by T. M. Wright
The woman in red had the collar of his coat in her hand now. I said to him, nodding at her fingers, my words slow and measured, "Do you see that, Mr. Whelan?"
He said nothing. He continued wheezing.
I took a deep breath. "Mr. Whelan," I said, "please listen to me." The hands of the woman crept forward spiderlike over his collar and found the sides of his neck. "You must continue driving. Please continue driving!"
He said nothing. His wheezing was very bad now.
I asked, "Where's your inhaler, Mr. Whelan?"
He thumped his right-hand coat pocket with his open hand. I reached in, found his inhaler, held it up to his mouth. The fingers of the woman in red were at the front of his throat now. I squeezed the inhaler once, then again, and again. He waved frantically in the air. I pulled the inhaler away. His wheezing stopped. He started choking, as if he had a piece of meat caught in his throat. "Drive!" I screamed. He continued choking. I reached out, grabbed the arm of the woman in red. It was like grabbing a steel pipe. I let go. Whelan continued to choke. He tumbled forward; his head hit the steering wheel, the horn sounded. The woman in red came forward with him, so the back of the bucket seat cut into her stomach and her head pushed into the area just above the windshield. "Stop it!" I screamed. "For God's sake, stop it!"
Whelan's choking grew quieter; he was beginning to gurgle.
"Oh, shit, shit, goddammit!" I breathed. I aimed the inhaler at the woman in red and squeezed.
The scream that came from her was pitiful, like the scream a rabbit makes when it dies. She folded backward, like an accordion, into the back seat. Her body began to liquefy just as it had in my apartment a billion years ago—and at last there was only a small dark pool on the seat. The pool evaporated quickly.
And I realized all at once what had happened. I had shown her that her murderous love for me was unrequited. So she went away.
~ * ~
Whelan came around by and by, and after clearing his throat for several minutes, and a couple of applications of the asthma inhaler, he said, "Peed my pants, anyway," and pulled back onto the road, the LTD dogging us.
"Do you have any idea what was happening to you back there?" I asked.
"Yeah," he answered, "I had a fucking asthma attack, a fucking doozie of an asthma attack." "No," I whispered.
"I didn't hear you, Mr. Feary."
"Nothing," I said. "Call me Sam."
"Okay. Call me Mr. Whelan. Everybody does. My first name's Kennedy, but I hate it, so even my girlfriends call me Mr. Whelan."
"Sure," I said. "Mr. Whelan."
We were on the main street of Brookfield less than a minute later.
Thirty-Six
Brookfield—what I could see of it at twelve-thirty in the morning—was very small. A hamlet. Maybe thirty-five houses total, most of them whitish two-story Victorian. There was also a big brick Presbyterian Church, a Sunoco station, a grange hall, a small restaurant called Hattie's Brookfield Restaurant, and a tiny post office.
The village's main street was empty. There were no lights on in any of the houses, and only one street-lamp, a modern, expressway-type arc light on a long, curving aluminum pole that looked very much out of place in the village. It cast a wide, ragged circle of bluish light on the sidewalk in front of the grange hall.
"Kind of a bust," I said.
And Whelan, who had pulled the Chevette over so we were in front of the post office, said, "Abner Cray lives here somewhere, does he?"
I nodded. "Yes. Somewhere."
"But you don't know where?"
I shrugged. "I haven't a clue."
He chuckled a little. "Not much of a detective, are you, Mr. Feary?"
The LTD had pulled up five car lengths behind us. Its lights were off. I said to Whelan, "So what do we do now?"
"What can we do?" he answered. "We wait until morning."
"Here?" I was incredulous. "In the car?"
He jiggled with something on the side of his seat and the seat went back to a reclining position, which gave me a shudder, because his head was now where the woman in red's lap had been. "Sure," he said. "If you have to, you can sleep anywhere, Sam."
But I couldn't sleep, though I marveled at the fact that he could. He nodded off within seconds and—predictably, considering his asthma—began to snore resonantly.
I got out of the Chevette, closed the door, and stood facing the LTD in the darkness.
It flashed its lights at me.
