Waking Lazarus (9 page)

‘‘Yeah, I think so.’’

‘‘Gimme a piece of that.’’

The waitress scribbled on the note pad again, turning away as she did.

Jude glanced toward Kristina. She was staring, but he pretended he didn’t notice and busied himself looking around the room. ‘‘I like their peach pie,’’ he said simply, feeling as if he needed to fill the dead space with some sort of idle chatter.

‘‘So, do you know why I’m here, Jude?’’ she asked.

He stiffened, then leaned across the booth a bit. ‘‘How about you just call me ‘Ron’ when we’re . . . you know.’’ He nodded his head to indicate the two other people in the cafe, both seated at the counter and oblivious to their presence.

Kristina didn’t follow his gaze but nodded. ‘‘Okay, Ron. Do you know why I’m here?’’

‘‘Didn’t we already go over this?’’ he said.

She looked at him and shook her head, almost imperceptibly. ‘‘I’m here because . . . because I think there’s something more to you. More than you can admit. Maybe even more than you know.’’

‘‘Such as?’’

‘‘That’s a question for you to answer.’’

‘‘I’m a janitor. We’ve been through this before, too.’’

‘‘Yes, you’re a paranoid janitor. But that’s just your day job.’’

Jude studied the booth’s tabletop, the flecked pattern on its surface. He knew where she was going with this.

‘‘Maybe you’ve just locked it away,’’ she continued.

‘‘What is ‘it,’ exactly?’’

‘‘Your gift.’’

‘‘This again, huh?’’ he said.

She stared at him with bleary eyes. ‘‘Dying three times . . . you think that doesn’t mean something?’’

He rolled his eyes, sighed. ‘‘Look, I—’’

At that moment the waitress returned with his coffee and pie. As she slid the cup and plate toward him, Jude felt a sharp, acidic taste in his mouth, a taste he faintly recognized and couldn’t identify until . . .

Copper. That was it. The bitter tang of copper filled his mouth, as if he were sucking on pennies. The taste of death. But this was wrong, all wrong; he’d only ever tasted that after returning from the Other Side, and that hadn’t happened for years now. He’d hidden from it all here in Red Lodge.

The waitress was staring at him.

‘‘Everything okay?’’ she asked.

He glanced up at her. ‘‘Yeah, yeah,’’ he said. ‘‘Just a little . . . lightheaded or something.’’

‘‘You want something else to drink? Milk?’’

He shook his head. ‘‘No, I think I’m fine. Thanks.’’

The waitress retreated, and as she did, the coppery taste subsided. ‘‘Sorry,’’ he said to Kristina. ‘‘I don’t know what happened there.’’ He took a drink of coffee, then picked up a fork. The hot, bitter taste of the coffee seemed to wipe away the last lingering effects of copper, and he woodenly started eating the pie while thoughts of dying began to jumble inside.

‘‘Anyway,’’ Kristina said, ‘‘I was saying you need to do something.
Be
something.’’

He stopped a forkful of pie midway between the plate and his mouth. He definitely wasn’t in the mood for this now. Not after the copper taste, already unearthing even more buried feelings. ‘‘I guess a janitor isn’t enough for you, huh?’’

‘‘Whatever you are, Jude—uh, Ron—you’re not a janitor.’’

Jude took the bite of pie and studied the rest of the slice sitting on his plate. Here it was again, the whole death thing. Back in his face. Back in his mouth. People like Kristina, when they encountered it, wanted it to be some kind of mystical experience. A complete circle. An answer. Death as a mere question was much too scary for them.

Careful. He thought of his conversation with Kevin, the same conversation he’d had with so many people over the years. He needed to give her something she could hold on to; the truth, as always, was too . . . barren. The truth would have to stay hidden deep inside of him. Forever.

‘‘I understand where you’re coming from,’’ he began gently. He looked in her eyes. ‘‘And you don’t have to be scared of anything. It’s nothing to be frightened—’’

‘‘You think I’m scared of dying?’’ she said. She smiled. ‘‘That’s not it at all. I’m not here for me; I’m here for you.’’

Well. This certainly was a new twist. Someone coming to him, not with Questions but Answers. He shrugged, ate his pie as if it were suddenly the most important thing in the world.

‘‘I’ve read your book,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ve done some research. There are things, patterns, about your life.’’

She waited, and Jude took another bite. He wasn’t overly interested in his life patterns at the moment; he had peach pie to eat. ‘‘Ah, and that’s where you come in,’’ he said, the condescension dripping from his voice.

