The Cure

by Athol Dickson

  The other one was named Billy or maybe Bobby, someone Riley kind of remembered from back in high school. The guy used to be a troublemaker hippie-type if Riley remembered right, but now he saw this Billy-Bobby fella over at the church sometimes. At least maybe he did. Riley couldn’t be sure, because he tried not to look at people’s faces when he went to church. He usually sat in a pew near the back, alone, hoping his short hair and clean-shaven face and new clothes would do the trick as they had with Bill Hightower and Henry and the chief, hoping even God would not recognize him for a thief as he waited for the offering basket to come around, in disguise as his old self.

  “I hear the mayor’s talkin’ ‘bout puttin’ these bums up in town somewheres,” said Jim, the one with the hayseed-looking earflaps. “Plum foolish in the head, ya ask me.”

  “Ayuh,” said Billy or Bobby, slurping his vegetable soup and getting a splatter on his greasy tie. “Don’t make no sense at all ta treat ‘em like they’s tourists.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Ya know what?”

  “Huh?”

  “She got a million-dollar car parked in her backyard.”

  “Go on ya!”

  “Saw it with my own eyes.”

  Earflaps chewed his food a moment, then said, “Ya think that’s got somethin’ ta do with all them bums?”

  “It’s got somethin’ ta do with somethin’—ya can bet on that.”

  “She’s on somebody’s payroll, an it ain’t ours.”

  “Ayuh. Oughta put her in the pokey and get a whole ‘nother mayor’s what we oughta do.”

  Billy-Bobby and Mr. Jim Earflaps fell silent after that, chewing their food methodically like a pair of cows. Riley wondered why they had spoken about Hope right in front of him that way. Maybe they didn’t remember he was her ex-husband. Or maybe they assumed the divorce meant he didn’t care about her anymore. Whatever the explanation, as Riley cleared the table next to them, he had the strongest urge to knock their ignorant heads together.

  He had piled all the dirty dishes into the gray plastic tub and nearly finished wiping off the tabletop when Jim said, “I’m thinkin’ maybe Mr. Hightower’s got the moxie ta handle things.” More silent chewing, then, “Hey, ya goin’ ta that town-hall meetin’ he called tonight?”

  “Well I guess prob’ly.”

  “You gonna stand up?”

  “Naw. Ain’t much on talkin’ in front a people. You?”

  “Maybe. Time somebody gave that woman a piece a their mind.”

  The two men griped another ten minutes before finishing their meals and leaving. Riley thought about their words as he worked through the lunch rush. He felt the familiar weight descending. He resisted it. There was no time for that. He had to do something.

  Riley made a phone call to find out what time the meeting was to start. He got Sadie’s permission to leave an hour early, and when the time came he removed his apron and stepped out the front door into a beautiful spring afternoon. The azure sky was cloudless. The air felt clean and cool and comfortable against his face. The stately birches touching branches along Main Street were finally in leaf, their virginal green crowns as soft and pale and delicate as low-lying fog. It would have been a picture postcard view of a small New England town except for the shabby men and women loitering everywhere, most of them filthy, wearing far more clothing than the weather called for, sitting on the curb and leaning against the birches or the facades of business storefronts.

  Riley knew they were there for him, waiting for the man who healed a few of them last winter, hoping he would reappear. Riley felt the weight of their desire added to the weight of all that he had done to Hope. Yet he still felt a frantic need to fix things.

  In the distance Riley heard voices shouting something over and over. As he scanned the street to find the source of the commotion he saw two well-dressed women emerge from a boutique across the way and hurry toward a fancy car with Massachusetts plates, neither woman looking right or left as they passed a huddle of vagrants. When their car backed out of the parking spot Riley saw the woman on the passenger side turn to lock her door.

  With a sigh he set out up the hill, heading for Bill Hightower’s meeting.