I sighed. "I'm sorry, my friend," I whispered, "but I'm afraid too much water has gone under the bridge. You're no fun anymore."
It flashed its lights again. I shook my head at it, turned, and walked up the street, toward the grange hall.
~ * ~
I expected that the LTD would follow me. It did. I heard its old gears mesh, heard that big engine pull it forward, and when I glanced back it was just passing the Chevette. It slowed and stopped a dozen feet in front of Whelan's car. Its gears meshed again, and it backed up slowly. I lifted my arm; I was going to yell, "Whelan, watch out!" but the LTD stopped, came forward, and halted five car lengths from me, just inside the circle of bluish light cast by the big arc lamp.
I strained to see the driver but saw only what I'd seen four of five hours before—someone hunched over the wheel, someone tall enough that the top of his head intersected the top of the windshield. And, as Whelan had told me, he was wearing a gray suit—a suit that looked achingly familiar. I saw others in the car, too—several dark shapes behind the tinted windshield, one in front, a couple more in back.
Surprising myself, I took three or four quick steps toward the car. I caught the driver off guard, I think, because he didn't put the LTD in reverse and begin backing away until I'd stopped walking. But I'd gotten close enough. I'd seen the driver.
Whelan had been right. It wasn't Art DeGraff.
It was the old man on the subway, the one that the woman in red had choked the friendliness out of, and when our eyes met, there on Brookfield's main street, he gave me a wide, gloating grin that said very clearly, "And now you'll get yours, Bozo!"
"Jesus," I whispered. "I'm sorry." I looked quickly away from those accusing eyes and into the back seat of the LTD.
Art DeGraff was there, in the middle of the back seat, his body squashed into a fetal position, his huge black oval eyes in that long oval white face peering out from what looked like a form-fitting dark hood. It was a face that had anger etched hard into it, the way the bark of an old tree is etched with the furrows of age.
I froze. That face, that living mask of anger, knew that I had seen it.
I heard it scream as the LTD backed away, out of the glow of the arc lamp in front of the grange hall. It was a scream of awful and bitter recognition—This is what I am, it said. This is the thing I have become. And now the world knows it!
That was the first and last time I felt sympathy for Art DeGraff.
~ * ~
I ran back to the Chevette. Whelan was snoring happily when I got there. I figured he was safer with me around, or that I was safer with him around. I wasn't sure which. We were safer together, I knew that.
The LTD, which had backed down the street and into the darkness, took its position five car lengths behind the Chevette, lights off, and for a good half hour I sat turned in the seat so I could keep an eye on it. At last I decided that sitting like that was only giving me a pain in the neck. So I put my seat back and I fell asleep.
~ *~
It was the smell of coffee that woke me. Whelan was holding a plastic cup of it near my nose. "Wake up," he said, "we got work to do."
I became aware of sunlight on me first, then of the sounds of people and traffic around us. I was also aware that I had a hell of a headache.
I sat up, leaving the seat back, and pressed my hands hard to the sides of my head. "Dammit!" I breathed.
"Take this," Whelan said, and he put the cup of coffee under my nose. It smelled good. I took a sip. It was very hot.
"
He's in the Ford," I said, my gaze on the dark area below the dashboard because the sunlight was too bright.
"Art DeGraff?" asked Whelan. "No, I told you: the driver—"
"He's in the back seat," I said, sipped the coffee, then chanced a look around. People dressed for midspring—in jackets and sweaters and an occasional hat—were coming and going from Hattie's Brookfield Restaurant and a small general store called Pete's Groceries and Things, which I hadn't noticed the night before. "What time is it?" I asked.
"About eight," Whelan answered. "Seven forty-five, actually."
"Seven forty-five?" I said, surprised that the whole town had, from the looks of things, been awake for at least an hour.
Whelan asked, "What do you mean Art DeGraff was in the back seat?"
I nodded. "He was. I saw him. He was sitting in the back seat, in the middle of the back seat."
"Oh?" Whelan said. "When?"
"Last night. After you fell asleep."
"Yes," Whelan said. "I see." Clearly his professional ego had been bruised. He, the hard-bitten former cop, had declared that Art DeGraff was not in the Ford, and he'd been proved wrong. "Well, it's not there anymore," he went on, and nodded at the rearview mirror.
