Christine (36 page)

"I don't care what he or any of those shitters do," Arnie said, and then, in a strangely offhand voice he added, "It doesn't matter anymore anyhow."

Dennis said, "Arnie, are you all right?"

And for a moment a look of desperate sadness passed over Arnie's face—more than sadness. He looked harried and haunted. It was the face, Dennis thought later (it is so easy to see these things later; too much later) of someone so bewildered and entangled and weary of struggling that he hardly knows anymore what it is he is doing.

Then that expression, like that other look of dark suspicion, was gone.

"Sure," he said. "I'm great. Except that you're not the only one with a hurt back. You remember when I strained it at Philly Plains?"

Dennis nodded.

"Check this out." He stood up and pulled his shirt out of his pants. Something seemed to dance in his eyes. Something flipping and turning at a black depth.

He lifted his shirt. It wasn't old-fashioned like LeBay"s; it was cleaner, too—a neat, seemingly unbroken band of Lycra about twelve inches across. But, Dennis thought, a brace was a brace. It was too close to LeBay for comfort.

"I put another hurt on it getting Christine back to Will's," Arnie said. "I don't even remember how I did it, that's how upset I was. Hooking her up to the wrecker, I guess, but I don't know for sure. At first it wasn't too bad, then it got worse. Dr Mascia prescribed—Dennis, are you okay?"

With what felt like a fantastic effort, Dennis kept his voice even. He moved his features around into an expression which felt at least faintly like pleasant interest and still there was that something dancing in Arnie's eyes, dancing and dancing.

"You'll shake it off," Dennis said

"Sure, I imagine," Arnie said, tucking his shirt back in around the back brace. "I'm just supposed to watch what I lift so I don't do it again."

He smiled at Dennis.

"If there was stilt a draft, it would keep me out of the Army," he said.

Once again Dennis restrained himself from any movement that could be interpreted as surprise, but he put his arms under the bed's top sheet. At the sight of that back brace, so like LeBay's, they had broken out in gooseflesh.

Arnie's eyes—like black water under thin gray March ice. Black water and glee dancing far down within them like the twisting, decomposing body of a drowned man. "Listen," Arnie said briskly. "I gotta move. Hope you didn't think I could hang around a lousy place like this all night."

"That's you, always in demand," Dennis said. "Seriously, man, thanks. You cheered up a grim day."

For one strange instant, he thought Arnie was going to weep. That dancing thing down deep in his eyes was gone and his friend was there—really there. Then Arnie smiled sincerely. "Just remember one thing, Dennis: nobody misses you. Nobody at all."

"Eat me raw through a Flavor Straw," Dennis said solemnly.

Arnie gave him the finger

The formalities were now complete; Arnie could leave He gathered up his brown shopping bag, considerably deflated, candle-holders and empty beer bottles clinking inside.

Dennis had a sudden inspiration. He rapped his knuckles on his leg cast. "Sign this, Arnie, would you?"

"I already did, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but it wore off. Sign it again?"

Arnie shrugged. "If you've got a pen."

Dennis gave him one from the drawer of the night-table. Grinning, Arnie bent over the cast, which was hoisted to an angle over the bed with a series of weights and pulleys, found white space in the intaglio of names and mottoes, and scribbled:

He patted the cast when he was done and handed the pen back to Dennis. "Okay?"

"Yeah," Dennis said. "Thanks. Stay loose, Arnie."

"You know it. Happy Thanksgiving."

"Same to you."

Arnie left. Later on, Dennis's mother and father came in; Ellie, apparently exhausted by the day's hilarity, had gone home to bed, On their way home, the Guilders commented to each other on how withdrawn Dennis had seemed.

"He was in a blue study, all right," Guilder said. "Holidays in the hospital aren't any fun."

As for Dennis himself, he spent a long and thoughtful time that evening examining two signatures. Arnie had indeed signed his cast, but at a time when both of Dennis's legs had been in full-leg casts. That first time, he had signed the cast on the right leg, which had been up in the air when Arnie came in. Tonight he had signed the left.

Dennis buzzed for a nurse and used all his charm persuading her to lower his left leg so he could compare the two signatures, side by side. The cast on his right leg had been cut down, and would come off altogether in a week or ten days. Arnie's signature had not rubbed off—that had been one of
Dennis's
lies—but it had very nearly been cut off.

Arnie had not written a message on the right leg, only his signature. With some effort (and some pain), Dennis and the nurse were able to maneuver his legs close enough together so he could study the two signatures side by side. In a voice so dry and cracked he was hardly able to recognize it as his own, he asked the nurse, "Do they look the same to you?"

"No," the nurse said. "I've beard of forging checks, but never casts. Is it a joke?"

"Sure," Dennis said, feeling an icy coldness rise from his stomach to his chest. "It's a joke." He looked at the signatures; he looked at them side by side and felt that rising coldness steal all through him, lowering his body temperature, making the hairs on the back of his neck stir and stiffen:

They were nothing alike.

Late that Thanksgiving night, a cold wind rose, first gusting, then blowing steadily. The clear eye of the moon stared down from a black sky. The last brown and withered leaves of autumn were ripped from the trees and then harried through the gutters. They made a sound like rolling bones.

Winter had come to Libertyville.

30 MOOCHIE WELCH

The night was dark, the sky was blue,

and down the alley an ice-wagon flew.

Door banged open,

Somebody screamed,

You oughtta heard just what I seen.

