Ride the Lightning (22 page)

She sighed, as if for the first time in hours she was finally relaxing. He held her tightly and she dug her chin sharply into his chest. Then a sudden looseness ran through her body as tension at last flowed from her.

Her immense weariness was contagious. Nudger realized he probably couldn’t climb out of the comfortable bed even if he mustered all his willpower. He wasn’t sure if that was because he was still tired from mental strain, or from not enough or too much sleep, or if he wanted to stay there as long as possible and clutch the fragile, bony form of Candy Ann to him. It was as if he could absorb her pain, and she his.

She seemed to drift into sleep again almost immediately.

It was past midnight before Nudger slept again, but he was content lying quietly awake until then.

XXVI
I

udger left Candy Ann asleep the next morning, making his way out of the trailer silently and driv
ing home over empty early-Sunday streets. He’d realized what might happen if he stayed with her that day. And there was something else, something nibbling at the edges of his consciousness. It was more than the fact that her blind optimism had affected him, made him believe in life over death despite pronouncements of doom by the state and by Curtis Colt’s own lawyer, and then left him saddened and disappointed. There was a frayed loose end somewhere, occasionally tickling the back of Nudger’s neck.

After showering and changing clothes at his apartment, he read the account of Colt’s execution in the morning
Post-Dispatch
. Colt reportedly had rejected the presence of a clergyman and had walked calmly to the execution chamber. He had been quiet and composed until just before the switch was to be thrown, then he’d panicked and struggled. But only for an instant. The high voltage had grabbed him, distorted his struggles into grotesque contortions. Three powerful surges. Flesh had burned, sparks had flown, smoke had
risen. Witnesses had turned away. The
Post
had an editorial about the execution on the op-ed page. They hadn’t liked it, didn’t want it to happen again. Good for them. Too late for Curtis Colt, who had gone to meet his Maker fortified with a last meal of White Castle hamburgers and Pepsi.

Nudger turned to the sports page and found that the winning streak had also expired: the Cardinals had finally lost a ball game. “Braves Bury Cards 10-0,” the headline read. There was no joy anywhere in the paper today.

At eleven o’clock, Nudger phoned Candy Ann. She’d been awake about an hour, she said, and wondered where he was. She didn’t ask him why he’d left. She knew why. Her voice was thick from too much sleep and too much grief, but she seemed composed now and resigned to the fact that Curtis was gone. She was young, Siberling had said. Stronger than Nudger thought. She’d recover. Maybe Siber
ling knew about such things. Nudger hoped so.

“Send me your bill, Mr. Nudger,” she said, all business again. “I’ll pay it somehow. Maybe not right away, but someday. I promise you that.”

Nudger thought about the cramped trailer and her nearminimum-wage job at the Right Steer. Then he thought about her hill-country pride. “I’ll mail it,” he said. “But there won’t be a due date on it. I won’t worry about it and I don’t want you to.”

She was silent for a while before speaking. “I do thank you, Mr. Nudger.” There was a weary finality in the way she said it. She’d gone up against the world for love and lost, and was settling into resignation.

Nudger told her to call him if she needed any more help of any kind, then hung up. An emotion he couldn’t identify was lodged in his throat. He swallowed. That helped, but not much.

He sat for a long time staring at the phone.

It might be a good idea to call Harold Benedict tomorrow morning, he thought, find out if there was any work available. Life went on. So did expenses. Eileen would be calling. That was a sure bet. So would Union Electric and his landlord and the phone company. Everyone could form a line.

Nudger decided not to worry about that. Benedict would have something. And Nudger was still due to be paid for the Calvin Smith photographs. Anyway, it might be weeks before a steady diet of Danny’s coffee and doughnuts could prove fatal. There was enough of that most precious commodity in this world, time. What the old woman in the liquor store and what Curtis Colt had run out of. Time. What whittled away at flesh and empires. What hurt and healed and always won its dark victory.

What Nudger had too much of today.

Monday morning a copy of the latest
St. Louis Voyeur
was stuffed into Nudger’s mailbox in the vestibule of his apartment building. He wasn’t a subscriber, so with a certain dread he withdrew the thin weekly newspaper from the tarnished brass box and unfolded it.

Though he was somewhat prepared, it was still a shock. The
Voyeur
hadn’t given up on Candy Ann, hadn’t the decency to allow her some breathing space. There was a front-page photo layout of the entire Curtis Colt affair, including shots of Colt being arrested, a long view of Olson’s Liquor Emporium, Colt being led to his execution, and a candid close-up of an apparently sobbing Candy Ann above the caption “Wages of Lover’s Sin.”

The last photograph, “Solace After Heartbreak,” was of Nudger stealthily stepping outside into the brightening morning and closing Candy Ann’s trailer door behind him. His face was turned three-quarters toward the camera, his features highlighted by the rising sun. The shot was a little fuzzy because of the long lens the photographer had used, but there was no doubt as to the identity of the man in the photo. There was what appeared to be an expression of guilt on his face, though Nudger knew it was really the result of him squinting in the sudden morning light.

He felt embarrassed, then angry. Then he told himself nobody read the rag of a paper anyway.

But he knew better. People in his line of work read the
Voyeur
. So did some of the people who might hire him. Even people who couldn’t read bought the
Voyeur
. The photograph would be misunderstood and bad for business.

