The Crash of Hennington (23 page)

Jacki filled the tub with water as hot as she could stand, then lowered her malfunctioning body down into it, wincing as it seared her skin. She liked it that way, especially now, when reminders of being alive were at a premium. She reclined back, slipping deeply under the clear surface, relishing that peculiar quiet of hot baths.

The steam condensed heavily on the walls. Turning slightly, Jacki ran a slow finger across the scar where she’d had her caesarian when Morton was born. He had come out of her side feet first with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. There had been a few panicked minutes when the doctors had been unable to get him to breathe. Having slept through Tucker’s birth, she had elected to be awake for the surgery, a new procedure at the time, and she could remember asking, ‘What’s wrong?’ while being told repeatedly to hold still, a ridiculous request since the epidural had paralyzed most everything from the neck down. When they finally gave her Morton, wailing away at the top of his lungs, her husband cried with relief, but she remained strangely unmoved, wondering, as she had done with Tucker, what in the world this little wet alien could possibly have to do with her.

Guilt came like a punch, not merely for being so cold at
the harrowing beginning to Morton’s life, but also because she realized she had forgotten his birth completely until this moment, that she hadn’t seen either of her sons in almost two years, that it had been at least a year since she had even spoken to one of them on the phone, and that right until this second, right until just now when she looked at the scar, right until this hot bath for her ravaged frame, it hadn’t even occurred to her that any of those were bad things or even anything that required a second thought. Regret and love and pain flooded into her, as if she had accidentally tripped a porthole below the waterline. She closed her eyes and gripped the sides of the tub until it subsided.

They must hate you. Of course, they don’t hate you.
You
would hate you. There’s not enough time. There is. You can’t go back to them. But you can move
forward
, and they’ll be there. As if they’ll ever want to see you now that you’re such a pathetic mess. You won’t always be this way. You’ve hit bottom. Yes, and now things can only move up.

She waited until the voices stopped pinging off one another inside her head. She felt blessed to be so tired that the future didn’t quite matter yet. These arguments she had with herself weren’t relevant right now. They were just reflected noise as the battle raged on. She tried to concentrate on the bath and was pleasantly surprised to find that she could do so. She inhaled the steam slowly so as not to bring on a coughing fit. Eyes still closed, she flattened her body, trying to get as much of herself under the water as possible. Morton and Tucker, Tucker and Morton, soon but not just yet.

There was a light knock on the door, and Davis poked her head in again. She looked worried.

—Jacki? I’m so sorry to interrupt. It’s just that—

She stopped. Jacki sat up further in the tub. When Davis didn’t go on, Jacki reached for her towel.

—I’m sorry, Jacki. This will be a shock. It looks like he’s close to finding you. We don’t think he knows yet, but he interviewed Joanie for a second time today and it looks like he wants to talk to me again tomorrow. We’re the only menial employees he’s talked to twice.

—He knows something.

Jacki’s voice croaked out in a timbre at once her own and someone else’s.

—It looks that way. My brother is coming here to take you to our mother’s. She lives out in Foster Downs. You’ll be safe there. I shouldn’t come with you in case he’s having the house watched. We’re going to sneak you out the back.

—Oh, Davis, I can’t ask you to take that risk for me.

It was the most she had spoken in weeks.

—The risk has already been accepted and taken. We wouldn’t bring you this far just to abandon you. You can be sure of that.

—But, Davis—

—No, don’t you worry. My mother knows the whole story and will take good care of you. Me and Joanie will visit you when we can, which I hope will be often. I brought you some clothes, and I packed up the rest of your things. I’ve got food in the kitchen that we can eat until my brother arrives. It won’t be long now.

—How can I possibly ever thank you?

—By surviving this, Jacki. By beating him. That will give us all hope, and then we’ll be the ones thanking
you.

51. Post-Coital Powwow.

—Hand me that washcloth, will you, darling?

—One second. Here.

—That was invigorating.

—'Invigorating'?

—All right, how about ‘fun'?

—'Fun’ will work.

—Didn’t you enjoy it?

—I absolutely did. The boy is energetic.

—I’ll say. Could you grab some more soap?