  Dublin’s town hall straddled the top of Main Street, high above him. With the foot of the street at the town landing and the businesses and churches set well back from the curbs along the street, there was a clear line of sight from down at the harbor through the overarching birches all the way up to the brick and granite building. When approaching the landing from the water, the town hall’s position made it the natural focus of attention, with the old copper clipper ship atop the weather vane on the building’s cupola the most prominent man-made object in all of Dublin.

  As he neared the high end of Main Street, Riley saw about a hundred people on the sidewalk below the town-hall steps. The crowd was the source of the repeated shouts he had heard down by the diner. He paused to listen to their words.

  “One, two, three, four, we won’t let you kill the poor!”

  “Five, six, seven, eight, cut the cost and end the wait!”

  Pushing his eyeglasses higher on his nose, Riley saw a few homemade signs waving above the heads of the people: Cure Us Now! and Heal the Homeless! and Murder for Hire! He felt as if every word they shouted, everything written, was focused right on him. He wished there was a way to explain.

  He saw television news crews at the fringes of the demonstration with camera and sound operators and reporters looking out of place in their suits. Eyeing the cameras around the crowd, he thought about his darkly silhouetted shaggy image in the back of Bill Hightower’s car, broadcast onto millions of television screens on the nightly news. He did not want to repeat that experience. He wanted to remain unnoticed, as unconnected as possible from the “mystery man” of Dublin and the events of the previous autumn. He almost turned back down the hill.

  Then he remembered the ugly conversation in the diner, the way those men had spoken about Hope as if she was not a person with feelings, but rather a symbol or an object, a scapegoat. Riley wiped his sweating palms on his shirt. If there was going to be a scapegoat, it ought to be him. He wove his way through the crowd and began to climb the steps.

  Memories of the glory days of shipbuilding were built into every brick and board of Dublin’s center of government. To reinforce the imposing sense of power already well established by the building’s situation above downtown, the sixteen granite steps tapered as they ascended, providing an illusion of deep perspective, as if Riley’s climb would take him to the heavens. At the top of the steps stood four imposing white Corinthian columns with ornate hand-carved capitals. Instead of the usual clusters of grape leaves the capitals were adorned with images of ships in every stage of construction. The columns rose from a broad landing. Behind them were two front doors, twelve feet tall and built of African mahogany by a long forgotten master shipwright. On the panels of each door were bas-relief carvings of more shipbuilding scenes. And to Riley’s dismay, in front of the doors stood Chief Steven Novak and two uniformed policemen wearing helmets.

  One of the policemen moved to bar Riley’s way, but the chief said something to him and the cop stepped back. When Riley reached the landing at the top of the stairs, the chief spoke loudly so he would be heard above the chanting demonstrators. “Hi ya, Riley. Here for the meeting?”

  “Is that okay?”

  “Ayuh. Open to all residents. Most of ‘em used the side door, though.”

  Riley had forgotten that option. He turned to look back down at the crowd. “What are they doing here?”

  “Mad about the price of that new cure for alkies, best I can tell. Wanna get it for free.”

  “But why are they here at town hall?”

  “After a photo opportunity, I imagine. Prob’ly figure Bill Hightower called the meetin’ to talk about getting rid of the alkies, and this is the town where that so-called cure got invented, so—”

  “Invented? Why wou
ld they think that?”

  “Don’t ya watch the news? They’ve been talkin’ ‘bout a connection between this new cure and the troubles we had last fall. The ‘mystery man’ and the riot at Henry’s store. Ya know about all that, right?”

  Riley didn’t trust himself to speak.

  The chief turned to look at him. “I’m kinda hopin’ they’re right. Mebbe they can find that fella for me. Sure do wanna talk to him ‘bout Willa Newdale.” The chief bent closer to speak into his ear. “Did ya know Willa?”

  “I don’t think so,” lied Riley.

  The chief continued to lean close to Riley, searching his face. “We never had a chance to finish talkin’ ‘bout how come a professor is workin’ over at the diner, did we? Sure like to hear your life’s story one of these days.”

  Riley felt his heartbeat rising. “Okay.”

  “Maybe I’ll drop by for lunch or somethin’ after we get a handle on all this.” The chief waved toward the crowd and Riley followed the gesture, relieved to look away from his searching eyes.

