by Стивен Кинг
My head ached with questions, and I thought that maybe it was just as well that Leigh was going away for a while.
As she herself had said about our folks, it seemed safer.
On Friday the 29th, the last business day of the old year, I called the Libertyville American Legion Post and asked for the secretary. I got his name, Richard McCandless, from the building’s janitor, who also found a telephone number to go with it. The number turned out to be that of David Emerson’s, Libertyville’s “good” furniture store. I was told to wait a moment and then McCandless came on, a deep, gravelly voice that sounded a tough sixty—as if maybe Patton and the owner of this voice had fought their way across Germany to Berlin shoulder to shoulder, possibly biting enemy bullets out of the air with their teeth as they went.
“McCandless,” he said.
“Mr McCandless, my name is Dennis Guilder. Last August you put on a military-style funeral for a fellow named Roland LeBay—”
“Was he a friend of yours?”
“No, only a bare acquaintance, but—”
“Then I don’t have to spare your feelings none,” McCandless said, gravel rattling in his throat. He sounded like Andy Devine crossed with Broderick Crawford. “LeBay was nothing but a pure-d sandy-craw sonofabitch, and if I’d had my way, the Legion wouldn’t have had a thing to do with planting him. He quit the organization back in 1970. If he hadn’t quit, we would have fired him. That man was the most contentious bastard that every lived.”
“Was he?”
“You bet he was. He’d pick an argument with you, then up it to a fight if he could. You couldn’t play poker with the sonofabitch, and you sure couldn’t drink with him. You couldn’t keep up with him, for one thing, and he’d get mean for another. Not that he had to go far to get to mean. What a crazy bastard he was, you should pardon my fran-sayse. Who are you, boy?”
For an insane moment I thought of quoting Emily Dickinson at him: I’m nobody! Who are you?
“A friend of mine bought a car from LeBay just before he died—”
“Shit! Not that ’57?”
“Well, actually it was a ’58—”
Yeah, yeah, ’57 or ’58, red and white. That was the only goddam thing he cared about, Treated it like it was a woman. It was over that car he quit the Legion, did you know that?”
“No,” I said. “What happened?”
“Ah, shit. Ancient history, kid. I’m bending your car as it is. But every time I think of that sonofabitch LeBay, I see red. I’ve still got the scars on my hands. Uncle Sam had three years or my life during World War II and I never got so much as a Purple Heart out of it, although I was in combat almost all that time. I fought my way across half the little shitpot islands in the South Pacific. Me and about fifty other guys stood up to a banzai charge on Guadalcanal two fucking million Japs coming at us hopped to the eyeballs and waving those swords they made out of Maxwell House coffee cans—and I never got a scar, I felt a couple of bullets go right by me, and just before we broke that charge the guy next to me got his guts rearranged courtesy of the Emperor of Japan, but the only times I saw the colour of my own blood over there in the Pacific was when I cut myself shaving. Then…”
McCandless laughed.
“Shit on toast, there I go again. My wife says I’ll open my mouth too wide someday and just fall right in. What’d you say your name was?”
“Dennis Guilder.”
“Okay, Dennis, I bent your ear, now you bend mine. What did you want?”
“Well, my friend bought that car and fixed it up… for a sort of a street-rod, I guess you’d say. A showpiece.”
“Yeah, just like LeBay,” McCandless said, and my mouth went dry. “He loved that fucking car, I’ll say that for him. He didn’t give a shit for his wife—you know what happened to her?”
“Yes,” I said.
“He drove her to it,” McCandless said grimly. “After their kid died, she didn’t get any comfort from him at all. None. I don’t think he gave much of a shit about the kid, either. Sorry, Dennis. I never could shut up. Talk all the time. Always have. My mother used to say, “Dickie, your tongue’s hung in the middle and runs on both ends.” What did you say you wanted?”
“My friend and I went to LeBay’s funeral,” I said, “and after it was over, I introduced myself to his brother—”
“He seemed a right enough type,” McCandless broke in. “Schoolteacher. Ohio.”
