Ride the Lightning (21 page)

He stood slouching in front of the stove and worried the eggs with a wood-handled spatula. The morning had started badly and wasn’t getting better.

At ten minutes after nine, a newscaster somberly announced that Curtis Colt had been put to death in the electric chair. It had taken three minutes and several surges of electricity to kill him. He’d offered no last words before two thousand volts had turned him from something into nothing.

Immediately after the announcement, a Jefferson City interview with Governor Scalla was played. The governor assured the voters that the electric chair could be made to do its work faster and more humanely, and that now that this unpleasant but necessary task had been done, potential murderers would realize the seriousness of what they might be considering and society could sleep easier in its collective bed. Justice had been served, Scalla said. Only by taking life could we emphasize the value of life.

Nudger switched off the radio.

He went ahead and ate his eggs, but he skipped the toast.

XXV
I

iberling was wrong. Candy Ann was in no condition to take a taxi home from the Right Steer. She had fainted when told of Curtis Colt’s execution, and when she’d been revived, through her stammering and weeping she’d given the restaurant manager Nudger’s number to call.

The aging White Knight to the rescue. By ten o’clock, Nudger had parked the VW in front of the Right Steer and was on his way inside to get Candy Ann.

The manager met Nudger just inside the door. He was wearing pointy-toed boots, jeans, and a fringed vinyl vest today. Everything but spurs and six-guns. He said his name was Mathewson and led Nudger through the dining area, then behind where the steaks were being broiled on an open grill, to a small office next to the kitchen.

Candy Ann was lying on a brown vinyl sofa that matched exactly the color of Mathewson’s vest, as if mate
rial had been left over and put to practical use. She was calm now, but she’d been crying hard. Her eyes were reddened and swollen almost closed. They were the kind of eyes that made your own water when you looked at them.

When she saw Nudger, she reached inside herself for a smile. She found a faint one that would have to do. “Mr. Nudger . . .”

Mathewson said, “You can take her out the side door.” He sounded impatient, worn down by Candy Ann and her trauma. This was a place of business, for chrissakes! The lunch crowd was already on his mental horizon; he could see their dust as they stampeded toward the swinging doors, hell-bent for the Buckeroo Special. “Take as long off as you need, Candy Ann,” he added. “Your job will be here for you.” Well, not such a bad guy after all.

Nudger thanked Mathewson for calling him, then led Candy Ann by the arm into the hot parking lot. Asphalt stuck to their soles. The sun was like a velvet weight press
ing down.

“You want to go home?” he asked.

She nodded, then kept her head bowed. She’d never looked so frail; she seemed to have lost twenty pounds overnight.

Nudger held the car door open for her; she was, especially now, the kind of woman who aroused male protective impulses and was naturally treated as a lady.

He walked around and got in behind the wheel, then edged the Volkswagen out onto Watson Road and drove toward Placid Grove Trailer Park.

This threatened to be the hottest day of the summer, and the inside of the trailer was stifling. As soon as they’d entered, Nudger switched on the air conditioner.

Candy Ann slumped in the small chair in the living room and used her palms to wipe perspiration from her face. The sweat stung her eyes, and that got her crying again. She didn’t seem able to stop. It was the kind of deep, racking sobbing that perpetuated itself, that could lead to complete

physical and mental exhaustion.

“Do you have a regular doctor?” Nudger asked.

She shook her head. “Never needed one much. I’ve been down to People’s Medical Clinic a few times, for female things. They assigned me to a Dr. Ochebow, a foreigner.”

Nudger phoned the clinic, talked to Dr. Ochebow, and explained the situation. Ochebow had a high voice and what sounded like an Indian accent. He was difficult to understand, but he seemed sympathetic and competent. He said he’d phone in a prescription for a sedative.

“Which of the neighbors do you get along with best?” Nudger asked, after he’d hung up.

Candy Ann thought about that. “Wanda Scathers, in the trailer behind this one.” She stopped talking for a moment to ride out a sobbing jag. “The one with the brown awnings.”

