Fade

by Robert Cormier

  Looking at old man Pinder, who was already beginning to dissolve with the booze, jaw loose and drooping, eyes dreamy and far away, Ozzie was tempted simply to kill him here and now and be done with it. But, he thought hazily, maybe the old man would be useful, one way or another. Besides, the fraud who was his Pa had deserved to die but certainly not this harmless old coot.

  Watch the nun.

  Why the nun?

  Because.

  Because why?

  Because.…

  But he didn't want to listen and ran out of the convent and through the woods, ran until his lungs threatened to burst and his legs stung with pain. Threw himself down on the grass, waited, afraid the voice would start again, glad when it didn't.

  Lately, the voice and the urges got together and tormented him, stopped him from doing what he wanted to do, made sly suggestions about what he should do. Like, he wanted to go after Bull Zimmer, find out what he was doing this summer, and begin plans for his revenge. Then Miss Ball. But the voice told him to wait. Only a few weeks had gone by since the old fraud died. Better to wait.

  So he waited, something he was good at, anyways. Stayed away from town except for a visit now and then to look up the old man. “Have you told anybody about me?” The old man always babbled on about how he would never tell, never tell. Ozzie knocked him around a bit to give him a taste of what might happen if he told. Bloodied his nose once, and it felt good to see blood coming from somebody else's nose. Mostly, though, he stayed at the convent, making himself useful. Busy hands are happy hands, Sister Anunciata said, handing him a bucket of water and brush or a broom or the green stuff to wash the windows. She got stung by a bee and her face swelled up, one eye closed, and she looked a little like Popeye in the cartoon and he had to cover his own face so she would not see him laughing. Later, in the fields, he saw these old yellow flowers, straggling through the weeds, flowers that were past their prime, starting to wilt. What the hell, good enough for the old nun. Nothing fancy, just right for her. He put them in a jar he found in the shed and placed them on the small table near her bed when she was out in the kitchen.

  “Why, thank you, Ozzie,” she said later, pleased. Her one good eye was filled with tears.

  “They're just old flowers,” he said, angry for some reason. Angry with himself and her.

  That was a mistake.

  Why was that a mistake?

  Because she thinks you ‘re trying to bribe her

  Why would I bribe her?

  Because she suspects what you did to the old fraud. Be careful with her. She ï watching you.

  No, she isn't.

  But maybe she was. Maybe she did suspect. He began to notice things. How that one good eye of hers was sharp, darting everywhere but most of all on Ozzie. He felt as if that eye could pin him to a wall, hold him there, wriggling. Every time he turned around, there she was. Swollen face, skin almost purple, and that sharp blue eye.

  Then her face got better, the swelling disappeared, faint purple gone, both eyes open, and she seemed less threatening to him.

  She's playing games.

  What games?

  The games of pretending not to watch you gathering her evidence.

  What kind of evidence?

  Evidence of what you did. To the old fraud.

  Fm not listening, not listening to you.

  Yes, you are.

  And, of course, he did listen and, in his own turn, he began to watch the nun. Watched her watching him. He found her wherever he went in the convent, whether doing his chores or just killing time. He turned a corner and there she was, busy with her own chores, but there just the same. Looked up from the supper table and found her eyes on him. Heard her footsteps padding by the door of his room late at night, knew it had to be her.

  Know what you've got to do?

  He didn't answer the voice. Hunched up in the blanket even though the night was hot.

  Sooner or later, you be got to do it.

  Still didn't answer, although the voice tugged at him to answer, like an itch you had to scratch.

  I'm not going to do it. You said it was too soon after the old fraud to do anything.

  That seemed to satisfy the voice. He waited and there was no response. He really did not want to hurt the old nun. She had taken him in, was kind to him. She was old, she would probably die soon anyways. He wanted Bull Zimmer and Miss Ball and the kids, not the old nun.

  Better do something, the voice said slyly just before he fell asleep.

