Praying for Sleep (19 page)

Oh, what's that on your head, Mama? What're you wearing there?

Mama...

Take off that hat, Mama, I don't like it one bit.

Fifteen years ago Michael Hrubek had been a boy both very muscular and very fat, with waddling feet and a long trunk of a neck. One day, playing in the tall grass field behind an old willow tree, he heard: "Michael! Miiiichael!" His mother walked onto the back porch of the family's trim suburban home in Westbury, Pennsylvania. "Michael, please come here." She wore a broad-brimmed red hat, beneath which her beautiful hair danced like yellow fire in the wind. Even from the distance he could see the dots of her red nails like raw cigarette bums. Her eyes were dark, obscured by the brim of the hat and by the amazing little masks that she dabbed on her eyes from the tubes of mask carrier on her makeup table. She did this, he suspected, to hide from him.

"Honey... Come here, I need you." Slowly he stood and walked to her. "I just got home. I didn't have time to stop. I want you to go by the grocery store. I need some things."

"Oh, no," the boy said tragically.

She knew he didn't want to, his mother said. But Mr. and Mrs. Klevan or the Abernathys or the Potters would be here at any minute and she needed milk and coffee. Or something. She needed it.

"No, I can't."

Yes, yes, he could. He was her little soldier. He was brave, wasn't he?

He whined, "I don't know about this. There are reasons why I can't do it."

"And mind the change. People short-change you."

"They won't let me cross the street," Michael retorted. "I don't know where it is!"

"Don't worry, honey, I'll give you the instructions," she said soothingly. "I'll write it down."

"I can't."

"Do it for me. Please. Do it quickly."

"I don't know!"

"You're twelve years old. You can do it." Her composure was steadfast.

"No, no, no..."

"All you have to do" — her mouth curved into a smile "is go by the store and get what I need. My brave little soldier boy can do that, can't he?"

But the Klevans or the Milfords or the Pilchers arrived the next minute and his mother didn't get a chance to write down the directions for him. She sent him on his way. Michael, frightened to the point of nausea, a five-dollar bill clutched in a death grip, started out on a journey to the nearby store.

An hour passed and his mother, stewing with mounting concern and anger, received a phone call from the market, Michael had wandered into the store ten minutes before and had caused an incident.

"Your son," the beleaguered manager said, "wants the store."

"He wants the store' she asked, bewildered.

"He said you told him to buy the store. I'm near to calling the police. He touched one of our checkers. Her, you know, chest. She's in a state."

"Oh, for the love of Christ."

She sped to the market.

Michael, shaking with panic, stood in the checkout line. Confronted with the apparent impossibility of doing what he'd been told to do — Go buy the store — his conscious thought dissolved and he'd belligerently grabbed the checker's fat arm and thrust the cash into her blouse pocket as she stood, hands at her side, sobbing.

"Take it!" he screamed at her, over and over. "Take the money!"

His mother collected him and when they returned home, she led him straight into the bathroom.

"I'm scared."

"Are you, darling? My little soldier boy's scared? Of what, I wonder."

"Where was I? I don't remember nothing."

"'Anything.' 'I don't remember anything.' Now get out of those filthy clothes." They were stained with sawdust and dirt; Michael had belly-flopped to the floor, seeking cover, when his mother, eyes blazing beneath her stylish hat, charged through the pneumatic door of the supermarket. "Then I want you to come out and tell my guests you're sorry for what you did. After that you'll go to bed for the day."

"Go to bed?"

"Bed," she snapped.

Okay, he said. Okay, sure.

Was he being punished or comforted? He didn't know. Michael pondered this for a few minutes then sat on the toilet, faced with a new dilemma. His mother had dumped his clothes down the laundry chute. Did she want him to apologize naked? He gazed about the room for something he might wear.

Five minutes later Michael opened the door and stepped out into the living room, wearing his mother's nightgown. "Hello," he said, trooping up to the guests. "I tried to buy the fucking store. I'm sorry." Mr. Abernathy or Monroe stopped speaking in mid-sentence. His wife raised a protective hand to her mouth to stop herself from blurting something regrettable.

