Ash Wednesday (11 page)

The Sundale Road development was situated on a slight rise, so that part of the town could be seen below. "What are they?" Beth asked. "Can you make it out?"

"I don't know. They look like"—he paused for a long time, knowing how silly it must sound—"like people. Sort of."

The phone rang and both of them jumped. Jim, the first to recover, picked up the receiver, thinking of unexpected deaths, midnight disasters. "Hello?"

The voice on the other end was weak and shaking. "Jim?”

“Yes?"

"Mary Spruce, Jim. Oh, Jim, have you seen?"

"Seen what, Mary?"

"
Outside
. Did you look outside?"

"You mean those lights?"

"Lights? You don't know what they are?"

"Well, no, they're too far—"

"They're
people
. Bodies anyway. It's . . . just horrible.”

“
Bodies?
" Jim said. Beth's frown deepened. She seemed ready to yank the phone away.

"Yes, I . . . Look, Jim,
Reg
is standing here. We're going to go. . . . May I talk to Beth?"

"Uh . . . sure." He handed the phone to his wife, shaking his head quickly to show the confusion he felt. Mary Spruce was the last person he'd expect to go off the deep end. As principal of Hatch Road Elementary, she'd always been the perfect martinet, ramrod straight, unflappable, and undeviating.

"Hello, Mary," Beth said, a note of official crispness in her voice. "What's wrong? . . . Are you serious? . . .
Reg
wants to
what?
. . . But I'm sure it's not the plant, Mary. It wasn't their siren. . . . All right. . . . No, I don't know what else it could be either. . . . I’ll call Dr. Reed in the morning. . . . All right, then. But do you really think . . . I know, Mary. . . .”

Jim began to pace. He looked out past the curtains and saw that the blue lights were still there.

"Yes, I know. . . . No, no one up here seems to be." Jim saw the Tompkins' porch light go on. "All right, I'll take care of it. Now, please don't worry, you—" Beth looked at the phone as though it had bit her ear. "She hung up on me."

"What did she say?"

"Okay, let me . . . let me try to remember. She paid that there are blue
people
, blue glowing people in the street, and that they don't move or talk. Evidently downtown is full of them."

"Oh, come on." He sat back down on the bed, turning his attention once more to his cut hand.

"That's what she
said
. And
Reg
thinks it's got something to do with the plant, so he and Mary are leaving, going to Mary's sister's place in Pittsburgh. She wants me to call Joe Reed and tell him she won't be in school tomorrow."

"Oh, nice. That's a good piece of shit work."

"Yeah, but she wants me to call him
now
."

Jim looked at the clock radio. "Jesus Christ, it's only four. You sure she's not just trying to knock you out of her job in two years?"

"What?"

"I mean, if I were the school superintendent and somebody called me at four A.M., I'm damned if I'd make them a principal."

She smiled coldly. "I didn't think you cared about that." He could not smile back. "I care about you. I still do." The silence was uncomfortable, and she broke it quickly.

"Yeah. Well, that's not going to call Reed for me." She dialed the number while Jim got a pair of binoculars from the closet and looked out the window toward town.

"Mary was right," he said finally. "They
are
people. And they're naked."

"You're joking."

"Come here and look. Mary wasn't crazy."

"I can't. The phone's still . . . Hello? Dr. Reed? . . . This is Elizabeth Callendar. I'm sorry to call you at this hour, but—"

Reed's voice was so loud over the line that Jim could hear it, faint and tinny. ". . . can't talk now," the voice said. "Everything's insane. There will be no school at all in the district tomorrow, if that's why you called. Everything's canceled.
Everything
. Call me back tomorrow." There was a click and the line went dead.

"What the—"

"I told you," said Jim, "come here and
look
."

She went to his side and took the binoculars. "They
are
naked!"

"Uh-huh. And dead, if we can believe Mary."

"Jim, they're not moving."

"That would tend to add credence to the dead part."

"Stop it!" she flared, lowering the binoculars. "This isn't funny! What's happening out there?"

Jim thought for a moment. "I'll call Bill Gingrich." He dialed, but the line was busy. "That's funny," he said. "This whole thing is funny. I'm scared."

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know."

"We could go see what it's all about."

"No," she said. "I'm not going out there."

"We just going to shiver here till morning?"

"I know I'm not going out."

He nodded. "Okay, then. Let's go back to bed."

She looked at the rumpled bedclothes and shook her head.

"I won't sleep. I think I'll make some coffee. How's your hand?"

"It stopped bleeding."

"You going to get up?"

He didn't want to. He knew that if he did, she'd talk about nothing but the hysteria that seemed to be affecting the town. Besides, it was the hour of the wolf, that dark time just before dawn that he treasured, the time when he was used to lying with his guilt next to him like a lover, reliving that moment over and over again, wearing his crown of thorns while Beth was lost in her own sleeping dreams. "No," he said. "I'm still tired."

She left the bedroom, and soon he heard the bubble of the coffeepot, smelled the spicy scent of the brew drifting through the house, remembering how Terry used to love to work the grinder, remembering Terry.

He turned off the bedside lamp and lay on his side, so that he would not see the dim frame of light surrounding the door.

Remembering Terry. . .

“Your
great
-grandfather, Terry. . . . Can you say hello? Hello, hello?"

