The Stranger (2 page)

Two

Like it was diseased vermin, they burned the blue-eyed stranger on the shore, then buried the ashes with the others. Later there was this big meeting in the hotel. I didn’t go, but I knew what they were talking about. This was no south-of-the-border bread bandit who had washed up in Sullivan this morning. This was a regular blue-eyed guy from the next town. Somehow he’d got the Jumpy. That meant everything was changing. And changing for the worse. How long before the men and women of Sullivan would be watching me with their big frightened eyes just in case I got the telltale twinge when I looked at them?

I walked out of town around Lime Bay. There on the headland is a pile of white rocks. Every night I added another dozen to it. It’s now perhaps the size of a truck; a near-perfect square that glows milky white when the moon comes up. Rocks there are all shapes and sizes, but if I stand and look at them for a while I can start to see them as pieces of a puzzle. Originally I’d only meant to build a platform maybe the size of a bedsheet and about knee high. But the thing had just grown bigger and bigger.

Once when Ben got drunk and was sore at me for some reason he called it my “goddam obsession.” He apologized afterward.

But yeah,
obsession.
I guess that’s what it was. Now I build it a little higher every night. I take pieces of that white rock that might be the size of a cigarette carton or as big as a shoebox, that are either square or broad and flat like a book. Then I stand and stare at what I’ve built so far. It might take a while, but eventually I see where the piece fits, just like when you’re doing a jigsaw puzzle. Somehow my brain manages to perfectly match the shape of a rock in my hand to the same shaped space in my neat heap of stones.

I work either at night when there’s a moon that’s bright enough for me to see my
obsession.
Or I work at dawn or at dusk. Here, it’s far enough from the town for me not to be stared at like a freak in a cage. There are no houses on the headland. Precious few trees either. It’s just a bald finger of land poking out into the lake. So, as the clock in the town hall chimed midnight, I worked. My rhythmic ritual. Select stone. Stand. Stare at my “goddam obsession.” Stare at the stone in my hand. Then slot it into place on the pile. Repeat the procedure. Stand and stare. Listen to the rhythm of my breathing. The chirp of crickets. The night birds calling across the water. Do it all over again. That night I split my finger sliding a rock into its socket. But that wasn’t going to spoil the rhythm. Blood got onto the stones. Juicy red paw prints. But it didn’t look out of place. It looked right.

“You shouldn’t be doing this tonight, Greg.”

I looked up to see Lynne standing there. She fingered the flare of her cotton skirt. This was the first time I’d seen her really nervous. As if I frightened her. Nine months ago she’d worn the skirt and I’d told her that it was my favorite. Tonight she was wearing the same skirt to please me. More chocolate cake syndrome, huh?

She repeated the line as near as dammit. “Don’t do this tonight, Greg. You don’t have to.”

“It gives me something to do.”
Yeah, it’s my goddam obsession.
“Where’s William?”

“Asleep.”

“How are the kids?”

“They’re fine. The dogs are fine, too, just in case you ask.” Lynne laughed. I hadn’t heard her laugh like that before. It was nervy . . . tight-sounding. Sure, she was frightened. She was frightened of me. But here she was, only she wasn’t paying me in chocolate cake.

“Greg,” she said. “Why don’t we walk down to the beach?”

“I can’t yet.” I picked up a rock that was the size of a skull. It even had dark shading where the eyes would be. “I haven’t done my regulation twelve stones.”

“You don’t have to do this anymore, you know?” Her eyes glinted at me in the moonlight. “They’re . . .” She hunted for the word. “They’re safe now.”

My throat tightened the way it does when you know you can’t speak. I found the perfect slot for my skull-shaped rock and slid it into place. Blood smeared the skull stone where the mouth would be.

It took a while before I freed the words from the back of my throat. “You should go home to William. He’ll wonder where you are if he wakes up and finds you’re not in bed.”

“He’ll know where I’ll be.”

“You haven’t been here to see me for a while. What brought you?”

“I’ve been busy with Adam and Marsha. Marsha’s been difficult for weeks, not sleeping and messing the house. The doctor says it’s the terrible twos.”

“I’ve seen William taking them down to the beach. You know, you’ve a good husband there, Lynne?”

“I know.”

“Then why come up here to see me?”

“I was thinking that—”

“You were thinking? Or did the Caucus call on you tonight and suggest it’s time everyone worked a little harder to keep Greg Valdiva sweet?”

“Greg, no, they didn’t.” She looked hurt. “I know full well what happened today. I thought you needed someone you could talk to.”

“Or someone to fuck?”

She smiled. “If that’s what you want. I’ll be more than happy to—”

“To turn tricks like a whore?”

