The End of the Pier (28 page)

Now she even forced herself to rock the chair; it creaked on the
rotting planks, and she felt her neck creak, too, as she ever-so-slowly turned her face to look at him with that same stiff smile. Wade Hayden was grinning crazily back at her, but she didn't look away. She dared to look straight at the knife. “Wade, what've you got that old kitchen knife for? You can't hunt with that.” She said it slowly and almost dreamily, her mouth curled up in that memory of a smile. The way, she thought, Joey smiled.

Shirl would go on seeing Joey in the Rainbow Café forever. But she was never going to see Chad again, never.

Somehow she managed to go on rocking, holding Dr. Hooper's blue dress, and saying, while he was looking down at the knife with a puzzled expression, “What things, Wade? Why don't you tell me what things have been happening?”

“That's what I was meaning to do, Maud. Bad things.” Now the knife was between his thumb and forefinger, dangling, swaying slightly. “Things I did. I thought you might hear me out.”

She tried to bring her son's face to mind and she couldn't. It was blotted out by the fear.

She felt a momentary reprieve. Yes, she assured him, she would hear him out. If she didn't look at him, if she concentrated on the dock over there, she might be able to convince herself that this wasn't really happening. Beyond that row of little boats she had no future. She wondered if she even had a past. It was all unreal. “What things were those, Wade?” she asked again, conversationally, her fingers pleating the blue dress.

Wade was crossing his legs, clearing his throat, as if to get comfortable and in voice.

“You didn't know me and Eunice very well.”

No, she hadn't. Her tongue felt thick. He'd murdered his own child.

“We was like
that
.” He held up two fingers close together. “Much more'n her and her mother. Yeah, Eunice and me, we understood one another. Trouble was, Eunice took herself off whorin' around.”

It jolted her, the way he said this, his voice so measured and calm. Maud's hair was a cap of perspiration; her scalp prickled. She would have to hide her terror.

“. . . whorin', and got herself pregnant.” He turned it into three syllables—“preg-a-nant.” Now his voice, almost guttural before, became high and thin and whined like a saw as he brought his fist down on the arm of the aluminum chair. “You can't have that goin' on, not in your own house—not your own flesh.”

She could feel the heat coming off him; it was like the shimmering heat that can rise, miragelike, from baked surfaces—a road, the desert. She had to answer him: “No. No, you can't, Wade.” Keep saying his name. Did he even hear her? Did he even know where he was?

“Eunice, she'd've turned out like that Loreen Butts or that Tony what's-her-name.”

He had forgotten. Maud shut her eyes. He'd actually forgotten the name, as if Tony were only some lost acquaintance, someone he'd known casually.

“Did you ever know Loreen Butts?” His tone was conversational, casual, as if they'd just stopped on the pavement to exchange a bit of gossip.

No. The word did not come out; she choked on it, swallowed. Maud cleared her throat. “No,” she said firmly.

He turned to her. “You coming down with something, Maud? You're all over sweat. Nothin' worse'n a summer cold.”

Nothing worse. She clutched her book. Behind her, twigs snapped. Sam.

It's not Sam. You didn't hear a car. Forget Sam. She tried to shut out Wade's voice. He was talking about Loreen Butts.

“Thing was, she took up with that Boy Chalmers. He's queerer than a three-dollar bill, everyone knows that. In a way it's just as well that sheriff in Elton County arrested him. Boy Chalmers.” Wade leaned over, spat onto the boards. “His kind shouldn't be walking around. Don't surprise me trash like that Loreen Butts
would take up with Boy Chalmers.” Now he was back to talking about Eunice again. “Thing is, Eunice's ma never really knew how to raise her, though I expect she tried. Not like my own momma. You should've known her . . .”

His angel of a mother. Maud gripped her book, the blue dress now lying folded over the chair arm, and listened to this peculiar, disjointed tale, about how wonderful his angel mother was. It was all a lie. Wade's mother had gone off when he was just a little boy. Sam had got it from Molly Hayden; even Molly, so tight-lipped around nearly everyone, even she would talk to Sam.

Where was he? Was he coming back?

