“I didn’t say that…”
“… and you could have stopped him. You know that, don’t you? That’s why you’ve been looking so fucking guilty. You’re just as responsible for this mess as he is.”
“I am not!” Ace manages to look furious and abashed at the same time. “I’m the one who pulled your ass out of the fire, remember? If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be sitting out here right now accusing me of all kinds of things that you don’t know nothing about. You be as dead as a fucking doornail – pardon my language, but that’s a fact, and you know it. And if this is your idea of thanks, lady…” He runs out of words.
Now it’s Jillian’s turn to stare at the ground. This is all so confusing, she thinks.
“You’re right,” she finally says, quietly, almost in a whisper. “You did save my life. And I am grateful. I am. But I just don’t understand…” When she looks up, there are tears in her eyes. “What is it with you people? How can you do these things? I know you saved my life, but if it wasn’t for you and your friends, my life wouldn’t have needed saving in the first place.” She shakes her head. “I don’t get it,” she says, throwing her arms in the air as if admitting defeat. “I just don’t get it.”
“Look,” Ace says. “I feel just as bad about what happened as you do. Well, maybe not just as bad,” he concedes, “but plenty bad. Believe me. But you don’t understand…”
“You’re right. I don’t. Explain it to me.”
Ace sighs. Removing his hat, he wipes his forehead with his sleeve, which, as far as Jillian can tell, only serves to make his face dirtier. “Now I’m not saying that I know any of this for a fact,” he says cautiously. “Because if I did, that would mean that I was saying that I was out here last night, and I’m not saying that I was…”
“I understand,” Jillian says wearily. This stupid charade is getting more and more pointless and tiresome.
“…so I don’t necessarily know any of this for a fact,” Ace repeats. “But if I was going to guess, I would say that maybe some of the boys got themselves a little drunk, you know? And maybe they decided to come out here and have a little fun with The Crazies, maybe shake ‘em up a little…”
“The Crazies?”
“That’s what the folks who live around here call the hippies who live here in the old Phillips place. Who used to live here in the old Phillips place,” Ace corrects himself, surveying the smoldering remains of the house. “We’re just not used to folks like that around here, you know? We’re just regular people. Farmers, mostly. And they act so different from normal people. So we… a lot of us folks just kinda figured that they were crazy, and we started calling them The Crazies, and it kinda stuck, you know? And now that’s all anyone ever calls them. No offense, ma’am,” he says to Sunshine, almost as an afterthought. Sunshine looks puzzled; clearly, she hasn’t picked up any reason to be offended.
Well, Jillian thinks fleetingly, if the shoe fits…
“Well, anyway,” Ace continues, warming to his story, “as I was saying, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if maybe some of the boys got themselves a few sheets into the wind and got to feeling real brave. And maybe one of the boys talked the rest of them into doing something that they really shouldn’t have done, something that they’d probably regret when they sobered up. And maybe some of them didn’t need a whole lot of talking into, if you know what I mean.” He shakes his head sadly. “It’s really hard to say why people do things sometimes…”
He trails off and gazes into the distance for so long that Jillian thinks that he’s done talking, which is fine with her. But finally, Ace clears his throat noisily and spits on the ground.
“Anyway, maybe something like that happened. And maybe it doesn’t seem like it to you, but I’ll bet that most of them were just out to have a good time. None of them really wanted to hurt anybody. And nobody wanted to burn anybody’s house down, and that’s a fact. I mean,” he clarifies quickly, “that’s probably a fact. I mean, that’s probably what happened, you know?”
“Sure,” said Jillian, “but the house did get burned down, didn’t it? How do you suppose that happened? It didn’t burn itself down, did it?”
“Well,” Ace muses, “maybe – I say maybe – maybe one of the boys was a real hothead, and he had a grudge against The Crazies for some reason, I don’t know. And maybe, after all the other guys left, he decided to do some things that were really stupid, stuff that we… stuff that the other guys wouldn’t have let him do if they were here, no matter how drunk they were, no matter how big they mighta talked before… well, if something like that happened, the guys who had left wouldn’t be responsible for what this guy did all by himself when they weren’t here, now, would they?”