“That’s right. I had a talk with him, and he did seem like a nice enough guy, I told him I was going to do my senior English paper on Ezra Pound—”
“Ezra who?”
“Pound.”
“Who the fuck’s that? Was he at LeBay’s funeral?”
“No, sir. Pound was a poet.”
“A what?”
“Poet. He’s dead too.”
“Oh.” McCandless sounded doubtful.
“Anyway, LeBay—this is George LeBay he said he’d send me a bunch of magazines about Ezra Pound for my report, if I wanted them. Well, it turns out that I could use them, but I forgot to get his address. I thought you might have it.”
“Sure, it’ll be in the records; all that stuff is. I hate being fucking secretary, but my year’s up this July, and never again. Know what I mean? Never-fucking-again.”
“I hope I’m not being a real pain in the ass.”
“No. Hell, no. I mean, that’s what the American Legion’s for, right? Gimme your address, Dennis, and I’ll send you a card with the info on it.”
I gave him my name and address and apologized again for bothering him at his job.
“Think nothing of it,” he said. “I’m on my fucking coffee break, anyhow.” I had a moment to wonder just what it was he did at David Emerson’s, which really was where Libertyville’s elite bought. Was he a salesman? I could see him showing some smart young lady around, saying, Here’s one fuck of a nice couch, ma’am, and look at this goddam settee, we sure didn’t have nothing like that on Guadalcanal when those fucking stoned-out Japs came at us with their Maxwell House swords.
I grinned a little, but what he said next sobered me quickly.
“I rode in that car of LeBay’s a couple of times. I never liked it. I’ll be damned if I know why, but I never did. And I never would ride in it after his wife…you know. Jesus, that gave me the spooks.”
“I’ll bet,” I said, and my voice seemed to come from far away. “Listen, what did happen when he quit the Legion? You said it had something to do with the car?”
He laughed, sounding a little pleased. “You’re not really interested in all that ancient history, are you?”
“Well, yeah, I am. My friend bought the car, remember.”
“Well then I’ll tell you. It was a pretty funny goddam thing, at that. A few of the guys mention it from time to time, when we’ve all had a few. I ain’t the only one with scars on my hands. Get right down to the bottom of it, it was sort of spooky.”
“What was?”
“Aw, it was a kid’s trick. But nobody really liked the sonofabitch, you know. He was an outsider, a loner—”
Like Arnie, I thought.
“—and we’d all been drinking,” McCandless finished. “It was after the meeting, and LeBay had been making an even worse prick of himself than usual. So a bunch of us are at the bar, you know, and we could tell LeBay was getting ready to go home. He was getting his jacket on and arguing with Poochie Anderson about some baseball question. When LeBay went, he always went the same way, kid. He’d jump into that Plymouth of his, back up, and then floor it. That thing’d go out of the parking lot like a rocket, spraying gravel everywhere. So—this was Sonny Bellerman’s idea—about four of us go out the back door to the parking lot while LeBay’s shouting at Poochie. We all get behind the far corner of the building, because we know that’s where he’ll finish backing the car up before he takes off. He always called it by a girl’s name, I told you it was like he was married to the fucking thing.
“Keep your eyes open and yo
ur heads down or he’ll see us,” Sonny says. “And don’t move until I give you a go.” We were all sort of tanked up, you know.
“So about ten minutes later out he comes, drunk as a skunk and feeling around in his chinos for his keys. Sonny says, “Get ready, you guys, and keep low!”
“LeBay gets in his car and backs her up. It was perfect, because he stopped to light a cigarette. While he did that, we grabbed the back bumper of that Fury and we lifted the rear wheels right off the ground so that when he tries to pull out, spraying gravel all over the side of the building like usual, you know, he’s only gonna spin his wheels and not go anywhere. You see what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said. It was a kid’s trick; we had pulled the same thing from time to time at school dances, and once, for a joke, we had blocked up Coach Puffer’s Dodge so that the driving wheels were off the ground.
