Insomnia (21 page)

‘They call themselves The Friends of Life, Lisette, and they claim their demonstration this morning was a spontaneous outpouring of indignation prompted by the news that Susan Day – the woman radical pro-life groups nationwide call “America’s Number One Baby-Killer” – is coming to Derry next month to speak at the Civic Center. At least one Derry police officer believes that’s not quite the way it was, however.’

Kirkland’s report went to tape, beginning with a close-up of Leydecker, who seemed resigned to the microphone in his face.

‘There was no spontaneity about this,’ he said. ‘Clearly a lot of preparation went into it. They’ve probably been sitting on advance word of Susan Day’s decision to come here and speak for most of the week, just getting ready and waiting for the news to break in the paper, which it did this morning.’

The camera went to a two-shot. Kirkland was giving Leydecker his most penetrating Geraldo look. ‘What do you mean “a lot of preparation”?’ he asked.

‘Most of the signs they were carrying had Ms Day’s name on them. Also, there were over a dozen of
these
.’

A surprisingly human emotion slipped through Leydecker’s policeman-being-interviewed mask; Ralph thought it was distaste. He raised a large plastic evidence bag, and for one horrified instant Ralph was positive that there was a mangled and bloody baby inside. Then he realized that, whatever the red stuff might be, the body in the evidence bag was a doll’s body.

‘They didn’t buy these at Kmart,’ Leydecker told the TV reporter. ‘I guarantee you that.’

The next shot was a long-lens close-up of the smeared and broken windows. The camera panned them slowly. The stuff on the smeared ones looked more like blood than ever, and Ralph decided he didn’t want the last two or three bites of his macaroni and cheese.

‘The demonstrators came with baby-dolls whose soft bodies had been injected with what police believe to be a mixture of Karo syrup and red food-coloring,’ Kirkland said in voice-over. ‘They flung the dolls at the side of the building as they chanted anti-Susan Day slogans. Two windows were broken, but there was no major damage.’

The camera stopped, centering on a gruesomely smeared pane of glass.

‘Most of the dolls split open,’ Kirkland was saying, ‘splattering a substance that looked enough like blood to badly frighten the employees who witnessed the bombardment.’

The shot of the red-smeared window was replaced by one of a lovely dark-haired woman in slacks and a pullover.

‘Oooh, look, it’s Barbie!’ Lois cried. ‘Golly, I hope Simone’s watching! Maybe I ought to—’

It was McGovern’s turn to say hush.

‘I was terrified,’ Barbara Richards told Kirkland. ‘At first I thought they were really throwing dead babies, or maybe fetuses they’d gotten hold of somehow. Even after Dr Warper ran through, yelling they were only dolls, I still wasn’t sure.’

‘You said they were chanting?’ Kirkland asked.

‘Yes. What I heard most clearly was “Keep the Angel of Death out of Derry.”’

The report now reverted to Kirkland in his live stand-up mode. ‘The demonstrators were ferried from WomanCare to Derry Police Headquarters on Main Street around nine o’clock this morning, Lisette. I understand that twelve were questioned and released; six others were arrested on charges of malicious mischief, a misdemeanor. So it seems that another shot in Derry’s continuing war over abortion has been fired. This is John Kirkland, Channel Four news.’

‘“Another shot in –”’ McGovern began, and threw up his hands.

Lisette Benson was back on the screen. ‘We now go to Anne Rivers, who talked less than an hour ago to two of the so-called Friends of Life who
were
arrested in this morning’s demonstration.’

Anne Rivers was standing on the steps of the Main Street cop-shop with Ed Deepneau on one side and a tall, sallow, goateed individual on the other. Ed was looking natty and downright handsome in a gray tweed jacket and navy slacks. The tall man with the goatee was dressed as only a liberal with daydreams of what he might think of as ‘the Maine proletariat’ could dress: faded jeans, faded blue workshirt, wide red fireman’s suspenders. It took Ralph only a second to place him. It was Dan Dalton, owner of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes. The last time Ralph had seen him, he had been standing behind the hanging guitars and bird-cages in his shop window, flapping his hands at Ham Davenport in a gesture that said
Who gives a shit what you think?

But it was Ed his eyes were drawn back to, of course, Ed who looked natty and put together in more ways than one.