—I’ll get the floor all wet.

—Lean,
Albert. I know you can reach. I’ve seen you do it.

—Almost. There we are … Shit, I dropped it.

—Just get out and get it. It doesn’t matter if the floor gets wet. That’s what tile is for.

—Here. Hold on, I need to rinse.

—Do you think we should have invited Kevin in here with us?

—Why? He turned us down all the other times.

—Still, it’s polite to ask.

—He’s young.

—He’s not
that
young. You said he was thirty.

—Younger than us, my love. I think he’s still of an age where he likes to sleep in his own spunk. It’s kind of sexy, actually.

—'Spunk'?

—What?

—Where did you hear a word like ‘spunk'?

—All the cool kids are saying it down at the high school.

—Picking up teenagers again, are we?

—I think I heard it on television, actually.

—They can say ‘spunk’ on television now?

—You should probably write a law, darling.

—I probably should. Hand me a towel, please.

—My God, even with the air conditioning, it’s still torrid in here.

—We just got out of a shower.

—But feel the vent.

—It’s the heat wave. The weather center says we’re probably going to end up having a drought.

—Well, we’re already doing our part by showering together.

—Kevin should be doing his part.

—Oh, you liked him that much, did you? I haven’t seen you this randy in a good while, O horny wife of mine.

—You know the thing is, his, whatever, manhood doesn’t
seem
all that big, but once it’s, you know—

—Yes.

—It sort of—

—Seems a whole lot bigger?

—Yes. How does he do that?

—Enthusiasm.

—And that Y-shaped thing he does—

—Tell me about it. I was chafing terribly and I still didn’t want it to stop.

—How do you learn something like that?

—I hardly think our dear Kevin is an angel.

—You don’t think he turned clips, do you?

—Maybe. I think he hinted that’s how he got through college.

—He went to college?

—Yes. A Mansfield alumnus even. Art history. He worked in galleries before we hired him down at the auction house. Why so ashen all of a sudden?

—Hearing ‘Mansfield’ reminds me of Jon Noth.

—Cora, my sweet, this is hardly the time to be thinking of Jon Noth.

—I know that, but I just can’t forget what he said. And that
look
on his face. Smug and triumphant. Did I tell you he said I didn’t know how unhappy I was?

—Yes.

—I mean, the
nerve.
It’s nearly forty years, for pity’s sake. Who does he think he is?

—I’m sure I don’t know. Now, dear—

—As if I would just drop everything. And then turning up at the fund-raiser, too. Why can’t I just let go of this? Why can’t I just brush this off?

—Probably because you once cared for him.

—I’m almost
obsessing
over it. This isn’t the last of him, I can assure you.

—I wasn’t doubting.

—He was always tenacious.

—No, he wasn’t. I fought him once, and he disappeared for thirty-six years. Maybe I’ll just have to fight him again.

—Don’t joke. I’ll bet that’s what he wants.

—Darling, we’ve just had the most delightful sex with a charming, handsome young man who seems to genuinely enjoy our company. We’ve never gone three occasions with
anyone.
Not many people involve themselves so uninhibitedly and joyously with a married couple without also seeking a cash payment. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that this shower was probably for naught because our man Kevin is in there right now working up that marvelous prick of his in order to stick it into one of us all over again while the other of us does something equally wonderful to him. How many other couples nearing sixty do you know who have this much fun? I
forbid
you to bring Jon Noth into this.

—What if he’s dangerous?

—You’ve had lots of threats as Mayor, and you’ve never worried before.

—But—

—No ‘buts'. Honestly, Cora. Put him out of your mind.
You’ve instructed the staff to keep him at a distance like all the other crackpots. That’s all he is, another crackpot.

—But that’s just the thing. He’s not.

—He
is.
Just because he once knew you doesn’t mean anything. Quit worrying.

—I wish there was some way I could just get him out of the city, out of my
life.

—He’s not
in
your life. He’s a gnat that you’ve swatted away. He won’t be back.

—If only you could have seen him when he came to my office—

—Cora—

—What are you two doing in here?

—Just cleaning up, Kevin. My word, hard again already?