But then, business was plenty bad already.

The hell with it. Nudger carried the paper upstairs, wadded it tightly, and dropped it into the wastebasket in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. It made a solid, satisfying sound hitting the rest of the trash.

Then he stood for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck and turning in a slow circle. The sun was brilliant on the window over the sink, casting a weblike shadow of the glass’s corner crack onto the bright counter. A large wasp, reveling in the morning heat, buzzed exploringly against the pane from frame to frame, found no opening, then zigzagged away. Nudger stopped turning and stood still and watched it, until the mere speck that it had become blended with the leaves of a tree and could no longer be discerned. He wondered how long the wasp would live if it didn’t fall victim to a bird or exterminator. It struck him as tragic that any creature should miss the opportunity to live out its allotted time. Cruel nature, crueler mankind.

He knew he couldn’t stay away. He’d known it since yesterday.

Before he had breakfast, before he called Harold Benedict or left to look at his office mail or checked his answering machine, he put on his blue sport coat and a dark tie and drove to Curtis Colt’s funeral.

XXVII
I

t was a state-funded affair, with only a graveside cere
mony at a paupers’ cemetery in south St. Louis. Nudger had noticed the date and time of burial while reading newspaper accounts of Colt’s execution, and they had lodged, cold and nagging, in his mind.

There were about a dozen people gathered around the grave, including the state-appointed clergyman. Most of them were pallbearers, also paid by the state. Lester was there, looking more bereaved then anyone, wearing an oversized winter-wool sport jacket over a T-shirt. There was an older couple who appeared bored with the ceremony. Welborne Colt hadn’t attended. He and his brother had reached the final parting still separated by antagonism and distance.

Candy Ann was standing about a hundred feet away from the clergyman, off to the side of the gleaming wood casket. Her straw-colored hair glowed with the morning. In the wash of bright sunlight, she looked like a child playing a dress-up in black.

When she saw Nudger, she averted her eyes. He was sure
she’d gotten her complimentary copy of the
Voyeur
, as he had. A great thing to wake up to on the day of your fiancé’s funeral.

The preacher, who himself resembled a cadaver and was of indeterminate religion, adjusted his dark suit on his thin frame and made a vague crosslike motion with his right hand. Nudger noticed several people, including a man with a tripod-mounted camera, stationed on the grave-strewn hill above Curtis’ coffin. The media would stop only after Colt was buried, and maybe not even then. Certain crimes, and their aftermaths, caught and held the public’s attention. Nudger knew a telephoto lens was probably trained in close-up on Candy Ann now as the photographer, possibly from the
Voyeur
, hoped for an expression of grief, a tear. If he really got lucky, she’d faint.

The clergyman rambled on about life and death, gestic
ulating grandly, playing for the press. Where Nudger was standing, the man’s voice came across merely as a monotonous drone. Everyone around the grave was shifting their weight from leg to leg, perspiring heavily, wishing the clergyman would finish sending Colt on his way. Only Candy Ann stood perfectly still, though, like Nudger, she was probably too far away to understand what the preacher was saying.

A blue jay in a nearby pin oak began chattering angrily, noisily, upstaging the preacher, who turned briefly and glared at it. The jay cocked its head to the side, as if to get a better angle of vision, and stared back insolently with a bright eye, a look it probably usually reserved for worms. The clergyman made up his mind to ignore the winged interloper. The jay hopped down onto a lower branch, among sunlit leaves, and really started raising hell. That seemed to hurry the gaunt man of the cloth along.

Finally the service was over. The jay stopped its clacking as if in relief. Candy Ann walked to the single floral spray by the grave, plucked a blossom, and laid it gently on the lid of the casket. The clergyman rested a bony hand on her shoulder, but she ignored him. He was part of Curtis’ imposed untimely death and could in no way comfort her.

After standing motionless for a few minutes, she turned and walked away. Nudger saw the photographer with the tripod and long lens straighten up from his camera and say something to the man next to him. Everyone began drifting toward the parked cars.

Something tugged at Nudger’s arm. He turned to see Lester Colt beside him, red-eyed and stricken-looking. His face was puffier than usual, and he reeked of cheap, per-fumy cologne or shaving lotion mingled with perspiration.

“I figure you did your best, Mr. Nudger,” he said. He sniffled. “Want you to know there ain’t no hard feelings ’cause you couldn’t save Curtis.”

Nudger nodded, feeling uncomfortable. “We did what we could,” he said. “I’m sorry, Lester.” Over Lester’s shoulder he saw Candy Ann get into a waiting County cab, a flash of pale leg against the black of her dress.

“Welborne shoulda been here, don’t you think?”

“I think so,” Nudger said. He didn’t feel like giving Welborne a break. “It was the least he could have done. His own brother.” Nudger meant it.

The taxi carrying Candy Ann wound along the cemetery’s narrow gravel road, flashing through patches of deep shade. It paused at tall black iron gates hinged open on stone pillars, then turned out into the traffic. Nudger could see Candy Ann’s wide black hat through the cab’s rear window. She didn’t look back.

“She did okay by Curtis after all,” Lester said, watching with Nudger as the cab disappeared beyond the trees. He smiled, looked over at the grave, and sniffled again.

“How did you get here?” Nudger asked. There were no more parked cars now other than his VW and a van belonging to one of the media people.