or any other kind of beans had no doubt been noted in Heaven, where they
had her down in the Big Book of Insults to God-Regina, currently age
ten, thinks God pulled a real boner when He created beans. She yawned.
She felt better now about her chances with the Harrisons and about her
relationship with God, though she didn’t feel better about the change in
her diet. Anyway, she slept.
2
While Lindsey was washing her face, scrubbing her teeth, and brushing
her hair in the master bathroom, Hatch sat in bed with the newspaper.
He read the science page fifft, because it contained the real news these
days.
Then he skimmed the entertainment section and read his favorite comic
strips before turning, at last, to the A section where the latest
exploits of politicians were as terrifying and darkly amusing as usual.
On page three he saw the story about Bill Cooper, the beer deliveryman
whose truck they had found crosswise on the mountain road that fateful,
snowy night in March.
Within a couple of days of being resuscitated, Hatch had heard that the
trucker had been charged with driving under the influence and that the
percentage of alcohol in his blood had been more than twice that
required for a conviction under the law. George Glover, Hatch’s
personal attorney, had asked him if he wanted to press a civil suit
against Cooper or the company for which he worked, but Hatch was not by
nature litigious.
Besides, he dreaded becoming bogged down in the dull and thorny world of
lawyers and courtrooms. He was alive. That was all that mattered.
A drunk driving charge would be brought against the trucker without
Hatch’s involvement, and he was satisfied to let the system handle it.
He had received two pieces of correspondence from William Cooper, the
first just four days after his reanimation. It was an apparently
sincere, if long-winded and obsequious, apology seeking personal
absolution, which was delivered to the hospital where Hatch was
undergoing physical therapy. “Sue me if you want,” Cooper wrote, “I
deserve it. I’d give you everything if you wanted it, though I don’t
got much, I’m no rich man. But no matter whether you sue me or if not,
I most sincerely hope you’ll find it in your generous heart to forgive
me one ways or another. Except for the genius of Dr. Nyebern and his
wonderful people, you’d be dead for sure, and I’d carry it on my
conscience all the rest of my days.” He rambled on in that fashion for
four pages of tightly spaced, cramped, and at tunes inscrutable
handwriting.
Hatch had responded with a short note, assuring Cooper that he did not
intend to sue him and that he harbored no animosity toward him. He also
had urged the man to seek counseling for alcohol abuse if he had not
already done so.
A few weeks later, when Hatch was living at home again and back at work,
after the media storm had swept over him, a second letter had arrived
from Cooper. Incredibly, he was seeking Hatch’s help to get his truck
driving job back, from which he had been removed subsequent to the
charges that the police had arrayed against him. “I been chased down
for driving drunk twice before, it’s true,” Cooper wrote, “but both them
times, I was in my car, not the truck, on my own time, not during work
hours. Now my job is gone, plus they’re fixing to take away my license,
which makes life hard. enough, for one thing, how are you going to get
a new job without a license? Now that figure is, from your kind answer
to my last letter, you proved yourself a fine Christian genlleman, so if
you was to speak up on my behalf, it would be a big help.
After all, you didn’t wind updead, and in fact you got a lot of
publicity out of the whole thing, which must’ve helped your antique
business a considerable amount.”
Astonished and uncertain, furious, Hatch had read the letter without
answering it in fact he quickly put it out of his mind, because he was
surprised by how angry he grew whenever he contemplated it.