Nudger told Candy Ann he’d be back soon, then went outside and stepped over a twisted wire fence between the two trailers. A small grayish dog scrambled out from under the Scathers’ trailer and started yapping at him as if it had never laid eyes on anything quite so contemptible and threatening. He noticed that its ears were laid back flat against its head, so it was scared and probably bluffing. Or so he told himself as he advanced and the dog retreated, matching him precisely step for step, as if they were performing an intricate Latin dance maneuver Nudger vaguely remembered from the movies.

“Stop it, Buffy! Right now!” the woman in the trailer’s open back door shouted.

Magic voice, magic words. Buffy abruptly calmed down. He turned up his pinkish nose at Nudger, blinked several times, then retreated back beneath the trailer where it was cooler, as if to say all this wasn’t worth his trouble anyway. Dogs could be fickle that way, not unlike people.

Nudger walked over to the woman, who had waddled down the metal steps and was standing in the shade of the back-door awning. She was in her forties, and hadn’t been pretty even twenty years and fifty pounds ago. Her hair was thin and scraggly, and she was wearing bright pink slacks and a clashing green blouse with dark stains down the front. In her right hand was a paint-smeared screwdriver long and thick enough to use as a crowbar.

She looked at Nudger, then glanced down for a second at the screwdriver in her hand. “Been fixin’ things,” she explained, not smiling.

Nudger tried a smile and introduced himself. “You’re a friend of Candy Ann Adams, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “We know each other. Talked over the fence from time to time.”

“She’s suffered a shock,” Nudger said. “A friend of hers was killed and she’s pretty upset.”

Wanda appeared surprised. Apparently she didn’t read the newspapers or watch what passed for news on TV. She hadn’t known about Curtis’ execution and his relationship with Candy Ann. And, obviously, Candy Ann hadn’t considered her enough of a friend to confide in.

“Was this person killed in some kinda accident?” she asked.

“You could say that. And you could help Candy Ann by driving over to Walgreen’s Drugstore on Watson and picking up a prescription her doctor phoned in.”

“How come you ain’t going?”

“I think I need to stay with her, the way she is.”

Wanda still wasn’t sure about Nudger, the ominous stranger. What might he be up to? She peered around him, down along the side of Candy Ann’s trailer. “Can’t tell, the past several months, whether she’s home or not,” she said.

“She’s home,” Nudger said. “And I’m worried about her and telling you the truth. You want to phone her to check?”

But the offer itself was enough. “I guess not.” She contorted an arm to reach behind her and scratch between her shoulder blades with the screwdriver. “I’d like to help. Who knows, I might need the same sorta help myself someday. What kinda prescription?”

“Just a sedative to help her sleep off some of her grief. Nothing strong.” He looked into Wanda’s small brown eyes, imagining her thoughts. Prescription medicine. Drugs. He couldn’t blame her for being skeptical. “Everything’s legal,” he said. “I promise. Nothing crossed but my heart.”

“I didn’t mean to act like I didn’t trust you.”

“That’s okay,” Nudger said. “You should be careful.”

“That’s the truth, way people are these days.”

A thin girl about ten, with Wanda’s tiny, vacuous eyes, came to the door. She stood with one hand lightly touching the doorjamb, as if to maintain contact with reality.

Wanda noticed her. “Can you watch your baby sister for a while, Lou Jane? I gotta run an errand.”

The girl nodded silently.

Wanda turned back to Nudger, waiting. A large fly touched down on her shoulder. She absently brushed it away and it buzzed into the trailer.

Nudger gave her a ten-dollar bill. “The prescription’s in Candy Ann’s name, phoned in by Dr. Ochebow from the People’s Clinic.”

Wanda nodded, pocketed the money, then tossed the screwdriver past Lou Jane onto the trailer floor. Nudger heard it bounce and then roll into the dimness behind the child.