“Anything you want, Greg. I’ll do—”

“Anything?” My voice had risen louder. My heart beat furious against my chest like an angry fist. Yes, she would do anything. I could be brutal. I could hurt her. Beat her with my fist as I filled her with my cum. And she’d smile and say, “Thank you, Greg, I’m delighted to be of service.” She’d say the words in that polite hotel receptionist voice of hers. Her smile wouldn’t falter. I could insult her, foul mouth her husband, trash her kids to hell and back. That’s why I felt myself getting angry with her. Because she was willing to sacrifice so much of herself to keep me sweet. As if I was some fucking hairy-assed god or something. The whole of Sullivan would bust their spleen to keep me sweet. Because I’d recognized a stranger for what he
REALLY
was. I’d saved their skins again. Only I didn’t feel good about it. I didn’t feel good about being offered the chocolate cake. I didn’t feel great about being offered a good man’s wife.

Let me tell you this: It ain’t pretty. I ain’t proud. Once, soon after I arrived here, when I felt lonely as hell, I’d fucked Lynne. The great and good of the town recognized the value of me forming an emotional attachment to Lynne. That fucking her every once in a while would keep me sweet. Maybe I would even fall ass-over-tit in love with her; then she’d have a hold over me and, in turn, Sullivan would have me in its grip. Then I wouldn’t leave. I would be the town’s guardian angel forever.

But their plan didn’t work. Not exactly. Yes, Lynne is beautiful. She has the willowy body of a supermodel. She’s a gold medal–winning lover. But I’d fucked her because I was lonely and I wanted to sleep with my arms around a woman. Only it wasn’t an addiction. Because I felt a great heap of guilt burning inside me. Her husband was a nice guy. Very softly spoken and always shot me a friendly smile, like I was doing him a HUGE favor by humping his woman.

So, as Lynne began to speak sweetly, as she began to move toward me with that hip-swaying walk of hers, and shoot me those love-me-tonight looks I found myself wanting to make me, Greg Valdiva, ugly from the soul outward to the tip of my sunburnt nose.

But I couldn’t be deliberately cruel. She was a sweet-natured person. Instead I kept saying to her in a voice that came to my ears as a hoarse whisper, “Go home, Lynne; it’s late.”

“But I want to stay here with you, Greg.”

“You belong at home, Lynne. Your kids and your husband are asleep. Go back to them, Lynne.”

“Greg—”

“Lynne. Please. What I really want now . . . what would make me really happy . . . is to be left alone.” I looked at her, knowing right then how good it would be to see her naked and to be able to kiss her breasts, stroke her legs. But guilt tore through me like a burning stake. “Lynne, go home.”

She sighed. “OK, Greg.” She spoke lovingly. Her voice just so sweet I felt the blood tingle in my veins.

“But if you need anything, you know where I’ll be.” She smiled. “Call me, right?”

“Right. Thanks, Lynne.” I said it as if I meant it. What’s more I realized I
did
mean it.

For a second she paused. I thought she’d kiss me. A sweet, good-night kind of kiss. But if she did that, I don’t think I could stop myself from kissing her right back on her soft mouth. Once I was on that track I’d be on the old animal roller-coaster ride. I’d have her for sure. But not there. Not where I built the block of stones that I’d keep building I guess until they touched the sky. Or I died first. One of the two.

But she smiled a bright smile, wished me good night. Then lightly she walked back along the headland path in the direction of home and family. After that I stood looking out across the lake. At the way the moon filled it with lights that seemed to swell then shrink like a million beating hearts. With Lynne gone she no longer filled the night air with her perfume. I smelled lake water. Eventually the thump of my heart receded and I could hear the crickets again, riding with the ghostly call of a night bird.

At last I finished placing the final stone of my regulation dozen. It gleamed there in the moonlight. A block of white stone close on six tons. Just for a moment my mind raced through the rock, down into the soil. There was an irrational kind of eagerness to see what nine months lying in the ground had done to them.

It required physical effort on my part. A real wrenching back to stop myself picturing them.

Even so, one memory came back clearly enough. The week after I’d buried my mother and twelve-year-old sister here up on the headland I’d visited them. Some wild animal had opened up the single grave they shared. Strands of Chelle’s lovely dark hair lay pasted around the sides of the hole. Somehow it looked like the way seaweed looks on the beach. The paws of the animal had clawed it all in the same direction. The thing’s teeth had messed their faces, but it was the hair I remember so strongly. Dear God, that memory’s a hard unforgiving shape inside my head. Chelle liked playing with that hair. Not in an aren’t-I-so-pretty kind of way. She’d fool around with it. Of course my mother would go nuts when she saw the way Chelle would gel it in spikes or braid it with fuse wire. What really detonated the Mom bomb was when Chelle shampooed this paste they use at school to glue paper (it’s kid-friendly glue; not the kind you’d inhale to get so high you jump off the school roof or torch the principal’s car—a kind of flour and water mixture); anyway, she mixed this gloop into her hair, then molded it so it stood on end like a unicorn’s horn. It made her a good foot taller. What’s more, the thing set concrete hard.

