The Cure (17 page)

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

R
ILEY DROPPED AN ANONYMOUS CASHIER’S CHECK
for one hundred thousand dollars in the collection basket. It was the fifth time he had done so in the ten weeks since Dylan closed the deal. They said it was better to give than to receive, but he felt no joy in the experience, having stolen it in the first place. To get around that scruple Riley sometimes told himself that every offering was originally a gift from God anyway, and if all anybody ever did was give back what the Lord had given, was he any different?

Unfortunately, that logic wasn’t doing any good. According to Riley’s banker in New York, Henry had not cashed a single check so far—more than half a million dollars’ worth of paper in the preacher’s drawer or somewhere, unaccepted—so apparently not all offerings were the same. Maybe after he had given God an even million they would be square. Maybe it would take ten. Or maybe there wasn’t enough money in the world.

Pushing his new eyeglasses higher on his nose, Riley decided not to think about it anymore. He settled in to listen to the sermon as Pastor Henry approached the podium. Thirty minutes later, the lady to his left passed him the Communion tray. It felt strangely heavy in his hands. He stared down at the concentric circles of plastic thimbles, red wine in the center, grape juice around the outside. At least that was the usual way they arranged the blood of Christ. But what if someone made a mistake? What if the wine was on the outside this time? Riley thought about the note he had stolen from the offering basket.

. . .
if they ever drink again, the urge will return stronger than ever
.

Staring at the juice and wine, Riley remembered the chief of police outside the tent at Teal Pond, asking Hope to explain the Mercedes. He remembered Bree walking away when he couldn’t bring himself to give advice about her boyfriend. He remembered the powder he had piled on a plastic tray at Henry’s Drug Store, the surprising weight remaining even after he was cured, pressing him to poison those who needed healing most. He thought of Dylan Delaney entering Hope’s kitchen without knocking. He thought of his old friend Brice’s last sensation, the caustic taste of rubbing alcohol granting sweet oblivion. And Riley saw the start of everything, the equatorial sunlight slanting through pollen-laden air to illuminate a clearing filled with corpses, and in his hands he saw the multicolored stained-glass radiance reflected in a dozen little circles on the tray, every color in the universe absorbed into monotonous blood red, everything the same no matter what he did, and suddenly he did not care which one he drank.

Riley closed his eyes, picked a random thimble, and tossed the liquid down.

He set the tray onto the pew beside him and stood and walked out of the church alone, descending the tall steps and crossing town on foot to his garage apartment, where he lay down to take a Sunday nap with the unsatisfying taste of grape juice in his mouth.

The next morning he showered and shaved and dressed himself and went to work the lunch shift at Sadie’s Downtown Diner, where he overheard a couple of the local fellas talking. The men weren’t making any secret of their conversation in the little dining room, so Riley couldn’t help but overhear their comments about Hope. The fella doing most of the talking was named Jim something. He wore a plaid wool cap with earflaps, even though the temperature outside was finally up into the sixties now that it was May. Jim had recognized Riley when he first started working at the diner a few months ago, said he knew him from his days before in Dublin, remembered he had left for Brazil as a missionary and then came back to teach at Bowditch for a little while. The man had asked a few embarrassing questions about the time since then—”where ya been, what ya been doin’”—but Riley had grown used to lying about that.

The other one was named Billy or maybe Bobby, someone Riley kind of remembered from back in high school. The guy used to be a troublemaker hippie-type if Riley remembered right, but now he saw this Billy-Bobby fella over at the church sometimes. At least maybe he did. Riley couldn’t be sure, because he tried not to look at people’s faces when he went to church. He usually sat in a pew near the back, alone, hoping his short hair and clean-shaven face and new clothes would do the trick as they had with Bill Hightower and Henry and the chief, hoping even God would not recognize him for a thief as he waited for the offering basket to come around, in disguise as his old self.

“I hear the mayor’s talkin’ ‘bout puttin’ these bums up in town somewheres,” said Jim, the one with the hayseed-looking earflaps. “Plum foolish in the head, ya ask me.”

