Insomnia (11 page)

The Deepneaus had also apparently kept every album they had ever purchased during the sixties – Carolyn had found this one of their most endearing characteristics – and now, as Ralph approached the Cape Cod with his hands curled into fists at his sides, he heard Grace Slick wailing one of those old San Francisco anthems:

The music was coming from a boombox on the Cape Cod’s postage stamp-sized porch. A sprinkler twirled on the lawn, making a
hisha-hisha-hisha
sound as it cast rainbows in the air and deposited a shiny wet patch on the sidewalk. Ed Deepneau, shirtless, was sitting in a lawn-chair to the left of the concrete walk with his legs crossed, looking up at the sky with the bemused expression of a man trying to decide if the cloud passing overhead looks more like a horse or a unicorn. One bare foot bopped up and down in time to the music. The book lying open and face-down in his lap went perfectly with the music pouring from the boombox:
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,
by Tom Robbins.

An all but perfect summer vignette; a scene of small-town serenity Norman Rockwell might have painted and then titled
Afternoon Off
. All you had to overlook was the blood on Ed’s knuckles and the drop on the left lens of his round John Lennon specs.

‘Ralph, for God’s sake don’t get into a fight with him!’ McGovern hissed as Ralph left the sidewalk and cut across the lawn. He walked through the lawn sprinkler’s fine cold spray almost without feeling it.

Ed turned, saw him, and broke into a sunny grin. ‘Hey, Ralph!’ he said. ‘Good to see you, man!’

In his mind’s eye, Ralph saw himself reaching out and shoving Ed’s chair, pushing him over and spilling him onto his lawn. He saw Ed’s eyes widen with shock and surprise behind the lenses of his glasses. This vision was so real he even saw the way the sun reflected on the face of Ed’s watch as he tried to sit up.

‘Grab yourself a beer and drag up a rock,’ Ed was saying. ‘If you feel like a game of chess—’

‘Beer? A game of
chess
? Christ Jesus, Ed, what’s wrong with you?’

Ed didn’t answer immediately, only looked at Ralph with an expression that was both frightening and infuriating. It was a mixture of amusement and shame, the look of a man who’s getting ready to say,
Aw, shit, honey – did I forget to put out the trash
again?

Ralph pointed down the hill, past McGovern, who was standing – he would have been lurking, if there had been something to lurk behind – near the wet patch the sprinkler had put on the sidewalk, watching them nervously. The first police car had been joined by a second, and Ralph could faintly hear the crackle of radio calls through the open windows. The crowd had gotten quite a bit bigger.

‘The police are there because of
Helen
!’ he said, telling himself not to shout, it would do no good to shout, and shouting anyway. ‘They’re there because you beat up your
wife,
is that getting through to you?’

‘Oh,’ Ed said, and rubbed his cheek ruefully. ‘
That
.’

‘Yes,
that,
’ Ralph said. He now felt almost stupefied with rage.

Ed peered past him at the police cars, at the crowd standing around the Red Apple . . . and then he saw McGovern.

‘Bill!’ he cried. McGovern recoiled. Ed either didn’t notice or pretended not to. ‘Hey, man! Drag up a rock! Want a beer?’

That was when Ralph knew he was going to hit Ed, break his stupid little round-lensed spectacles, drive a splinter of glass into his eye, maybe. He was going to do it, nothing on earth could stop him from doing it, except at the last moment something did. It was Carolyn’s voice he heard inside his head most frequently these days – when he wasn’t just muttering along to himself, that was – but this wasn’t Carolyn’s voice; this one, as unlikely as it seemed, belonged to Trigger Vachon, whom he’d seen only once or twice since the day Trig had saved him from the thunderstorm, the day Carolyn had had her first seizure.

Ayy, Ralph! Be damn careful, you! Dis one crazy like a fox! Maybe he
want
you to hit im!

Yes, he decided. Maybe that was
just
what Ed wanted. Why? Who knew? Maybe to muddy the waters up a little bit, maybe just because he was crazy.

