Insomnia (74 page)

Dorrance leaned forward and whispered in Joe Wyzer’s ear, guarding his lips with one puffy, age-spotted hand. Then he sat back again, looking deeply satisfied with himself.

‘He says we’re going to the Civic Center,’ Joe said.

‘The
Civic
Center!’ Lois exclaimed, sounding alarmed. ‘No, that can’t be right! Those two little men said—’

‘Never mind them right now,’ Dorrance said. ‘Just remember what it’s about – nerve. Who has it, and who doesn’t.’

Silence in Joe Wyzer’s Ford for almost the space of a mile. Dorrance opened his book of Robert Creeley poems and began to read one, tracing his way from line to line with the yellowed nail of one ancient finger. Ralph found himself remembering a game they had sometimes played as kids – not a very nice one. Snipe Hunt, it had been called. You got kids who were a little younger and a lot more gullible than you were, fed them a cock-and-bull story about the mythical snipe, then gave them towsacks and sent them out to spend a strenuous afternoon wandering around in the damps and the willywags, looking for nonexistent birds. This game was also called Wild Goose Chase, and he suddenly had the inescapable feeling that Clotho and Lachesis had been playing it with him and Lois up on the hospital roof.

He turned around in his seat and looked directly at Old Dor. Dorrance folded over the top corner of the page he was reading, closed his book, and looked back at Ralph with polite interest.

‘They told us we weren’t to go near either Ed Deepneau or Doc #3,’ Ralph said. He spoke slowly and with great clarity. ‘They told us very specifically that we weren’t even to
think
of doing that, because the situation had invested both of them with great power and we were apt to get swatted like flies. In fact, I think Lachesis said that if we tried getting near either Ed or Atropos, we might end up having a visit from one of the upper-level honchos . . . someone Ed calls the Crimson King. Not a very nice fellow, either, by all reports.’

‘Yes,’ Lois said in a faint voice. ‘That’s what they told us on the hospital roof. They said we had to convince the women in charge to cancel Susan Day’s appearance. That’s why we went out to High Ridge.’

‘And did you succeed in convincing them?’ Wyzer asked.

‘No. Ed’s crazy friends came before we could get there, set the place on fire, and killed at least two of the women. Shot them. One was the woman we really wanted to talk to.’

‘Gretchen Tillbury,’ Ralph said.

‘Yes,’ Lois agreed. ‘But surely we don’t need to do any more – I can’t believe they’ll go ahead with the rally now. I mean, how could they? My God, at least four people are dead! Probably more! They’ll
have
to cancel her speech or at least postpone it. Isn’t that so?’

Neither Dorrance nor Joe replied. Ralph didn’t reply, either – he was thinking of Helen’s red-rimmed, furious eyes.
How can you even ask?
she’d said.
If they stop us now, they win
.

If they stop us now, they win.

Was there any legal way the police
could
stop them? Probably not. The City Council, then? Maybe. Maybe they could hold a special meeting and revoke WomanCare’s rally permit. But
would
they? If there were two thousand angry, grief-stricken women marching around the Municipal Building and yelling
If they stop us now they win
in unison,
would
the Council revoke the permit?

Ralph began to feel a deep sinking sensation in his gut.

Helen clearly considered tonight’s rally more important than ever, and she wouldn’t be the only one. It was no longer just about choice and who had the right to decide what a woman did with her own body; now it was about causes important enough to die for and honoring the friends who had done just that. Now they were talking not just about politics but about a kind of secular requiem mass for the dead.

Lois had grabbed his shoulder and was shaking it hard. Ralph came back to the here and now, but slowly, like a man being shaken awake in the middle of an incredibly vivid dream.

‘They
will
cancel it, won’t they? And even if they don’t, if for some crazy reason they don’t, most people will stay away, right? After what happened at High Ridge, they’ll be afraid to come!’

Ralph thought about that and then shook his head. ‘Most people will think the danger’s over. The news reports are going to say that two of the radicals who attacked High Ridge are dead, and the third is catatonic, or something.’

‘But Ed! What about Ed?’ she cried. ‘He’s the one who got them to attack, for heaven’s sake!
He’s the one who sent them out there in the first place!
’

‘That may be true, probably
is
true, but how would we prove it? Do you know what I think the cops will find at wherever Charlie Pickering’s been hanging his hat? A note saying it was all his idea. A note exonerating Ed completely, probably in the guise of an accusation . . . how Ed deserted them in their time of greatest need. And if they don’t find a note like that in Charlie’s rented room, they’ll find it in Frank Felton’s. Or Sandra McKay’s.’

‘But that . . . that’s . . .’ Lois stopped, biting at her lower lip. Then she looked at Wyzer with hopeful eyes. ‘What about Susan Day? Where is
she?
Does anybody know? Do you? Ralph and I will call her on the telephone and—’

‘She’s already in Derry,’ Wyzer said, ‘although I doubt if even the police know for sure where she is. But what I heard on the news while the old fella and I were driving out here is that the rally is going to happen tonight . . . and that’s supposedly straight from the woman herself.’

Sure,
Ralph thought.
Sure it is. The show’s going on, the show
has
to go on, and she knows it. Someone who’s ridden the crest of the women’s movement all these years – hell, since the Chicago convention in ’68 – knows a genuine watershed moment when she sees it. She’s evaluated the risks and found them acceptable. Either that or she’s evaluated the situation and decided that the credibility-loss involved in walking away would be unacceptable. Maybe both. In any case, she’s as much a prisoner of events – of
ka-tet –
as the rest of us
.