  What he did was go on a rampage in the town. The next night. Found a hammer in the shed and raced through the woods, gone, unseen, emerging in the town, barely breathing hard, carried on waves of excitement. His body throbbed with strength and energy, as if he had swallowed a potent brew. He ran down the deserted street, swinging the hammer, breaking windows in the stores and cars parked at the curbs, then denting the cars themselves. Threw rocks at neon signs. Smashed the small panes of glass in parking meters. Spotted the library building and received an inspiration. He ran to the library, raced up the steps, broke the window, reached inside to unlock the door. Then went on a binge of wrecking, tumbling bookcases to the floor, sweeping hundreds of books off the shelves, tossing them against the window. That'll show her, that bitch of a librarian. He realized the voice had spoken, and although Ozzie's intention was not to please the voice, he reveled in the havoc he was creating, a thousand books spilled on the floor.

  The sound of a siren drew him out of the library and back into the street, where lights had been turned out in the rooms above the stores and a police cruiser swung around the corner, the siren going ninety miles an hour, the car itself barely moving.

  Ozzie frolicked on the sidewalk, laughing and dancing, jumping around, giving himself up to frenzy—God, how he hated this town and what a joy it was to attack it like this, to get his revenge, for himself and his Ma.

  I'll show you worse than this, he vowed as the cruiser's spotlight illuminated the damage he had created, this is nothing at all. People emerged from the buildings bewildered, rubbing their eyes, while a young cop pushed back his cap and shook his head as a final sheet of glass in the liquor store window suddenly let go and smashed into a thousand pieces of glass on the sidewalk.

  Ozzie let out a whoop.

  Gliding toward the alley, he saw the old man swaying, drunk as usual, looking at the damage.

  “What do you think, old man?” Ozzie said.

  And the old man jumped as the voice without a body reached him. In his high spirits, Ozzie hit the old guy. Wanted to do to him what he did to the town. Bopped him good on the head, which sent him reeling back against the brick wall of the alley. Then let him have a blow to the mouth, saw the blood spill, saw the piece of tooth fly out of his mouth. Heard the old man's bellow of pain as he collapsed to the ground. Somebody on the sidewalk looked toward the alley, began walking toward Ozzie.

  He left the old man in a heap on the ground. Enough damage for one night. Better get back to the convent. Hated to leave the scene of his triumph, another cruiser arriving with siren wailing. But went anyway. Through the alley to the woods.

  That was very nice.

  He waited a few days before venturing to town again, although he was impatient to see the evidence of his attack. Caution, he told himself.

  Wiping the stuff from his nose, he went down the back steps of the convent and through the courtyard looking for a place to hide in for a while. He saw old man Pinder thrashing out of the woods and into the yard. The old man was agitated, flecks of foam at the corners of his lips, the old eyes red and bleary as usual but something else in his eyes now, something sharp and alert.

  “What's the matter, old man?” Ozzie asked. He had never come out to the convent before.

  “There's a stranger in town,” the old man said, spit flying every which way from his lips. “And he's looking for you.”

  knew he was there, nearby, somewhere in the town, the instant I stepped off the bus. Something in the a
ir, like a distant note of music only my ears could hear. An aura, a mood, which I tried to pin down but found elusive as I stood in front of a converted railroad car that obviously was a diner although it had no sign. The morning aromas of coffee, bacon, and other fried foods wafted through an open window, bringing a feeling of normality that did not quite dispel the alien atmosphere the town presented to me.

  At first glance Ramsey reminded me of the cowboy towns in the old Saturday matinees at the Plymouth. Wooden sidewalks, warped boards. Iron railings to which horses had been tethered in earlier times. Slanting roofs above the sidewalks supported by wobbly posts. Only the parking meters shattered the illusion of other times.

  In an encyclopedia at the Monument Public Library, I had learned that Ramsey had long ago been a prosperous resort town, famous for mineral waters that attracted thousands of visitors, including President Grover Cleveland. The springs had dried up, however, and time passed the town by. Now it was only a whisper of its former self, without industry or shopping malls, population fewer than 3,000, according to the most recent U.S. census. No motels or even a movie theater. One dubious hotel, the Glenwood, at which I had succeeded in making reservations for three nights despite the lack of interest on the part of the clerk who manned the telephone. Thus, I had been prepared for a slumbering backwater but not for the desolation and damage I observed as I walked up Main Street to the hotel.