‘Cut the shit,’ he said, dropping his voice almost to a whisper. He was gratified to see Ed’s attention snap back to him in a hurry, and even more pleased to see Ed’s pleasantly vague expression of rueful amusement disappear. It was replaced by a narrow, watchful expression.
It was,
Ralph thought,
the look of a dangerous animal with its wind up
.

Ralph hunkered down so he could look directly at Ed. ‘Was it Susan Day?’ he asked in the same soft voice. ‘Susan Day and the abortion business? Something about dead babies? Is that why you unloaded on Helen?’

There was another question on his mind –
Who are you really, Ed?
– but before he could ask it, Ed reached out, placed a hand in the center of Ralph’s chest, and pushed. Ralph fell backward onto the damp grass, catching himself on his elbows and shoulders. He lay there with his feet flat on the ground and his knees up, watching as Ed suddenly sprang out of his lawn-chair.

‘Ralph, don’t mess with him!’ McGovern called from his place of relative safety on the sidewalk.

Ralph paid no attention. He simply remained where he was, propped on his elbows and looking attentively up at Ed. He was still angry and afraid, but these emotions had begun to be overshadowed by a strange, chilly fascination. This was madness he was looking at – the genuine article. No comicbook super-villain here, no Norman Bates, no Captain Ahab. It was just Ed Deepneau who worked down the coast at Hawking Labs – one of those eggheads, the old guys who played chess at the picnic area out on the Extension would have said, but still a nice enough fella for a Democrat. Now the nice enough fella had gone totally bonkers, and it hadn’t just happened this afternoon, when Ed had seen his wife’s name on a petition hanging from the Community Bulletin Board in the Shop ’n Save. Ralph now understood that Ed’s madness was at least a year old, and that made him wonder what secrets Helen had been keeping behind her normal cheery demeanor and sunny smile, and what small, desperate signals – besides the bruises, that was – he might have missed.

And then there’s Natalie,
he thought.
What’s
she
seen? What’s
she
experienced? Besides, of course, being carried across Harris Avenue and the Red Apple parking lot on her staggering, bleeding mother’s hip?

Ralph’s arms broke out in goosebumps.

Ed had begun to pace, meanwhile, crossing and recrossing the cement path, trampling the zinnias Helen had planted along it as a border. He had returned to the Ed Ralph had encountered out by the airport the year before, right down to the fierce little pokes of the head and the sharp, jabbing glances at nothing.

This is what the gee-whiz act was supposed to hide,
Ralph thought.
He looks the same now as he did when he took after the guy driving that pickup truck. Like a rooster protecting his little piece of the barnyard
.

‘None of this is strictly her fault, I admit that.’ Ed spoke rapidly, pounding his right fist into his open left palm as he walked through the cloud of spray thrown by the sprinkler. Ralph realized he could see every rib in Ed’s chest; the man looked as if he hadn’t had a decent meal in months.

‘Still, once stupidity reaches a certain level, it becomes hard to live with,’ Ed went on. ‘She’s like the Magi, actually coming to
King Herod
for information. I mean, how dumb can you get? “Where is he that is born King of the Jews?” To
Herod
they say this. I mean, wise men my ass! Right, Ralph?’

Ralph nodded. Sure, Ed. Whatever you say, Ed.

Ed returned the nod and went on tramping back and forth through the spray and the ghostly interlocking rainbows, smacking his fist into his palm. ‘It’s like that Rolling Stones song – “Look at that, look at that, look at that stupid girl”. You probably don’t remember that one, do you?’ Ed laughed, a jagged little sound that made Ralph think of rats dancing on broken glass.

McGovern knelt beside him. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he muttered. Ralph shook his head, and when Ed swung back in their direction, McGovern quickly got up and retreated to the sidewalk again.

‘She thought she could fool you, is that it?’ Ralph asked. He was still lying on the lawn, propped up on his elbows. ‘She thought you wouldn’t find out she signed the petition.’

Ed leaped over the walk, bent over Ralph, and shook his clenched fists over his head like the bad guy in a silent movie. ‘No-no-no-
no
!’ he cried.