But his own mother... Why, she was smiling! Michael was astonished. Though her masked eyes were cold she was smiling at him. "Well, here's our pretty little soldier boy," she whispered. "Doesn't Michael look fashionable?"

"I found it behind the door."

"Did you now?" she asked, shaking her head.

Michael smiled. Fashionable. He felt pleased with himself and repeated his apology, laughing harshly. "I tried to buy the fucking store!"

The guests, holding the cups that contained tea not coffee and lemon not milk, avoided each other's eyes. Michael's mother rose. "I've changed my mind, Michael. You look so nice why don't you go out and play?"

"Outside?" His smile faded.

"Come along. I want you outside."

"I'd feel funny going outside wearing —"

"No, Michael. Outside."

"But they might see me." He began to cry. "Somebody might see me."

"Now!" she screeched. "Get the fuck outside."

Then she escorted him by the hand, thrusting him the front door. Two of the neighborhood girls stared at him as he stood on the doorstep in the pale-blue nightgown. They smiled at first but when he began to stare back, muttering to himself, they grew uncomfortable and went inside.

Michael turned back to his own front door. He heard the lock click. He looked obliquely through the dirty glass window and saw his mother's face, turning away. Michael walked to the willow tree in the backyard and for the rest of the afternoon huddled by himself in a nest of grass similar to the one in which he sat tonight. Looking for snipers and staring at the car.

As he listened to the rustle of this grass, feeling it caress his skin as it had so long ago, Michael Hrubek remembered much of that day. He didn't, however, remember it with perfect clarity for the very reason that made it so significant in his life — it was his first break with reality, his first psychotic episode. The images of those few hours were altered by his mind and by the intervening years, and were buried beneath other memories, many of which were just as haunting and sorrowful. Tonight, moved by the smell and feel of the grass, he might have delved deeper into that event — as Dr. Richard had been encouraging him to do — but he'd grown so agitated by now that he could wait no longer. Snipers or no, he had to act. He rose and made his way to the road.

The sports car had apparently broken down earlier in the evening. The hood was up and the windows and doors were locked. A red triangular marker sat in the road near the rear fender. Hrubek wondered if its purpose was to help snipers sight on their target. He sailed it into the brush like a Frisbee.

"MG," he whispered, reading the emblem on the hood. He concluded this meant "My God." Paying no attention to the inside of the car he walked directly to the trunk. A gift! Look at this. A gift from My God! The rack was locked but he simply grabbed the mountain bicycle in both hands and pulled it free. Bits of metal and plastic from the mountings cascaded around him. He set the bicycle on the ground and caressed the tubes and leather and gears and cables. He felt a chill from the metal and enjoyed this sensation very much. He lowered his head to the handlebar and rubbed his cheek on the chrome.

He took a marker from his pocket and wrote on his forearm:
Oh, strANGE aRe the works of GOD. Thank YOU GOD for this beautlFul gIFt
. Next to these words he drew a picture of a serpent and one of an apple and wrote the name
EVE
. He licked the name and stepped back, studying his new means of transportation with an uneasy but grateful gaze.

Richard Kohler found himself in an alien world.

He was wearing a wool-blend suit, a silk tie, red-and-green Argyles and a single penny loafer — what other proof did he need, he reflected, that he was no outdoorsman?

Bending forward as far as he dared he pulled his other shoe out of a pool of soupy, methane-laced mud and wiped it on the grass beside him. He stepped back into the wet loafer and continued his journey westward.

Curiously this forest invoked in him a claustrophobia that he'd never felt anywhere else — even in his dark tiny office, where he would often spend fifteen straight hours. His pulse was high, his limbs itched from this fear of confinement and he was having trouble breathing. He also heard noises where no noises should be and his sense of direction was terrible. He was on the verge of admitting to himself that, yes, he was lost. His points of reference — trees, signposts, bushes — were vague and shifty. More often than not, as he walked toward them, they simply vanished; sometimes they turned into grotesque creatures or faces in the process.

Over his shoulder was his ruddy backpack, containing the syringe and drugs, and on his arm was a black London Fog raincoat. He was too hot to wear it and he wondered why on earth he'd brought the coat with him. The radio updates about the impending storm suggested that a helmet and armor would be better protection than gabardine.