  Ramsey, in fact, resembled a town under siege. Or a town recovering from an assault. Several windows had been boarded up at a store whose sign proclaimed KELCEY'S GROCERY in faded print. Smashed streetlight globes whose broken remains had not yet been removed. The shattered tubes of a neon sign that had once advertised Dempsey's Drug Store. The small windows of the parking meters had all been smashed.

  At the Glenwood Hotel I stepped into a lobby with a cracked tile floor, a sagging sofa whose color had long ago faded away. A bell stood on a small end table, the kind of bell the sisters at St. Jude's had on their desks. I rang the bell and listened to its forlorn echo.

  I should not be here, I told myself. I should be back in the safety of Frenchtown. Before leaving, I had weighed all the risks. Suppose I could not control the fade in a strange town I had never visited before? Suppose the fade happened on the bus or the train or while I walked the streets of Ramsey, Maine? I finally turned my back on the fears. Finding the fader who was my nephew was more important than lapsing into the fade. The risk was small, really. Sometimes months passed without the fade occurring.

  Now, in the lobby, my fears were somewhat placated. In a few moments I would have a room to which I could flee if the fade occurred unexpectedly, just as my tenement in Frenchtown was always a refuge.

  A middle-aged man descended an uncarpeted stairway. He was small and thin, a few strands of hair combed to cover as much of his bald head as possible.

  “I called last week,” I said. “For reservations. The name is John LeBlanc.”

  Realizing that I was venturing into the unknown, into the mystery surrounding the fade, I had withheld my real name, feeling absurd for the moment but allowing instinct to guide me.

  “I know,” he said, still uninterested. Taking a skeleton key from his pocket, he said: “We're a residence hotel, we don't get many transients.”

  I paid him in advance, doing business as we stood in the lobby, no reservations desk in sight. As he beckoned me to follow him, I asked: “What happened to the town? Looks like a hurricane hit it….”

  “Vandalism,” he said. “Young punks, probably from Ban-gor, tearing up the place.”

  The room he led me to on the second floor was surprisingly comfortable-looking, dominated by a four-poster bed with a George Washington bedspread, a highly polished mahogany bureau, and a Boston rocker.

  “Mrs. Wright's place,” he said. “But she spends August in Canada. Only room available, you're a lucky man. Nobody comes to Ramsey anymore. No reason to. Town's gone to pot.”

  He waited. I realized he had actually been asking me what had brought me to Ramsey. My story was ready. “I'm a writer,” I said. “I'm doing a book on old resort towns. This is a preliminary visit to check a few details….”

  He nodded curtly and stepped through the doorway, closing the door gently behind him. I realized that he had not once looked me in the eye from the moment he came down the stairs until he left the room.

  Which I soon learned was the usual practice with strangers in Ramsey, Maine, at least on that particular day.

  I spent the morning roaming the town, making small purchases in the stores—razor blades in Dempsey's Drug Store, a box of Kleenex in Kelcey's Grocery, a Newsweek in Dunker's Convenience Store—and no one paid me any attention. At the registers, the cashiers—middle-aged men who were probably the proprietors—barely acknowledged my presence as they rang up the sales and handed me the change.

  The Ramsey Public Library and the Pilgrim Congregational Church, with a clock in its steeple, stood across from each other at the far end of Main Street. The library, a redbrick building with a sagging roof, showed no signs of life. A notice posted on the front door announced that it was closed for renovations.

  Town Hall was located at the opposite end of Main Street and contained the police and fire departments. Across the street, the town common was deserted, a gazebo its centerpiece, an ancient cannon guarding the entrance.

  I ate lunch in the Ramsey Diner, where patrons ordered a beer and a shot of whiskey to go with the noontime special, which that day was meat loaf. The counterman did not look at me as he took my order and later slid the plate along the tiled counter top. No one else in the place looked at me either.

