seriously, in which there were no rules, no verities that could be
relied upon, where up was down and in was out. Chaos. They had ridden
the back of a bull named Chaos, and Bobby had been flat-out terrified.
“You okay?” Frank asked.
Bobby nodded.
More than fear was involved. On a level deeper than intellect or even
instinct, perhaps as deep as the soul itself, Bobby had been offended by
that chaos. Until now he had not realized what a powerful need he had
for stability and order. He’d always thought of himself as a free
spirit who thrived on change and the unexpected. But now he saw that he
had limits and that, in fact, beneath the devil-may-care attitude he
sometimes struck, beat the steady heart of a stability-loving
traditionalist. He suddenly understood that his passion for swing music
had roots of which he’d never been aware: the elegant and complex
rhythms and melodies of big-band jazz appealed to his bebop surface and
to the secret seeker of order who dwelt in his heart.
No wonder he liked Disney cartoons, in which Donald might run wild and
Mickey might get in a tangled mess Pluto, but in which order triumphed
in the end. Not for the chaotic universe of Warner Brothers’ Looney
Tune which reason and logic seldom won more than a tempo victory.
“Sorry, Frank,” he said at last.
“Give me a second. This isn’t the place for it, but I’m having an
epiphany.”
“Listen, Bobby, please, I’m telling the truth. Evidently I remember
everything when I travel. The very fact of traveling tears down the
wall blocking my memory, but as soon as I begin traveling, the wall goes
up again. It’s part of the degeneration I’m undergoing, I guess. Or
maybe it’s just a desperate attempt to forget what’s happened to me in
the past, what’s happening now, and what will sure as hell happen to me
in the days to come.”
Though no wind had risen, some of the breakers were large now, washing
deep onto the beach. They battered the bottoms of Bobby’s legs and, on
retreating, buried his feet in coal.
Struggling to explain himself, Frank said, “See, traveling isn’t easy
for me, like it is for Candy. He can control where he wants to go, and
when. He can travel just by deciding to do it, virtually by wishing
himself someplace, like you suggested I might be able to do. But I
can’t. My talent for portation isn’t really a talent, it’s a curse.”
His voice was shaky.
“I didn’t even know I could do it until seven years ago, the day that
bitch died. All of us who came from her are cursed, we can’t escape it.
I thought I could escape by killing her, but that didn’t release me.”
After the events of the past hour, Bobby thought nothing could surprise
him, but he was startled by the confession Frank had made. This
pathetic, sad-eyed, dimpled, comic-fat pudgy man seemed an unlikely
perpetrator of matricide.
killed your own mother?”
“Never mind about her. We haven’t time for her.”
Frank looked back toward the brush out of which they had come and both
ways along the beach, but they were still alone in the downpour.
“If you’d known her, if you’d suffered under her hand,” Frank said, his
voice shaking with anger, “if you had known the atrocities she’s capable
of, you’d have picked up an ax and chopped at her too.”
“You took an ax and gave your mother forty whacks?” That crazy sound
burst from Bobby again, a laugh as wet as the rain but not as warm, and
again he was spooked by himself
“I discovered I could teleport when Candy had me backed into a corner,
going to kill me for having killed her. And that’s the only time I can
travel-when it’s a matter of survival.”
“Nobody was threatening you last night in the hospital.”
“Well, see, when I start traveling in my sleep, I think maybe I’m trying
to escape from Candy in a dream, which triggers teleportation. Traveling
always wakes me, but then I can’t stop, I keep popping from place to
place, sometimes staying a few seconds, sometimes an hour or more, and