Kohler had parked his BMW up the road, a half from here, and had made his way through a field into forest, making slow progress. His leather soles slipped the damp rocks and he'd fallen twice onto the hard ground. The second time he'd landed on his wrist, nearly spraining it. The vicious thorns of a wild rosebush hooked his leg and it took five painful minutes to free himself.

Kohler recognized, though, that he'd been lucky. The nurse who'd alerted him to the escape reported that the young man had run from the hearse in Stinson and had apparently gotten as far as Watertown.

As Kohler had sped in that direction down Route 236, he was certain that he'd sighted Michael in a clearing. The doctor raced to the turnoff, climbed from the car and searched the area. He'd called his patient's name, pleaded with him to show himself, but received no response. Then the doctor had driven off once more. But he hadn't gone far. He pulled off onto a side road and waited. Ten minutes later he believed that he'd seen the same figure hurrying on once more.

Kohler had found no sign of Michael since. Hoping he might stumble across him by chance, the psychiatrist had taken to the wilderness again, heading in the direction in which Michael seemed to be headed — west.

Where are you, Michael?

And why are you out here tonight?

Oh, I've tried so hard to look into your mind. But it's as dark as it ever was. It's as dark as the sky.

He tripped again, on a strand of wire this time, and tore his slacks on a sharp rock, gouging his thigh. He wondered if there was a danger of tetanus. This thought discouraged him — not the risk of disease but the reminder of how much basic medicine he'd forgotten. He wondered if his knowledge of the human brain compensated for the long-forgotten facts of physiology and organic chemistry he once had learned and recited so easily. Then these thoughts faded, for he found the sports car.

There was nothing remarkable about the vehicle itself. He didn't for a minute think that Michael had lifted the hood and tried to hotwire it. His patient would be far too frightened at the thought of driving a car to steal one. No, Kohler was intrigued by something else — a small object resting on the ground behind the rear bumper.

The tiny white skull ironically was the exact shade of the car itself. He stepped closer and picked it up, looking carefully at the delicate bones. A tiny fracture ran through the cheek. Trigeminal, he thought spontaneously, recalling the name of the fifth pair of cranial nerves.

Then the skull teetered on the tips of his fingers for an instant and tumbled with a soft crack onto the trunk of the car, rolling into the dust of the shoulder. Kohler remained completely still as the muzzle of the pistol slid along his skin from his temple to his ear, while a fiercely strong hand reached out and fastened itself to his shoulder.

13

Trenton Heck pointed the Walther up at the turbulent clouds and eased the ribbed hammer down. He put the safety on and slipped the gun back into his holster.

He handed the wallet back to the skinny man, whose hospital identification card and driver's license seemed on the up and up. The poor fellow wasn't quite as pale as when Heck had tapped the muzzle to his head a few minutes before.

But he wasn't any less angry.

Richard Kohler dropped to his knees and unzipped the backpack Heck had tossed onto the grass before frisking him.

"Sorry, sir," Heck said. "Couldn't tell whether you were him or not. Too dark to get a good look, with you crouched down and all."

"You come up on Michael Hrubek that way and he'll panic," Kohler snapped. "I guarantee it." He rummaged inside the pack. Whatever was so precious inside — just a couple of bottles, it looked like — didn't seem to be damaged. Heck wondered if he'd caught himself a tippler.

"And I'll tell you something else." The doctor turned, examining Heck. "Even if you'd shot him, he'd've turned around and broken your neck before he died." Kohler snapped his fingers.

Heck gave a brief laugh. "With a head wound? I don't know about that."

"There's apparently a lot you don't know about him." The doctor rezipped the pack.

Heck supposed he couldn't blame the man for being pissed off but he didn't feel too bad about the ambush. Kohler, it turned out, had been padding down the same path Hrubek must've taken earlier in the evening. In the dark, how was Heck to know the difference? True, the doctor was undoubtedly a lot punier. But then so are all suspects after they turn out not to be suspects.

"What's your interest here exactly, sir?" Heck asked.