He’s asking me to absolve him, Jillian realizes. In his own way, he’s asking for my forgiveness. But Jesus, this isn’t like some high-school kids pulling a dumb prank. People were almost killed here tonight. And I was almost one of them. In fact, if it hadn’t of been for this poor, dumb son-of-a-bitch…
“I don’t know, Ace,” Jillian says. Closing her eyes, she lies back down on the grass. She’s unbearably tired and not at all up to the strain of solving a moral dilemma. She sighs. “I just don’t know.”
4.3.17: Sturdivant
The ancient Chevy wheezes up to the ribbon of police tape that cordons off what’s left of the front yard. Even before Roger can kill the engine, Corinne pops open the door and nearly flies out of the car, leading Roger to marvel at how fast she can still move when she really wants to.
A young trooper holds up his hand as Corinne bears down on him. “Miss,” he says, “I’m sorry, but you can’t…” Without slowing down, Corinne casts a withering look in his direction, and then she’s already past him.
“Our little girl lives here,” Roger explains amiably, as he saunters past the trooper. “Her mom’s a tad upset.” The trooper waves Roger by with an official-looking gesture that suffers somewhat from the fact that Roger is already well past him when he delivers it.
“Where is she?” Corinne is demanding of everyone when Roger catches up to her. “Where’s Sunshine?” She’s bellowing the question not only at the disciples she encounters, but also at policemen, firemen, reporters, and anyone else who crosses her path.
When she finally finds her, Corinne smothers Sunshine in an enormous embrace, Sunshine almost disappears in the fleshy folds of her mother’s bosom. “My baby!” Corinne blubbers, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, my poor, poor baby!”
“Corinne, I’m alright,” Sunshine says, although not much sound escapes. “I’m okay. I’m not hurt.”
“I knew that nothing good would come of your associating with that man,” Corinne says disgustedly, pushing Sunshine away and holding her at arms’ length so that she can inspect her. “Oh, look at you,” she adds, a hand flying to her mouth in horror. “You’re all burnt up!”
“Corinne, that’s just soot,” Sunshine says, reassuringly. “I’m just a little black from the smoke. But I didn’t get burned at all. I’m fine.”
“Oh, my brave, brave baby,” Corinne sobs, pulling Sunshine close again. “Who did this terrible thing to you? How many people did they shoot?”
“I don’t know who did it, Corinne, and it wasn’t so terrible. And nobody got shot. Who’s been telling you these things?”
“Oh,” Corinne snaps back angrily, “and I suppose you’re going to tell me that you didn’t run back into the house to save that stupid little rich girl, what’s her name?”
“Her name’s Jill, and she’s not stupid, and yes, I did help her get out, Corinne, but…”
“You could have been killed! And she’s such a little bitch, you’ve got no business…”
“She looks okay to me, Cory,” Roger points out. “Don’t make such a big deal out of it.”
“And since when did you become such an expert?” Corinne demands, hotly. “She looks like hell, if you must know. She’s damn lucky to even be alive.”
And
Nathan, his timing worse than ever, picks that exact moment to wander by.
“And you,” Corinne shouts. Her eyes narrow into dark daggers. Grabbing Nathan by the arm, she spins him around sharply. “This is all your fault, every bit of it. I knew you were trouble the minute I first set eyes on you. If I told her once I told her a thousand times not to get messed up with you, but no, she’s got to go and try to get herself killed. Why didn’t you try to stop her? She would have listened to you, you son-of-a-bitch.”
“Corinne,” Nathan says, with a patient smile, “Sunshine makes her own decisions. You overestimate my influence…”
“Yeah, well,” Corinne says, “overestimate this!” And she socks Nathan squarely in the jaw with a roundhouse right, with all the force of her considerable bulk behind it.
