Do it, Eddie, go on, why not? There’s not much else, is there? The rest is pretty well used up. Just step down a little brisker on the old go-pedal and then twist the wheel to the right.
Do it. Go on. Make a little mischief for your buddies to clean up.
I thought about the night we’d sat out on this same bench, the young man I currently had my eye on four years younger than he was now and listening raptly as Eddie told the tale of stopping Brian Lippy’s bigfoot truck. The kid listening as Eddie told about trying to get Lippy’s girl to do something about her situation before her boyfriend fucked her up beyond all recognition or maybe killed her. The joke turned out to be on Eddie, of course. So far as I knew, that bloodyface girl is the only one of that roadside quartet still alive. Yeah, she’s around. I don’t road-patrol much anymore, but her name and picture come across my desk from time to time, each picture showing a woman closer to the beerbreath brokennose fuck-ya-for-a-pack-of-smokes hag she will, barring a miracle, become. She’s had lots of DUIs,
quite a few D-and-Ds, a trip to the hospital one night with a broken arm and hip after she fell downstairs. I imagine someone like Brian Lippy probably helped her down those stairs, don’t you? Because they do pick the same kind over and over. She has two or maybe it’s three kids in foster care. So yeah, she’s around, but is she living? If you say she is, then I have to tell you that maybe George Morgan and Eddie J. had the right idea.
‘I’m going to make like a bee and buzz,’ Shirley said, getting up. ‘Can’t take any more hilarity in one day. You doin okay with it?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Hey, he came back that night, didn’t he? There’s that.’
She didn’t have to be any more specific. I nodded, smiling.
‘Eddie was a good guy,’ Shirley said. ‘Maybe he couldn’t leave the booze alone, but he had the kindest heart.’
Nope, I thought, watching her walk across to Ned, watching them talk a little. I think you’re the one with the kindest heart, Shirl.
She gave Ned a little peck on the cheek, putting one hand on his shoulder and going up on her toes to do it, then headed toward her car. Ned came over to where I was sitting. ‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, good.’
‘And the funeral . . . ?’
‘Hey, shit, it was a funeral. I’ve been to better and I’ve been to worse. I’m glad the coffin was closed.’
‘Sandy, can I show you something? Over there?’ He nodded his head at Shed B.
‘Sure.’ I got up. ‘Is the temperature going down?’ If so, it was news. It had been two years since the temp in there had dropped more than five degrees below the outside temperature.
Sixteen months since the last lightshow, and that one had consisted of no more than eight or nine pallid flickers.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Trunk open?’
‘Shut tight as a drum.’
‘What, then?’
‘I’d rather show you.’
I glanced at him sharply, for the first time getting out of my own head enough to register how excited he was. Then, with decidedly mixed feelings — curiosity and apprehension were the dominant chords, I guess— I walked across the parking lot with my old friend’s son. He took up his sidewalk super’s pose at one window and I took up mine at the next.
At first I saw nothing unusual; the Buick sat on the concrete as it had for a quarter of a century, give or take. There were no flashing lights, no exotic exhibits. The thermometer’s red needle stood at an unremarkable seventy-three degrees.
‘So?’ I asked.
Ned laughed, delighted. ‘You’re looking spang at it and don’t see it! Perfect! I didn’t see it myself, at first. I knew something had changed, but I couldn’t tell what.’
‘What are you talking about?’
He shook his head, still smiling. ‘Nossir, Sergeant, nossir. I think not. You’re the boss; you’re also one of just three cops who were there then and are still here now. It’s right in front of you, so go to it.’
I looked in again, first squinting and then raising my hands to the sides of my face to block the glare, that old gesture. It helped, but what was I seeing? Something, yes, he was right about that, but just what? What had changed?
I remembered that night at The Country Way, nipping the pages of the dead jukebox back and forth, trying to isolate the most important question, which was the one Ned had decided not to ask. It had almost come, then had slipped shyly away again. When that happened, it was no good to chase. I’d thought that then and still did now.
So instead of continuing to give the 8 my cop stare, I unfocused my eyes and let my mind drift away. What it drifted to were song-titles, of course, titles of the ones they never seem to play, even on the oldies stations, once their brief season of popularity has gone. ‘Society’s Child’ and ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ and ‘Quick Joey Small’ and—
—and bingo, there it was. Like he’d said, it was right in front of me. For a moment I couldn’t breathe.
There was a crack in the windshield.
A thin silver lightning-bolt jigjagging top to bottom on the driver’s side.
Ned clapped me on the shoulder. ‘There you go, Sherlock, I knew you’d get there. After all, it’s only right there in front of you.’
I turned to him, started to talk, then turned back to make sure I’d seen what I thought I’d seen. I had. The crack looked like a frozen stroke of quicksilver.
‘When did it happen?’ I asked him. ‘Do you know?’
‘I take a fresh Polaroid of it every forty-eight hours or so,’ he said. ‘I’ll check to make sure, but I’ll bet you a dead cat and a string to swing it with that the last picture I took doesn’t show a crack. So this happened between Wednesday evening and Friday afternoon at . . .’ He checked his watch, then gave me a big smile. ‘At four-fifteen.’
‘Might even have happened while we were at Eddie’s funeral,’ I said.
‘Possible, yeah.’
We looked in again for a little while, neither of us talking. Then Ned said, ‘I read the poem you told me about. “The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay.”‘
‘Did you?’
‘Uh-huh. It’s pretty good. Pretty funny.’
I stepped back from the window and looked at him.
‘It’ll happen fast now, like in the poem,’ he said. ‘Next thing a tire’ll blow . . . or the muffler will fall off. . . or a piece of the chrome. You know how you can stand on a frozen lake in January and listen to the ice creak and thunk?’
I nodded.
‘This is going to be like that.’ His eyes were alight, and a curious idea came to me: I was seeing Ned Wilcox really, genuinely happy for the first time since his father had died.
‘You think?’
‘Yes. Only instead of ice creaking, the sound will be snapping bolts and cracking glass.
Cops will line up at these windows like they did in the old days . . . only now it’ll be to watch things break and come loose and fall off. Until, finally, the -whole thing goes. They’ll wonder if there isn’t going to be one more flash of light at the very end, like the final Chinese Flower at the end of the fireworks display on the Fourth of July.’
‘Will there be, do you think?’
‘I think the fireworks are over. I think we’re going to hear one last big steel clank and then you can take the pieces to the crusher.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Nah,’ he said, and smiled. ‘You can’t be sure. I learned that from you and Shirley and Phil and Arky and Huddie.’ He paused. ‘And Eddie J. But I’ll watch. And sooner or later . . .’ He raised one hand, looked at it, then closed it into a fist and turned back to his window. ‘Sooner or later.’
I turned back to my own window, cupping my hands to the sides of my face to cut the glare. I peered in at the thing that looked like a Buick Roadmaster 8. The kid was absolutely right.
Sooner or later.
Bangor, Maine
Boston, Massachusetts
Naples, Florida
Lovell, Maine
3 April, 1999-11 May, 2001
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’ve had ideas fall into my lap from time to time — I suppose this is true of any writer — but From a Buick 8 was almost comically the reverse: a case of me falling into the lap of an idea.
That’s worth a note, I think, especially when it leads to an important acknowledgment.