Insomnia (3 page)

‘Look,’ he said. ‘We can talk—’

That was as far as he got. Ed took another quick step forward, reached up with one slim hand – it was very white in the rapidly darkening day – and slapped Heavyset across his far from inconsiderable jowls. The sound was like the report of a kid’s air rifle.

‘How many have you killed?’ Ed asked.

Heavyset pressed back against the side of his pickup, his mouth open, his eyes wide. Ed’s queer, stiff strut never faltered. He walked into the other man and stood belly to belly with him, seemingly oblivious of the fact that the pickup’s driver was four inches taller and outweighed him by a hundred pounds or more. Ed reached up and slapped him again. ‘Come on! Fess up, brave boy –
how many have you killed?
’ His voice rose to a shriek that was lost in the coming storm’s first really authoritative clap of thunder.

Heavyset pushed him away – a gesture not of aggression but of simple fright – and Ed went reeling backward against the crumpled nose of his Datsun. He bounced back at once, fists clenched, gathering himself to leap at Heavyset, who was cringing against the side of his truck with his gimme-cap now askew and his shirt untucked in the back and at the sides. A memory flashed across Ralph’s mind – a Three Stooges short he’d seen years ago, Larry, Curly, and Moe playing painters without a clue – and he felt a sudden surge of sympathy for Heavyset, who looked absurd as well as scared to death.

Ed Deepneau did not look absurd. With his yanked-back lips and wide, unblinking eyes, Ed looked more like a fighting cock than ever. ‘I know what you’ve been doing,’ he whispered to Heavyset. ‘What kind of comedy did you think this was? Did you think you and your butcher friends could get away with it forev—’

At that moment Ralph arrived, puffing and gasping like an old carthorse, and put an arm around Ed’s shoulders. The heat beneath the thin tee-shirt was unnerving; it was like putting an arm around an oven, and when Ed turned to look at him, Ralph had the momentary (but unforgettable) impression that that was exactly what he was looking into. He had never seen such utter, unreasoning fury in a pair of human eyes; had never even suspected such fury might exist.

Ralph’s immediate impulse was to recoil, but he suppressed it and stood firm. He had an idea that if he pulled back, Ed would fall on him like a rogue dog, biting and clawing. It was absurd, of course; Ed was a research chemist, Ed was a member of the Book of the Month Club (the kind who took the twenty-pound histories of the Crimean War they always seemed to offer as alternates to the main selection), Ed was Helen’s husband and Natalie’s dad. Hell, Ed was a friend.

. . . except this wasn’t that Ed, and Ralph knew it.

Instead of pulling back, Ralph leaned forward, grasped Ed’s shoulders (so hot under the tee-shirt, so incredibly, throbbingly hot), and moved his face until it blocked Heavyset from Ed’s creepy fixed gaze.

‘Ed, quit it!’ Ralph said. He used the loud but steadily firm voice he assumed one used with people who were having hysterics. ‘You’re all right! Just quit it!’

For a moment Ed’s fixed gaze didn’t waver, and then his eyes moved over Ralph’s face. It wasn’t much, but Ralph felt a small surge of relief just the same.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ Heavyset asked from behind Ralph. ‘He crazy, do you think?’

‘He’s fine, I’m sure,’ Ralph said, although he was sure of no such thing. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, and didn’t take his eyes from Ed. He didn’t
dare
take his eyes from Ed – that contact felt like the only hold he had over the man, and tenuous at best. ‘Just shaken up from the crash. He needs a few seconds to calm d—’

‘Ask him what he’s got under that tarp!’ Ed yelled suddenly, and pointed over Ralph’s shoulder. Lightning flashed, and for a moment the pitted scars of Ed’s adolescent acne were thrown into sharp relief, like some strange organic treasure map. Thunder rolled. ‘Hey, hey, Susan Day!’ he chanted in a high, childlike voice that made Ralph’s forearms break out in goosebumps. ‘How many kids did you kill today?’

‘He ain’t shook up,’ Heavyset said. ‘He’s crazy. And when the cops get here, I’m gonna see he gets tooken in.’

Ralph glanced around and saw a blue tarpaulin stretched across the bed of the pickup. It had been tied down with bright yellow hanks of rope. Round shapes bulked beneath it.

‘Ralph?’ a timid voice asked.