“Dr. Hooper.” Maud didn't know she'd said it aloud until Wade turned to her, turned as if he were still with cold, his whole torso, not just his head.

“She had you all fooled, didn't she, that woman? Probably just because she was a doctor, you thought she was better than other people? You know them letters she used to write? Well, you ought to have read them letters and I bet you wouldn't think she was so wonderful.”

His voice, Maud thought, had taken on the rancor and bitterness of an invalid, a sick old woman like Aunt Simkin.

“You didn't know she walked out on her boy, did you?” His tone had deepened. “Letters is bad news, most of the time. Being postmaster, well, I should know. Postmasters got a sacred trust.”

She felt him looking at her, wanting her to ask. “I expect they do, Wade. I'm not sure just what it is, myself.” She coughed.

“It's a sacred trust to know. To
know
what goes on in your town. That Billy Katz—you know him? He's postal clerk over in Hebrides. Billy Katz is a disgrace to the profession.” Wade leaned forward, spat into the dark water, then continued, conversationally. “Yeah, that Billy. If it wasn't for me going over there to pinch-hit him, well, that town'd hardly get any service at
all
. Don't think I didn't know all about Loreen Butts and that Antoinette woman. Ain't much goes on a postmaster don't know about.” He
took a pull at the can of beer, laughed as he swallowed, and wiped the spittle from his mouth. “Sam DeGheyn thinks I was over to Hebrides all that afternoon. You remember? Afternoon Eunice was murdered?”

As if this were just another to-be-forgotten date on the calendar. Maud's fingers were tight around the blue dress. She couldn't answer.

“Sam DeGheyn thinks he is the cat's pee-jays around here.” His tone became sly. “He was carrying on with that Alonzo woman, did you know that?”

Maud shook her head. She knew it wasn't so, and yet a flicker of jealousy spurted up within her. It was astonishing that in the midst of all this fear, she could feel something as clear as jealousy.

“Oh, hell, yeah.” He kept his eyes on her. “Fooled around over there in the courthouse after hours. I bet he had her in just about every—”

“How'd you fool him, Wade?” She blurted it out in a voice that sounded tight as violin strings. “How'd you put one over on Sam?”

His laugh was more of a giggle. It was awful. “Easy as pie. All I had to do was jump in my pickup and come back to the farm and then go back again. Only took an hour, not much more. Anyone'd come into the post office, all I had to do was say I was in the john or was sick. No one come in, I guess. Who wants to talk to Billy Katz, anyway? He don't know his ass from—excuse my French.”

The giggle was frightening, almost worse than his thumb running the blade of the knife.

“Dr. Elizabeth Hooper . . . Dr. Elizabeth Hooper . . .”

He repeated the name again and again as if he were stroking it, tasting it. He told Maud how he had watched, that very night, from inside the dark post office. “She wasn't nothin' but a whore, Maud.” His voice had taken on again that whining petulance. “Had to do her, didn't I? Just like I did the others. What the hell did she care about her boy? She just walked out on him, didn't she?
Like Loreen Butts left that baby of hers time and again so she could go with that Boy Chalmers.” The voice had changed to that high, rasping whine again, as he talked about standing at the window of the post office. It was down the street a little from the Brandywine Guest House, but he could look up that way and watch.

“Don't . . .” Maud held up her hands to stop him telling her about what had happened.

It was crazy to challenge him, to suggest he'd done something wrong, but she couldn't help herself. Not when it came to Dr. Hooper. “She was here because of her son. Because of him she came through here like clockwork, once a month, just to see her son.”

Maud was weeping now, looking out over the water. All of those people across the lake and not one of them could help her. Sam.

“It's too late.”

The change in his voice jolted through her like an electrical shock. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the knife move, no longer forgotten. She had said just the wrong thing: it was not her place to argue Dr. Hooper's case; it was her place to tell Wade he was right. Wade Hayden needed absolution; he might be going to kill them both, but he needed something from her. That was the reason his voice was so cold with rage.

