked. If you have ideas like that, you’re sick and you should maybe see a doctor. But the way I figure it, you’re maybe sick because your mother died.”

  “My foster mother,” Coyle said.

  “Or maybe it was the doll you used to know, what’s her name?”

  “Ellen Gardiner.”

  “So she got married and left town,” Joey said. “Can’t you forget her?”

  “Of course I can,” Coyle said.

  “That’s better. Listen, after you have yourself a piece of the one you’ve got tonight, you’ll feel better. Maybe you’ll forget about some of those dizzy ideas. We’re here for a good time, remember?”

  “I’ll give it everything I’ve got.”

  They drank more. Coyle had always reacted favorably to Joey Bader, ever since they were kids together, all the way through the years in high school, when they had wandered the streets of Camberton together. There was a building joy in the closeness with Joey. They were pals, buddies, two country boys who would soon be going into the army together. Joey was a returning brother, anxious to recreate the pattern of their schoolboy fellowship. Joey was saying something to him now, and the lightness of his laughter and the sincerity of his drunken affection, all these things lifted Coyle out of his personal pit of thoughtful quiet and into the realm of gaiety again.

  “Yours is a terrific dancer, Tom. Watch her shake her can.”

  The sight of the line of girls, retreating in perfect tempo, bowing and smiling before the final roll of the drums, all these things were fresh and new in Coyle’s eyes now. It was as though he had just walked into the place and decided to pick one of the girls off the line and have a good time with her. He swallowed the rest of his drink and followed Joey away from the table, noticing the roll in Joey’s gait and feeling stronger than Joey because he was less drunk than Joey.

  Valdido caught them at the bar and they had another drink and Valdido muttered a few sweaty cautions about taking it easy, because the girls were getting dressed and would be out in a minute. There was a corridor to the left and they drifted through it, following Valdido’s broad back. When they arrived at the end of the hall, the girls were dressed and waiting for them.

  The big one was named Claire and she seemed to understand immediately that she was Joey’s, taking his arm easily and letting him lead her down the hall. The little one smiled and did the same with Coyle. Without so much make-up on, she looked better, but the resemblance to Ellen Gardiner was gone now, completely gone. She was warm and soft at his side and her manner told him that she had been through this routine before. She said the right things and used her body the right way and smiled right and kissed right, nothing too serious, but enough nuzzling and rubbing to telegraph her desire to please him. They went upstairs into a small room, furnished as though it might be somebody’s living room, a few soft chairs and a fireplace with a quaint sofa before it; all of these things Colonial, the tongs and the brass equipment and the square table pulled up alongside the bay window. They sat at the table and Valdido brought in a bottle and four glasses and then stared for a moment and shook his head sadly and backed slowly into the hall.

  Coyle saw the room through the blurred and cloudy fog of his drunkenness, a pleasant haze that warmed the scene before him and made the party an intimate, cozy gathering; just four good friends out for a good time. The shock of Joey’s loud laughter turned him back to the table. The girls were giggling and the big blonde was already half drunk, shaking all over under the impact of the cards Joey was dealing. It was a trick deck, made up of provocative photographs on the face of every card. Joey threw the cards around and went out of control every time the girls reacted to them, their cacophonic squeals filling the small room. Coyle sat down and entered the game, play-acting at enjoying Marge’s sly jokes and jibes.

  Valdido suddenly appeared and said something to Marge, off to one side.

  “Gus says why don’t we take a ride,” Marge said quietly. “The noise is coming down to the bar.”

  “Ride,” Joey said.

  “Why don’t we go up to the hill?” Marge said, a bit louder.

  “Old Chicopee, hah?” Joey got up and slobbered his last hooker, out of control now, the liquor spilling over his mouth and down his chin. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and reached for Claire and pulled her to him with a violence that made her gasp and cry out.

  “Let’s go to Chicopee Hill,” Marge said.

  “Come or, Joey,” Coyle shouted.

  When they reached the parking lot, Coyle got behind the wheel of the convertible, revving the motor, letting it howl and roar into the stillness of the valley. Marge asked him softly whether he felt sober enough to drive. Sober? He could drive to hell tonight, straight over Chicopee Hill to the nearest star. Suddenly Marge was the most attractive girl in the world. Suddenly he was boiling with enthusiasm, almost trembling with impatience to get the big car out of the valley and up on the winding road to the high hill and under the trees.

  The road was a ribbon of gray ahead of him, an arrow into the blackness and then an endless squirming snake, coiling through the dark cliffs, hugging the edges of nothingness. He held the wheel with one hand, proud of his skill on the turns, singing high and gay with the rest of them, his free hand feeling the warm flesh of the girl next to him.

  The road was higher now, only a few minutes from the ridge of Chicopee, the last steep mile, when Marge began to scream and he felt her harden and go tight under his fingers and he knew that he must swerve sharply to avoid the two bright circles ahead of him.

  Headlights! They stabbed at him and they were blinding and growing bigger before him so that he closed his eyes against them and in the clipped moment of his eyelids closing, the car slid off the side and the world was a sea of space and there was nothing he could do to bring the big machine back into line and back into reality.

