Spree (34 page)

“Can’t see anything,” he said, looking in. “Give me the flashlight.”

Jon handed it to him. Lyle was just standing there, glum, obedient.

Nolan shot the light down there and said, “I think I see her.”

He moved back off the planks. On his hands and knees at the place where the snowy earth met the planks, he started tearing the rotten boards away.

“Help me clear these goddamn things out,” Nolan said, and Jon slipped the ring of rope around his shoulder and helped. The wood was so old, so weathered, so decaying, it almost crumbled in their hands.

“You help, too,” Nolan demanded of Lyle, and Lyle did. He got on hands and knees and tore at the wood. Just one of the guys.

Then the opening of the old well was exposed. It was about four foot in diameter. It was quite deep; with the sun as low in the sky as it was, there was no hope of seeing down there without a flashlight. Nolan shined his down.

“I see her,” he said, leaning in one side.

“I do too,” Jon said, leaning in opposite him.

She was down there all right; on her back, her head to one side. She was in a lavender outfit. That was all they could make out.

“How the hell deep is this thing?” Jon asked.

“Probably thirty feet,” Nolan said. His voice was quavering.

Jon looked at Nolan; a single tear streaked the man’s left cheek. Nolan looked at Jon and wiped away the tear, leaving some dirt from a hand that had been tearing away rotten planks. It was a moment neither would ever forget. Or mention.

Now Nolan stood and looked to Lyle. Nolan started to smile; it was an awful smile. He walked over to the boy and gripped him with one hand by the expensive leather coat and said, “You killed her, you little cocksucker.”

He shook his head side to side. “No, she fell.”

“Running from
you
. Why don’t you run from me, now?” And he got out the Colt.

“That’s Pa’s gun,” Lyle said, stupidly, recognizing it.

“Nolan,” Jon said. He was on his knees, leaning over the well, using the flashlight. “I think I saw her move.”

Nolan stuck the gun back in his waistband and bent down and took the flashlight and shined it down there.

“Sherry!” he called.

His voice echoed down the well, the beam of the flashlight touching her body. Her motionless body.

“Sherry!”

Nolan’s voice reverberated off the brick walls of the old well.

Nothing.

“Sherry!”

And thirty feet down, something—someone—stirred.

“Goddamn,” he said, a disbeliever in the presence of a saint, “she
did
move.”

He stood up. “Give me that rope.”

Jon did.

Nolan looped one end of it around the nearest sturdy tree, knotted it firmly; then, he looped the other end of it around his waist.

“You’re going down there?” Jon asked.

Nolan didn’t bother answering.

“I don’t know if you’ve got enough rope,” Jon said.

“I always allow myself just enough rope,” Nolan said. He walked to the edge of the well.

“This is a hand-dug well,” he said. “They laid these bricks as they went. Look—you see? There’s plenty of lip on most of those bricks, to cling to. That should allow me to pretty much climb down the side.”

Jon was shaking his head doubtfully. “It’s an old fucker. Some of those bricks’ll give.”

“That’s why you’re going to have to brace me.”

“No problem,” Jon said. He wasn’t worried: he’d been into bodybuilding since he was eight years old and clipped a Charles Atlas coupon off the back cover of a Superman comic book.

Jon dug his feet in and gripped the rope with his gloved hands, as Nolan eased himself down into the well, and Jon put his back into it, pulling away as Nolan went down.

As they’d thought, a brick gave every now and then, and threw them a scare, and strained some of Jon’s muscles, back muscles particularly, but about five minutes later, Nolan was down there. Kneeling beside her. Cradling her in his arms.

Jon called down: “How is she?”

Nolan shouted up: “Breathing!”

That was a start.

Then Jon could hear a voice; not Nolan’s: hers.

Soft, so soft he could barely hear her, and he couldn’t make it out at all. But she was saying something to Nolan.

Then he understood a word; her voice had managed to be loud enough to echo faintly up the well: “Nolan!”

And they were embracing down there.

“You want me to come back later?” Jon called down.

Nolan didn’t respond.

He and Sherry were standing now. He was helping her, but she was standing, too. So nothing major was broken. Good. They both stood and embraced and then Nolan seemed to have his hands on her shoulders, looking right at her, telling her something.

“I’m coming back up!” Nolan shouted.

And Jon braced the rope, pulled as Nolan climbed the bricks. The trip up took a little longer, but there were no slips, no scares. Jon pulled him up over the edge of the well, and Nolan, a little winded, sat there and smiled.

“There’s a soft bed of sand and leaves down there,” he said. “She landed on her back, her weight evenly distributed. Nothing broken, looks like.”

“That’s great.”

“That’s lucky. She hit her head pretty bad, though. On the way down, probably. Concussion, I think. She’s cold, but not frostbitten, I don’t think. She was better off down there than out on this snowy ground. She was away from the elements.”