McGovern apparently felt the same. ‘My God, I can’t believe it’s the same man,’ he murmured.

‘Lisette,’ the good-looking blonde was saying, ‘with me I have Edward Deepneau and Daniel Dalton, both of Derry, two of those arrested in this morning’s demonstration. That’s correct, gentlemen? You were arrested?’

They nodded, Ed with the barest twinkle of humor, Dalton with dour, jut-jawed determination. The gaze the latter fixed on Anne Rivers made him look – to Ralph, at least – as if he were trying to remember which abortion clinic he had seen her hurrying into, head down and shoulders hunched.

‘Have you been released on bail?’

‘We were released on our own recognizance,’ Ed answered. ‘The charges were minor. It was not our intention to hurt anyone, and no one
was
hurt.’

‘We were arrested only because the Godless entrenched power-structure in this town wants to make an example of us,’ Dalton said, and Ralph thought he saw a minute wince momentarily tighten Ed’s face. A there-he-goes-again expression.

Anne Rivers swung the mike back to Ed.

‘The major issue here isn’t philosophical but practical,’ he said. ‘Although the people who run WomanCare like to concentrate on their counselling services, therapy services, free mammograms and other such admirable functions, there’s another side to the place. Rivers of blood run out of WomanCare—’

‘
Innocent
blood!’ Dalton cried. His eyes glowed in his long, lean face, and Ralph had a disturbing insight: all over eastern Maine, people were watching this and deciding that the man in the red suspenders was crazy, while his partner seemed like a pretty reasonable fellow. It was almost funny.

Ed treated Dalton’s interjection as the pro-life equivalent of
Hallelujah,
giving it a single respectful beat before speaking again.

‘The slaughter at WomanCare has been going on for nearly eight years now,’ Ed told her. ‘Many people – especially radical feminists like Dr Roberta Warper, WomanCare’s chief administrator – like to gild the lily with phrases like “early termination”, but what she’s talking about is abortion, the ultimate act of abuse against women by a sexist society.’

‘But is lobbing dolls loaded with fake blood against the windows of a private clinic the way to put your views before the public, Mr Deepneau?’

For a moment – just a moment, there and gone – the twinkle of good humor in Ed’s eyes was replaced by a flash of something much harder and colder. For that one moment Ralph was again looking at the Ed Deepneau who had been ready to take on a truck-driver who outweighed him by a hundred pounds. Ralph forgot that what he was watching had been taped an hour ago and was afraid for the slim blonde, who was almost as pretty as the woman to whom her interview subject was still married.
Be careful, young lady,
Ralph thought.
Be careful and be afraid. You’re standing next to a very dangerous man
.

Then the flash was gone and the man in the tweed coat was once more just an earnest young fellow who had followed his conscience to jail. Once more it was Dalton, now nervously snapping his suspenders like big red rubber bands, who looked a few sandwiches shy of a picnic.

‘What we’re doing is what the so-called good Germans failed to do in the thirties,’ Ed was saying. He spoke in the patient, lecturely tones of a man who has been forced to point this out over and over . . . mostly to those who should already know it. ‘They were silent and six million Jews died. In this country a similar holocaust—’

‘Over a thousand babies every day,’ Dalton said. His former shrillness had departed. He sounded horrified and desperately tired. ‘Many of them are ripped from the wombs of their mothers in pieces, with their little arms waving in protest even as they die.’

‘Oh good God,’ McGovern said. ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever—’

‘Hush, Bill!’ Lois said.

‘– purpose of this protest?’ Rivers was asking Dalton.

‘As you probably know,’ Dalton said,‘the City Council has agreed to re-examine the zoning regulations that allow WomanCare to operate where it does and how it does. They could vote on the issue as early as November. The abortion rights people are afraid the Council might throw sand in the gears of their death-machine, so they’ve summoned Susan Day, this country’s most notorious pro-abortion advocate, to try and keep the machine running. We are marshalling our forces—’

The pendulum of the microphone swung back to Ed. ‘Will there be more protests, Mr Deepneau?’ she asked, and Ralph suddenly had an idea she might be interested in him in a way which was not strictly professional. Hey, why not? Ed was a good-looking guy, and Ms Rivers could hardly know that he believed the Crimson King and his Centurions were in Derry, joining forces with the baby-killers at WomanCare.