Mom exploded. But she saw the funny side of it later. A good six weeks later, that is.

So, it was seeing her lovely hair smeared like seaweed in the dirt by some slobbering raccoon that really sent me over the edge. That was the birth of my
GODDAM OBSESSION
. I refilled the hole. Then I placed a layer of rocks over it so nothing could disturb the grave. As I worked I saw that you could interlock the different shaped rocks like a jigsaw puzzle. I kept going. Outward and upward. I keep adding to it. You see, I don’t think I could stop myself if I tried.

It’s a monument to my mother and sister. A good one, I think. In a hundred years’ time people will stop on the headland, look at that big cube of stone, and even though they might not know who lies there they’ll tell each other that those people were important. They weren’t forgotten.

The day the stranger died—the one with the Jesus eyes—I decided to build another kind of monument. It would be to the people I’ve met. To the people I found myself killing. Hell, it might even be some kind of monument to me. One that people can look at a hundred years from now and know what life was like the year the entire world went wrong. That monument, I decided, would be the story of what happened to our world and about what happened to me.

And this is it.

Three

Do you understand people? Can you guess what’s going through their minds? I used to date a girl who would be nice as pie with me all day, then turn ’round in the evening and say the day had been total crap. If she was nice to me one week she’d be one hell of a bitch the week after. As if she’d overspent from her good-nature account and needed some back.

Three days after I killed the blue-eyed stranger pretty much the whole of Sullivan was like that. That mood pendulum swung from gratitude to one of hatred. OK, so it was concealed hatred. But they hated me when they said their
Good morning, Greg
s. When I delivered firewood it pained them to be so ingratiatingly
nice
. Though nothing would be said to my face, I knew from the stiff bits of conversation that they were only being nice because they thought it mandatory. Well, that was the usual routine after I’d gone and done their bloody work for them.

This time it wasn’t going to be exactly the same.

I drove the truck along the same old route, dropping off bundles of sticks and baskets of logs at those pleasant suburban houses with their double garages and swimming pools out back.

“Thank you, Greg.”

“Have a nice day, Greg.”

“See you Friday, Greg.”

“Here, help yourself to a cold soda, Greg.”

Yeah, that was the same old song they sang . . . they sang it all day as I hefted the firewood to the wood-burning stoves they used for cooking now that the electricity supply was down to six hours a day. And I was civil in return. I wished them good day. Thanked them when they offered food or a drink. But you could read the minds of those townspeople, all right.

You’re a weird one, Greg Valdiva. What makes you tick? How do you know when a stranger has bad blood? Do you get some kind of porn thrill hacking out someone’s brains with an ax? Weren’t you disgusted with yourself when you hit the bread bandit so hard he shit blood all over the sidewalk?

You’re a disgusting son of a bitch, Valdiva.

For two pins we’d make you leave town.

Hell for one pin, Valdiva, we’d shoot you dead, you monster . . .

Yeah, that’s what they were thinking.

But isn’t that what you are deciding?

Maybe. But then I am some kind of monster. But I was Sullivan’s own pet monster. I kept the more dangerous monsters from the outside world at bay.

Today, then, it was the old routine. Nice salutations. Disgusted stares. Except for when I reached a house at the end of the street with cherry trees overhanging a kind of cute rustic picnic table and chairs. Eight or maybe nine teenagers clustered ’round it smoking cigarettes and drinking beer out of these big, oversize plastic bottles. Most of them I’d pass the time of day with now and then, except for a snotty-nosed guy who always looked at me as if I was something hot and filthy he’d just stepped in. His name was Crowther. His family had something to do with the battery factory over in Lewis. Crowther was pissed. Pissed as in angry. And maybe pissed as in being drunk. One day he’d have inherited Crowther Electrical and become a millionaire ’round about a hundred times over. Only ten months ago the battery factory, along with most of Lewis, became nothing but a pile of burnt brick. That gave the guy a well-I’ve-got-nothing-else-to-lose kind of quality.

“How’re you doing, Valdiva?” Crowther shouted this in a friendly way. But the way he was looking down his nose at me, you could tell he was getting all juicy with contempt.

“Fine, thanks,” I replied.

“I see you’ve got wood?” Crowther grinned at his people. “Have you got wood for me, Valdiva?”

“I’ve got wood for anyone who wants it,” I replied.

The others laughed in a good-natured way. They saw I’d got the joke and was easygoing enough to run with it.

“How much wood have you got for me, Greg?”

I looked at the girl who’d spoken. She was pretty. And she was smiling a nice smile.

