“Birds,” he supplied.
“Yes,” she answered, “made of ravens, or crows or something. All of them rustling their feathers, pulsing. I was so afraid he was going to throw that coat over me, and it would just—” She broke off, looking at him. “You okay? You forgot about the coat, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “I thought I remembered everything. I remembered something about the coat, but I’d managed to … forget the birds.”
“You remember the voice though, right?” she asked.
He shuddered, and lifted his arm, and at first, she didn’t know what he was doing. When he spoke, she realized that they’d both been talking in absolute whispers for the last fifteen minutes or so because now his voice sounded louder than hell.
“Hey, Merle, bring some more goddamn drinks over here, now!”
The bartender threw him a look. “Goddammit, Freddie, since when have I been a fucking waitress? Get your damn ass over here and get them yourself!”
“That was funny the first time I heard it. What was that, ten years ago? Now bring the fucking drinks.”
Merle showed him his middle finger, but went about getting the drinks.
Freddie turned back to her. “Can I get another one of those cigarettes, miss?”
She offered the pack. “Only if you can tell me what the fuck that voice was all about.”
He took one and puffed for a moment. “It was twenty years before I figured it out. I had a friend, he was in ‘Nam with me later, after the time I was telling you about. He got too much Agent Orange, or whatever other shit they were pumping down on us when we were black-Cadillacing it through the jungle with our shirts off. He got cancer of the throat. You ever hear anyone with cancer of the throat, just before they put that thing in?”
“Tracheotomy?” she asked.
“Yeah, tracheotomy. Well, he’s waitin’ for one of those when they realize it ain’t gonna do no good, and he’s got this shit crawlin’ all the way through him. I was there when he died, in a shitty Vet hospital in Arkansas. The last words he spoke, just as he died. That’s the closest thing I ever heard to that voice.”
“You think he’s Death?”
Freddie shook his head. “No, death ain’t always cruel; sometimes it’s welcome. Like old Frank, he was waiting for death, and he wasn’t sad when it came. Like I said, that was the closest I’ve heard, but it wasn’t exactly it. His voice was mocking me. You ever heard a man’s dying words?”
She nodded, thinking of the kid (man, dammit; he was old enough to want to rape her) she’d watched Johnny kill, lying there, bleeding to death on a sidewalk, still cursing her as he died. She took a cigarette herself. “He stood there, his coat flapping around him, his face melting and coming back, and in that fucking voice he told me he had a deal for me. Told me about this river outside that looks as if it’s about to wash this shit-hole away. He stood there in my own bedroom like some goddamn rapist and told me if I could catch him before he got to the end of the river, we could … talk. If not, bye-bye Johnny.”
“You left the next morning?” he asked gently.
She lit her cigarette. “You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?”
Freddie shrugged. “Not really. A sensible person would put it down to a nightmare, shrug it off, feel strange about it all day, but carry on trying to do normal things. Then when that person had the same dream the next night, they’d wonder how it could happen. Then they’d brood on it more; wish they could talk to someone about it, but think what was the chance of findin’ a head doctor out in the jungle. Then they’d let it slip in front of the rest of the unit and find everyone else there’d had the same dream, both nights….”
Susan looked at him, and tears of gratitude started to well in her eyes. “Really?” she asked. “That’s what happened?”
“That’s the way it was. Honey, I wouldn’t blame you if you hadn’t started out on such a crazy road trip for a week. I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for the others. You were on your own.”
“It was three days before I set out,” she said flatly. “I can’t get those three days back, though, can I? He has three days on me. He’s on foot, I’m in a car. But what does that mean if the guy can appear in a bedroom, in a prison cell … shit, in the jungle. How fast can he go? And what good is the car, when I have to keep getting out every couple of miles to check the river?” Freddie said nothing. Susan lit another cigarette before carrying on. “I keep calling the hospital, and they tell me no change. They say I can go see him, and I know they wonder why I’m not there.”
“Nothing you can do there; maybe you can here.”
Merle brought the new round of drinks, put them down heavily on the table and left without a word.
Freddie looked at her kindly. “How long’s it been, Susan? How long you been on the road?”
“Seven days. Only a week but it seems longer. It’s slow going. Half the time there aren’t even proper roads. I keep thinking, Should I go for the main ones and make better time? Then I think, What if I miss him?”
Freddie shook his head. “No, I think you’re doin’ the right thing stickin’ to the river. You got to.”
“But it’s slow!”
“How many hours a night you drivin’?”
“All of them.” She took a drink from the bottle in front of her, knowing she shouldn’t if she was to get through the night, but unable to resist talking to someone who understood. “So, what did you do when you all found out you weren’t dreaming?” she asked.
“I don’t know that we weren’t dreamin’. I don’t know that it makes any difference. We all knew we could do somethin’ about it. If we could catch that bastard somewhere before he got to the end of the river, we could maybe save Larry. He’d saved us.”
“You caught him?” she asked, and there was desperation in her voice, hoping for a hint.
“I never seen a bunch of men work harder,” he said. “I was so proud of my boys over those next few days. We marched triple time, barely rested, walked through the nights.”
“You think that’s the best time to catch him?”
He nodded. “Honey, I think that’s the only time he comes out.
“We made a five-day hump in three nights. By the time we got to the end, we were almost dead on our feet, bloodied beyond belief.”
“You … you got to the end?” she asked nervously.
He looked at her and smiled, and it was the saddest smile she had ever seen.
“We got to the end, and we never saw that bastard once. We walked on a couple of days, to the base. We’d been there but ten minutes when the infirmary called me in and said Larry had died.
“You didn’t want to hear that, did you? So, now tell me what you going to do when you reach the end? Ain’t far now, another couple of days—or nights—and you’ll get there.”
“I’m going to find him. I’m not thinking beyond that. I figure I’m just a few miles behind him. I’ll get him. Maybe not tonight, but tomorrow, or the next night for sure.”
“I hope you’re right. What if you do catch up to him?”
She thought of the gun in the trunk of the car and wondered if it would do any good. She doubted it. “It’s funny, isn’t it? I spend all this time in the car thinking about that, playing out the scenarios. I always see me getting Johnny back. I just haven’t figured out the how part yet.”
“I don’t think it’s the sort of thing you can plan for. What makes you check out little shit pokes like this place?”
“See if anyone’s seen him on the river….”
“Is that the only reason?” Freddie asked, and she answered honestly, not concerned about how it might sound.
“I sometimes think I might just see him standing at the bar…. I don’t know why. I just think he’d like the idea of being in places where bad things could happen. Some drunk beatin’ his buddy over the head with a bottle. Maybe that lantern of his can carry more than one….”
He nodded in agreement. “Things are tough around these parts—when things are tough, good people do crazy things. I always thought, if I hadn’t been reassigned South straight after that, if I’d gone into some side-street brothel I’d have found him buying drinks, looking around at desperate men and women. All the time thinkin’, ‘I’m gonna get you soon….’ He’s dirty like that, I think.”