‘Suppose,’ says the man twirling his Stetson between his hands, ‘that the 8 is a kind of valve. Like the one in a scuba diver’s regulator. Sometimes it breathes in and sometimes it breathes out, giving or receiving according to the will of the user. But what it does it always limited by the valve.’
‘Yes, but — ‘
‘Or think of it. another way. Suppose it breathes like a man lying on the bottom of a swamp
and using a hollow reed to sip air with so he won’t be seen.’
‘All right, but — ‘
‘Either way, everything comes in or goes out in small breaths, they must be small breaths, because the channel through which they pass is small. Maybe the thing using the valve or the reed has put itself into a kind of suspended state, like sleep or hypnosis, so it can survive on so little breath. And then suppose some misguided fool comes along and throws enough dynamite into the swamp to drain it and make the reed unnecessary. Or, if you’re thinking in terms of a valve, blows it clean off. Would you want to risk that? Risk giving it all the goddam air it needs?’
‘No,’ the New Sarge says in a small voice.
Curtis says: ‘Once Buck Flanders and Andy Colucci made up their minds to do that very thing.’
‘The hell you say!’
‘The hell I don’t,’ Curtis returns evenly. ‘Andy said if a couple of State Troopers couldn’t get away with a little vehicular arson, they ought to turn in their badges. They even had a plan. They were going to blame it on the paint and the thinner out there in the hutch.
Spontaneous combustion, poof, all gone. And besides, Buck said, who’d send for the Fire Marshal in the first place? It’s just an old shed with some old beater of a Buick inside it, for Christ’s sake.’
The New Sarge can say nothing. He’s too amazed.
‘I think it may have been talking to them,’ Curt says.
‘Talking.’ He’s trying to get the sense of this. ‘Talking to them.’
‘Yes.’ Curt puts his hat — what they always call the big hat — back on his head and hooks the strap under his chin the way you wear it in warm weather and adjusts the brim purely by feel. Then, to his old friend he says: ‘Can you say it’s never talked to you, Sandy?’
The New Sarge opens his mouth to say of course it hasn’t, but the other man’s eyes are on him, and they are grave. In the end the SC says nothing.
‘You can’t. Because it does. To you, to me, to all of us. It talked loudest to Huddie on the day that monster came through, but we hear it even when it whispers. Don’t we? And it talks all the time. Even in its sleep. So it’s important not to listen.’
Curt stands up.
‘Just to watch. That’s our job and I know it now. If it has to breathe through that valve long enough, or that reed, or that whatever-it-is, sooner or later it’ll choke. Stifle. Give out. And maybe it won’t really mind. Maybe it’ll more or less die in its sleep. If no one riles it up, that is. Which mostly means doing no more than staying out of snatching distance. But it also means leaving it alone.’
He starts away, his life running out from under his feet like sand and neither of them knowing, then stops and takes one more look at his old friend. They weren’t quite rookies
together but they grew into the job together and now it fits both of them as well as it ever will.
Once, when drunk, the Old Sarge called law enforcement a case of good men doing bad chores.
‘Sandy.’
Sandy gives him a whatnow look.
‘My boy is playing Legion ball this year, did I tell you?’
‘Only about twenty times.’
‘The coach has a little boy, must be about three. And one day last week when I went overtown to pick Ned up, I saw him down on one knee, playing toss with that little hoy in left field. And I fell in love with my kid all over again, Sandy. As strong as when I first held him in my arms, wrapped in a blanket. Isn’t that funny?’
Sandy doesn’t think it’s funny. He thinks it’s maybe all the truth the world needs about men.
‘The coach had given them their uniforms and Ned had his on and he was down on one knee, tossing underhand to the little boy, and I swear he was the whitest, purest thing any summer sky ever looked down on.’ And then he says
NOW:
Sandy
In the shed there was a sallow flash, so pale it was almost lilac. It was followed by darkness .
. . then another flash . . . then more darkness . . . darkness this time unbroken.
‘Is it done?’ Huddie asked, then answered his own question: ‘Yeah, I think it is.’
Ned ignored this. ‘What?’ he asked me. ‘What did he say then?’
‘What any man says when things are all right at home,’ I told him. ‘He said he was a lucky man.’
Steff had gone away to mind her microphone and computer screen, but the others were still here. Ned took no notice of any of them. His puffy, red-lidded eyes never left me. ‘Did he say anything else?’
‘Said you hit two homers against the Rocksburg Railroad the week before, and that you gave him a wave after the second one, while you were coming around third. He liked that, laughed telling me about it. He said you saw the ball better on your worst day than he ever had on his best. He also said you needed to start charging ground balls if you were serious about playing third base.’
The boy looked down and began to struggle. We looked away, all of us, to let him do it in reasonable privacy. At last he said: ‘He told me not to be a quitter, but that’s what he did with that car. That fucking 8. He quit on it.’
I said, ‘He made a choice. There’s a difference.’
He sat considering this, then nodded. ‘All right.’
Arky said: ‘Dis time I’m really going home.’ But before he went he did something I’ll never forget: leaned over and put a kiss on Ned’s swollen cheek. I was shocked by the tenderness of it. ‘G’night, lad.’
‘Goodnight, Arky.’
We watched him drive away in his rattletrap pickup and then Huddie said, ‘I’ll drive Ned home in his Chevy. Who wants to follow along and bring me back here to get my car?’
‘I will,’ Eddie said. ‘Only I’m waiting outside when you take him in. If Michelle Wilcox goes nuclear, I want to be outside the fallout zone.’
‘It’ll be okay,’ Ned told him. ‘I’ll say I saw the can on the shelf and picked it up to see what
it was and maced my stupid self.’
I liked it. It had the virtue of simplicity. It was exactly the sort of story the boy’s father would have told.
Ned sighed. ‘Tomorrow bright and early I’ll be sitting in the optometrist’s chair over in Statler Village, that’s the downside.’
‘Won’t hurt you,’ Shirley said. She also kissed him, planting hers on the corner of his mouth. ‘Goodnight, boys. This time everyone goes and no one comes back.’
‘Amen to that,’ Huddie said, and we watched her walk away. She was forty-five or so, but there was still plenty to look at when she put her backfield in motion. Even by moonlight.
(Especially by moonlight.)
Off she went, driving past us, a quick flick of right-back-atcha and then nothing but the taillights.
Darkness from Shed B. No taillights there. No fireworks, either. It was over for the night and someday it would be over for good. But not yet. I could still feel the sleepy beat of it far down in my mind, a tidal whisper that could be words if you wanted them to be.
What I’d seen.
What I’d seen when I had the boy hugged in my arms, him blinded by the spray.
‘You want to ride along, Sandy?’ Huddie asked.
‘Nah, guess not. I’ll sit here awhile longer, then get on home. If there are problems with Michelle, you have her call me. Here or at the house, makes no difference.’
‘There won’t be any problem with Mom,’ Ned said.
‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Are there going to be any more problems with you?’
He hesitated, then said: ‘I don’t know.’
In some ways I thought it was the best answer he could have given. You had to give him points for honesty.
They walked away, Huddie and Ned heading toward the Bel Aire. Eddie split apart from them, going toward his own car and pausing long enough at mine to take the Kojak light off the roof and toss it inside.