They were on the outskirts of Derry again. Ralph could see the Civic Center on the horizon.

Now it was Old Dor Lois turned to. ‘Where is she? Do
you
know? It doesn’t matter how many security people she’s got around her; Ralph and I can be invisible when we want to be . . . and we’re very good at changing people’s minds.’

‘Oh, changing Susan Day’s mind wouldn’t change anything,’ Dor said. He still wore that broad, maddening smile. ‘They’ll come to the Civic Center tonight no matter what. If they come and find the doors locked, they’ll break them open and go inside and have their rally just the same. To show they’re not afraid.’

‘Done-bun-can’t-be-undone,’ Ralph said dully.

‘Right, Ralph!’ Dor said cheerily, and patted Ralph’s arm.

Five minutes later, Joe drove his Ford past the hideous plastic statue of Paul Bunyan which stood in front of the Civic Center and turned in at a sign which read
THERE
’
S ALWAYS FREE PARKING AT YOUR CIVIC CENTER
!

The acre of parking lot lay between the Civic Center building itself and the Bassey Park racetrack. If the event that evening had been a rock concert or a boat-show or a wrestling card, they would have had the parking lot entirely to themselves this early, but tonight’s event was clearly going to be light-years from an exhibition basketball game or a monster truck-pull. There were already sixty or seventy cars in the lot, and little groups of people standing around, looking at the building. Most of them were women. Some had picnic hampers, several were crying, and almost all wore black armbands. Ralph saw a middle-aged woman with a weary, intelligent face and a great mass of gray hair passing these out from a carrybag. She was wearing a tee-shirt with Susan Day’s face on it and the words
WE SHALL
VERC
ME
.

The drive-through area in front of the Civic Center’s bank of entrance doors was even busier than the parking lot. No fewer than six TV newsvans were parked there, and various tech crews stood under the triangular cement canopy in little clusters, discussing how they were going to handle tonight’s event. And according to the bedsheet banner which hung down from the canopy, flapping lazily in the breeze, there
was
going to be an event.
RALLY IS
ON
, it read in large, blurry spray-paint letters. 8
P.M. COME SHOW YOUR SOLIDARITY EXPRESS YOUR OUTRAGE COMFORT YOUR SISTERS
.

Joe put the Ford in Park, then turned to Old Dor, eyebrows raised. Dor nodded, and Joe looked at Ralph. ‘I guess this is where you and Lois get out, Ralph. Good luck. I’d come with you if I could – I even asked him – but he says I’m not equipped.’

‘That’s all right,’ Ralph said. ‘We appreciate everything you’ve done, don’t we, Lois?’

‘We certainly do,’ Lois said.

Ralph reached for the doorhandle, then let it go again. He turned to face Dorrance. ‘What’s this about? Really, I mean. It’s
not
about saving the two thousand or so people Clotho and Lachesis said are going to be here tonight, that’s for sure. To the kind of All-Time forces
they
talked about, two thousand lives are probably just a little more grease on the bearings. So what’s it all about, Alfie? Why are we here?’

Dorrance’s grin had faded at last; with it gone he looked younger and strangely formidable. ‘Job asked God the same question,’ he said, ‘and got no answer. You’re not going to get one either, but I’ll tell you this much: you’ve become the pivot-point of great events and vast forces. The work of the higher universe has almost completely come to a stop as those of both the Random and the Purpose turn to mark your progress.’

‘That’s great, but I don’t get it,’ Ralph said, more in resignation than in anger.

‘Neither do I, but those two thousand lives are enough for me,’ Lois said quietly. ‘I could never live with myself if I didn’t at least try to stop what’s going to happen. I’d dream of the deathbag around that building for the rest of my life. Even if I only got an hour’s sleep a night I’d dream of it.’

Ralph considered this, then nodded. He opened his door and swung one foot out. ‘That’s a good point. And Helen’ll be there. She might even bring Nat. Maybe, for little Short-Time farts like us, that’s enough.’

And maybe,
he thought,
I want a rematch with Doc #3.

Oh, Ralph,
Carolyn mourned.
Clint Eastwood?
Again?

No, not Clint Eastwood. Not Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger, either. Not even John Wayne. He was no big action-hero or movie-star; he was just plain old Ralph Roberts from Harris Avenue. That didn’t make the grudge he bore the doc with the rusty scalpel any less real, however. And now that grudge was a lot bigger than just a stray dog and the retired history teacher who had lived downstairs for the last ten years or so. Ralph kept thinking of the parlor at High Ridge, and the women propped against the wall below the poster of Susan Day. It wasn’t upon Merrilee’s pregnant belly which the eye in his mind kept focusing but Gretchen Tillbury’s hair – her beautiful blonde hair that had been mostly burned off by the close-range rifle-shot that had taken her life. Charlie Pickering had pulled the trigger, and maybe Ed Deepneau had put the gun in his hands, but it was Atropos Ralph blamed, Atropos the jump-rope-thief, Atropos the hat-thief, Atropos the comb-thief.

Atropos the earring-thief.

‘Come on, Lois,’ he said. ‘Let’s—’

But she put her hand on his arm and shook her head. ‘Not just yet – get back in here and shut the door.’