“We got some kind of shock, though. He gets his cigarette lit, and then he turns on the radio. That’s another thing that used to drive us all fucking bugshit, the way he always listened to that rock and roll music like he was some kid instead of old enough to qualify for Social-fucking-Security. Then he put the tranny into drive. We didn’t see it, because we were all hunkered down so he wouldn’t see us. I remember Sonny Bellerman was kind of laughing, and just before it happened, he whispers, “They up, men?” and I whispers back, “Your pecker’s up, Bellerman.” He was the only one who really got hurt, you know. Because of his wedding ring. But I swear to God, those wheels were up. We had that Plymouth’s rear end four inches off the ground.”
“What happened?” I asked. From the way the story was going, I thought I could guess.
“What happened? He pulled out just like always, that’s what happened! Just like all four wheels was on the ground, He spun gravel and ripped that rear bumper out of our hands and pulled about a yard of skin off with it. Took most of Sonny Bellerman’s third finger; his wedding ring got caught under the bumper, you know, and that finger popped off like a cork coming out of a bottle. And we heard LeBay laughing as he went out, like he knew all along we was there. He could of, you know; if he’d gone back to use the bathroom after he finished shouting at Poochie, he could have looked right out the window while he whizzed and seen us standing around behind the building waiting for him.
“Well, that was it for him and the Legion. We sent him a letter telling him we wanted him out, and he quit. And, just to show you how funny the world is, it was Sonny Bellerman who stood up at the meeting right after LeBay died and said we ought to do the right thing by him just the same. “Sure,” Sonny says, he says, “the guy was a dirty sonofabitch, but he fought the war with the rest of us. So why don’t we send him off right?” So we did. I dunno. I guess Sonny Bellerman’s a lot more of a Christian than I’ll ever be.”
“You must not have had the back wheels off the ground,” I said, thinking of what had happened to the guys who had screwed around with Christine in November. They had lost a lot more than some skin off their fingers.
“We did, though,” McCandless said. “When we got sprayed with gravel, it was from the front wheels. I’ve never to this day been able to figure out how he pulled that trick off. It’s kind of spooky, like I said. Gerry Barlow—he was one of us who did it—always claimed LeBay threw a four-wheel drive into her somehow, but I don’t think there’s a conversion kit for something like that, do you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think it could be done.”
“Naw, never do it,” McCandless agreed. “Never do it. Well, hey! I done jawed away most of my coffee break, kid. Want to get back and grab another half a cup before it all gets away from me. I’ll send you that address if we got it. I think we do.”
“Thank you, Mr McCandless.”
“My pleasure, Dennis. Take care of yourself.
“Sure. Use it, don’t abuse it, right?”
He laughed. “That’s what we used to say in the Fighting Fifth, anyway.” He hung up.
I put the phone down slowly and thought about cars that still kept moving even when you lifted their driving wheels off the ground. Sort of spooky. It was spooky, all right, and McCandless still had the scars to prove it. That made me remember something George LeBay had told me. He had a scar to show from his association with Roland D. LeBay, as well. And as he grew older, his scar had spread.
45
NEW YEAR’s EVE
For this daring young star met his death while in his car,
No one knows the reason why—
Screaming tyres, flashing fire, and gone was this young star,
O how could they let him die?
Still, a young man is gone, but his legend lingers on,
For he died without a cause…
— Bobby Troupe
I called Arnie on New Year’s Eve. I’d had a couple of days to think about it, and I didn’t really want to do it, but I had to see him. I had come to believe I wouldn’t be able to decide anything until I actually saw him again for myself, And until I had seen Christine again. I had mentioned the car to my father at breakfast, casually, as if in passing, and he told me that he believed all the cars that had been impounded in Darnell’s Garage had now been photographed and returned.
Regina Cunningham answered the phone, her voice stiff and formal. “Cunningham residence.”
“Hi, Regina, it’s Dennis.”
“Dennis!” She sounded both pleased and surprised. For a moment it was the voice of the old Regina, the one who gave Arnie and me peanut butter sandwiches with bits of bacon crumbled into them (peanut butter and bacon on stone-ground rye, of course). “How are you? We heard that they sprung you from the hospital.”