  Down below, Riley saw people he recognized from the shelter. He saw the giant from Houston, standing head and shoulders above everyone else. He thought of that night—was it really six months past already?—being manhandled down the street against his will to Henry’s Drug Store, and the helpless fear of knowing he was out of miracles when they had placed so much naked hope in him. He thought of the night before that, giving out the little bit of powder he had found, and the joy on the faces of those few he had cured. The weight had lifted then, for just a little while. He thought of his excitement when he figured out a way to fix everything, a way to make things easier for Hope and Bree, and to help Dylan, the good man who had come to take Riley’s place. He thought of all these homeless alcoholics, who like him had heard that miracles were happening in Maine and staked their lives against the ravenous winter on the hope that it was true. Riley thought of his brief weeks of satisfaction when he foolishly believed he had found a life worth living, and then he thought about five thousand dollars for one dose and the fact that his grand scheme to help the world was yet another blessing that had been forbidden him. He should have known such good fortune would not be granted to a ghost.

  Five thousand dollars. He remembered first hearing that figure and not understanding what it meant, alone that night in his garage apartment. He remembered people coming on the television to explain the implications. The rich would never suffer alcoholism again, but of course the poor would have no hope. A new class distinction would be born, a brave new world where the wealthy could purchase sobriety with its attendant virtues, while the poor remained addicted and exposed to all the sins that drunkenness inspired.

  Five thousand dollars was the difference between salvation and slavery. The price of willpower. The cost of freedom. The value of a human life. Riley remembered hearing the people on the television say these things, and the weight coming down again as he began to realize what he had done. In his simpleminded eagerness to help Hope and Bree, and Dylan, and a world of broken people, he had failed to consider one simple, obvious detail: all the millions they were paying him had to come from somewhere.

  At first Riley had assumed it must be a mistake. He knew Lee Hanks would make it right. Mr. Hanks was the fine Christian man who had sent him off to save the pagans of Brazil. So Riley had asked Dylan to make a call, to explain the problem, and the solution. Riley would cut his own price, cut it down to nearly nothing. Then Mr. Hanks’s company could sell the cure for much less, perhaps even give it freely to those too poor to pay.

  But although Dylan had left many messages, Mr. Hanks had not replied.

  As if the thought had conjured up the lawyer from below, Riley saw Hope’s lover come uphill along the sidewalk, approaching the crowd at the foot of the steps. Dylan did not pause but tucked his head and pressed right into the mass of them. Riley watched him nearly make it to the bottom step, then a man stubbornly refused to get out of his way. There was a little flurry of movement, and several other demonstrators moved to block his progress. He seemed to stumble, but then he straightened up and turned to go back through the crowd the way he came. A couple of men stepped up to block his retreat in that direction too.

  “Uh, Chief . . .” said Riley.

  “I see him.” The chief pointed at Dylan and said, “Hey, Dave, you and Ronny wanna go get that fool and bring him up here?”

  With their black batons drawn, the two policemen hurried down the steps and muscled their way into the crowd, arriving at Dylan’s side and hustling him toward the steps. The protesters parted reluctantly before the three men, but they made it back to the stairs without the use of force. Soon a pale and nervous Dylan joined Riley and the chief in front of the town-hall doors.

  “Seems like them fellas don’t like ya very much, counselor,” said Chief Novak.

  “Ayuh. Been gettin’ that a lot,” said Dylan.

  Riley glanced at his profile and saw his swollen black and purple left eye and felt a rush of sympathy. The man had been a target ever since CNN broke the story and the whole world learned Dylan was the legal representative of BHR Incorporated, the Delaware corporation that held the patent on the cure. People had vandalized his truck, thrown rocks at his house, and a homeless man had walked up to him in the street and socked him in the eye without warning. But in spite of everything, Dylan had not broached the subject of going public with Riley’s identity.

  The chief said, “Bet they’d back off if ya told us who your client is.”

