Christine (9 page)

“What other bruises?”

We were sitting in one of the back booths. Arnie glanced around to make sure no one was looking at us and then raised his T-shirt. I hissed in breath at what I saw. A terrific sunset of bruises—yellow, red, purple, brown—covered Arnie's chest and stomach. They were just starting to fade. How he had been able to come to work after getting mashed around like that I couldn't begin to understand.

“Man, are you sure he didn't spring any of your ribs?” I asked. I was really horrified. The shiner and the scrape looked tame next to this shit. I had seen high school scuffles, of course, had even been in a few, but I was looking at the results of a serious beating for the first time in my life.

“Pretty sure,” he said levelly. “I was lucky.”

“I guess you were.”

Arnie didn't say a lot more, but a kid I knew named Randy Turner was there, and he filled me in on what had happened in more detail after school had started again. He said that Arnie might have gotten hurt a lot worse, but he came back at Buddy a lot harder and a lot madder than Buddy had expected.

In fact, Randy said, Arnie went after Buddy Repperton as if the devil had blown a charge of red pepper up his ass. His arms were windmilling, his fists were everywhere. He was yelling, cursing, spraying spittle. I tried to picture it and couldn't—the picture I kept coming up with instead was Arnie slamming his fists down on my dashboard hard enough to make dents, screaming that he would make them eat it.

He drove Repperton halfway across the garage, bloodied his nose (more by good luck than good aim), and got one to Repperton's throat that made him start to cough and gag and generally lose interest in busting Arnie Cunningham's ass.

Buddy turned away, holding his throat and trying to puke, and Arnie drove one of his steel-toed workboots into Repperton's jeans-clad butt, knocking him flat on his belly and forearms. Repperton was still gagging and holding his throat with one hand, his nose was bleeding like mad, and (again, according to Randy Turner) Arnie was apparently gearing up to kick the son of a bitch to death when Will Darnell magically reappeared, hollering in his wheezy voice to cut the shit over there, cut the shit, cut the
shit.

“Arnie thought that fight was going to happen,” I told Randy. “He thought it was a put-up job.”

Randy shrugged. “Maybe. Could be. It sure was funny, the way Darnell showed up when Repperton really started to lose.”

About seven guys grabbed Arnie and dragged him away. At first he fought them like a wildman, screaming for them to let him go, screaming that if Repperton didn't pay for the broken headlight he'd kill him. Then he subsided, bewildered and hardly aware how it had happend that Repperton was down and he was still on his feet.

Repperton finally got up, his white T-shirt smeared with dirt and grease, his nose still bubbling blood. He made a lunge for Arnie. Randy said it looked like a pretty halfhearted lunge, mostly for form's sake. Some of the other guys got hold of him and led him away. Darnell came over to Arnie and told him to hand in his toolbox key and get out.

“Jesus, Arnie! Why didn't you call me Saturday afternoon?”

He sighed. “I was too depressed.”

We finished our pizza, and I bought Arnie a third Pepsi. That stuff's murder on your complexion, but it's great for depression.

“I don't know if he meant get out just for Saturday or from then on,” Arnie said to me on our way home. “What do you think, Dennis? You think he kicked me out for good?”

“He asked for your toolbox key, you said.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he did. I never got kicked out of
anyplace
before.” He looked like he was going to cry.

“That place bites the root anyway. Will Darnell's an asshole.”

“I guess it would be stupid to try and keep it there anymore anyway,” he said. “Even if Darnell lets me come back, Repperton's there. I'd fight him again—”

I started to hum the theme from
Rocky.

“Yeah, fuck you and the cayuse you rode in on, Range Rider,” he said, smiling a little. “I really
would
fight him. But Repperton might take after her with that jackhandle again when I wasn't there. I don't think Darnell would stop him if he did.”

I didn't answer, and maybe Arnie thought that meant I agreed with him, but I didn't. I didn't think his old rustbucket Plymouth Fury was the main target. And if Repperton felt that he couldn't accomplish the demolition of the main target by himself, he would simply get by with a little help from his friends—Don Vandenberg, Moochie Welch,
et al.
Get on your motorhuckle boots, boys, we got plenty good stompin tonight.