“I’m doing okay,” I said. “How about you?”
There was a brief silence, and then she said, “Well, you know how things have been around here.”
“Problems,” I said. “Yeah.”
“All the problems we missed “in earlier years,” Regina said. “I guess they just piled up in a corner and waited for us.”
I cleared my throat a little and said nothing.
“Did you want to talk to Arnie?”
“If he’s there.”
After another slight pause, Regina said, “I remember that in the old days you and he used to swap back and forth on New Year’s Eve, seeing the New Year in. Was that what you were calling about, Dennis?” She sounded almost timid, and that was not like the old full-steam-ahead Regina at all.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “Kid stuff, I know, but—”
“No!” she said, sharply and quickly. “No, not at all! If Arnie ever needed you, Dennis—needed some friend now is the time. He… he’s upstairs now, sleeping. He sleeps much too much. And he’s… he’s not… he hasn’t.”
“Hasn’t what, Regina?”
“He hasn’t made any of his college applications!” she burst out, and then immediately lowered her voice, as if Arnie might overhear. “Not a single one! Mr Vickers, the guidance counsellor at school, called and told me! He scored 700s on his college boards, he could get into almost any college in the country—at least he could have before this—this trouble…” Her voice wavered toward tears, and then she got hold of herself again. “Talk to him, Dennis. If you could spend the evening with him tonight… drink a few beers with him and just… just talk to him…”
She stopped, but I could tell there was something more. Something she needed to say and couldn’t.
“Regina,” I said. I hadn’t liked the old Regina, the compulsive dominator who seemed to run the lives of her husband and son to fit her own timetable, but I liked this distracted, weepy woman even less. “Come on. Take it easy, okay?”
“I’m afraid to talk to him,” she said finally. “And Michael’s afraid to talk to him. He… he seems to explode if you cross him on some subjects. At first it was only his car; now it’s college too. Talk to him, Dennis, please.” There was another short pause, and then, almost casually, she brought out the heart of her dread: “I think we’re losing him
.”
“No, Regina, hey—”
“I’ll get him,” she said abruptly, and the phone clunked down. The wait seemed to stretch out. I crooked the phone between my jaw and my shoulder and rapped my knuckles on the cast that still covered my upper left leg. I wrestled with a craven urge just to hang the telephone up and push this entire business away.
Then the phone was picked up again. “Hello?” a wary voice asked, and the thought that burned across my mind with complete assurance was: That’s not Arnie.
“Arnie?”
“It sounds like Dennis Guilder, the mouth that walks like a man,” the voice said, and that sounded like Arnie, all right—but at the same time, it didn’t. His voice hadn’t really deepened, but it seemed to have roughened, as if through overuse and shouting. It was eerie, as if I were talking to a stranger who was doing a pretty good imitation of my friend Arnie.
“Watch what you’re saying, dork,” I said. I was smiling but my hands were dead cold.
“You know,” he said in a confidential voice, “your face and my ass bear a suspicious resemblance.”
“I’ve noticed the resemblance, but last time I thought it was the other way around,” I said, and then a little silence fell between us—we had gone through what passed for the amenities with us. “So what are you doing tonight?” I asked.
“Not much,” he said. “No date or anything. You?”
“Sure, I’m in great shape,” I said. “I’m going to go pick up Roseanne and take her to Studio 2000. You can come along and hold my crutches while we dance, if you want.”
He laughed a little.
“I thought I’d come over,” I said. “Maybe you and me could see the New Year in like we used to. You know?”
“Yeah!” Arnie said. He sounded pleased by the idea—but still not quite like himself. “Watch Guy Lombardo and all that happy crappy. That’d be all right.”
I paused for a moment, not quite sure what to say. Finally I replied cautiously, “Well, maybe Dick Clark or someone. Guy Lombardo’s dead, Arnie.”
“Is he?” Arnie sounded puzzled, doubtful. “Oh. Oh, yeah, I guess he is. But Dick Clark’s hanging in there, right?”