Ash Wednesday (46 page)

But the fear drew him away, back to his own room, where he lay listening, and Where comfort finally conquered fear so that he thought,
pullin
' his
pud
. . .
pullin
' his old wrinkled
pud
to
Playboy
or somethin', that's all, and he rolled over and made himself sleep as the words in the next room grew softer and more infrequent, passing at length into silence.

But there were no grounds for Fred
Hibbs's
suspicions. Eddie Karl had not masturbated, nor had he been able to, for eight years. He only lay on his bed naked, keeping his eyes from his own withered body, watching instead how the warm glow of the Bakelite reading lamp illuminated the soft, rosy flesh of a young woman who had lain there beside him forty years before, letting his shaking hand trail down the length of her body as she lay on her side facing him, from the hillock of her hip down the slope of her waist and up again to where her breast met her side, and then down to touch that smooth breast, and Eddie always telling her, telling her how absolutely beautiful she was, how he'd never seen a woman more beautiful, no not even in the movies or in the magazines, and now she was reaching for him again, and when she did, the memory faded, because he could not remember what had happened next. Always, when it came to that, he just could not remember.

He was tired now, too tired to bring her back again, so he switched off the lamp, whispered good night to the darkness, and went to sleep, his arm over the place where she would be when he wanted to see her again.

The next morning over breakfast Fred
Hibbs
had looked at him oddly. "You talk in your sleep?"

"Why?" Eddie asked. "You hear me?"

"I heard you
talkin
'."

"I had
comp'ny
. Couldn't be rude, could I?"

"What
kinda
company?"

"I wanted you to know, I'd tell ya."

"You're not
goin
' screwy on me, are you?"

"I had
comp'ny
, Fred."

"Somebody
dead
, wasn't it?"

Eddie looked down at his dirty plate, stood up, and put it into the sink. "No," he said softly. "She ain't dead. She'll never be dead."

"Who?"

Eddie sighed. "A woman. A woman I knew once."

Fred
Hibbs
frowned, confused. "There ain't no ghosts in this house, so how can you be
talkin
' to someone here?"

'"I can talk to her everywhere," Eddie replied with a crooked smile, "until I find her somewhere."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"The love of my life, my boy. Everybody
oughta
have a love of his life."

"But who was she?"

"Her name wouldn't mean
nothin
' to you. I was mighty young, so you
woulda
been just a little boy at the time. But Jesus Christ she was beautiful, and how I did love her." He sat back down at the table with a third cup of coffee. "She was married, but her husband was an asshole. He didn't know what he had." Eddie's face wrinkled in bitter memory. "Or maybe he did at that. Anyways, he made it pretty miserable for her. So she started to drink. That's how I met her—over a drink." He looked up at Fred
Hibbs
. "Am I
borin
' you?"

Fred shook his head shortly. "No."

"Well, let me know if I do. We old guys do go on,
y'know
." He slipped back into his story as though he had never stopped. "She kept on
drinkin
'. I couldn't get her to stop that. But I did get her to stop fuckin' around with guys that were no good for her. Got her to fuck around with
me
instead." He chuckled, but his face immediately softened, the lines vanishing as if by magic. "Oh, God, but she was so beautiful. We had good times together, good times. Right in this house, with all the shades drawn down. And she loved me too, I
know
she did. Women can fake
lotsa
stuff, but she didn't fake that. Time and again I told her to leave that
sonuvabitch
and come live with me,
marry
me, but it scared her, the thought of
divorcin
' him, and him gettin' mad, and well, not too many people got divorced back then, 'specially in a place like Merridale. And 'cause she was scared, she drank more, and I finally scared her away for good." Eddie stopped talking and shook his head.

"
Whatcha
mean, 'for good'?"

"She left me. Left her husband. Left town. I never heard from her again. Just scared off, I guess. If I hadn't pushed her, we
mighta
been able to go on like we had. But I loved her too much." Eddie Karl shook his head, then looked up.

"Now ain't that a sad story though? Don't it just tug at your heartstrings and make you barf?"

"And you never found out what happened to her?"

"Nope. Probably wound up
tumin
' tricks in Philly. But I been
carryin
' the torch for her ever since. Now you tell
me
about
your
biggest heartbreak."

"Never had one. Never had much time for women."

"I never had much time for
nothin
' else." Eddie's eyes narrowed. "You ain't queer, are ya, Fred?"

"
Shit!
" Fred spat out. "You
are
loony."

"Not that I mind if you are," Eddie went on, "but I'll just have to remember to lock my bedroom door at night."

~*~

Goddamn, thought Fred
Hibbs
, half remembering, half watching the news. He didn't know if he could handle it much longer, not if Eddie kept acting so crazy. But at least his mother and father weren't there. There was that at least.
The movies. With Harriet
Viner
.
Jumpin
' Jesus, what's next?
He wouldn't have been too surprised if Eddie started digging up the cemetery to actually see his old friends and lovers once again.
As long as he don't bring them home.