  In the afternoon, I struck out on foot, following a winding highway for about two miles. I finally reached a clearing where a wooden sign proclaimed Sisters of Mercy in faded Gothic script. Following a gravel road, I came upon an ancient stone building with a single steeple, a small gold cross at the top. Ivy clung to the building with a thousand green fingers. The windows were tall and narrow, giving away no secrets.

  I rang the bell and heard chimes echoing unendingly through distant corridors. After a few moments, the heavy oak door swung open, revealing a tiny woman, enclosed in the black-and-white habit seldom seen these days. Her pink cheeks glowed like polished apples.

  “Yes?” she whispered.

  “I wonder—is it possible for me to attend mass in the chapel?”

  “We cannot welcome visitors on weekdays,” she said, voice and eyes full of regret. “Only on the first Sunday of the month. I'm sorry …”

  She paused for a moment, as if to offer consolation, and slowly closed the door.

  As I started away my flesh turned cold, as if someone had raked a fingernail across my back. I knew instantly that my fader either was here or had been here. Somewhere in the vicinity, in the convent itself perhaps. My first tendency was to ring the convent bell again. But I held back. I was not ready to see that nephew of mine who was the fader. Not yet. Somehow he was connected in my mind with the damage I had seen in the town. I did not know why I should make that assumption but there it was. The call of the blood again. The links. Between my uncle Adelard and myself. And now, myself and this Ramsey boy.

  Back in town, twilight brought a chill. Until this moment the town had seemed sterile, without weather of any kind, as if under glass. My visit took place toward the middle of August, but it might have been any day of the year on a distant planet that resembled earth.

  “Taxi?”

  Turning, I encountered an old man wearing a faded baseball cap, RED sox faintly stitched across a dirty visor. Bloodshot eyes, face pinched and wizened, teeth broken, nose awry from an old fracture, a purple grape of a lump fresh on his forehead.

  “You the cabdriver?” I asked, although I knew how ridiculous the question sounded.

  “Hell no,” he said. “This town, in fact, don't have a taxi. But I could arrange a ride. Tommy Pinder at your service.” He had brought a variety of smells with him: alcohol and vomi
t and an odor I remembered from the old dump on the edge of Frenchtown. Shooting me a shrewd glance, he said: “Find what you've been looking for?”

  “What am I looking for?” I asked. His eyes were red and watery, but intelligence flickered in them.

  “Well, I figure you must be looking for something,” he said. “Saw you all day, wandering the streets. Buying stuff you don't need in the stores. Bought a magazine in Dunker's and tossed it into a rubbish barrel without reading it. Said to myself: He's looking for something, that fellow.”

  “I'm a writer,” I said. “Doing a book on old resort towns. Thought I might include a chapter on Ramsey.”

  The old man shrugged deeper into his clothes. I could see a raincoat under his nondescript topcoat and at least two sweaters.

  “You from?” he asked.

  “Down in Massachusetts …” As another drift of alcohol reached me, I asked: “Buy you a drink?”

  “Is the pope Catholic?” The grin he attempted gave his face a grotesque look.

  I made the writer's leap at that moment, and saw how much the old man resembled the town. Both in ruins, damaged, ancient. Behind the old man's easy manner, I sensed apprehension, nervousness, or did he merely need a drink badly?

  “Let's find a bar,” I said, although I had seen no bar in town, merely the Ramsey Diner where patrons drank beer and whiskey with their lunch.

  “I prefer the out-of-doors,” the old man said with a touch of dignity. “The gazebo there in the common across the way. If you offer me a dollar or two, I can go into Dempsey's and buy us a good bottle of muscatel. Or whatever you prefer …”

  Taking money out of my pocket, I said: “Nothing for me. I'll meet you in the common.”

  The common was modest in size. The gray barrel of the cannon was covered with meaningless graffiti. Whoever had assaulted the town had ignored the common. A spotlight, spared from the vandalism, showered illumination on the gazebo. The old man and I sat on the steps, looking at Main Street across the way, almost eerie in its stillness. A few people came and went, flitting through the shadows, emerging into the light from the stores and then disappearing into the gloom.