“Back as soon as I can, Lou Jane,” Wanda said. “You keep your hands outa them potato chips.” She walked heavily around toward the front of the trailer.

Nudger heard a car start after three long, grinding attempts, then saw her drive down Tranquillity Lane in a dented blue Datsun.

He looked at Lou Jane and smiled. Deadpan, she quietly closed the door on him. Such a way he had with women.

He climbed back over the wire fence, knocking it flat and then stooping to bend it erect again. Buffy took that as a signal for mild aggression and emitted a few halfhearted growls from the shadows beneath the trailer. But it was a hot, hot day, and one burst of ferociousness by one small dog was enough.

The pills took effect less than an hour after Candy Ann had swallowed the first one. She wanted to sleep where she was sitting in the living room chair, but Nudger forced her to stand and helped her into the tiny bedroom. He was surprised to see that most of the room was taken up by a water bed. He guided her down onto the bed, then timed his actions with the waves so he could remove her sensible waitress shoes.

“Lightnin’,” she muttered. “Hit the old tree behind the house. Left it all black and charred. Lordy! Don’t let it get me, hear?
Hear
?”

“I hear,” Nudger said. He patted her forehead and waited for her to be quiet, to sleep.

When she was breathing evenly, he left her alone.

He didn’t think he should leave the trailer. He had nowhere important to go, anyway. He sat on the sofa in the living room and read dog-eared back issues of
People
magazine while Candy Ann slept.

After learning a lot about Johnny Carson’s diet, Debra Winger’s taste in men, Walter Cronkite’s boat, and a history of show-business deals struck in hot tubs, Nudger fell asleep himself.

Biff Archway was stripped to the waist, dressed like a pirate and struggling with the spoked wheel. Debra Winger was lounging on the deck in a bikini, pointing languidly toward land. Nudger was being interviewed for
People
by Walter Cronkite on Cronkite’s boat.

“So they executed him,” Nudger was saying. “Zap! Just like that. Well, not just like that. It took a little longer than they expected. In fact, a lot longer. His flesh sizzled like bacon.”

Johnny Carson peered down from the bridge and grinned. “How dead
is
he?” he asked.

Cronkite laughed like an amiable grandfather. Archway winked at Debra Winger, who smiled. Lightning danced on the horizon.

“Thar she blows!” Archway yelled lustily. He waved his cutlass.

A woman’s voice, not Debra Winger’s, said, “Mr. Nudger?”

The trailer was dim. Candy Ann was standing over Nudger. Or was he dreaming?

“Why does that bastard get to steer the boat?” he asked.

“Mr. Nudger, wake up.” She was shaking his shoulder.

His body jerked and he sat up on the sofa. He looked around, remembering. The boat was gone. So was the ocean.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Better,” Candy Ann said. “You been dreaming?”

“I sure hope so.” Nudger wiped at his eyes and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. His brain was still fogged from sleep. His side was aching from his uncomfortable position on the sofa. “What time is it?”

“Almost nine-thirty,” she said. “We both slept for a long spell.”

“I’m still tired,” Nudger mumbled, and struggled to his feet. A dull pain crept up his right side, reached his armpit, then retreated halfway. It leveled off and was bearable.

“Will you stay?” Candy Ann asked. “Please!”

“Stay?”

“I need someone with me tonight. All night.” She’d moved closer and he smelled gin on her breath.

“You’ve been drinking.”

“Not much.”

“You can’t mix booze with those pills. Dangerous.”

“I ain’t had another pill.” She was walking now, into the bedroom, glancing back at him.

Nudger followed.

He stood next to her by the bed, thinking about Curtis Colt, not yet buried. He was repulsed by what he wanted so desperately to do. Life as opposed to death.

Candy Ann knew what was in his mind, sensed his desire and his revulsion.

“Not sex,” she said hastily. “I need someone to hold me, is all. Tonight I’m alone more than I ever been.”

Her words released him. He nodded and lay down with her on the water bed, feeling the mattress undulate as she moved up against him, scooting on her elbows and knees.