The Jefferson Airplane had been replaced by the Animals, Eric Burdon growling out the gospel according to John Lee Hooker: Boom-boom-boom-boom, gonna shoot ya right down. McGovern uttered a thin cry, apparently thinking Ed meant to attack Ralph, but instead Ed sank down with the knuckles of his left hand pressed into the grass, assuming the position of a sprinter who waits for the starter’s gun to explode him out of the blocks. His face was covered with beads of what Ralph at first took for sweat before remembering the way Ed had paced back and forth through the spray from the sprinkler. Ralph kept looking at the spot of blood on the left lens of Ed’s glasses. It had smeared a little, and now the pupil of his left eye looked as if it had filled up with blood.

‘Finding out that she signed the petition was fate! Simple fate! Do you mean to tell me you don’t see that? Don’t insult my intelligence, Ralph! You may be getting on in years, but you’re far from stupid. The thing is, I go down to the supermarket to buy baby-food, how’s that for irony – and find out she’s signed on with the baby-
killers!
The Centurions! With the Crimson King himself! And do you know what? I . . . just . . . saw . . .
red
!’

‘The Crimson King, Ed? Who’s he?’

‘Oh, please.’ Ed gave Ralph a cunning look. ‘“Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.” It’s in the Bible, Ralph. Matthew, chapter 2, verse 16. Do you doubt it? Do you have
any fucking question
that it says that?’

‘No. If you say so, I believe it.’

Ed nodded. His eyes, a deep and startling shade of green, darted here and there. Then he slowly leaned forward over Ralph, planting one hand on either side of Ralph’s arms. It was as if he meant to kiss him. Ralph could smell sweat, and some sort of aftershave that had almost completely faded away now, and something else – something that smelled like old curdled milk. He wondered if it might be the smell of Ed’s madness.

An ambulance was coming up Harris Avenue, running its flashers but not its siren. It turned into the Red Apple’s parking lot.

‘You
better,
’ Ed breathed into his face. ‘You just
better
believe it.’

His eyes stopped wandering and centered on Ralph’s.

‘They are killing the babies wholesale,’ he said in a low voice which was not quite steady. ‘Ripping them from the wombs of their mothers and carrying them out of town in covered trucks. Flatbeds for the most part. Ask yourself this, Ralph: how many times a week do you see one of those big flatbeds tooling down the road? A flatbed with a tarp stretched across the back? Ever ask yourself what those trucks were carrying? Ever wonder what was under most of those tarps?’

Ed grinned. His eyes rolled.

‘They burn most of the fetuses over in Newport. The sign says
landfill,
but it’s really a crematorium. They send some of them out of state, though. In trucks, in light planes. Because fetal tissue is extremely valuable. I tell you that not just as a concerned citizen, Ralph, but as an employee of Hawking Laboratories. Fetal tissue is . . . more . . . valu-able . . . than gold.’

He turned his head suddenly and stared at Bill McGovern, who had crept a little closer again in order to hear what Ed was saying.

‘
YEA, MORE VALUABLE THAN GOLD AND MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES
!
’ he screamed, and McGovern leaped back, eyes widening in fear and dismay. ‘
DO YOU KNOW THAT, YOU OLD FAGGOT
?
’

‘Yes,’ McGovern said. ‘I . . . I guess I did.’ He shot a quick glance down the street, where one of the police cars was now backing out of the Red Apple lot and turning in their direction. ‘I might have read it somewhere. In
Scientific American,
perhaps.’

‘
Scientific American!
’ Ed laughed with gentle contempt and rolled his eyes at Ralph again, as if to say
You see what I have to deal with
. Then his face grew sober again. ‘Wholesale murder,’ he said, ‘just as in the time of Christ. Only now it’s the murder of the unborn. Not just here, but all over the world. They’ve been slaughtering them by their thousands, Ralph, by their
millions,
and do you know why? Do you know why we’ve re-entered the Court of the Crimson King in this new age of darkness?’

Ralph knew. It wasn’t that hard to put together, if you had enough pieces to work with. If you had seen Ed with his arm buried in a barrel of chemical fertilizer, fishing around for the dead babies he had been sure he would find.

‘King Herod got a little advance word this time around,’ Ralph said. ‘That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it? It’s the old Messiah thing, right?’