It occurred to me that they could kill him. Not just kill him but really, honest-to-Christ
kill
him. Guys like that sometimes did. Things just went a little too far and some kid wound up dead. You read about it in the paper sometimes.

“—keep her?”

“Huh?” I hadn't followed that. Up ahead, Arnie's house was in view.

“I asked if you had any ideas about where I could keep her.”

The car, the car, the car, that's all he could talk about. He was starting to sound like a broken record. And, worse, it was always her, her, her. He was bright enough to see his growing obsession with her—
it,
damn it,
it
—but he wasn't picking it up. He wasn't picking it up at all.

“Arnie,” I said. “My man. You've got more important things to worry about than where to keep the car. I want to know where you're going to keep
you.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“I'm asking you what you're going to do if Buddy and Buddy's buddies decide they want to put you in traction.”

His face suddenly grew wise—it grew wise so suddenly that it was frightening to watch. It was wise and helpless and enduring. It was a face I recognized from the news when I was only eight or nine or so, the face of all those soldiers in black pajamas who had kicked the living shit out of the best-equipped and best-supported army in the world.

“Dennis,” he said, “I'll do what I can.”

10

LeBay Passes

The movie version of
Grease
had just opened, and I took the cheerleader out to see it that night. I thought it was dumb. The cheerleader loved it. I sat there, watching those totally unreal teenagers dance and sing (if I want
realistic
teenagers—well, more or less—I'll catch
The Blackboard Jungle
sometime on a revival), and my mind just drifted away. And suddenly I had a brainstorm, the way you sometimes will when you're not thinking about anything in particular.

I excused myself and went into the lobby to use the pay-phone. I called Arnie's house, dialling quick and sure. I'd had his number memorized since I was eight or so. It could have waited until the movie was over, but it just seemed like such a damned good idea.

Arnie himself answered. “Hello?”

“Arnie, it's Dennis.”

“Oh. Dennis.”

His voice was so odd and flat that I got a little scared. “Arnie? Are you all right?”

“Huh? Sure. I thought you were taking Roseanne to the movies.”

“That's where I'm calling from.”

“It must not be that exciting,” Arnie said. His voice was still flat—flat and dreary.

“Roseanne thinks it's great.”

I thought that would get a laugh out of him, but there was only a patient, waiting silence.

“Listen,” I said, “I thought of the answer.”

“Answer?”

“Sure,” I said. “LeBay. LeBay's the answer.”

“Le—” he said in a strange, high voice . . . and then there was more silence. I was starting to get more than a little scared. I'd never known him to be quite this way.

“Sure,” I babbled. “LeBay. LeBay's got a garage, and I got the idea that he'd eat a dead-rat sandwich if the profit margin looked high enough. If you were to approach him on the basis of, say, sixteen or seventeen bucks a week—”

“Very funny, Dennis.” His voice was cold and hateful.

“Arnie, what—”

He hung up.

I stood there, looking at the phone, wondering what the hell it was about. Some new move from his parents? Or had he maybe gone back to Darnell's and found some new damage to his car? Or—

A sudden intuition—almost a certainty—struck me. I put the telephone back in its cradle and walked over to the concession stand and asked if they had today's paper. The candy-and-popcorn girl finally fished it out and then stood there snapping her gum while I thumbed to the back, where they print the obituaries. I guess she wanted to make sure I wasn't going to perform some weird perversion on it, or maybe eat it.

There was nothing at all—or so I thought at first. Then I turned the page and saw the headline,
LIBERTYVILLE VETERAN DIES AT 71
. There was a picture of Roland D. LeBay in his Army uniform, looking twenty years younger and considerably more bright-eyed than he had on the occasions Arnie and I had seen him. The obit was brief. LeBay had died suddenly on Saturday afternoon. He was survived by a brother, George, and a sister, Marcia. Funeral services were scheduled for Tuesday at two.

Suddenly.

