Lisey’s Story (65 page)

And what had caused his final illness? His death certificate claimed pneumonia, and she had no problem with that. They could have put
Nibbled to death by ducks
on it and he'd have been just as dead—but she couldn't help wondering. Had his death been on a flower that he had picked up and smelled, or a bug that had slipped its sipper under his skin as the sun went down red in its house of thunder? Did he get it on a quick visit to Boo'ya Moon a week or a month before his final reading in Kentucky, or had it been waiting for decades, ticking like a clock? It might have been in a single grain of dirt that got under one fingernail while he was digging his brother's grave. Just a single bad bug that lay asleep as the years passed, finally waking up at his computer one day when a reluctant word finally came to him and he snapped his fingers in satisfaction. Maybe—terrible thought, but who knew?—she had even brought it back herself from one of her own visits, a lethal mite in a tiny dot of pollen he had kissed from the tip of her nose.

Oh shit, now she
was
crying.

She had seen a packet of unopened Kleenex in the top lefthand drawer of the desk. She took it out, opened it, removed a couple, and began to blot her eyes with them. In the other room, she heard Timothy Bottoms shout, “He was
sweepin
, you sonsabitches!” and knew that time had taken another of those ungainly crow-hops forward. There was only one more scene in the movie. Sonny goes back to the coach's wife. His middle-aged lover. Then the credits roll.

On the desk, the telephone gave a brief
ting
. Lisey knew what it meant as surely as she had known what Scott meant when he made that weak twirling gesture at the end of his life, the one that meant
everything the same
.

The phone was dead, the lines either cut or torn out. Dooley was here. The Black Prince of the Incunks had come for her.

“Amanda, come here!”

“In a minute, Lisey, the movie's almost—”

“Amanda, right now!”

She picked up the telephone, confirmed the nothing inside it, put it back down. She knew everything. It seemed to have been there all along, like the sweet taste in her mouth. The lights would be next, and if Amanda didn't come before he doused them—

But there she was, standing between the entertainment alcove and the long main room, looking suddenly afraid and old. On the VHS tape the coach's wife would soon be throwing the coffee pot at the wall, angry because her hands were too unsteady to pour. Lisey wasn't surprised to see her own hands were trembling. She picked up the .22. Amanda saw her do it and looked more frightened than ever. Like a lady who would have preferred to be in Philadelphia, all things considered. Or catatonic.
Too late, Manda
, Lisey thought.

“Lisey, is he here?”

“Yes.”

In the distance thunder rumbled, seeming to agree.

“Lisey, how do you kn—”

“Because he's cut the phone.”

“The cell—”

“Still in the car. The lights will go next.” She reached the end of the
big redwood desk—
Dumbo's Big Jumbo indeed
, she thought,
you could almost put a jet fighter down on the smucking thing
—and now it was a straight shot to where her sister was standing, maybe eight steps across the rug with the maroon smears of her own blood on it.

When she reached Amanda the lights were still on, and Lisey had a moment's doubt. Wasn't it possible, after all, that a tree-branch knocked loose by the afternoon storms had finally fallen, taking down a telephone line?

Sure, but that's not what's happening
.

She tried to give Amanda the gun. Amanda didn't want to take it. It thumped to the carpet and Lisey tensed for the explosion, which would be followed by either Amanda's scream of pain or her own as one of them took a bullet in the ankle. The gun didn't go off, just stared into the distance with its single idiot eye. As Lisey bent down to get it, she heard a thud from below, as if someone had walked into something down there and knocked it over. A cardboard box filled with mostly blank pages, say—one of a stack.

When Lisey looked up at her sister again, Amanda's hands were pressed, left over right, on the scant shelf of her bosom. Her face had gone pale; her eyes were dark pools of dismay.

“I can't hold that gun,” she whispered. “My hands . . . see?” She turned them palms out, displaying the cuts.

“Take the smucking thing,” Lisey said. “You won't have to shoot him.”

This time Amanda closed her fingers reluctantly around the Pathfinder's rubber grip. “Do you promise?”