‘‘Maybe you don’t believe it now. But I think you will.’’

He sighed. In spite of his best efforts, he was getting a bit angry. Who was she to be telling him what he should do with his life? ‘‘So you’ve got it all figured out, do you?’’

‘‘What I’m saying is:
you
need to figure it out.’’

He shoveled in his last bite of pie, ignoring her.

‘‘So just try,’’ she continued.

He looked around for the waitress, hoping she would come around for a coffee refill.

‘‘Try what?’’ he asked Kristina without looking at her.

‘‘Figure out who Jude Allman is.’’

‘‘And how do I do that?’’

‘‘Look for signs. You’ve already had some. And you’ll have more, I think.’’

He took a sip of coffee and said nothing. This was verging on the border of more God Talk. And once the conversation went there, he knew he wouldn’t be able to control himself.

‘‘I have some ideas. I’ve made some notes based on your book and other things, and—’’ she stopped, as if searching for words—‘‘I have some ideas,’’ she repeated. ‘‘But I think maybe you’re supposed to see it all for yourself.’’

‘‘Great, I’ll get right on that.’’

She fell silent, and Jude eventually looked back at her. She was studying him, waiting.

‘‘What?’’ he asked.

‘‘You said you’d get right on it.’’

‘‘Oh, you mean now?’’

She shrugged. ‘‘Why not?’’

‘‘Where is that waitress?’’ he asked in frustration, mostly because he didn’t want to deal with Kristina and her mumbo jumbo. He glanced back at Kristina again, then waved his hands dismissively. ‘‘Okay, okay already. Signs, you say. Maybe I could get a big old sign right now, huh?’’

She shrugged again.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Concentrated. After a few moments, his brow softened, and he began to speak.

‘‘Wait. Wait a minute. I’m seeing . . . I think I’m seeing the sign.’’

‘‘What is it?’’ she asked. He could hear the anticipation in her voice.

‘‘It’s . . . it’s rectangular, and green, and it says . . . ‘Welcome to the New Jersey Turnpike.’ ’’ He opened his eyes and looked at her, then loudly slurped his coffee.

They walked out the front door of the Red Lodge Cafe and started down the street in silence. After a few minutes of smug euphoria, Jude now felt miserable for being so flip with Kristina. He knew why she was here, and he could understand. One thing Jude had learned from people in general and the terminally ill in specific: when a person approaches the end of her life, she needs to feel her existence has served a greater purpose. Kristina wanted him to be part of it.

Unfortunately it was easy to let the old anger and fear drain back into his thoughts whenever someone brought up his past. Jude knew things about his past no one else knew. Things no one else would ever know.

Finally he spoke. ‘‘Look, I’m sorry about back there. It’s just that . . . it was scary being Jude Allman. It’s a lot easier to be Ron Gress.’’

‘‘I understand,’’ she said softly.

‘‘So if you’ll just give me—’’ The sudden taste of copper filled Jude’s mouth again, this time so strong that he gagged. He opened his mouth and tried to spit, but the hot, hard taste slid down his throat in a molten river.

‘‘What’s wrong?’’ she asked.

‘‘I don’t know,’’ he said, feeling like his tongue was too thick with metal for his voice to be understood.

Jude heard the screech of brakes. On the street, no more than twenty feet away, the headlights of a pickup—its brakes chattering— framed the silhouette of a man in the street. The image moved, but in Jude’s eyes it was a photo: a black outline, bathed in a bright glare of halogen.

The pickup’s front bumper hit the man’s legs, launching him into an effortless cartwheel, an impossible acrobatic display that seemed to last for an impossibly long time. The man’s body finally ended its gravity defying stunt with a sickening thud on the pavement.

Right next to Jude.

He looked at the man, whose eyes were vacant, unresponsive.
Dead
. But after a few seconds the eyes blinked, focusing on Jude. The man’s mouth lolled open, moving spasmodically, as if he were trying to speak but had no voice. Jude stooped down, touched the quivering man, and . . .

The world swam. Colors reversed. Reversed. Jude shook his head, thinking he must be blacking out, but the odd colors stayed in his line of vision. It was as if he were looking at film negatives, everything tinted a sick orange, the sky dark and shadows white.

Then he saw something that wasn’t happening. Something that wasn’t happening but
had
happened. Inside the negative frame, images of other people flared and flickered in a giant slide show. A woman, a young girl, an older girl. Grade school. College. Children being born.