He glanced to his left and saw Dorrance Marstellar – at ninety-something easily the oldest of the Harris Avenue Old Crocks – standing just beyond Heavyset’s pickup truck. There was a paperback book in his waxy, liver-spotted hands, and Dorrance was bending it anxiously back and forth, giving the spine a real workout. Ralph supposed it was a book of poetry, which was all he had ever seen old Dorrance read. Or maybe he didn’t really read at all; maybe he just liked to hold the books and look at the artfully stacked words.

‘Ralph, what’s wrong? What’s happening?’

More lightning flashed overhead, a purple-white snarl of electricity. Dorrance looked up at it as if unsure of where he was, who he was, or what he was seeing. Ralph groaned inside.

‘Dorrance –’ he began, and then Ed lunged beneath him, like some wild animal which has only lain quiet to regain its strength. Ralph staggered, then pushed Ed back against the crumpled hood of his Datsun. He felt panicky – unsure of what to do next or how to do it. There were too many things going on at once. He could feel the muscles in Ed’s arms humming fiercely just below his grip; it was almost as if the man had somehow swallowed a bolt of the lightning now loose in the sky.

‘Ralph?’ Dorrance asked in that same calm but worried voice. ‘I wouldn’t touch him anymore, if I were you. I can’t see your hands.’

Oh, good. Another lunatic to deal with. Just what he needed.

Ralph glanced down at his hands, then looked at the old man. ‘What are you talking about, Dorrance?’

‘Your hands,’ Dorrance said patiently. ‘I can’t see your—’

‘This is no place for you, Dor – why don’t you get lost?’

The old man brightened a little at that. ‘Yes!’ he said in the tone of one who has just stumbled over a great truth. ‘That’s just what I oughtta do!’ He began to back up, and when the thunder cracked again, he cringed and put his book on top of his head. Ralph was able to read the bright red letters of the title:
Buckdancer’s Choice
. ‘It’s what
you
ought to do, too, Ralph. You don’t want to mess in with long-time business. It’s a good way to get hurt.’

‘What are you—’

But before Ralph could finish, Dorrance turned his back and went lumbering off in the direction of the picnic area with his fringe of white hair – as gossamer as the hair on a new baby’s head – rippling in the breeze of the oncoming storm.

One problem solved, but Ralph’s relief was short-lived. Ed had been temporarily distracted by Dorrance, but now he was looking daggers at Heavyset again. ‘Cuntlicker!’ he spat. ‘Fucked your mother and licked her cunt!’

Heavyset’s enormous brow drew down.
‘What?’

Ed’s eyes shifted back to Ralph, whom he now seemed to recognize. ‘Ask him what’s under that tarp!’ he cried. ‘Better yet, get the murdering cocksucker to show you!’

Ralph looked at the heavyset man. ‘What have you got under there?’

‘What’s it to you?’ Heavyset asked, perhaps trying to sound truculent. He sampled the look in Ed Deepneau’s eyes and took two more sidling steps away.

‘Nothing to me, something to him,’ Ralph said, lifting his chin in Ed’s direction. ‘Just help me cool him out, okay?’

‘You know him?’

‘Murderer!’ Ed repeated, and this time he lunged hard enough under Ralph’s hands to drive him back a step. Yet something was happening, wasn’t it? Ralph thought the scary, vacant look was seeping out of Ed’s eyes. There seemed to be a little more
Ed
in there than there had been before . . . or perhaps that was only wishful thinking. ‘Murderer,
baby
murderer!’

‘Jesus, what a loony tune,’ Heavyset said, but he went to the rear of the truckbed, yanked one of the ropes free, and peeled back a corner of the tarpaulin. Beneath it were four pressboard barrels, each marked
WEED-GO
. ‘Organic fertilizer,’ Heavyset said, his eyes flicking from Ed to Ralph and then back to Ed again. He touched the bill of his West Side Gardeners cap. ‘I spent the day workin on a set of new flower-beds outside the Derry Psych Wing . . . where
you
could stand a short vacation, friend.’

‘Fertilizer?’ Ed asked. It was himself he seemed to be speaking to. His left hand rose slowly to his temple and began to rub there.
‘Fertilizer?’
He sounded like a man questioning some simple yet staggering scientific development.

‘Fertilizer,’ Heavyset agreed. He glanced back at Ralph and said, ‘This guy is sick in the head. You know it?’

‘He’s confused, that’s all,’ Ralph answered uneasily. He leaned over the side of the truck and rapped a barrel-top. Then he turned back to Ed. ‘Barrels of fertilizer,’ he said. ‘Okay?’

No response. Ed’s right hand rose and began to rub at his other temple. He looked like a man sinking into a terrible migraine.

‘Okay?’ Ralph repeated gently.