“No,” Lisey said. “But almost.”

She peered toward the stairs leading down to the barn. It was darker at that end of the study, far more ominous, especially now that Amanda had the gun. Untrustworthy Amanda, who might do anything. Including, maybe fifty percent of the time, what you asked of her.

“What's your plan?” Amanda whispered. In the other room, Ole Hank was singing again, and Lisey knew
The Last Picture Show
's final credits were rolling.

Lisey put a finger across her lips in a
Shhh
gesture

(
now you must be still
)

and backed away from Amanda. One step, two steps, three steps, four. Now she was in the middle of the room, equidistant from Dumbo's Big Jumbo and the alcove doorway where Amanda held the .22 awkwardly with the barrel pointed at the bloodstained rug. Thunder rumbled. Country music played. From below: silence.

“I don't think he's down there,” Amanda whispered.

Lisey took another backward step toward the big red maple desk. She still felt entirely keyed up, was almost vibrating with tension, but the rational part of her had to admit that Amanda might be right. The telephone was out, but up here on the View you could count on losing your service at least twice a month, especially during or just after storms. That thump she'd heard when she bent to pick up the gun . . .
had
she heard a thump? Or had it just been her imagination?

“I don't think
anyone's
down th—” Amanda began, and that was when the lights went out.

For a few seconds—endless ones—Lisey could see nothing, and damned herself for not bringing the flashlight from the car. It would have been so
easy
. It was all she could do to stay where she was, and she had to keep Amanda where
she
was.

“Manda, don't move! Stand still until I tell you!”

“Where is he, Lisey?” Amanda was starting to cry.
“Where is he?”

“Why, right here, Missy,” Jim Dooley said easily from the pitch blackness where the stairs were. “And I can see you both with these goggles I got on. You look a smidge green, but I can see you fine.”

“He can't, he's lying,” Lisey said, but she felt a sinking in her middle. She hadn't counted on him having some sort of night-vision equipment.

“Oh, Missus—if I'm lyin, I'm dyin.” The voice was still coming from the stairhead, and now Lisey began to see a dim figure there. She couldn't see his paper sack of horrors, but oh Jesus she could hear it crackling. “I see you well enough to know it's Miss Tall-N-Scrawny with
the peashooter. I want you to drop that gun on the floor, Missy Tall. Right now.” His voice sharpened and cracked like the end of a whip loaded with shot. “Mind me, now!
Drop hit!
”

It was full dark out now, and if there was a moon it either hadn't risen or was occluded, but enough ambient light came through the skylights to show Lisey that Amanda was lowering the gun. Not dropping it yet, but lowering it. Lisey would have given anything to have been holding it herself, but—

But I need both hands free. So when the time comes I can grab you, you sonofabitch
.

“No, Amanda, hold onto it. I don't think you'll have to shoot him. That's not the plan.”

“Drop it, Missy,
that's
the plan.”

Lisey said, “He comes in here where he doesn't belong, he calls you mean names, then tells you to drop the gun?
Your own gun?
”

The barely-there phantom that was Lisey's sister raised the Pathfinder again. Amanda didn't point it at the black cutout hovering in the shadows by the stairs, only held it with the muzzle pointing toward the ceiling, but she
was
still holding it. And her back had straightened.

“I tole you
drop
hit!” the dim figure nearly snarled, but something in Dooley's voice told Lisey he knew that battle was lost. His damned bag rattled.

“No!” Amanda shouted. “I won't! You . . . you get on out of here! Get out and leave my sister alone!”

“He won't,” Lisey said before the shadow at the head of the stairs could reply. “He won't because he's crazy.”

“You want to watch out for talk like that,” Dooley said. “You seem to be forgettin I can see you like you 'us on a stage.”