And as Sunshine looks on in horror, Nathan, performing perhaps the only ungraceful act she’s ever seen him perform, crumples awkwardly to the ground and winds up lying on his back with his arms stretched straight out, looking for all the world like he’s just been crucified in his own back yard.
4.3.18: Sturdivant
When Jillian wakes up, she’s alone.
She blinks a few times as she looks around, trying to make sense of the confusion that mills around her. Various white-robed figures (“The Crazies,” she thinks; how appropriate) scurry about. She thinks she also recognizes some of the other people who attended last night’s “ceremony,” they’re wandering to and fro, looking at the charred remains of the house, shaking their heads, crying on each other’s shoulders. People in uniform are striding around purposefully, nodding absently to each other as they cross paths, occasionally speaking somberly into their squawking hand-held radios.
Jillian hails one of them, a young-looking guy in a gray-and-blue uniform with shiny black boots and a hat that says State Police. “Excuse me,” she asks, “could you tell me what time it is?” Damn, she thinks, I lost my Piaget in the fire – and it was one of the only things that Mother’s ever given me that I really liked. And where’s my phone? It was useless for making calls out here, but at least it could have told me the goddamn time.
“It’s after eight,” the trooper replies. He stops and smiles. “You’re one of the young ladies that we had to pull out of the house aren’t you? You’re lucky to be alive.”
I suppose so, Jillian thinks. I wonder how long that’ll take to sink in. It just doesn’t seem real, somehow. More like a bad dream.
“Can you help me, Officer… Barnes?” she asks, squinting to read the name tag that’s pinned to a flap that covers the top of his breast pocket.
“I’ll sure try.”
“There’s a limo supposed to be here at nine to take me to the airport, and I…”
“Airport?” Officer Barnes is puzzled. “There’s no commercial airport around here.”
“The Hartford airport, I think. Bradley Airport? Something like that?”
“You’re going to take a limo all the way to Bradley from here?” He’s clearly incredulous.
There are times, Jillian thinks, that having a rich father comes in handy. “It looks like I’m probably going to be running late,” she says, “so I need to get in touch with Daddy. He’s waiting for me at the airport, and I don’t want him to worry about me. And I ought to let him know that I’m okay, in case he hears about the fire on the news, or something. Is there any way I could use your radio to get in touch with him? Or do you have a phone in your car, or something like that? Cell phones don’t seem to work out here.”
“I can try to get word to him on the radio,” Barnes says, raising his voice to be heard over the whirring of a helicopter that’s settling down lazily off to the side of the house. “Why don’t you come on over to my car with me, and I’ll see if the dispatcher can’t help you out.”
“Great,” Jillian says. “Thanks.”
The trooper extends his hand and helps Jillian to her feet. She moves gingerly, as if she expects to be sore; but in fact, she’s surprised to find that she has no aches and pains at all. After what I’ve been through, she thinks, somehow I expected to feel a whole lot worse than I do.
I guess I am lucky.
“My car’s around front,” Officer Barnes explains as they started to walk off. “I ought to warn you that there’s a whole pack of reporters hanging around up there. We’ve managed to keep them out of the back yard, which is why they haven’t hassled you yet. But they’re hovering around out near the road like a pack of vultures.”
“Reporters? You don’t know if this has been on TV or anything, do you?” Damn, she thinks, I sure hope Daddy doesn’t hear anything about this until I have a chance to talk to him.
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure it’s been on the news,” he says. “This is a big deal around here. I think that there were a couple of Olympic athletes in the house, or something like that. Shoot, not only are all the local reporters here, but I even saw a TV crew from one of the Hartford stations nosing around – I recognized one of the reporters from the six o’clock news, you know? And I heard tell that one of the networks was going to send some folks up here all the way from New York. You know, with the Olympics going on right now and all, there’s a lot of interest in this event.”
“Is that one of yours?” Jillian asks, pointing to the helicopter which has just touched down a short distance away. The blades, even now that they’re spinning to a stop, are kicking up a wind that tousles her sweaty hair.
“One of ours?” The trooper is puzzled.
“The chopper.”