Ed closed his eyes for a moment, and when they opened again, Ralph observed a sheen in them he thought was probably tears. Ed’s tongue slipped out and dabbed delicately first at one corner of his mouth and then the other. He took the end of his silk scarf and wiped his forehead, and as he did, Ralph saw there were Chinese figures embroidered on it in red, just above the fringe.

‘I guess maybe –’ he began, and then broke off. His eyes widened again in that look Ralph didn’t like. ‘Babies!’ he rasped. ‘You hear me?
Babies!
’

Ralph shoved him back against his car for the third or fourth time – he’d lost count. ‘What are you talking about, Ed?’ An idea suddenly occurred to him. ‘Is it Natalie? Are you worried about Natalie?’

A small, crafty smile touched Ed’s lips. He looked past Ralph at the heavyset man. ‘Fertilizer, huh? Well, if that’s all it is, you won’t mind opening one of them, will you?’

Heavyset looked at Ralph uneasily. ‘Man needs a doctor,’ he said.

‘Maybe he does. But he was calming down, I thought . . .
could
you open one of those barrels? It might make him feel better.’

‘Yeah, sure, what the heck. In for a penny, in for a pound.’

There was another flash of lightning, another heavy blast of thunder – one that seemed to go rolling all the way across the sky this time – and a cold spackle of rain struck the back of Ralph’s sweaty neck. He glanced to his left and saw Dorrance Marstellar standing at the entrance to the picnic area, book in hand, watching the three of them anxiously.

‘It’s gonna rain a pretty bitch, looks like,’ Heavyset said, ‘and I can’t let this stuff get wet. It starts a chemical reaction. So look fast.’ He felt around between one of the barrels and the sidewall of his truck for a moment, then came up with a crowbar. ‘I must be as nutty as he is, doin this,’ he said to Ralph. ‘I mean, I was just goin along home, mindin my business. He hit
me
.’

‘Go on,’ Ralph said. ‘It’ll only take a second.’

‘Yeah,’ Heavyset replied sourly, turning and setting the flat end of the crowbar under the lid of the nearest barrel, ‘but the memories will last a lifetime.’

Another thunderclap rocked the day just then, and Heavyset did not hear what Ed Deepneau said next. Ralph did, however, and it chilled the pit of his stomach.

‘Those barrels are full of dead babies,’ Ed said. ‘You’ll see.’

Heavyset popped the lid on the end barrel, and such was the conviction in Ed’s voice that Ralph almost expected to see tangles of arms and legs and bundles of small hairless heads. Instead, he saw a mixture of fine blue crystals and brown stuff. The smell which rose from the barrel was rich and peaty, with a thin chemical undertone.

‘See? Satisfied?’ Heavyset asked, speaking directly to Ed again. ‘I ain’t Ray Joubert or that guy Dahmer after all. How ’bout that!’

The look of confusion was back on Ed’s face, and when the thunder cracked overhead again, he cringed a little. He leaned over, reached a hand toward the barrel, then looked a question at Heavyset.

The big man nodded to him, almost sympathetically, Ralph thought. ‘Sure, touch it, fine by me. But if it rains while you’re holdin a fistful, you’ll dance like John Travolta. It burns.’

Ed reached into the barrel, grabbed some of the mix, and let it run through his fingers. He shot Ralph a perplexed look (
there was an element of embarrassment in that look as well,
Ralph thought), and then sank his arm into the barrel all the way to the elbow.

‘Hey!’ Heavyset cried, startled. ‘That ain’t a box of Cracker Jack!’

For a moment the crafty grin resurfaced on Ed’s face – a look that said
I know a trick worth two of that
– and then it subsided into puzzlement again as he found nothing further down but more fertilizer. When he drew his arm out of the barrel, it was dusty and aromatic with the mix. Another flash of lightning exploded above the airport. The thunder which followed was almost deafening.

‘Get that off your skin before it rains, I’m warning you,’ Heavyset said. He reached through the Ranger’s open passenger window and produced a McDonald’s take-out sack. He rummaged in it, came out with a couple of napkins, and handed them to Ed, who began to wipe the fertilizer dust from his forearm like a man in a dream. While he did this, Heavyset replaced the lid on the barrel, tamping it into place with one large, freckled fist and taking quick glances up at the darkening sky. When Ed touched the shoulder of his white shirt, the man stiffened and pulled away, looking at Ed warily.

‘I think I owe you an apology,’ Ed said, and to Ralph his voice sounded completely clear and sane for the first time.