—The night is still young. There’s plenty more we can accomplish before dawn. You’re becoming an upstanding citizen yourself there, Albert.

—We’re being summoned, Cora.

—Yes, Cora. I’m summoning us all back to bed. Come and come.

—Why is someone like you still single, Kevin?

—But I’m not single. I have the two of you.

—But surely—

—Tut, tut, now. Not another word. I like my freedom is all. Besides, why limit myself to one when these evenings with two as handsome as you are so enjoyable? I do hope Albert constantly compliments you on your smile, Cora. It dazzles.

—It certainly does, darling.

—Here. Take my hands and off we go. All worries forgotten.

—Did you hear that, Cora? All worries forgotten.

—I heard. All right, let’s go.

52. A Casualty.

The drought had taken its first.

An ancient female began to bleat early in the morning sunshine, and they all knew that when this particular bleating began, death was inevitable. The high pitch meant that the cow’s throat was nearly swollen shut from lack of fluid. Even if they could have gotten to water immediately, which they very nearly did, there was no way for the old cow to squeeze more than a drop or two into her stomach. The herd knew she was doomed, and the poor cow knew it, too. Her bleatings increased in intensity until the air was filled with the cries of herdmembers answering her long, slow death song. By noon, heat and exhaustion had caused the cow’s knees to buckle, and she collapsed. The rest of the herd kept close around her all through the night, offering gentle nudges of comfort and concern as her sounds became gradually quieter. Finally, she laid her massive, aged head down onto the grass of the small field and softly moaned until dawn broke, at last quietly dying just as the sun touched her massive, wrinkled face.

She watched the cow die and felt at fault. They hadn’t been away from water for all that long, only two nights and a day, but the grass they had been eating had been increasingly dry, robbing them of extra moisture that had apparently been more precious to some than she realized. None of the other animals had shown signs of excessive dehydration. She was aware of her own thirst, but even so, the death of the cow was an unpleasant surprise that could have been avoided. She should have known that the amount of water a good-sized, healthy herdmember like herself could survive on was considerably less than the frailer and older members needed.

They didn’t seem to blame her, though, glancing at her
sadly but without accusation, and indeed, they had a point. The cow had been extremely old and perhaps unable to eat enough to keep her alive even if greener grass were underfoot. Maybe some other, unknown condition had merely accelerated an already imminent death. Herdmembers died. It was sad that it had to happen. That was all.

And yet. What if the worst was true? What if the old cow had died because of her neglect? Though she had not slept through the night as the cow had slowly passed, and had led the herd with considerable vigor all day long to the greenest, wettest spots she knew of, she was still wide awake well after dark. What had she not seen? What could have happened differently?
Was
there anything?

When she was a calf the leader was a stout bull with dark creases under his eyes. He had once led the herd in an attempted fording of a river that was nearly in flood. Four of the first five animals crossing had been washed away and drowned, excepting only the leader whose immense weight alone carried him safely to the other side. A shaky, tenuous period followed, but the chastened leader was slowly forgiven and allowed to retake a firm, if increasingly cautious, grip over the herd. The lead position depended entirely upon the faith of the members of the herd being led, and it was true that there seemed to be no question of her losing that. Still, she didn’t want to lose any others, even from natural causes, even from the inevitable additional deaths that the worsening drought would certainly bring. It was an impossible goal, but in striving for the impossible, she might accomplish the improbable.

As if this wasn’t enough, there was also the whole matter of the thin creature. His behavior was becoming more erratic, if that was possible. His awful sick sour smell hovered about like a swarm of lazy bees. He had not made any further
attempts to bother the herdmembers physically, but he had taken to yelping at them from up in the trees. Some of the more sensitive among the herd were becoming unnerved by his presence and had begun chasing him off if he ventured too close. She was concerned not only for the safety of the herd but, distantly, for the thin creature himself. What if his strangeness increased? He had never been a threat to them before. How could she keep him from molesting them without hurting him? What if he died of whatever illness he was suffering from? He had been with them since before she and most of the rest of the herd were born. What would happen to them after he was gone? Of course the herd would continue just fine, but even so, that sort of change was unwelcome.