“Hell, no,” Barnes says, annoyed. “I’ll bet that’s the network people from New York.” He frowns and reaches for his radio. “Excuse me a minute,” he says. “I need to talk to somebody about controlling these reporters so this doesn’t get out of hand.”
But when the door to the helicopter opens, Jillian is surprised to see that the figure that jumps out doesn’t appear to be a reporter at all. And although he doesn’t see her at first as he scans the crowd anxiously, she recognizes him instantly, his Tony Lama anteater boots and oversized Stetson cowboy hat are as out of place on a Connecticut lawn as a rhino at a kennel club.
“DADDY!” she screams as she races toward him. “Oh, Daddy,” she sobs as she collapses onto him.
G.W. pats her head and makes soothing noises, rocking her gently back and forth as if she were a baby. The events of the past few hours boil up and over all at once, and she weeps uncontrollably in the comfort of his strong arms.
4.3.19: Sturdivant
“Take ‘em to the best hotel in Hartford and let ‘em get themselves cleaned up. You got that?”
“Yes sir,” the driver says. “You told me that already…”
“Well, I’m telling you again,” G.W. snaps.
“Daddy, we need to stop on the way so I can get some new clothes,” Jillian says from the back seat, through the open window. “And I don’t think Sunshine’s got any clothes either…”
“Oh, no that’s okay,” Sunshine protests weakly. “I can change back into the clothes I’ve got on.”
Jillian glances at the torn and blackened garment that had once been a snowy-white tunic. “There’s no way you’re getting back into that… that outfit,” she says, for lack of a better description. “Oh, Daddy,” she moans, as a sudden realization strikes her. “I don’t even have any money. Not even a credit card. My wallet was on the dresser. It’s all gone. Just like my watch.”
“Here,” G.W. says, graciously, “take one of mine.”
“But, Daddy, it’s not just my credit cards, my driver’s license was in there, and…”
“Don’t trouble yourself with any of that now, sweetheart,” he says soothingly. “We’ll have plenty of time to take care of that when you get back.” His tone changes abruptly as he addresses the driver. “You did relay a message to the plane that the girls were gonna be a little while getting there, didn’t you?”
“Yes sir, like you told me.”
“Jillian Kendal!” A reporter pushes her wa
y over to the side of the car, microphone in hand. “Hi, Jill,” she smiles. “I’m Amanda Ramone, CBS News. Tell me, will this near-tragedy have any effect on your chances…”
“She’s fine,” G.W. barks. “And didn’t I tell you that if you didn’t get out of my little girl’s face I was gonna shove that goddamn thing up your ass?”
“Mister,” the reporter huffs, “you told me no such thing. And I don’t know if you realize who you’re talking to…”
“Well,” he says evenly, “I’m telling you now. So piss off.” And then to the driver, “Go ahead, get ‘em the hell outta here.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
“Love you too, precious. See you in a bit. You too, Sunshine,” he calls after them.
But after driving just a few yards, the limo jerks to a halt. “Daddy,” Jillian calls back, leaning out the window, “I forgot to tell you. There’s going to be a few other people coming with us on the plane. Sunshine’s parents are coming, and…”
“That’s fine, that’s fine,” G.W. says impatiently, waving the car on. “Now go on, move it on out of here. Git!”
“I take it,” Amanda Ramone says, as the car drives off, “that you’re G.W. Kendal?”
“That’s right,” G.W. snaps back. “Not that it’s any of your goddamn business.”
“That’s quite a daughter you’ve got there, Mr. Kendal,” says Amanda Ramone, brightly, as the limo drives off. “The house burns down around her, and she flies off to the Olympics like nothing happened at all. Nerves of steel. Must get it from her old man.”
“She was plenty shook up, let me tell you,” G.W. says, and then he remembers. What am I talking to her for? he wonders, casting a disparaging glance in the reporter’s direction. She’s just being friendly to me because she wants me to slip up and say something stupid.
And anyway, I’ve got more important fish to fry, he thinks, as his expression darkens.
It’s time I got me some answers.
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