— Bo Diddley

The Thursday after thanksgiving was the last day of November, the night that Jackson Browne played the Pittsburgh Civic Center to a sellout crowd. Moochie Welch went up with Richie Trelawney and Nicky Biltingham but got separated from them even before the show began. He was spare-changing, and whether it was because the impending Browne concert had created some extremely mellow vibes or because he was becoming something of an endearing fixture (Moochie, a romantic, liked to believe the latter), he had had a remarkably good night. He had collected nearly thirty dollars' worth of "spare change". It was distributed among all his pockets; Moochie jingled like a piggy bank. Thumbing home had been remarkably easy too, with all the traffic leaving the Civic Center. The concert ended at eleven-forty, and he was back in Libertyville shortly after one-fifteen.

His last ride was with a young guy who was headed back to Prestonville on Route 63. The guy dropped him at the 376 ramp on JFK Drive. Moochie decided to walk up to Vandenberg's Happy Gas and see Buddy. Buddy had a car, which meant that Moochie, who lived far out on Kingsfield Pike, wouldn't have to walk home. It was hard work, hitching rides, once you got out in the boonies—and the Kingsfield Pike was Boondocks City. It meant he wouldn't be home until well past dawn, but in cold weather a sure ride was not to be sneezed at. And Buddy might have a bottle.

He had walked a quarter of a mile from the 376 exit ramp in the deep single-number cold, his cleated heels clicking on the deserted sidewalk, his shadow waxing and waning under the eerie orange streetlamps, and had still perhaps a mile to go when he saw the car parked at the curb up ahead. Exhaust curled out of its twin pipes and hung in the perfectly still air, clouding it, before drifting lazily away in stacked layers. The grille, bright chrome highlighted with pricks of orange light, looked at him like a grinning idiot mouth. Moochie recognized the car. It was a two-tone Plymouth. In the light of the maximum-illumination streetlamps the two tones seemed to be ivory and dried blood. It was Christine.

Moochie stopped, and a stupid sort of wonder flooded through him—it was not fear, at least not at that moment. It couldn't be Christine, that was impossible—they had punched a dozen holes in the radiator of Cuntface's car, they had dumped a nearly full bottle of Texas Driver into the carb, and Buddy had produced a five-pound sack of Domino sugar, which he had tunnelled into the gas tank through Moochie's cupped hands. And all of that was just for starters. Buddy had demonstrated a kind of furious invention when it came to destroying Cuntface's car; it had left Moochie feeling both delighted and uneasy. All in all, that car should not have moved under its own power for six months, if ever. So this could not be Christine. It was some other '58 Fury.

Except it was Christine. He knew it.

Moochie stood there on the deserted early-morning sidewalk, his numb ears poking out from beneath his long hair, his breath pluming frostily on the air.

The car sat at the curb facing him, engine growling softly. It was impossible to tell who, if anyone, was behind the wheel; it was parked directly beneath one of the streetlights, and the orange globe burned across the glass of the unmarred windshield like a waterproof jack-o'-lantern seen deep down in dark water.

Moochie began to be afraid

He slicked his tongue over dry lips and looked around. To his left was JFK Drive, six lanes wide and looking like a dry riverbed at this empty hour of the morning. To his right was a photography shop, orange letters outlined in red spelling KODAK across its window.

He looked back at the car. It just sat there, idling.

He opened his mouth to speak and produced no sound. He tried again and got a croak. "Hey. Cunningham."

The car sat, seeming to brood. Exhaust curled up. The engine rumbled, idling fast on high-octane gas.

"That you, Cunningham?"

He took one more step. A cleat scraped on cement. His heart was thudding in his neck. He looked around at the street again; surely another car would come, JFK Drive couldn't be totally deserted even at one-twenty-five in the morning, could it? But there were no cars, only the flat orange glare of the streetlights.

Moochie cleared his throat.

"You ain't mad, are you?"

Christine's duals suddenly came on, pinning him in harsh white light. The Fury ripped toward him, peeling out, the tires screaming black slashes of rubber onto the pavement. It came with such sudden power that the rear end seemed to squat, like the haunches of a dog preparing to spring—a dog or a she-wolf. The onside wheels jumped up on the pavement and it ran at Moochie that way, offside wheels down, onside wheels up over the curb, canted at an angle. The undercarriage scraped and shrieked and shot off a swirling flicker of sparks.

Moochie screamed and tried to sidestep. The edge of Christine's bumper barely flicked his left calf and took a chunk of meat. Warm wetness coursed down his leg and puddled in his shoe. The warmth of his own blood made him realize in a confused way just how cold the night was.

He thudded hip-first into the doorway of the photo shop, barely missing the plate-glass window. A foot to the left and he would have crashed right through, landing-in a litter of Nikons and Polaroid One-Steps.

He could hear the car's engine, suddenly revving up. That horrible, unearthly shrieking of the undercarriage on the cement again. Moochie turned around, panting harshly. Christine was reversing back up the gutter, and as it passed him, he saw. He saw.

There was no one behind the wheel.

Panic began to pound in his head. Moochie took to his heels. He ran out into JFK Drive, sprinting for the far side. There was an alley over there between a market and a dry-cleaning place. Too narrow for the car. If he could get in there—

Change jingled madly in his pants pockets and in the five or six pockets of his Army-surplus duffel coat. Quarters, nickels, dimes. A jingling silver carillon. He pumped his knees almost to his chin. His cleated engineer boots drummed the pavement. His shadow chased him.