Reed too. “They’d probably scare the poor mutt to death.”
The sound of a car over the sound of the rain.
Beagle whimpered.
Reed remembered, but he didn’t hear the hoofbeats.
They had vanished with the woman.
Headlights split the rain into sparkling motes and slashes. The car passed them at a crawl, stopped and backed up.
They didn’t move.
Helen slid out, one arm bandaged from elbow to shoulder, a bandage over her right eye. She wore no coat and didn’t bother with an umbrella.
Reed didn’t have the strength to stand. “Well?”
“Too soon to really tell,” she said, standing at the first step She smiled, though. “But it looks good.” She chuckled. “I heard one of the nurses call it a miracle when she found out how it happened.”
Reed nodded. “Cool. Because it was.”
Cora said, “Yeah. Maybe.” Not really a contradiction.
Helen leaned over and tapped their shoulders. “Let’s get inside, okay? He wouldn’t want you guys to catch pneumonia. He’s got enough problems now as it is.”
He looked over his shoulder and saw the dark beyond the threshold. “Can we go to the Moonglow instead?”
Helen balked for a second, then nodded. “Sure. Why not? I’ll turn on the coffee.”
Halfway there, Cora stopped them with a touch.
There were no fires left; just the rain.
“What happened?’’ she asked.
Helen said, “I don’t know. Maybe he does, but he can’t talk. Not for a while, anyway.”
But Reed walked on, Beagle trotting at his side.
I know, he thought, and wouldn’t say it aloud; I know what it was. It was the end of the world, and Reverend Chisholm stopped it. At least for a while.
He did smile then.
No one saw it but the dog.
* * * *
2
P
lease don’t
Casey knew he was alive, knew he was hurt badly, knew there was an even chance he would never see the Landing again. Or anything else, for that matter.
He knew in the cloud that carried him through the comforting dark that he had wrestled with Death, and neither one of them had won.
What he didn’t know was what it meant.
What he didn’t know was why, from the edge of the cloud, he could see through the dark to a Tennessee autumn hillside, and the funeral down there, a big man in black reading softly from a Bible over the grave of a woman who finally knew her son.
What he didn’t know was why the pain wouldn’t stop.
please don’t hurt
What he did know was that he was tired. Almighty tired. Tired enough to let the cloud take him wherever it wanted to go. Tired enough to want to stay here, drifting through the dark, Tennessee autumn below, flickering visions of a steeple once in a while passing by.
Tired enough to decide that if this was how you died, it wasn’t so bad. Not so bad after all.
He only hoped that whatever it was he was supposed to do, that he had done it, and that it hadn’t been too late, and that someone out there, maybe Helen, maybe the kids, knew that Casey Chisholm wasn’t a coward after all.
casey
Not so bad. A little too quiet. It would do to have someone sing now and then; maybe play the organ the way Helen did on Sundays, or when she practiced and he sat in the office without her knowing he was listening; maybe get out a guitar and play it in the kitchen while someone else played the piano over there in the parlor, and
Casey
Someone else danced a waltz out there on the lawn.
Aw, damn, he thought; aw, damn I’m going to miss it.
“Casey.”
Maybe his eyes opened, maybe he could see now without them. Whatever it was, Mel Farber was so close, Casey could smell the fear and anxiety on his breath, on his skin.
The young man looked old, and there were pocks of burned flesh across his face.
“You look like hell, Doc,” he managed, and gasped at the pain, closed his eyes, and gasped again.
A muttering, a woman responding, a few seconds later, the pain receding but too slowly.
“Casey.”
“I hear you. Stop shouting.”
“Don’t talk, Case, it probably hurts.”
No kidding, he thought, but for a change he obeyed.
“You’re going to be all right. Eventually. I think. Better shape than the Landing, that’s for sure.”
Casey moistened his lips. “Feels. Every bone. Broken.”
“Damn near.” Closer. “You never heard this, Case, but I think it’s a goddamn miracle.”
Casey hoped he smiled; he couldn’t feel a thing. “Nothing. Goddamn. About it. Then.” Moistened his lips again. “The kids? Helen?”
Silence for too long.
He was afraid.
He couldn’t move.
“Reed and Cora, pretty good. They’re home. Helen was banged up by that madwoman. The other one, I mean. Helen chopped her with a cleaver. She’s with the kids now, just called from the Moonglow.” Chuckling, macabre chuckling. “Would you believe Mrs. Racine put a hole through that little man’s head? She claims it was one shot.”
Casey floated for a while, no longer quite so comfortable with the cloud and the dark, wishing someone would turn on a light so he could see better, so he could see more. The Tennessee autumn hillside would just have to wait.
“Arlo. The others.”
“Word’s still coming in, Case. Don’t know where Arlo is, but we found Escobar in the bar. Burned to death. Sliced to ribbons.” Closer, again. “Not a single drop of blood, and no burn marks on the floor.”
Floating.
Listening to his heart working overtime; listening to the silence.
“Case?”
“What?”
“Is ... is it what you said? Was that woman ... you know.”
What he wanted to say was, It wasn’t a woman, Mel, and you know it now. Not a woman. She was one of them. Maybe it was a test, I’m not sure. Maybe it was a warning, I’m not sure. No matter what I say, old friend, you’ll believe what you want to and the hell with what I say. That’s the way of it. The way it always was, the way it always will be.
Believe what you want. It’ll get you through the night.
What he did say was, with what he hoped was a smile: “We’ll never know, will we? I don’t think we’ll ever really know.”
Silence, moving around the room, whispers, the smell of ointments and bandages and healing flesh and broken bones and flowers that had no right to smell so lovely.
A straw between his lips.
Blessed water.
“Casey?”
“Now what?”
“There’s something else.”
A moment of panic: “I’m crippled.”
“No, no, good Lord, no. Just about everything’s busted but that dumb back of yours. Don’t worry. You get through this, you’ll walk. Limping, for sure, but walking.”
“Then what?”
“It’s your hair.”
He couldn’t move his arms; they both hung in traction.
“What about it? You had to shave it off?”
“No. It’s ... I don’t know, maybe I should let Helen—”
“Mel.” The voice, without the look.
“It’s white, Case. Your hair has turned pure white.”
There may have been an explanation, but he couldn’t hear it and didn’t try. He was tired. Almighty tired. He let the cloud take him away for a while. To rest. Maybe dream. Maybe listen to the music, watch the people dance.
He had done his best.
With any kind of luck now, not all of them were in step.
* * * *
3
A
nd the church bell rang.
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Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01] Page 34