I turned around in the seat. There was a green pickup truck behind us, a big yellow dog looking at me through its windshield, and, behind that, a black and gold Chevy Blazer. But no LTD. I turned back, sighed, sipped my coffee. "Good coffee," I said.
"I'll put it on your tab," he said.
"Now what?" I said.
"Now I get a sweet roll. You want one?"
I smiled at him. I was beginning to like him. "I'll pay," I said, fished my wallet out, and got a dollar from it. To my surprise, he took it.
"I'll be right back," he said, opened his door, climbed out—with several grunts and groans and wheezes—bent over, and looked back in. "They got raspberry and strawberry and prune, I think. Which do you want?"
"Raspberry's good," I said, and he nodded and lumbered across the street to Hattie's Brookfield Restaurant.
~ * ~
As I waited in the Chevette for Whelan to return with our breakfast, such as it promised to be, I hoped that Abner would pass by. After all, people who move to a small town, like Brookfield, often adopt its habits, become locals. Why move to a small town otherwise? So, because everyone else in town—or so it seemed—was up and moving about, starting the day's business, Abner should have been up, too. Maybe with his camera in hand, because Brookfield looked like a nice place to take pictures, a typical New England town, very picturesque. So I thought I'd see him wandering down the street, his gaze moving from here to there so he wouldn't miss the chance at a good shot.
But he didn't pass by, although a lot of other people did—couples, old people, young people, people in overalls, people in sports coats, people in hiking boots, people in sneakers, people who looked very purposeful and people who looked aimless, people with pets in hand, people with pets on leashes, people carting groceries home, people laughing and people frowning.
Lots more people, in fact, than should have been on the main street of Brookfield, Vermont.
It was as I was thinking this that Whelan opened his door, stuck his head in, and handed me a raspberry Danish wrapped in a napkin. "Nice little town," he said, and climbed into the driver's seat.
"Sure," I said. I sipped my coffee, munched on the Danish. "Awfully crowded, though."
"Yeah." He smiled a long-suffering smile. "Tell me about it." He took a bite of his Danish, chewed it, prepared to take another bite. "Fuckin' flea market," he said, the Danish poised near his lips. He nodded to indicate an area beyond the grange hall. "Over there." He took another bite of the Danish. "I guess it's an annual thing," he said as he chewed. "Just a bunch of junk if you ask me."
"That's why all these people are here?" I said incredulously. "Because of a flea market?"
"You'd be surprised how many people these things draw, Sam."
I took a bite of my Danish. I asked, "You can see them, Mr. Whelan?"
"See who?"
I nodded to indicate the crowds on Brookfield's main street. "Them. Those people."
"What the hell are you talking about, Sam? Sure I can see them."
"Good," I said. "I'm glad. It makes me feel better that you can see them." I sipped my coffee. "Tell me how you know about small-town flea markets, Mr. Whelan. I thought you'd put in forty years—"
He cut in, "At the NYPD? Yes. I did. But I also do a hell of a lot of traveling, Sam." He finished his Danish. "Anyway, like I was saying, I do travel. I get outta that freakin' city as much as I can, you know. Can't stand it there for too long, so I travel. Why the hell do you think I drive this damned lawn mower?" he asked, and answered himself, "Because it doesn't use any gas, that's why."
"I was wondering," I said. "You don't really… fit in it, do you?"
He grinned. "I'm not fat, Sam. I'm stocky."
"Gotcha," I said. I was enjoying the banter, the coffee, the raspberry Danish. I was even beginning to enjoy the crowds of people, now that I knew why they were in Brookfield.
The sunlight through the window glass was warming the side of my face and my shoulder—it had even taken my headache away. I leaned forward and looked through the windshield. The sky was an even pale blue, and all but cloudless.
Whelan nodded to indicate the post office. "They should be open at nine. That's when we'll find out where your friend is."
