Ash Wednesday (48 page)

His heart.

He touched it, and found the source of the odd sensation. He shook the shoulder of his sleeping wife.

"What?" she said sleepily, irritated.

"Feel this," he said. "Put your hand here." Taking her hand and placing it on his chest, he found himself praying that she wouldn't feel it, would notice nothing irregular, that it was only temporary, or his imagination.

"It's not steady," she said after only a few seconds, forever shattering his feeble rationalization.

"My heart."

"
Mmm
." She felt for a while longer, then moved her hand to his wrist. "Maybe a muscle spasm. In your chest . . .

"No," she said after a moment. "I feel it in your wrist too, I think."

"Should I . . . should I go to the hospital?"

"Does your chest hurt at all?"

"Are you numb? In your arm or anywhere?"

He flexed the muscles in his left arm, then his right.

"You could go now," she said, "or maybe wait. I don't know."

"I'll go in the morning." He
felt
all right,
dammit
—it was just that damn heartbeat, out of cadence.
Mim
went back to sleep in a few minutes, but Tom Markley stayed awake until dawn, when he got up and made coffee.

It's killing me, he thought. Sons of bitches are killing me.

He had never before had any trouble with his heart. Then, just after Christmas he'd had a checkup and found his blood pressure elevated—160 over 100. Under a lot of pressure, he'd told Doc Barnes, who had smiled gently, given him some expensive medication, and told him to try to relax. And now this.

He didn't go to the doctor's the next morning. Part of him wanted to, knew that he should, but a greater part didn't care. Maybe his body was wiser than he was. Maybe it knew that it was time for him to die. Besides, it might be too expensive. He wasn't old enough for Medicare, and he'd let his hospitalization lapse a month before. He simply couldn't afford it.

When he arrived home that evening, he told
Mim
that he had seen the doctor and had received a clean bill of health. Just an irregularity, nothing to worry about.

She only nodded and smiled briefly, the kind of smile she gave when he told her that the shower faucet just needed a new washer, or the wiring in the hutch was fine, and it was just the bulb that had burned out. She didn't say, "Oh, thank God, I was so worried," or "I'm going to have to start taking better care of you," or "It's no wonder—you've been worrying too much. We'll be just fine as long as we're together," or half a hundred other things that she could have said. And because she had said none of those things, he knew for certain that she no longer loved him, and the heartbeat grew more erratic, having less reason to keep the man alive.

Now he stood in front of the mirror, sensing his heart's tripping patterns while
Mim
watched TV in the
rec
room. I'm going to die, he thought for the thousandth time since it had begun. I am going to die. He was as certain of it as he was sure of the loss of
Mim's
love, the lack of the town's respect, the stark glare of red with which this month's accounts had been written.

And when I die, I'll stay here forever. And she'll see me dead, and her lovers will see me too, and they'll laugh at me, laugh at me naked and lying there, and maybe, I don't know, but maybe I'll know about it because maybe these things do know and can see and can think.

He frowned at his image in the glass, and grew angry at the tear he saw in one eye's corner.

I don't want to know. I don't want to see it.

There was one logical, inescapable answer, and he accepted it. On the way out, he stopped in the doorway to the
rec
room. "I'm going out,
hon
," he said.

"Oh. All right. When'll you be back?"

"I'm not sure." He paused, then said, "I love you,
Mim
."

"I love you too." She didn't look at him as she said it, but kept her gaze fixed on the TV screen. At that moment a glance from her would have saved him.

He drove out of Merridale, northeast on a rough two-lane that wove past farmers' fields, through state game lands. Miles beyond the phenomenon's sphere of influence he stopped, and walked several hundred yards back on a trail he'd used to hike with his father, and, when he'd been still younger, his grandfather. At last he stopped and chambered a cartridge into the ancient P.38 he'd brought home from the war. Afraid that if he held the weapon to his head for too long a time he might weaken, he brought it up and pulled the trigger in one motion.

Flame exploded, a roar cut through the forest's stillness, and the birds leaped shrieking from the trees. The echoes died away, the birds resumed their perches, and the trees grew silent again. The flare from the pistol had faded, and everything was dark. There was not a patch of light, not a glimmer, not a spark.

~*~

By the next weekend the rain had washed away the blood, and the birds had finished what bits of tissue remained after Tom Markley had been lifted and placed into the ambulance. Bob Craven's three children ran far ahead, the way they always did on walks, leaving him and Joan behind, hand in hand.

"It must have been right around here," Craven said.

"I'm surprised the children aren't looking for the exact spot." Joan shook her head. "Poor Tom."

