With the fingers of his left hand, from which most of the blood has been cleaned, Henry punches the ON switch for the big tape recorder and pulls the microphone close. He is sitting in the dark listening to the sound of tape hissing from reel to reel, and he feels oddly satisfied to be here, doing what he has done night after night for thousands of nights. Velvety exhaustion swims through his body and his mind, darkening whatever it touches. It is too early to yield. He will surrender soon, but first he must do his job. He must talk to Jack Sawyer by talking to himself, and to do that he calls upon the familiar spirits that give him voice.
George Rathbun: “Bottom of the ninth, and the home team is headed for the showers, pal. But the game ain’t OVER till the last BLIND man is DEAD!”
Henry Shake: “I’m talking to you, Jack Sawyer, and I don’t want you to flip out on me or nothin’. Keep cool and listen to your old friend Henry the Sheik the Shake the Shook, all right? The Fisherman paid me a visit, and when he left here he was on his way to Maxton’s. He wants to kill Chipper, the guy who owns the place. Call the police, save him if you can. The Fisherman lives at Maxton’s, did you know that? He’s an old man with a demon inside him. He wanted to stop me from telling you that I recognized his voice. And he wanted to mess with your feelings—he thinks he can screw you up by killing me. Don’t give him that satisfaction, all right?”
The Wisconsin Rat: “BECAUSE THAT WOULD REALLY SUCK! FISH-BRAINS WILL BE WAITING FOR YOU IN A PLACE CALLED BLACK HOUSE, AND YOU HAVE TO BE READY FOR THE BASTARD! RIP HIS NUTS OFF!”
The Rat’s buzz-saw voice ends in a fit of coughing.
Henry Shake, breathing hard: “Our friend the Rat was suddenly called away. The boy has a tendency to get overexcited.”
George Rathbun: “SON, are you trying to tell ME that—”
Henry Shake: “Calm down. Yes, he has a right to be excited. But Jack doesn’t want us to scream at him. Jack wants information.”
George Rathbun: “I reckon you better hurry up and give it to him, then.”
Henry Shake: “This is the deal, Jack. The Fisherman’s not very bright, and neither is his whatever, his demon, who’s called something like Mr. Munching. He’s incredibly vain, too.”
Henry Leyden folds back into the chair and stares at nothing for a second or two. He can feel nothing from the waist down, and blood from his right hand has pooled around the microphone. From the stumps of his fingers comes a steady, diminishing pulse.
George Rathbun: “Not now, Chuckles!”
Henry Leyden shakes his head and says, “Vain and stupid you can beat, my friend. I have to sign off now. Jack, you don’t have to feel too bad about me. I had a goddamn wonderful life, and I’m going to be with my darling Rhoda now.” He smiles in the darkness; his smile widens. “Ah, Lark. Hello.”
At times, it is possible for the smell of blood to be like laughter.
What is this, at the end of Nailhouse Row? A horde, a swarm of fat, buzzing things that circle and dart about Jack Sawyer, in the dying light seeming almost illuminated, like the radiant pages of a sacred text. Too small to be hummingbirds, they seem to carry their own individual, internal glow as they mesh through the air. If they are wasps, Jack Sawyer is going to be in serious trouble. Yet they do not sting; their round bodies brush his face and hands, blundering softly against his body as a cat will nudge its owner’s leg, both giving and receiving comfort.
At present, they give much more comfort than they receive, and even Jack cannot explain why this should be so. The creatures surrounding him are not wasps, hummingbirds, or cats, but they are bees, honeybees, and ordinarily he would be frightened to be caught in a swarm of bees. Especially if they appeared to be members of a sort of master bee race, superbees, larger than any he has seen before, their golds more golden, their blacks vibrantly black. Yet Jack is not frightened. If they were going to sting him, they would already have done it. And from the first, he understood that they meant him no harm. The touch of their many bodies is surpassingly smooth and soft; their massed buzzing is low and harmonious, as peaceable as a Protestant hymn. After the first few seconds, Jack simply lets it happen.
The bees sift even closer, and their low noise pulses in his ears. It sounds like speech, or like song. For a moment, all he can see is a tightly woven network of bees moving this way and that; then the bees settle everywhere on his body but the oval of his face. They cover his head like a helmet. They blanket his arms, his chest, his back, his legs. Bees land on his shoes and obscure them from view. Despite their number, they are almost weightless. The exposed parts of Jack’s body, his hands and neck, feel as though wrapped in cashmere. A dense, feather-light bee suit shimmers black and gold all over Jack Sawyer. He raises his arms, and the bees move with him.
Jack has seen photographs of beekeepers aswarm with bees, but this is no photograph and he is no beekeeper. His amazement—really, his sheer pleasure in the unexpectedness of this visitation—stuns him. For as long as the bees cling to him, he forgets Mouse’s terrible death and the next day’s fearsome task. What he does not forget is Sophie; he wishes Beezer and Doc would walk outside, so they could see what is happening, but more than that, he wishes Sophie could see it. Perhaps, by grace of d’yamba, she does. Someone is comforting Jack Sawyer, someone is wishing him well. A loving, invisible presence offers him support. It feels like a blessing, that support. Clothed in his glowing black-and-yellow bee suit, Jack has the idea that if he stepped toward the sky, he would be airborne. The bees would carry him over the valleys. They would carry him over the wrinkled hills. Like the winged men in the Territories who carried Sophie, he would fly. Instead of their two, he would have two thousand wings to bear him up.
In our world, Jack remembers, bees return to the hive before nightfall. As if reminded of their daily routine, the bees lift from Jack’s head, his trunk, his arms and legs, not en masse, like a living carpet, but individually and in parties of five and six, wander a short distance above him, then swirl around, shoot like bullets eastward over the houses on the inland side of Nailhouse Row, and disappear one and all into the same dark infinity. Jack becomes aware of their sound only when it disappears with them.
In the seconds before he can once again begin moving toward his truck, he has the feeling that someone is watching over him. He has been . . . what? It comes to him as he turns his key in the Ram’s ignition and flutters the gas pedal: he has been embraced.
Jack has no idea how much he will need the warmth of that embrace, nor of the manner in which it shall be returned to him, during the coming night.
First of all, he is exhausted. He has had the kind of day that should end in a surreal event like an embrace by a swarm of bees: Sophie, Wendell Green, Judy Marshall, Parkus—that cataclysm, that deluge!—and the strange death of Mouse Baumann, these things have stretched him taut, left him gasping. His body aches for rest. When he leaves French Landing and drives into the wide, dark countryside, he is tempted to pull over to the side of the road and catch a half-hour nap. The deepening night promises the refreshment of sleep, and that is the problem: he could wind up sleeping in the truck all night, which would leave him feeling bleary and arthritic on a day when he must be at his best.
Right now, he is not at his best—not by a longshot, as his father, Phil Sawyer, used to say. Right now he is running on fumes, another of Phil Sawyer’s pet expressions, but he figures that he can stay awake long enough to visit Henry Leyden. Maybe Henry cut a deal with the guy from ESPN—maybe Henry will move into a wider market and make a lot more money. Henry in no way needs any more money than he has, for Henry’s life seems flawless, but Jack likes the idea of his dear friend Henry suddenly flush with cash. A Henry with extra money to throw around is a Henry Jack would love to see. Imagine the wondrous clothes he could afford! Jack pictures going to New York with him, staying in a nice hotel like the Carlyle or the St. Regis, walking him through half a dozen great men’s stores, helping him pick out whatever he wants.