Close Encounters of the Third Kind (14 page)

“You heavy cargo people are going straight in. Use the bypass routes marked on your interstate maps. The rest of you will receive alternate route assignments just as soon as we finish collecting information on weigh stations along your way. Now, were staggering you Peterbuilts. We don’t want you all coming in together. And I’m going to ask you two more things. Stay off the CBs and no unscheduled stopovers. If any of you have to ‘go pottie,’ well, you know what to do.”

Above the din, a group of men stared at each other over coffee and cigarettes. They were in shirtsleeves and looked frazzled. Major Walsh circled the table and looked over the railing docks, the machinery, and all the noise. Walsh had never fancied home-front responsibility. This was his first year back from Special Forces Operations, both surface and clandestine, in Tanzania, Zaire, and Angola. And now, saddled with a security problem, Walsh was fighting mad that the team leader had drawn the line and not told him . . . everything. Walsh took a hit of coffee grounds and Chesterfield Long before kicking a wastepaper basket across the landing.

“You can’t sell me an earthquake alert,” he snarled, sucking his cigarette down to the fingertip. “There’s never been such a thing. These are ranchers—sheep and cattle and Indians. They don’t live in high-rise condominiums.”

An exhausted-looking think-tanker wrung his hands out and bent back in his chair. “I still like the flash flood,” he yawned.

“Where you gonna get the water, pal?” said someone else. “We’ll do a survey on dams and reservoirs in the watershed area. Tell ’em one’s going to burst.”

Major Walsh tucked in his shirt and tightened his Disneyland bicentennial souvenir belt.

“We don’t have time for a survey. You people know that. You should know that by now.”

Another guy, who had been attempting to break some sort of a record by contorting his Spidel Twist-o-Flex eleven times, coughed and interrupted.

“What about disease? You know, a plague epidemic?”

His buddy brightened at this and put down his pipe cleaning kit. “Anthrax,” he bubbled. “Isn’t there a lot of sheep up there in Wyoming?”

Major Wild Bill Walsh lit an Individuale and sat down.

“That’s good,” he exhaled. “But I’m worried it won’t evacuate everyone. There’s always a joker who thinks he’s immune. I want something scary enough to clear three hundred square miles of every living Christian soul.”

At the heart of the confusion below, Lacombe watched several workmen hoisting giant decals onto the bare silvery sides of the trailers. The decals read
Piggly-Wiggly Supermarkets, Coca-Cola, Kinney Shoes, Folger’s Coffee,
and
Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors.
Craving something sweet, the Frenchman popped a Listermint into his mouth and grinned at the American way of life. Then the steel doors opened, someone yelled “Westward Ho!” and the push was on.

18  

“N
o, Mother,” Ronnie was saying into the telephone, “I can handle it. But thanks anyway.”

She had cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder while she stood in front of the kitchen stove, stirring pots.

Ronnie turned partway around, covered the mouthpiece of the phone with her free hand, and said to Toby, “Go tell your father dinner’s almost ready.”

Toby hesitated and then just stood where he was in the kitchen doorway, watching and listening to his mother.

“You’re not helping me, Mother. You’re not helping. We have Master Charge till the end of the month. He hasn’t seen a doctor. He hasn’t seen anybody.”

Ronnie turned and peered out the kitchen window. Roy was sitting in his patio chair on the platform he had built on top of the garage roof. The binoculars were jammed against his eyes as he slowly turned his head from side to side, sweeping the horizon.

“Yes, he’s looking,” she told her mother. “He’s looking all the time, but not for work. I’m doing that . . . for me, Mother. Of course he loves us.”

Ronnie nodded her head vigorously and then had to grab the phone to keep it from falling. She noticed Toby still standing in the doorway. “Toby, call your father for dinner . . . You’re not helping me, Mother—”

The young boy moved slowly, almost unwillingly.

“Mother, I have to hang up now,” Ronnie said, and promptly did so.

She could hear Toby’s thin voice outside the house. It was almost as if he were afraid to raise it because he was worried about being overheard by the neighbors.

“Dad, Mom’s got dinner ready.”

Ronnie turned back to the window. Roy didn’t seem to hear Toby calling. He didn’t seem to hear anybody these days. Mrs. Harris from next door steered her car into the adjoining driveway and got out. Roy didn’t hear that either, nor the disgusted plosive Mrs. Harris felt impelled to utter each time she found him on his lookout perch.

“Please, Dad,” Toby whimpered.

His father let the binoculars drop to his lap. He stared down through the gathering dusk at his youngest son. Even through the kitchen window Ronnie could see that Roy’s face was damp. He must have been crying behind the binoculars. She thought of going out there to him, but then decided against it, turning everything on the stove to a low flame.

After a while, Neary climbed down. He came into the kitchen and stared at her for a moment. Ronnie saw that he’d dried his red-rimmed eyes. She also saw the prickly beginnings of a beard. Neary looked wiped out and, without a word, he moved past her into the family room on the way to the dining area.

Neary stopped at his miniature train layout, fixating on a little brown mountain built into the middle of the Lilliputian countryside. He picked up some shrubs and moved them to the top of the model mountain, which he’d reconstructed into a tall peak with deeply ridged sides. He felt his guts sicken as his brain drained him of every ounce of energy while working to make sense of the mountain image.

“It’s not right,” he said in a flat whisper, and left the room.