“But you
are
crazy. Just as crazy as the kid who shot my husband in Nashville. Gerd Allen Cole. Do you know about him? Sure you do, you know
everything
about Scott. We used to laugh about guys like you, Jimmy—”

“That's enough now, Missus—”

“We called you Deep Space Cowboys. Cole was one and you're another. Slyer and meaner—because you're older—but not much different.
A Deep Space Cowboy is a Deep Space Cowboy. You
toooour
the Milky Smuckin Way.”

“You want to
stop
that talk,” Dooley said. He was snarling again, and this time, Lisey thought, not just for effect. “I'm here on
bi'ness
.” The paper bag rattled and now she could see the shadow move. The stairs were maybe fifty feet away from the desk and in the darkest part of the long main room. But Dooley was moving toward her as if her words were reeling him in and now her eyes were fully adapted to the gloom. Another few steps and his fancy mail-order goggles would make no difference. They would be on equal footing. Visually, at least.

“Why should I? It's true.” And it was. Suddenly she knew everything she needed to know about Jim Dooley, alias Zack McCool, alias the Black Prince of the Incunks. The truth was in her mouth, like that sweet taste. It
was
that sweet taste.

“Don't provoke him, Lisey,” Amanda said in a terrified voice.

“He provokes himself. All the provocation he needs comes right out of the overheated warp-drive inside his own head. Just like Cole.”

“I ain't
nuthin
like him!” Dooley shouted.

Brilliant knowledge in every nerve-ending.
Exploding
in every nerve-ending. Dooley might have learned about Cole while reading up on his literary hero, but Lisey knew this wasn't so. And it all made such perfect, divine sense.

“You were never in Brushy Mountain. That was just a tale you told Woodbody. Barstool talk. But you were locked up, all right. That much was true. You were in the looneybin. You were in the looneybin with Cole.”

“Shut up, Missus! You listen-a me and shut up right
now!
”

“Lisey,
stop!
” Amanda cried.

She paid no attention to either of them. “Did you two discuss your favorite Scott Landon books . . . when Cole was medicated enough to talk rationally, that is? Bet you did. He liked
Empty Devils
best, right? Sure. And you liked
The Coaster's Daughter
. Just a couple of Deep Space Cowboys talking books while they got a few repairs in their smucking guidance systems—”

“That's
enough
, I said!” Swimming out of the gloom. Swimming
out of it like a diver coming up from black water into the green shallows, goggles and all. Of course divers didn't hold paper bags in front of their chests as if to shield their hearts from the blows of cruel widows who knew too much. “I ain't goan warn you again—”

Lisey took no notice. She didn't know if Amanda was still holding the gun and no longer cared. She was delirious. “Did you and Cole talk about Scott's books in group therapy? Sure you did. About the father stuff. And then, after they let you out, there was Woodsmucky, just like a Daddy in a Scott Landon book. One of the
good
Daddies. After they let you out of the nutbarn. After they let you out of the
scream factory
. After they let you out of the
laughing academy
, as the saying i—”

With a shriek, Dooley dropped his paper sack (it clanked) and launched himself at Lisey. She had time to think,
Yes. This is why I needed my hands free
.

Amanda also shrieked, hers overlapping his. Of the three of them only Lisey was calm, because only Lisey knew precisely what she was doing . . . if not precisely why. She made no effort to run. She opened her arms to Jim Dooley and caught him like a fever.

He would have knocked her to the floor and landed on top of her—Lisey had no doubt this was his intention—if not for the desk. She let his weight carry her back, smelling the sweat in his hair and on his skin. She also felt the curve of the goggles digging into her temple and heard a low, rapid clicking sound just below her left ear.

That's his teeth
, she thought.
That's his teeth, trying for my neck
.

Her butt smacked against the long side of Dumbo's Big Jumbo. Amanda screamed again. There was a loud report and a brief brilliant flash of light.

“Leave her alone, motherfucker!”

Big talk but she fired into the ceiling
, Lisey thought, and tightened her locked hands behind Dooley's neck as he bent her backward like a dance-partner at the end of a particularly amorous tango. She could smell gunsmoke,
her ears were ringing, and she could feel his cock, heavy and almost fully erect.