He held the baby out toward the old man so that they could see each other. There was no understanding in either face. The baby's was smooth and blank; eyes, nose, mouth, were all there, arranged in a cherubic perfection of scale, but it might as well have been featureless like an egg or lifeless like marble for all the reaction it showed to its ancestor.

Jim's grandfather displayed the same outward lack of enthusiasm. His eyes, so small amidst the yellowish pouches of flesh that surrounded them, glittered brightly as they always did, but whether with recognition or with merely the wet slickness of cataracts was something that only Grandpa Foster knew, for he had not spoken a word in three years. His mouth, merely a ridge in a pasty plain, had lost all ability to verbalize. All that remained was a slightly cockeyed smile that fortunately hid the absence of teeth. The mouth and tongue knew only softness, delivered by spoon with the help of patient nurses or by straw from those more hurried. Sucking, like Terry sucked at Beth's breast. Cycles. Jim thought: four generations apart and both babies sucking for nourishment.

Though never a tall man, Jim's grandfather had once exuded strength just the same, a tight
spareness
of frame making him look like a little Hercules standing behind the counter of his small grocery store, or tossing the heavy cartons of canned goods out of the cellar hole. He'd been a fixture in Merridale for decades, and the sign over the store. "Foster's Red Rose (Since 1923)," was proudly repainted every few years, at least until the Acmes and the Weis Markets moved in, making the little two-aisle store as obsolete as the pickle barrel, or the soft drink cooler on the porch where bottles of Sun-Ripe and Moxie and Ma's Root Beer sat neck-deep in water just a touch from freezing, or the ten-pound glass-lidded cans of pretzels that would be measured and sold at the customer's pleasure, bagged without benefit of rubber gloves or cellophane. It was remarkable, Jim remembered, how smiles and friendly words had made up for the lack of sterility. But in 1974, it was all sterility and few smiles. Even in Merridale there was not a "general store" to be found. Oh, other shops were still small and personable, but comestibles were in the hands of the giants, and the happy friendly grocer was a soulless shell who dribbled bloody urine into a plastic bag, while the little store was emptied, stripped, and newly stuffed with a batch of old cookware and battered furniture that was labeled "Antique" by the new sign on the window.

"I think he's tired," said Jim's mother, hovering at the bedside. "Are you tired, Dad? Would you like to sleep now? Did you like the baby. Dad? Isn't he pretty, hmm?" Jim's father made a sour face and looked up on the wall at the picture of Christ sitting in profile, the sleeping Jerusalem beneath him. Then he looked at Jim and shook his head, as if to say what he would say later in the car on the way home: “Can’t hear a thing. Didn’t even know we were there.” Jim smiled sadly at his father, agreeing tacitly. “Do you want to go to sleep now, Dad?” his mother went on. “I think we'd better go. Dad wants to . . .”

Just then the baby gurgled and cooed, and its doll-like hands began to flail the air as if the most beautiful and exciting and colorful toy in all the world hung before its great-grandfather's face. It was the most animated it had been since coming home from the hospital three weeks before, and Jim, Beth, Jim's mother and father, all froze in surprise as baby Terry babbled his magic syllables and weaved his arcane spell.

The enchantment produced a small miracle—a tear, large and crystalline as a diamond, slid from a corner of the old man's eye and drifted over his cheek, pausing momentarily as it slipped from crevice to crevice.

"My God," whispered Jim's mother. Old Dan Foster started to shake then, and more tears dripped from his eyes, while a thick boll of mucus appeared at each nostril.

"He's crying," Jim said. "He understands. He really knows," and the craggy head nodded ever so slightly.

They talked nonstop to the old man then, telling him things they hadn't thought about before because they had been so sure that Grandpa Foster wouldn't understand them. Jim's mother told him about the antique store, lying when she said it looked nice. Jim told him about the company newsletter he was editing, lying when he told him how much he enjoyed doing it, and thinking it ironic that old people should be told so many lies, especially an old man who had just miraculously demonstrated a capacity for understanding the truth. So, while Terry bubbled and babbled, Jim told the lies. The truth was not shocking, not even atypical.

He disliked his job. It was that simple. His official title, as related in his job description, was Administrative Associate, Employee Services. It meant that he was in charge of editing (organizing, laying out, and writing ninety percent of the copy for)
The Open Eye
, an eight-page biweekly newsletter for the white-collar staff of Linden Industries, a building-equipment company that owned a hefty piece of Lansford and employed a large number of its residents. When he'd taken the job in 1967, right out of college. he'd felt as though he'd been gently blessed. It was, as Harry Oakes told him, a
great
job for a college grad with a major in journalism. "Perfect place to learn the ropes," Oakes had said. "You'd be surprised—kids don't
want
to work for business these days. They'd rather starve on some dipshit small town newspaper staff. Think they're gonna
express
themselves. What they wind up expressing is bake sale announcements. But here you'll be your own boss, Jim. It's
your
paper. Of course, Mr. Matthews and I will want to take a look at each issue beforehand just to make sure you don't spill any beans that shouldn't be spilled, if you get me. After all, you'll have access to a lot of important information, more than any other young fellow in this company, I'll tell you
that
. But I think you'll be surprised at the free rein you'll have."