“Ayuh,” said Billy or Bobby, slurping his vegetable soup and getting a splatter on his greasy tie. “Don’t make no sense at all ta treat ‘em like they’s tourists.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“Ya know what?”

“Huh?”

“She got a million-dollar car parked in her backyard.”

“Go on ya!”

“Saw it with my own eyes.”

Earflaps chewed his food a moment, then said, “Ya think that’s got somethin’ ta do with all them bums?”

“It’s got somethin’ ta do with
somethin’
—ya can bet on that.”

“She’s on somebody’s payroll, an it ain’t ours.”

“Ayuh. Oughta put her in the pokey and get a whole ‘nother mayor’s what we oughta do.”

Billy-Bobby and Mr. Jim Earflaps fell silent after that, chewing their food methodically like a pair of cows. Riley wondered why they had spoken about Hope right in front of him that way. Maybe they didn’t remember he was her ex-husband. Or maybe they assumed the divorce meant he didn’t care about her anymore. Whatever the explanation, as Riley cleared the table next to them, he had the strongest urge to knock their ignorant heads together.

He had piled all the dirty dishes into the gray plastic tub and nearly finished wiping off the tabletop when Jim said, “I’m thinkin’ maybe Mr. Hightower’s got the moxie ta handle things.” More silent chewing, then, “Hey, ya goin’ ta that town-hall meetin’ he called tonight?”

“Well I guess prob’ly.”

“You gonna stand up?”

“Naw. Ain’t much on talkin’ in front a people. You?”

“Maybe. Time somebody gave that woman a piece a their mind.”

The two men griped another ten minutes before finishing their meals and leaving. Riley thought about their words as he worked through the lunch rush. He felt the familiar weight descending. He resisted it. There was no time for that. He had to
do
something.

Riley made a phone call to find out what time the meeting was to start. He got Sadie’s permission to leave an hour early, and when the time came he removed his apron and stepped out the front door into a beautiful spring afternoon. The azure sky was cloudless. The air felt clean and cool and comfortable against his face. The stately birches touching branches along Main Street were finally in leaf, their virginal green crowns as soft and pale and delicate as low-lying fog. It would have been a picture postcard view of a small New England town except for the shabby men and women loitering everywhere, most of them filthy, wearing far more clothing than the weather called for, sitting on the curb and leaning against the birches or the facades of business storefronts.

Riley knew they were there for him, waiting for the man who healed a few of them last winter, hoping he would reappear. Riley felt the weight of their desire added to the weight of all that he had done to Hope. Yet he still felt a frantic need to fix things.

In the distance Riley heard voices shouting something over and over. As he scanned the street to find the source of the commotion he saw two well-dressed women emerge from a boutique across the way and hurry toward a fancy car with Massachusetts plates, neither woman looking right or left as they passed a huddle of vagrants. When their car backed out of the parking spot Riley saw the woman on the passenger side turn to lock her door.

With a sigh he set out up the hill, heading for Bill Hightower’s meeting.

Dublin’s town hall straddled the top of Main Street, high above him. With the foot of the street at the town landing and the businesses and churches set well back from the curbs along the street, there was a clear line of sight from down at the harbor through the overarching birches all the way up to the brick and granite building. When approaching the landing from the water, the town hall’s position made it the natural focus of attention, with the old copper clipper ship atop the weather vane on the building’s cupola the most prominent man-made object in all of Dublin.

As he neared the high end of Main Street, Riley saw about a hundred people on the sidewalk below the town-hall steps. The crowd was the source of the repeated shouts he had heard down by the diner. He paused to listen to their words.

“One, two, three, four, we won’t let you kill the poor!”

“Five, six, seven, eight, cut the cost and end the wait!”

Pushing his eyeglasses higher on his nose, Riley saw a few homemade signs waving above the heads of the people:
Cure Us Now!
and
Heal the Homeless!
and
Murder for Hire!
He felt as if every word they shouted, everything written, was focused right on him. He wished there was a way to explain.