  There were rocks on the siding and the car bumped over and up, shattering the windswept silence with a dull roar and then rolling and twisting and bouncing, down and still further down. A flat stab of pain hit him, low, in the legs, or was it the wheel digging deep into his stomach? The dust came up to swirl around him and then the deeper dust of pain and darkness, and Marge moaning, “Oh, my God, oh my God,” above the metallic roar that echoed in the pit of blackness through which he was falling and groping as he fell…

  CHAPTER 3

  There was a voice somewhere close to his ear, down low. Coyle lay on his side. A flickering square of moonlight came through from above the high trees, so that the earth was gray before him, the small stones almost bright; the broken twigs and leaves exaggerated in his line of vision. Where were his legs? A great flood of pain rolled over his body, because the car was on him, below the hips. He turned his head and smelled the oil and gas and listened to the faraway sound of ticking. Insects? Small bright squares of light danced on the earth and he saw that they were cards, the dirty playing cards that Joey owned. On the stones and dirt, lewd faces were smiling up at him. And the noise? Where was Joey Bader? Was it Joey whispering to him now?

  “Tommy boy, Tommy boy, Tommy boy.”

  The voice was a dying gasp of pain, straight ahead and close to the rotted trunk of the tree. The stones were bigger up there and the slick sides of them glistened with Joey’s blood, a dark and burgeoning stain. The voice was strange and weak, as soft as the breat
h of the wind. The shape against the cold stone was contorted and impossible. Coyle sucked and moaned when he saw Joey’s legs, afraid to follow the line of the great rock upward to where Joey’s face should be. Joey was death and death was whispering again.

  “Tommy boy, Tommy boy.”

  There were no words in Coyle. He tried to move his body, struggling to force himself from the monster who held him, to get away and go across the dirt and help Joey. But when he pushed out his arms stung and bit and clawed at the sand as the screaming pain ripped at his thighs and brought his head down to gasp and mutter his hopelessness. He began to sob and cry when the dizziness reached out for him again.

  He blacked out and was gone.

  And when he awoke, time had no meaning for him. He screamed at once for Joey, the voice of a little boy, a whimpering entreaty, a weakening and singsong sobbing and blubbering, an endless monologue. He listened, after a while, tightened because of the feeble whispering from near the tree trunk.

  “Oh mamma, mamma, mamma, mamma,” the whispering said. “Jesus, I can’t feel anything, nothing at all any more. You hear me, Tom? What happened to the girls? The girls all right, Tommy boy?”

  “I can’t see, Joey.”

  Why was he lying? Marge must certainly be dead alongside him, tangled and trapped in the iron monster. And Claire? He saw only the edge of her shoulder, the big blonde’s shoulder, bitten by the cold steel above her, the blood running down her arm and lower still, the black tip of her shoe. Coyle screamed and turned away from the sight of her.

  “I killed them, Joey,” he shouted. “I killed all of you. God help me, but I’m a murderer.”

  Coyle heard the words pour out of him. Was he dying? Was this death? His eyes were closed against the night and he lay in a rocking, rolling bed. A sea of faces soared around him and there were voices begging him to awaken, but he must close his ears against them and close his eyes against the great fear above him, on the rock.

  But Joey was talking again.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Tom. That other car—”

  “I killed all of you, Joey.”

  “Oh, mamma, mamma, mamma,” Joey whispered.

  “Don’t give up, Joey. I’ll get you help.”

  “Too late, Tommy boy. Too late for me. But you’ll be all right. Take it easy and don’t be a sucker. Maybe you’ll get your chance.” He was babbling on and on, incoherently, but all the words were words of comfort for Coyle. “Listen, when you get to New York just mention my name to Willis, in the Rebus. You just step inside and open your yap and say Joey Bader and watch what happens. I had them all scared to death, Tommy boy. Willis will jump when he hears my name, he’ll get you inside across the street to see Masterson. He’ll give you a break. Mention my name and you’ll see. Just mention my name and tell them all off, Tom, and think of Joey when you’re doing it.”

  And a lot of it, lots more, but it was lost to Coyle because he blacked out again. And when he recovered, the voice was still there, weaker now and sometimes gone when the wind spoke louder from up above.

  “Oh, mamma, mamma, mamma,” whispered Joey.

  “Don’t die, Joey. I want you to take me to see Masterson.”

  Coyle was hysterical now, no longer aware of the words he spoke. He reached out and up for Joey, the tears hot on his cheeks. In all the world, there was only one thought of any importance now, and it involved freeing his body from the great weight and struggling and squirming so that Joey could be saved.

  But Coyle was not moving, of course.