That got up Crowther’s nose. It killed the superior grin on his face. “Valdiva, why d’ya do that crap job?”

“Delivering firewood?”

“Sure. Why do you moonlight, delivering sticks, when you know you’re the main man ’round here?”

“I don’t know about that.” I pulled bundles of wood from the back of the truck and set them down in the drive.

“Sure you are, Valdiva. You’ve got a
real
profession. Being the firewood guy, well . . . it must be so demeaning for you.”

“Got to pay the rent somehow.”

“They’d give you a fucking mansion if you asked.”

He jerked his thumb back at the house behind him. “They’d give you my fucking house, come to that. And they’d throw me out and I’d wind up living in your old hut down by the lake. What do you think of that?”

I kept it light as I began stacking the logs beside the stick bundles. “I don’t need a big house, Crowther. Not one as big as yours, anyway.”

“It’s a nice house for entertaining company.” Crowther stroked the bare knee of the girl sitting beside him.

“I imagine it is,” I said. “By the way, I got a note from your father asking for an extra gallon of kerosene. Where shall I put it?”

“Let’s see . . .” He playacted thinking about the question. “I know . . . how about somewhere where the sun doesn’t shine?”

He laughed at his own joke, but this time his cronies didn’t. They looked shocked and glanced at one another in a way that oozed pure discomfort.

Maybe the beer had lubed Crowther’s tongue. “Say, Valdiva, how does it feel to—to, you know . . . do it to one of those bread bandits? You know . . .” He made chopping motions with his free hand. “You know, slice and dice?”

“Crowther.”
The girl at his side hissed his name like he was making a big social gaffe at a cocktail party.

He didn’t listen. “You know, I’ve seen what you did to them. Man, those guys were mincemeat. I mean, you don’t hold back, do you? You really fucking cream them. Wham! Off go their faces. Wham! Off go their hands. You really mess those wops up, don’t you?”

His drinking buddies were getting agitated by Crowther’s spiel now. They pulled at his arms, hissed his name. I heard one whisper pleadingly to him, “Hey, come on, man. Cool it; you’re going to get him annoyed.”

“Why shouldn’t I get him fucking annoyed?”
That was the indignant drunk’s voice. The one that gets louder and more penetrating with every word. “Why shouldn’t I get the bastard annoyed? Who the hell does Valdiva think he is? He walks in here last year and suddenly he becomes the town hero. But all he does is turn some filthy bread bandit into jelly every few weeks.” He was on one now. Crowther was moved by the spirit, as they say. The spirit of what, God alone knows, but he lurched to his feet, then rolled up to me before throwing himself down to his knees. Hands together like he was praying, he made his eyes go all big and adoring like he was talking to Jesus. He started crying out. “Oh, my Lord God Valdiva. Forgive me if I spoke out of turn. Do not smite me. Do not turn thy back upon my miserable face. Do not withhold your bountiful gift of wood.” He started laughing as he remembered the joke. “Please, please, oh mighty Valdiva. Please give me your wood. For thy wood is a beautiful thing to behold. Give me wood, master. Give me
great
wood!”

Crowther’s friends made as if they intended to scurry across to drag him away, but they only came a few feet, then they stood there in a huddle, looking nervous and unhappy. They shot little glances at one another as if to ask,
Oh, shit, what do we do now?

Drunk, but with a glittery kind of anger, Crowther still knelt on the floor pretending to plead for forgiveness.

I froze my expression into a neutral mask. “I’ll put the can of kerosene right here next to the wood,” I told him. “The next delivery’s Friday. But if your father needs more kerosene I can drop a gallon off tomorrow afternoon.”

Like he’d been pulled up by the hair, Crowther snapped up onto his feet. “Yeah, and we’re expected to be grateful for that, are we?”

“Look, I don’t want any trouble. I only—”

“You don’t want any trouble. You
are
trouble. Did you know that? Everyone’s shit scared of you, Valdiva.”

“Remember what I said about the kerosene.” I shut the flap of the truck.

“But I’m not scared of you, Valdiva!” His face had been red. Now the color drained, leaving it waxy white. “I’m not scared, d’ya hear?”

“Crowther.” I compensated for his yelling by talking in a whisper. “Take it easy, all right?”

He stopped shooting his mouth off now. His eyes bulged at me from that white face. As I turned away to climb into the truck he grabbed one of the cut logs from the pile and swung it at me. A numbness spread down the side of my face. At that moment there was no pain. I just said to myself,
OK, turn back and stop him from doing it again
. Only the blow had been harder than I thought. I found myself rocking back on my heels. When he raised the log again I didn’t defend myself. . . . Christ, I couldn’t defend myself. I just remember seeing Crowther’s face blaze with fury. The eyes blazed pure fury, too. Maybe this was the same expression I wore on my face when I killed.