THIRTY-SEVEN
In Bangor, thirty years ago, my Aunt Greta told me that storms were really a giant old "hausfrau" sweeping out the old to make room for the new. Aunt Greta was in many ways a colorful and entertaining woman—"Lusty," my father used to say, which seemed to upset my mother. In my six- or seven-year-old brain, that giant old "hausfrau" was terribly real. I could see her. When storms came up, there she was with her awful broom, her long skirts, and her white bonnet (very much like the woman on the Old Dutch Cleanser cans), and, of course, of course, she was after me!
Eventually, I grew out of believing in the "giant old hausfrau," though my feelings toward my Aunt Greta remained ambivalent. On the one hand, I thought the story, horrific as it was, was wonderfully entertaining, and on the other hand, it really did give me a scare—the genuine scare of insecurity and aloneness and fear that is somehow different from the scare we get on roller coasters and at horror movies.
I bring Aunt Greta and her hausfrau up now because sitting there, in Kennedy Whelan's Chevette Scooter, in Brookfield, Vermont, at 8:45 in the morning, I could tell that a storm was coming. Even though the sky was a flat, pale blue and the sunlight warm through the Chevette's windows. I knew a storm was coming because I have always had a sixth sense about such things; many people do. Maybe there was a ragged edge to the morning's pleasantness. Maybe it was a little too pleasant. Maybe the few clouds scuttling about had a tinge of gray in them.
I said to Whelan, "There's a storm coming."
"Sure," he said. He didn't believe me.
"I mean it," I said. "I have a sixth sense about these things." I set my empty cup on the Chevette's dashboard. "There's a storm coming."
He nodded at the cup. "You want more?"
"I could use it," I said. I was still feeling a little groggy from sleeping in the Chevette's bucket seat. "I'll get it."
"Good enough," he said, and nodded again at the cup on the dashboard. "Take that with you, okay? I like to keep the car clean."
"You bet." I took the cup, climbed out of the car, and headed across the crowded street toward Hattie's Brookfield Restaurant. I was halfway across the street, and picking up bits and pieces of conversation from the crowds around me—"Eighteen dollars for an ashtray!" ... and "Guy must be out of his mind to be selling stuff like that at a family flea market"… and "Wouldn't mind settling here at all"—when I saw Abner.
He was coming out of Pete's Groceries and Things. He had a full bag of groceries in each arm and a look of desperation about him, as if the crowds that had inv
aded Brookfield planned to invade him next.
I stopped in the middle of the street. Someone jostled me; someone else, very annoyed, said, "Excuse me!" precisely the way Steve Martin says it.
"Abner!" I called.
He stopped. He glanced over at me. His look of desperation became a look of surprise and sudden panic. Then he bolted, his bags of groceries threatening to topple from his arms.
I looked quickly around at the Chevette. Whelan was rolling his window down and putting a new cigar into his mouth. "He's—" I called, and stopped. No, I thought, uncertain why, I don't want him knowing. But Whelan had heard me; he looked questioningly at me.
I held my cup high. "Cream?" I called.
He nodded.
"Great," I called, and walked very quickly to the door of Hattie's Brookfield Restaurant. I stopped there to let a few people walk in ahead of me, then I glanced back at the Chevette. Whelan was watching. He looked confused. I held the cup up again and smiled. "Cream?" I called; again he nodded.
I glanced in the direction that Abner had run. I saw only the flea market crowds, and, fleetingly, a wisp of darkness at the horizon.
I went in. The restaurant was packed. At the counter, I got the attention of a young and schoolgirl-pretty waitress (like the ones that fast-food restaurants use on TV commercials) who said, "Be with you in a moment, sir." She smiled a flat, vaguely welcoming smile.
"No," I said, "I don't want anything. Do you have a rear exit?"
Her smile vanished, as if I had said something obscene. Then, quickly, her smile reappeared. "Oh!" she said. "Yes, sure we do," and she nodded toward the back of the restaurant. "Over there," she said, and turned to the person who'd stepped up behind me. "Be with you in a moment, sir," she said.
He said, "Just coffee."
I closed my eyes. "Nuts!" I whispered. It was Kennedy Whelan's voice. I felt his hand on my shoulder. He gripped hard—harder, I thought, than he looked capable of. "You're a real amateur, Sam," he said.