“What do we do now?”

Nolan frowned. “Where’s Lyle?”

“Huh?”

Jon looked around. No Lyle.

“Oh. Shit. I sort of forgot about him.”

Surprisingly, all Nolan did was shrug. “Well, we’ll find him. He’s not going anywhere. I got the keys to his Camaro.”

Jon shrugged back at him. “I got your Trans Am keys. Think he’s dangerous?”

“Is he going to go find a gun and come after us? No. He’s nothing, without his ‘pa.’ He’s just a bug. He’ll get stepped on sooner or later.”

“What about Sherry?”

Nolan untied the rope from around his waist, then tossed it gently into the well like a fisherman casting his line. “I told her to tie it around her waist,” he said. “We’re going to haul her out.”

And they did. Sherry didn’t try climbing the bricks, but she held on to the rope firmly and, with both men pulling, they had her out of the ground and back among the living in a matter of minutes.

Her face was smudged and bruised, her clothes torn and dirty, the socks on her feet shredded and caked with blood, but Jon didn’t remember ever seeing a more beautiful woman.

She didn’t say anything; she just hugged Nolan and wept into his chest.

Then pulled away and looked at Nolan and said weakly, but wryly, “I suppose you think I’m a sissy, crying like this.”

Nolan glanced at Jon, who just shrugged.

Then Nolan, noting her lack of shoes, lifted her in his arms and carried her out of the forest, like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold.

23

LYLE PULLED
off the main drag onto the asphalt, and for the first time today, he smiled. He was close to home.

Then the smile went away, as he remembered there wouldn’t be nobody there. Pa was dead. Cindy Lou took off someplace. And it was just him, now.

Just him.

And he couldn’t stay long at home, no. He knew that murderer who killed Pa would come after him. Maybe he should go after them himself —Nolan and that curly-haired kid, he was partly responsible, too. Maybe Lyle should find a gun and go kill them both.

But he wasn’t sure. There was no one to ask about it.

Lyle had made about all the decisions in one day he was capable of. He felt good about that; he felt good about how he got away from Nolan and the kid. They’d been busy trying to get that girl out of that well. It occurred to Lyle, in an insight that came as close to irony as he was capable, that his fucking up and not killing the girl had turned out to be something good—without her still being alive, those two wouldn’t have got distracted, and he couldn’t have made a quiet break for it.

He’d outsmarted them, and he nodded to himself, flushed with self-satisfaction, as he drove, his mouth a tight smug line as he pondered all the people in his life who’d told him he was stupid, including Pa sometimes, and how he’d pulled one over on that supposedly real smart Nolan.

Nolan didn’t know Lyle had a little magnetic spare-key box tucked under the Camaro. Lyle had run across the road to the car and reached under for the key and there it was: right where Pa had had him put it—after Lyle locked his keys in the car half a dozen times or so, and Pa got tired of getting calls to come drive out in the truck to wherever and use the shim to unlock the car door.

First Lyle went to the Holiday Inn, to pick up Cindy Lou, only a note was waiting, for Pa and him. It said: “Good-bye, Daddy. Good-bye, Lyle. I have went to find a new life. Please don’t come looking. I will try and call Christmas. Love and kisses, Cindy Lou Comfort.” She had real good handwriting.

He lit out of there. Part of him wanted to crawl in that motel bed and sleep forever and a day; but he knew Nolan and the kid would be coming after him. He threw all his clothes and things and Pa’s too in the Camaro trunk and took off.

When he went by the Brady Eighty mall, he said, “So long, Pa.”

Then he caught Interstate 80 west, and kept the speed at fifty-five. He wanted to go faster, but Pa said never break little laws when you’re on your way home from breaking a big one. Even though the mall haul, as Pa liked to call it, sort of was a bust, Lyle supposed that rule still applied.

He was headed for home. He knew that might be a mistake—Nolan maybe could find out where the Comforts lived—but Lyle just had to go there. All his things were there. All of his clothes, except the few he had with him; all his records and tapes. He’d gather his things and take off somewhere. Hide or something. He supposed he’d have to leave the big-screen TV behind.

A little after eight, the morning still young, he stopped at the Howard Johnson’s near Iowa City and ate some breakfast, eggs and bacon and toast and juice. He was real hungry, but afterward, waiting for the girl to bring him his ticket, it hit him all of a sudden. Pa was dead. Pa wasn’t never coming back. Ever.

He started to bawl, right there in the Howard Johnson’s.

And then he ran to the can and puked up his whole breakfast.

Then he had to
pay
for the breakfast, talk about gyps.

He felt ashamed, as he drove away from the HoJo’s. Here he’d been by himself in the car, where he could’ve cried and nobody seen him, and he waits till he’s in a damn restaurant to break down like a baby. Pa wouldn’t be pleased.