As Jude watched, names and memories flashed in his mind, illuminating his consciousness in a bright fireworks display.

The colors shifted to normal again. He heard himself panting, as if he’d just finished running a marathon. After forcing his lungs to slow, he spoke to the broken man whose head he was now cradling.

‘‘You had a wife and a daughter. You loved them, really loved both of them. But your marriage split up, and you were ashamed. So ashamed that you lost all contact with them.’’

The man had no discernible reaction, but his gaze stayed fixed on Jude. ‘‘They’re both fine. They’re both happy. Leslie remarried. Your daughter, Susan, became a nurse. She’s married, and she has a daughter of her own now: Corinne.’’

Jude stopped, feeling his breath and pulse quicken again. He wasn’t sure what was happening to him, wasn’t sure where these words were coming from, but he was sure he couldn’t stop it. These things needed to be spoken.

‘‘What you need to know is, they’ve both forgiven you.’’

The man closed his eyes tightly, opened them again, and smiled. His hand grabbed Jude’s arm and squeezed. Finally, his eyes fluttered shut again, and a last breath crawled from his lungs in one long rasp.

Jude didn’t move. He sat, considering what had just happened. He re-ran the entire scenario, trying to wrap his mind around a logical explanation. It was complete understanding, complete knowledge of the other man’s life. A word came to him:
revelation
. Best not to share that one with Kristina.

Jude turned his eyes away from the dead man’s face and looked across the street. Another man sat on the curb, staring at him. The man was soft and puffy, on the verge of being chunky, but his face somehow stayed angular and chiseled; atop his head was a fine mane of pure white hair. He realized this had to be the pickup driver—the man who had hit the pedestrian.

The man’s stare made him uncomfortable until . . . until he realized the man wasn’t staring at him at all. He was simply staring into space, a space Jude happened to be occupying. The eyes were wild and vacant, focusing but not registering. As Jude watched, a paramedic brought the white-haired man an ice pack, which finally broke the hundred-yard stare; he accepted the ice pack and put it to his forehead.

Sights and sounds began to filter through Jude’s consciousness. He turned his head and noticed a couple of parked police cars nearby. Their cherry lights swirled, throwing a murderous glow on the downtown buildings. Jude heard the metallic
tick-tick-tick
of the lights cycling on the closest police cruiser.

‘‘I said, are you okay?’’ a voice above him asked. Jude looked up and saw a policeman standing over him, slightly bent at the waist.

He stared at the officer for a few moments, then simply nodded.

A new voice joined in. ‘‘Quite a way to perk up your Tuesday night, eh, Grant?’’ The voice was deep, authoritative, impossible to ignore. Jude turned his eyes to look at the other officer. Close-cropped dark hair, a leathery face with a cleft chin, and impenetrable eyes so dark it was hard to determine where the pupils ended and the irises began.

Officer Grant also turned and stood up straight. ‘‘Chief Odum. I didn’t know you were . . . I can handle this.’’

Chief Odum slapped a hand on Officer Grant’s shoulder. ‘‘You’re doing great, Grant. I’m not here to rattle your cage; I just happened to be driving by.’’

Officer Grant looked like he was about to say something else but then stopped. Odum turned his face toward Jude, looking down without bothering to bend. Looking down with those eyes of tar. ‘‘You see what happened?’’

Jude nodded.

‘‘Think you can tell us about it?’’

Jude nodded again.

‘‘Hang tight.’’ The two officers retreated to the police cruisers, leaving Jude alone with Kristina. She stood over him, watching. He wanted to say something, anything.

She spoke instead. ‘‘Looks like you just got a sign.’’

12

DREAMING

Jude sprang awake in his usual sweat-drenched terror. But this time, something was different. This time, he remembered part of the dream. Not much, but a little. It was a memory from his early childhood, a memory he hadn’t thought of in years. In the dream, he and his father flew a kite—a box kite, bright and yellow, hanging in the sky like a second sun.

He got out of his recliner and hit the button to disarm the security system, then padded to the bathroom instead of checking the house for intruders. Today, that didn’t seem as important as it usually did.

He went to the bathroom mirror and studied the reflection staring back at him. He leaned closer, looking for something, anything that would explain last night to him.

Nothing was there.

He dressed for work and went to his kitchen to get cereal. As he ate, something nibbled at the back of his mind, a loose end he was missing, a connection he hadn’t made.