  He fought again to break loose and when the great burst of pain caught him he was screaming and shouting to Joey, begging Joey to forgive him. Out of the deep darkness of his torment he thought he heard Joey talking again. Coyle lifted his head and stared hard at the rock. There was a voice up there. His mother? Joey? Was this the final moment of sanity? Far above the rock, the sky was graying and a cloud drifted across the hill and fled through the morning mists. Coyle saw nothing but the horror of Joey and at last even that began to fade, too. The cloud got bigger and the air itself became a cloud and he was breathing it and sucking it, clutching the cloud and knowing that this was either death or the beginning of madness. He closed his eyes against the inner pictures of his despair, but in a tick of time they were open again and the earth rose up and the little things around him were once more magnified. He saw the pebbles and the leaves on the twigs, and along the edge of the grass an insect marched toward one of the women on the cards and sat upon her and advanced until Coyle knew it was a beetle, crawling closer, the eyes bright and menacing…

  CHAPTER 4

  Over the hill, the hordes of beetles crawled. Beetles? The beetles down there were darting around on a flat concrete ribbon, up and over, up and over, bugs all of them. They were all cars, of course, but when they came over the rise and into the sun, Coyle saw them as insects. Something happened when the light hit them, a sudden glare and gleam around the headlights. And when they rolled over the hill, they were insect eyes, staring and probing. The shock of the long rows of twin eyes made Coyle sweat. But he did not move. He was watching the gate and the approach to the hospital grounds, the little creamy section of road that led off the main highway and made a smooth, pleasant curve between the two brick columns.

  Coyle was waiting for the light blue beetle that would be bringing Doctor Linden into the parking lot. The strain began to affect his eyes, so that he had to reach for his handkerchief and mop away the dampness. He didn’t want Doctor Linden to find him red-eyed, because the good doctor would shake his head very sympathetically and add it up all wrong. “What’s bothering you today, Tom?” he would ask. “It would help a lot if we could find out why you feel depressed when you look out at the headlights on the cars down there. What do they remind you of?”

  And how could you tell him that the sight of the beetles moved you back to Chicopee Hill? How could you explain the tie-up, the connection between the glare on the cars and the other horror up there—the bright and steady beam up on the ridge, the knife-edged stab of it in the sick moment before you drove the convertible over the rim and into the canyon? Your mind is exploded in a chain reaction and after the lights you must think of Joey Bader and the girls under the car, the whole disgusting scene including the blood and the horror of the voice whispering in the darkness near the rock. You have lived through it again and the horror flames inside you, as clearly as the sun on the beetles down there. And with the horror, a sort of madness takes hold of you and you wonder whether you have always been this crazy.

  There have been other times when death was close—and yet you escaped. You have been playing with death far too long. Is this an important part of the pattern? And such thoughts as this burn in your brain and take command of every part of you and fill your soul with the devastating sadness and guilt about Joey Bader and the girls, an impossible burden to face in this particular hour, when Doctor Linden is on the way to check you out. He will find you sweating and trembling at the window, and that would be too bad because it would mean more time here, more endless days and sleepless nights in the hospital at Camberton.

  Coyle pushed his chair back from the window. There was another mood growing in him and this was even worse. Looking down from even a five-story height gave Coyle the jitters. He forced himself to stare into the sky, to rest his eyes. In the west, the clouds were banking up, puffed and cottony and motionless. It would be hot again and the heat always soothed him.

  A door opened at the end of the crisscross pattern of the floor tiles. A nurse came through and hesitated as she closed the door behind her. She saw him sitting in the gloom and lifted a hand and waved at him, a quick flip of her wrist that meant she was Miss Cumber. He watched her start toward him down the hall, feeling an almost overwhelming anxiety as he listened to the rubbered beat of her shoes. Where was Doctor Linden? Was Miss Cumber coming with bad news? Coyle steeled himself and forced a sm
ile as she approached.

  It was the build-up to a scene he had played with her often, in the recent past, an exchange of banter, a little game with each other.

  “And how are we feeling today?” Miss Cumber asked.

  “Just swell, Miss Cumber.”

  “And the leg?”

  “As good as new.” He kicked out twice to show her that he was spry and fit. The leg still hurt, but he was pretty solid now, only a slight limp when he walked. He got up and stepped around the room for her, happy when she smiled at him and nodded her approval.

  “Don’t overwork it, Tom.” She sat him down and joined him on the wicker settee. “I have good news for you this morning. You’re getting out of here today.”

  Coyle jumped up and took her hands and pulled her his way and began to dance around the room with her, putting on a great show of joy and gladness. In the calculated surge of excitement, he felt her yield to his embrace and she made a few feminine sounds of hilarity and then sighed and adjusted herself on the settee again when it was all over.

  “You really should take it easy,” she said gently, not wanting to hurt him, but honestly concerned about his leg because she knew its condition intimately. “We don’t want a relapse, Tom.”

  “I’m as strong as an ox,” Coyle laughed.

  “I’m glad you feel that way.”

  Feel? Was she accenting the word a bit? When she said a word a certain way, or looked at him with too much sympathy, it was like putting a key in a hidden lock, in a hidden door. Doctor Linden had found the door a long time ago and looked inside. Doctor Linden had seen something in his brain that fascinated him and moved him to soft words. It was the same with Miss Cumber. They must have spent hours talking about him.

  And he got hot all over whenever they gave him the treatment, the sad eye, the gentle routine that made him feel like some kind of special whack. A minute ago, a second ago, he was kicking and dancing to prove himself a happy patient, but the mood had fled under the impact of Miss Cumber’s motherly concern and he was back in the dark again, all gray and dim inside the closet.