"I wish he would have talked to me. I gave him the chance. I could tell something was wrong." Craven kicked at a stone and sent it rolling into the brush.

"I wish
you'd
talk to
me
," Joan said quietly, her eyes on the dirt path before them.

"What?"

"Something's wrong with
you
. Something's
been
wrong. Ever since this all started."

He laughed self-consciously. "It's . . . the situation," he said with a sad smile. "None of us can be expected to be perfectly normal, not even after—what is it now?—four months?"

"I'm not talking about normality. I'm thinking of something else. Something that makes you who you are." She stopped, ignoring the shouts of the children far up the trail. "When did you lose it, Bob? Your faith."

"What do you mean? Faith in what?" He could feel himself start to sweat under the down vest.

"In what you believe in." She shook her head. "You know I've never been a . . . a holy roller. I mean, I believe in God, but I've never been a fanatic about it. Sometimes, when I think back on it, I think I married you
in spite
of what you are, not because of it, and though I do believe, it's just never been all that . . . `important' isn't the word . . . `compulsive.' " She smiled and nodded. "I've never been compulsive or obsessive about it."

"And I have?"

"In a way. I mean, doing what you do, you have to be demonstrative, don't you? But lately I get the feeling that it's just been . . . all show, like you're playing a role." He turned away from her and looked into the woods, not wanting her to see the truth. "Am I right?" she asked.

"I don't know. I really don't know."

"You don't really believe what you're telling everyone, do you?"

"What
am
I telling everyone?"

"That there's a purpose behind what's happened. That God's behind it."

"I . . . I don't—"

"What?"

"I don't know why."

She laughed, not unkindly. "Who does?"

"No! I mean what's it all accomplished? We've got a town full of scared and crazy people, Joan. Marie Snyder gets murdered, Fred
Hibbs
nearly kills Eddie Karl, Tom blows his brains out! Nobody's
learning
anything."

"What are they supposed to learn?"

"How to
live
, damn it!" Craven slammed his right fist into his left palm. "I thought, when this all started, I thought that we'd
learn
more, that we were
lucky
, we were
chosen
, that by, by staring death in the face so openly, we'd learn to
live
better.
Knowing
, you see,
knowing
that death's waiting would make us value living so much more that we'd be
better
, be kinder to each other. But we
weren't
. And I wanted to say that, to make them see that, to tell them not to be scared, to love each other."

"But you
have
," Joan said. "You've calmed them, held them together."

"I haven't done a thing," he said grimly. "I haven't done a thing except stop believing myself."

"
I
haven't, Bob." There was a challenge in her tone. "I never thought I had as strong a faith as yours, but maybe I have. Maybe because yours came so easily to you and I had to work at it. "

"I don't want to argue about—"

"It isn't something you get and keep forever, you know. It's something you
do
have to work at."

His words were pinched, angry. "Well, maybe I could be born again."

"Born again, bullshit! You're not just born once or twice—you've got to be born over and over again every day of your life. "

"Not in Merridale! Every day is a new
death
around here, not a new birth!"

"So it depends on where you are? I can just hear Jesus now—'Sorry, folks, I'm not myself today. Must be the Jerusalem blues.' "

"Don't talk like that."

"What do
you
care? I thought you'd lost it."

"Look! What's wrong with me is what's wrong with everybody in town. We
don't
feel blessed, we feel
cursed!
”

“
Why?
"

"
Because we're the only ones!
" His face changed as he cried out, and she recoiled from him, not in fear, but in sudden awe of the understanding that seemed to have overtaken him.

"We're the only ones," he repeated quietly. "You said . . . you said it depends on where you are. And maybe you're right."

"I don't understand."

"Anyone, any single one of us would have had the Jerusalem blues. Even Jesus did—'Let this cup pass from me,' remember? Because he was alone. And
Merridale's
alone too. We're a freak—our town's a freak, and we're part of it. But if it were—I don't know—more widespread maybe, then . . . then we'd be blessed. Because we were the first, because we had a chance to get ready."

" 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord,' " Joan quoted, and Craven's face brightened.

"Exactly," he said. "Then it would make some sense. But to have this happen just to our town—
that's
what's so confusing, so damn frightening. We're too busy feeling like lepers to grasp the significance of what's happened to us."

“Wait, wait. You think . . . there'll be more of this?"

"I don't know!" His face glowed like a child's at Christmas. "But if there is, then we'll
know
."

"Know what?"

"Know
why
. Then the whole world will know."

She hugged her husband. "Do you know you sound half crazy?"

He laughed. "I can believe that."

"But what if it stays the same?"