At eight o'clock,
Francis Joins the Navy
was on a Philadelphia UHF station, and he watched that for a while, but Eddie's antenna was weak, diluting the antics of Donald O'Connor and the talking mule with snow to a point where it became not only unfunny, but unwatchable. Too weary to get up and change channels, Fred
Hibbs
closed his eyes for a quick nap. When he woke up it was long after midnight, and his back hurt. Damn couch. He turned off the TV and went upstairs, where he brushed his teeth and went to bed.

Sometime after two o'clock he awoke, wondering what was shaking him so. When it reached his sleep-dulled mind that something was indeed acting on his body, and that it was not a dream, he gasped, stiffened, and blinked in fear at the sudden light.

"Wake up," called a cracked voice that he knew to be Eddie's. But something was different in it, changed. There was none of the playfulness that had always been there, even when he had told Fred about that woman long ago. "Wake
up
, Fred. Wake up,
dammit
."

"
Whazzit
," Fred grunted. "
Whassamatter
?"

"Get up, get dressed," Eddie barked. "You
gotta
come with me."

"Come where?"

"Just get dressed!" Eddie whirled around and left the room.

Fred
Hibbs
, confused, frantic, obedient, pulled on his pants, drew on his shirt, thinking, What the hell, what the hell? But his mind was too befuddled to protest, and Eddie had never asked him to do anything that wasn't important. He might've been loony, but he'd never taken Fred on a fool's errand. Fire? he thought as he laced his shoes. Accident? He clattered down the steps and found Eddie waiting for him at the front door.

"Come on," Eddie said, opening it.

"
Where?
"

"Just come,
goddammit
, I need your help!" He was out on the front sidewalk already, and Fred ran to catch up, slamming the door behind him.

"Eddie, if this is some fuckin' half-assed idea of yours, I'm really gonna be
pissed!
"

"No. No, boy,
nothin
' loony this time. This is
real
, boy,
real
." They kept walking north up Market, through the square and beyond, where the houses thinned out and the streetlights ended.

Fred grabbed Eddie's arm to slow him. The older man's energy seemed to come from some bottomless well of determination, and though Fred was panting, Eddie looked as fresh as if he had just left his house. His eyes burned in frustrated rage as he turned to Fred. "No farther," Fred said, wheezing, "not till . . . you tell me . . . where—"

"The Anchor," Eddie snarled, and tore his arm away, moving purposefully into the night.

"The Anchor?" cried Fred, scuttling to keep up. "The Anchor's
closed
! It's after two—they're
closed
. There's nothing
there
." He didn't hear Eddie reply, just saw his craggy head shake in disagreement as he walked on, wielding his cane like a swagger stick. "Aw, shit," mumbled Fred, stopping and looking back toward town. "Aw,
shit
," he said again, running to keep up with Eddie.

When they arrived a short time later at the Anchor, Eddie went right up to the front door and rattled the knob. It was a makeshift door of hollow pine. The
Jerney
brothers had not yet received the steel one they'd ordered to replace the old glass-paned panel that the unidentified vandal had ruined. Eddie shook it again, then looked at Fred. "It's shit," he said. "Hollow. Bust it in."

"Bust it
 
. . .
what?
"

"That's what you're here for, why I wanted you to come. I'm not strong enough; you are. Well, don't just stand there
gawkin
' at me, bust it in!"

"Christ, Eddie, you're
talkin
' about . . . uh . . . breaking and entering!"

"There's worse things than that, boy. Now you either bust that door in for me, or you go home to your own house tonight. I mean it."

"But why?"

"You'll see why! Now come
on!
" Eddie threw himself against the door, which tossed him back as though it were made of rubber. The resulting thud was loud.

"Quiet!" hissed Fred
Hibbs
. "You'll wake up the whole damn town!"

"Then
help
me."

"All right, all right, oh Jesus we're gonna get in a shitload of trouble for this, damn you, Eddie . . .”

 
Fred stepped up to the door, lifted his foot, and kicked with all his strength at the spot next to the gold-painted knob. Something crunched, but the door did not open. He kicked again. The casing splintered, and the door swung in with a bang that made Fred's heart pound even more quickly.

Pushing Fred aside, Eddie strode into the bar, his cane carried loosely at his side as though his determination alone gave strength to his thin legs. He walked directly to the heavy wooden box nailed to the floor of the room, knelt beside it, and started to rock it back and forth so that the nails loosened
protestingly
, filling the room with harsh screeching.

"I looked," Eddie grunted as he worked. "I closed the fucking place tonight, just me and Leo tending the bar. . . He was
talkin
' about the break-in, how they busted up everything, and I was . . .
sittin
' next to this box, and I said how about the box, and he got this funny look and said no, not the box. . . . I knew he was
lyin
', and when he went to take a leak I got down and I got my knife in and pried back a slat and I looked. . . . Didn't see much, no not much, but enough. . . . Just her hair, and that was enough. . . . I didn't forget."