Suddenly the fear left her. She couldn't understand why or how it had fled to go and watch her from some other place. She squinted, looking across the water, and saw either the same figure returned or another much like it. The figure was no more than a black stick, but she could still see the tiny light of cigarette or cigar. It was as if the fear had fled across the water to stand way over there and observe her.

Maud just sat there waiting, smoothing her hand over her book of poetry as if it were some kind of talisman. She did not fully understand this new feeling; here she was sitting on the end of the pier with a madman, a psychopath, a murderer, and she felt lightweight. Looking across the water, she felt the scene before her
dissolve into particles of light and then reform itself into something the same yet subtly different, something that couldn't be seen with the naked eye but could only be
felt.
“Ramon Fernandez, tell me . . .”

Wade was saying something.

“What?” she asked.

“ ‘Ramon,' you said.”

She must have said the name aloud.

“ ‘Ramon Ferdinand,' you said. Who's he?”

“Not ‘Ferdinand.' Fer-
nan
-dez.”

“What kinda name's that? Is that a Spanish name?”

She smiled slightly, smoothed her hand over the book. “Maybe it's Cuban.”

“Sounds like a spic.” Angrily, he spit into the water. He seemed to have forgotten why he was here.

She smiled again. “Well, he's not.”

“It's one of them spic names,” he said sulkily.

Maud thought for a moment, and then she started to rock. It was as if this were a night like any other night, just the two of them sitting on the end of the pier, chatting. The
three
of them, she thought, thinking of Ramon.

“He's a friend.”

“Well.” His voice held a note of apology, but he was still sulking.

“A good friend. Yes, I've known him for—oh, years and years.” She turned to look at him now, at the thin and craggy profile, the nail-bitten hand that was now loose on the knife.

“He ain't from around here, is he. I guess I'd remember a name like that.”

“No, he's not.” She paused. “He lives in Key West.”

“Key West,
Florida
? That place where all the queers go? I hope you're not goin' to tell me he's a queer.”

“He owns a marina. You know, where people berth their boats.”

Wade was working up to spit again. “Kinda work queers do.”

“It's beautiful, the marina. All the boats.”

“You
never been to Florida, have you?”

Maud kept on rocking slowly and studying the line of boats across the water. “Just the once. It's so beautiful. The sun goes down right behind the marina. You've never seen such a sunset in your life, not up here in the North.”

“Hell, sun goes down here just like everywhere. What's so special about Key West? All it is is full of queers.”

He'd forgotten everything, it seemed. Forgotten the blood, the knife, the reason he'd come here; and she kept on rocking and talking about the Key West she'd never seen except in her mind. And then she felt that what happened didn't make all that much difference. The most Wade could do would be to take the knife and stick it into her. And in the long scheme of things, of wars and famines, floods, fires—that wasn't very much. What people thought was important was important only in the way a rattle is to a baby: something bright that makes a pleasant noise, something the baby simply wants. That knife wasn't much more than a rattle. If he suddenly plunged it into her, it would merely move through particles of light. For the first time in her life, Maud felt free.

Something would have to be done, nevertheless. She turned and looked at him. “Wade, I guess it's time for me to go in.”

He was still little-boy sulky. “I was hoping we could just set here and talk more.”

“Maybe some other night.”

She rose. He didn't move.

“I've got to take the things in.” Maud moved the bottle from the Colonel Sanders bucket and dumped the melted ice out. All Wade did was to look up at her, blinking, as if his eyes were trying to adjust to a new darkness. “You could help. You could just fold up that chair and bring it along.”

He got up slowly, sighing with impatience. Still holding on to the knife, he folded up the aluminum chair as Maud pulled the bead chain on the lamp. They were in darkness. She flicked it on
again, and there was a tiny dazzle of moonlight on the knife, the chair, the silver bucket-stand. She picked up the stand and reached for the lamp. “Do you think you could carry this?”

“I guess,” he said, his tone still truculent. His big-knuckled hand closed around the lamp.

Maud looked at him, at the pathetic and rather silly picture he made. He was standing with the chair under one arm, the knife still clutched in that hand, the lamp in the other, holding it by its wrought-iron stem. He was squinting at the light, his thumb and forefinger about to pull the bead chain.