‘Until the legal aberration which opened the door to this slaughter has been corrected, the protests will continue,’ Ed replied. ‘And we’ll go on hoping that the histories of the next century will record that not all Americans were good Nazis during this dark period of our history.’

‘
Violent
protests?’

‘It’s violence we oppose.’ The two of them were now maintaining strong eye contact, and Ralph thought Anne Rivers had what Carolyn would have called a case of hot thighs. Dan Dalton was standing off to one side of the screen, all but forgotten.

‘And when Susan Day comes to Derry next month, can you guarantee her safety?’

Ed smiled, and in his mind’s eye Ralph saw him as he had been on that hot August afternoon less than a month ago – kneeling with one hand planted on either side of Ralph’s shoulders and breathing
They burn the fetuses over in Newport
into his face. Ralph shivered.

‘In a country where thousands of children are sucked from the wombs of their mothers by the medical equivalent of industrial vacuum cleaners, I don’t believe anyone can guarantee anything,’ Ed replied.

Anne Rivers looked at him uncertainly for a moment, as if deciding whether or not she wanted to ask another question (maybe for his telephone number), and then turned back to face the camera. ‘This is Anne Rivers, at Derry Police Headquarters,’ she said.

Lisette Benson reappeared, and something in the bemused cast of her mouth made Ralph think that perhaps he hadn’t been the only one to sense the attraction between interviewer and interviewee. ‘We’ll be following this story all day,’she said. ‘Be sure to tune in at six for further updates. In Augusta, Governor Greta Powers responded to charges that she may have—’

Lois got up and pushed the Off button on the TV. She simply stared at the darkening screen for a moment, then sighed heavily and sat down. ‘I have blueberry compote,’ she said, ‘but after that, do either of you want any?’

Both men shook their heads. McGovern looked at Ralph and said, ‘That was scary.’

Ralph nodded. He kept thinking of how Ed had gone striding back and forth through the spray thrown by the lawn-sprinkler, breaking the rainbows with his body, pounding his fist into his open palm.

‘How could they let him out on bail and then interview him on the news as if he was a normal human being?’ Lois asked indignantly. ‘After what he did to poor Helen? My God, that Anne Rivers looked ready to invite him home to dinner!’

‘Or to eat crackers in bed with her,’ Ralph said dryly.

‘The assault charge and this stuff today are entirely different matters,’ McGovern said, ‘and you can bet your boots the lawyer or lawyers these yo-yos have got on retainer will be sure to keep it that way.’

‘And even the assault charge was only a misdemeanor,’ Ralph reminded her.

‘How can assault be a misdemeanor?’ Lois asked. ‘I’m sorry, but I never
did
understand that part.’

‘It’s a misdemeanor when you only do it to your wife,’ McGovern said, hoisting his satiric eyebrow. ‘It’s the American way, Lo.’

She twisted her hands together restlessly, took Mr Chasse down from the television, looked at him for a moment, then put him back and resumed twisting her hands. ‘Well, the law’s one thing,’ she said, ‘and I’d be the first to admit that I don’t understand it all. But somebody ought to tell them he’s crazy. That he’s a wife-beater and he’s crazy.’

‘You don’t know
how
crazy,’ Ralph said, and for the first time he told them the story of what had happened the previous summer, out by the airport. It took about ten minutes. When he finished, neither of them said anything – they only looked at him with wide eyes.

‘What?’ Ralph asked uneasily. ‘You don’t believe me? You think I imagined it?’

‘Of course I believe it,’ Lois said. ‘I was just . . . well . . . stunned. And frightened.’

‘Ralph, I think maybe you ought to pass that story on to John Leydecker,’ McGovern said. ‘I don’t think he can do a goddam thing with it, but considering Ed’s new playmates, I think it’s information he should have.’

Ralph thought it over carefully, then nodded and pushed himself to his feet. ‘No time like the present,’ he said. ‘Want to come, Lois?’

She thought it over, then shook her head. ‘I’m tired out,’ she said. ‘And a little – what do the kids call it these days? – a little freaked. I think I’ll put my feet up for a bit. Take a nap.’

‘You do that,’ Ralph said. ‘You do look a little tuckered. And thanks for feeding us.’ Impulsively, he bent over her and kissed the corner of her mouth. Lois looked up at him with startled gratitude.