In the obits, it's always “after a long illness,” “after a short illness,” or “suddenly.” Suddenly can mean anything from a brain embolism to electrocuting yourself in the bathtub. I remembered something I had done to Ellie when she was hardly more than a baby—three, maybe. I scared the bejesus out of her with a Jack-in-the-box. There was the little handle going around in big brother Dennis's hand, making music. Not bad. Kind of fun. And
then—ka-BONZO!
Out comes this guy with a grinning face and an ugly hooked nose, almost hitting her in the eye. Ellie went off bawling to find her mother and I sat there, looking glumly at Jack as he nodded back and forth, knowing I was probably going to get hollered at, knowing that I probably
deserved
to get hollered at—I had known it was going to scare her, coming out of the music like that, all at once, with an ugly bang.

Coming out so suddenly.

I gave the paper back and stood there, looking blankly at the posters advertising
NEXT ATTRACTION
and
COMING SOON
.

Saturday afternoon.

Suddenly.

Funny how things sometimes worked out. My brainstorm had been that maybe Arnie could take Christine back where she had come from; maybe he could pay LeBay for space. Now it turned out that LeBay was dead. He had died, as a matter of fact, on the same day that Arnie had gotten into it with Buddy Repperton—the same day Buddy had smashed Christine's headlight.

All at once I had an irrational picture of Buddy Repperton swinging that jackhandle—
and at the exact same moment,
LeBay's eye gushes blood, he keels over, and suddenly, very suddenly. . .

Cut the shit, Dennis,
I lectured.
Just cut the—

And then, somewhere deep in my mind, somewhere near the center, a voice whispered
Come on, big guy, let's cruise
—and then fell still.

The girl behind the counter popped her gum and said, “You're missing the end of the picture. Ending's the best part.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

I started back toward the door of the theater and then detoured to the drinking fountain. My throat was very dry.

Before I'd finished getting my drink, the doors opened and people came streaming out. Beyond and above their bobbing heads, I could see the credit-roll. Then Roseanne came out, looking around for me. She caught many appreciative glances and fielded them cleanly in that dreamy, composed way of hers.

“Den-Den,” she said, taking my arm. Being called Den-Den isn't the worst thing in the world—having your eyes put out with a hot poker or having a leg amputated with a chain-saw is probably worse—but I've never really dug it all that much. “Where were you? You missed the ending. Ending's—”

“—the best part,” I finished with her. “Sorry. I just had this call of nature. It came on very suddenly.”

“I'll tell you all about it if you take me up to the Embankment for a while,” she said, pressing my arm against the soft sideswell of her breast. “If you want to talk, that is.”

“Did it have a happy ending?”

She smiled up at me, her eyes wide and sweet and a little dazed, as they always were. She held my arm even more tightly against her breast.

“Very happy,” she said. “I like happy endings, don't you, Den-Den?”

“Love them,” I said. I should maybe have been thinking about the promise of her breast, but instead I found myself thinking about Arnie.

• • •

That night I had a dream again, only in this one Christine was old—no, not just old; she was ancient, a terrible hulk of a car, something you'd expect to see in a Tarot deck: instead of the Hanged Man, the Death Car. Something you could almost believe was as old as the pyramids. The engine roared and missed and jetted filthy blue oil-smoke.

It wasn't empty. Roland D. LeBay was lolling behind the wheel. His eyes were open but they were glazed and dead. Each time the engine revved and Christine's rust-eaten body vibrated, he flopped like a ragdoll. His peeling skull nodded back and forth.

Then the tires screamed their terrible scream, the Plymouth lunged out of the garage at me, and as it did the rust melted away, the old, bleary glass clarified, the chrome winked with savage newness, and the old, balding tires suddenly bloomed into plump new Wide Ovals, each tread seemingly as deep as the Grand Canyon.

It screamed at me, headlights glaring white circles of hate, and as I raised my hands in a stupid, useless, warding-off gesture, I thought,
God, its unending fury—

• • •

I woke up.

I didn't scream. That night I kept the scream in my throat.

Just barely.

I sat up in my bed, a cold puddle of moonlight caught in a lapful of sheet, and I thought,
Died suddenly.

That night I didn't get back to sleep so quickly.