Since dinner was going to be delayed, Ronnie opened the refrigerator and put the bowl of salad back inside. The green bulb she had screwed into the socket turned all the food inside to unappetizing shades of gray-green. She made a face at the stuff. What had seemed a great idea just a couple of weeks ago now seemed trivial and silly in the face of her own husband’s unreasonable state of mind. Ronnie closed the refrigerator door quickly.

When Neary showed up for dinner, he’d neither washed nor changed. Ronnie noticed that the children seemed to edge away from him. She always sat at the opposite end of the table from Roy, but now the children seemed to cluster nearer to her end than his, too uncomfortable with him to say anything.

She served and passed him his plate of salmon croquettes, niblet corn, and mashed potatoes, with a square of margarine melting in the center of the mound. He stared down as if no one had ever told him what to do with food on a plate.

Ronnie realized that the children were watching Roy intently as he started moving the mashed potatoes around the plate with his fork. He molded the potatoes into a little peak. “Not big enough,” he said. With a single back and forth motion he flicked the croquette onto the tablecloth.

The children were stunned.

Neary reached halfway across the table and took the serving bowl of mashed potatoes. He heaped a gob onto his plate, shaping it into a large mound. Neary froze to survey the situation. Not right! Another gob from the serving bowl. Not yet! So another, and one more until the bowl had been cleaned. Then, like a mad potter, Neary started to knead the white mush with his hands into some kind of shape.

Ronnie was trying to catch her breath, and Neary looked up at his family. They were frozen in place, staring at him. Roy wanted to talk to them; he wanted to touch them and make everything all right.

He forced a smile, then tried to make a funny face about himself.

“By now you’ve noticed,” he said, starting to laugh at his own understatement, “something funny about Dad. Don’t worry, I’m still Dad.”

Neary reached out to touch Sylvia, but she moved still farther away from him toward her mother.

He tried again, addressing all the children. “It’s like when you know the music but you just don’t remember the words? I don’t know how to say it, what I’m thinking”—Neary pointed to the large mound of mashed potatoes—“but . . . this means something . . . this is important.”

Roy looked up at Ronnie, who was concentrating on control. His mouth moved. “I’m all right,” he was saying silently. “I’m all right.” But no words came out.

Then Neary got to his feet and left the room.

The children’s eyes swung back toward their mother.

Saddened, she said grimly, “Eat,” and began forking the croquette into her mouth.

They all heard the shower start up, but they also heard over the running water the hacking, choking sounds of a man crying.

Ronnie stood up. “Stay here,” she ordered the children, and left the room.

She listened at the bathroom door for a moment, then knocked twice, softly. “Sweetheart . . . Roy, please open the door.”

There was no answer, just the terrible coughing sobs. Ronnie tried the door handle. It turned but the door was locked. She stood there, her hand on the knob. “Roy!” she called. Loudly this time. “Roy!”

He didn’t respond; he probably couldn’t hear her.

Ronnie made a decision. She ran into the kitchen and got a butter knife out of the utensil drawer. “Finish your dinner,” she shouted to the kids as she headed back toward the bathroom.

Ronnie knew what to do. At one time or another, all the children had locked themselves in their bedroom or bathroom. She fitted the butter knife between the door and the frame and gently eased the lock open. Then she turned the knob and pushed the door. It swung in.

The bathroom was dark. Water was pouring into the sink and the bathtub was half full, water smashing down into it from the showerhead. Neary was huddled in the far corner of the darkness, his hands mashed over his mouth to keep the sobs inside. Ronnie turned off the sink faucets, but left the shower running.

Neary tried to smile at his wife. His convulsions subsided slowly. “It’s like the hiccups,” he said in a small, childish voice. “I started and I can’t stop. What’s happening to me?”

“All right, Roy,” Ronnie said, holding herself together. “Mother gave me the name of this man. He’s a doctor.”

“I’m scared to death,” he said, “and I don’t know why.”

Neary got up and sort of lunged over to the shower. He stuck his head under the spray. When he pulled out, Ronnie turned the faucets off and handed him a towel. She wanted to go over and hug his tears away, but she was too frightened. Another spasm of silent crying vibrated through Neary. After it passed, he opened the door of the medicine cabinet, somehow managed to get the lid of an aspirin bottle open, and, with trembling hands, got two pills out and into his mouth. Then he dropped the bottle into the sink. It smashed.

“Look,” Ronnie said, trying to sound calm, reasonable. “What he does is family therapy. We all go. You’re not singled out. And maybe it’s not your fault anyway.”

“I think maybe it’s all a joke,” Neary said brokenly. “Except look how I’m not laughing.”

“Roy! Say you’ll go see him. You’ve got to promise me,” Ronnie told him, realizing that she was speaking to her husband in the same way that she dealt with her children when they were wrong. “Promise?”

Suddenly the bathroom door was thrown open the rest of the way and Brad hurtled into the room. “You crybaby!” he screamed at the image of his broken-down father. “Crybaby! Crybaby!”

Brad tore out of the bathroom and hurtled toward his own room. He slammed his door five times, wanting to smash it off its hinges.

“You know he doesn’t mean that. It’s only, for him you’re always so strong.”

Ronnie helped Roy into their bedroom. He had now stopped crying, but his trembling only intensified as he collapsed on their bed.

“I don’t need a doctor,” he told her. “I need you.”

Ronnie had no idea how to deal with this. She beat on the bedspread with her tiny fists. “I can’t help you,” she cried. “I don’t understand!”

“Neither do I.”