He saw television news crews at the fringes of the demonstration with camera and sound operators and reporters looking out of place in their suits. Eyeing the cameras around the crowd, he thought about his darkly silhouetted shaggy image in the back of Bill Hightower’s car, broadcast onto millions of television screens on the nightly news. He did not want to repeat that experience. He wanted to remain unnoticed, as unconnected as possible from the “mystery man” of Dublin and the events of the previous autumn. He almost turned back down the hill.

Then he remembered the ugly conversation in the diner, the way those men had spoken about Hope as if she was not a person with feelings, but rather a symbol or an object, a scapegoat. Riley wiped his sweating palms on his shirt. If there was going to be a scapegoat, it ought to be him. He wove his way through the crowd and began to climb the steps.

Memories of the glory days of shipbuilding were built into every brick and board of Dublin’s center of government. To reinforce the imposing sense of power already well established by the building’s situation above downtown, the sixteen granite steps tapered as they ascended, providing an illusion of deep perspective, as if Riley’s climb would take him to the heavens. At the top of the steps stood four imposing white Corinthian columns with ornate hand-carved capitals. Instead of the usual clusters of grape leaves the capitals were adorned with images of ships in every stage of construction. The columns rose from a broad landing. Behind them were two front doors, twelve feet tall and built of African mahogany by a long forgotten master shipwright. On the panels of each door were bas-relief carvings of more shipbuilding scenes. And to Riley’s dismay, in front of the doors stood Chief Steven Novak and two uniformed policemen wearing helmets.

One of the policemen moved to bar Riley’s way, but the chief said something to him and the cop stepped back. When Riley reached the landing at the top of the stairs, the chief spoke loudly so he would be heard above the chanting demonstrators. “Hi ya, Riley. Here for the meeting?”

“Is that okay?”

“Ayuh. Open to all residents. Most of ‘em used the side door, though.”

Riley had forgotten that option. He turned to look back down at the crowd. “What are they doing here?”

“Mad about the price of that new cure for alkies, best I can tell. Wanna get it for free.”

“But why are they here at town hall?”

“After a photo opportunity, I imagine. Prob’ly figure Bill Hightower called the meetin’ to talk about getting rid of the alkies, and this is the town where that so-called cure got invented, so—”

“Invented? Why would they think that?”

“Don’t ya watch the news? They’ve been talkin’ ‘bout a connection between this new cure and the troubles we had last fall. The ‘mystery man’ and the riot at Henry’s store. Ya know about all that, right?”

Riley didn’t trust himself to speak.

The chief turned to look at him. “I’m kinda hopin’ they’re right. Mebbe they can find that fella for me. Sure do wanna talk to him ‘bout Willa Newdale.” The chief bent closer to speak into his ear. “Did ya know Willa?”

“I don’t think so,” lied Riley.

The chief continued to lean close to Riley, searching his face. “We never had a chance to finish talkin’ ‘bout how come a professor is workin’ over at the diner, did we? Sure like to hear your life’s story one of these days.”

Riley felt his heartbeat rising. “Okay.”

“Maybe I’ll drop by for lunch or somethin’ after we get a handle on all this.” The chief waved toward the crowd and Riley followed the gesture, relieved to look away from his searching eyes.

Down below, Riley saw people he recognized from the shelter. He saw the giant from Houston, standing head and shoulders above everyone else. He thought of that night—was it really six months past already?—being manhandled down the street against his will to Henry’s Drug Store, and the helpless fear of knowing he was out of miracles when they had placed so much naked hope in him. He thought of the night before that, giving out the little bit of powder he had found, and the joy on the faces of those few he had cured. The weight had lifted then, for just a little while. He thought of his excitement when he figured out a way to fix everything, a way to make things easier for Hope and Bree, and to help Dylan, the good man who had come to take Riley’s place. He thought of all these homeless alcoholics, who like him had heard that miracles were happening in Maine and staked their lives against the ravenous winter on the hope that it was true. Riley thought of his brief weeks of satisfaction when he foolishly believed he had found a life worth living, and then he thought about five thousand dollars for one dose and the fact that his grand scheme to help the world was yet another blessing that had been forbidden him. He should have known such good fortune would not be granted to a ghost.