  “We’ve been all through that,” said Dylan, carefully looking away from Riley.

  “Ayuh,” said the chief. “But I still think your man mighta killed our Willa. Be a good thing if ya gave him up.”

  “I just can’t, Steve. I can tell ya he’s no murderer, if that makes ya feel any better.”

  “Won’t feel better till I have that fella in my jail.”

  Riley stared at the angry faces in the crowd below, the ones who had slept with him in the shelter, who had remained in Dublin through the bitter cold winter, who had come here seeking a miracle and would not leave without it. If they would treat Dylan this way, what would they do to him? He remembered the giant’s rage in Henry’s pharmacy, and felt a new fear supersede his concerns about the police chief’s investigation of Willa Newdale’s disappearance. It was an awful thing to be the focus of such fury. If Dylan ever wavered under the pressure to reveal his client’s name, Chief Novak’s jail might be the safest place in town.

  As if reading Riley’s mind, Dylan said, “Shouldn’t ya get more men up here?”

  The chief nodded, his eyes also wary on the crowd. “Would if I could.”

  “What else could they be doin’ that’s more important than this?”

  The chief faced Dylan. “Well, counselor, let’s see. Five a my fellas are on riot alert down at the park already, and another couple of ‘em are handlin’ some of these people at the landin’, and for some reason these alkies keep wantin’ to break into Henry’s Drug Store again so I had to send some fellas over there. That there is the whole Dublin police force, including them that usually sits behind a desk. Like I keep sayin’, if you’d just gimme a name maybe we could settle a lot of these people down.”

  Dylan sighed and said nothing, as Riley eyed the other two policemen. Three men at the top of the stairs, and a hundred at the bottom. He asked, “Are we safe?”

  “I tried to get Bill Hightower to call this off, but the pigheaded . . .” The chief’s voice trailed off as Riley saw him make a deliberate effort at self-control. After a moment, staring down at the protesters, the chief continued, “I told ‘em a while ago not to set foot on the steps, and so far they’re stayin’ back. You fellas stop your worryin’ and go on in. We can handle this out here.”

  Riley watched the giant from Houston chanting angry slogans with a massive raised fist beating time above his head. Riley thought about leaving Dublin. Probably with all his money there was a way to go someplace where p
eople couldn’t find him. But he didn’t know how to use money in that way. What if he did it wrong and made things even worse? Everything he did made things worse. It might even be better to vanish without the money, go back to what he was before. Riley knew exactly how to disappear into the midst of those he had betrayed. He could head south to the overpasses of Florida and no one would ever find him. He could be Stanley Livingston again. Given all his failures here in Dublin, the prospect had appeal—a simple life, beholden to no one and responsible for nothing.

  Then Riley thought of the naïve girl who had shared his dream to save the world. She had followed him so willingly into danger, followed in a dugout canoe, and after four long years she had dragged him home insensate. He remembered going through the motions here at home, and Hope’s apparently unending patience until that final night, was it four years after they came home from Brazil? Yes, at least that long. One did not go from holy man to homeless alcoholic overnight. Four years of steady decline from failed missionary to failed professor, failed husband, failed father. And the final form of danger he inflicted on her that last evening in their kitchen when he had raised his hand to Bree and Hope had charged between them, suddenly a tigress, furiously driving him out into the street, into his native element once and for all, back into the jungle where she should have left him in the first place.

  “Riley?”

  He turned to find Hope’s lover standing there, battered and bruised on his behalf, a good man, the kind of man Hope and Bree deserved, holding the imposing hand-carved door open and staring at him curiously.

  “I was just thinking,” said Riley.

  “Sure.”

  With Dylan following, Riley entered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WITH HER CAR WINDOW DOWN in honor of the beautiful spring afternoon, Hope cruised aimlessly, counting desperate people, passing numbers thirty-eight and thirty-nine, two men combing through a trash can. She was in the old Pontiac because the opulent Mercedes made her nervous. She had driven it only once or twice since learning that it caused so much suspicion. Other than that, she left the expensive car in her backyard out of sight.