Wide Blue Yonder (37 page)

He got the car going again and was only slightly annoyed when other cars were in his way, something that had seldom happened when he was invisible. The girl said, “You can let us off anywhere, we’ll walk home. I have an ATM card I can give you. I’ll write down the code and you can get, well, it isn’t much but …” He wasn’t listening to her, he figured she just liked to talk, and he was going to have to get used to it if they rode together. He
wondered if he could ask her to drive so he could sleep. He wanted to be asleep inside the car with the darkness streaming past and the old man whispering dreams.

First, though, there was the matter of gas for the car, which he had learned must be attended to, and it was simple, you just went to the gas place and gave the car a drink and sometimes people came out and made noise but the gun always shut them up. Here was a place, not too busy, the way he preferred it in order to avoid complications. “Stay put,” he told the others. There was still a cheeseburger smell in the car. It was making him yawn. When he got out and leaned against the pump with the hose in his hands, he almost fell asleep. It was lucky the car knew how to do this part and he could just stand here drowsy with the gas rushing smoothly through his fingers.

The old man’s head turned toward him behind the glass and his eyes or maybe the glass reflected a chip of light back at him. The old man’s mouth was moving as usual with nothing coming out, couldn’t he ever talk normal so you could understand him? What the hell was he looking at, something behind him—then the gas was spraying everywhere because he had it confused with the gun, trying to shoot that evil bad-luck face hanging over him, except it wasn’t even money now, it was huge, a giant’s face in the sky, swimming in colors to confuse his eyes and where was the damn gun? The gas smell was eating up his nose and the electricity howled through him and the girl was screeching, “What? What? It’s a stupid chamber of commerce billboard,” no, it was a curse laid on him that he would never sleep, that the food in his belly would turn to boiling stone. There was no escape for him nor any use in running because the ghost would always be a step ahead. He asked the car for one last ride and it carried them away.

S
omehow they’d ended up back inside the house.

Josie despaired; in her mind she had worked it out that once the gunman had whatever he wanted, money or food or enough screaming, he would leave them alone, vanish. Instead it might go on and on and get worse and worse. Where were the police anyway? He’d only committed about ninety-five traffic violations. Mitchell Crook was out here somewhere, as well as the rest of the Springfield cops, and was it too much to hope that someone was looking for her? The gunman was behind the wheel, doing his psycho brooding thing, while Josie tried to think of what she would do if she was in a movie. Grab the wheel and steer the car off a cliff, if they had such things as cliffs in Springfield. But since they didn’t, she could only sit there like a twerp. An idiotic random act of violence. That’s what this was. All those times she had done wild and stupid things, practically begged for disaster, and nothing had happened. Now this. She hated being an innocent bystander. It was so insipid.

“Look,” she said, “just take us back to my uncle’s house, let us go, no hard feelings, OK?” Because they were in fact only a few blocks away, and he seemed to be listening to her as she gave him directions. He pulled up in front of the house and her heart was like a bird struggling to break loose from a trap, almost free. “Come on, Harvey,” keeping her voice light and calm, she hoped, waiting for Harvey to fumble himself forward in the seat; once they were out of the car they would be safe.

But just as she set foot on the sidewalk, the gunman was at her side, muttering and herding her with the gun, Harvey too, all of them shuffling up the walkway and nothing was over yet.

Inside, something seemed to set him off again. He raged and stomped through the rooms, scratched up bloody welts on his arms, made them turn out the lights and lock the doors and windows. Lucky for Harvey, he left the television on. Josie decided that even if she got shot for it she was going to change her wet pants, such a nasty feeling, and scuttled into the bathroom. When she came out she asked the gunman, “Would you like some ice cream?” Thinking she could get on his good side. If he actually had one. He only snarled. He looked like he hadn’t been eating regularly for about five years, which was probably the last time he’d seen the inside of a bathtub.

She and Harvey sat on the couch, as before, while Mr. Nasty kept lifting the corners of the window shades, all freaky nervous. What was he so afraid of, what was out there that was worse than his own horrible self? Now he was carrying on in whatever language it was he used for the purposes of insanity, was it Spanish? Earlier in the summer they had finally caught the infamous Railroad Killer, the Mexican man who had traveled the country murdering people near train tracks. At least they said they’d caught him but what if they hadn’t, or if there was more than one of them? You could practically
see
railroad tracks from the back porch.

It got late, and later. Midnight. Josie was in some beaten-down state of mind, too tired and numb to care very much what might happen next. At least Harvey, now that he was back in his old spot on the couch, seemed fine. The blue reflected light of the television made him glow, and Josie thought, with a kind of holy
exhaustion, that she loved him, and if she died before morning she would do so with love in her heart. Anyone might walk into Harvey’s house, into his life, and take up residence there, herself, Rosa, or a madman, and he let them. He had no more self-importance than a trout in a stream. If only you could empty yourself of yourself. You got too full silly that was so tired.

She kept dozing off and jerking awake, dry-mouthed, to find Harvey pitched sideways and snoring next to her, the Weather Channel’s tiny voice droning on, and the gunman staring her down from his perch on the windowsill. Josie always pretended she was still asleep, but she had the uneasy feeling that he knew she was awake, and that he knew she knew he did. It made her cold afraid. What would it be like to be dead? Would it be anything? Did it hurt?

Toward dawn she must have slept more soundly, because the next time she woke she felt almost rested. The first thing she saw was an enormous field of white cloud, shaped like a saucer. It took her a moment to realize it was on television. The cloud was circling around itself, slowly, it seemed, although Josie knew it was actually moving at terrific speed. Ridges, arms, spirals of cloud, hundreds of miles wide. The sky around it serene and sun-drenched blue. It was a hurricane the way no one ever saw it, from above.

The top of her head must have unhinged because the sight of it was pouring straight into her brain. It was so beautiful. It was where she wanted to be right now. Above all the weather and the mess of thinking and being scared.

The next minute it was gone and there was a commercial for of all things Taco Bell. The sun on the drawn shades filled the room with somber light. Harvey began to stir. She hadn’t seen the gunman move, but somehow he’d wrapped himself in the curtains, twisted them like they were a rope ladder he was trying to climb.

Josie asked, “Would it be all right if I got up to make some coffee? Coff-ee? You want some?”

He showed her his teeth, but he didn’t seem to mind her being in the kitchen. Josie put food down for Fat Cat, although she hadn’t seen it since last night. Maybe it was smart enough to be hiding. She started the coffee and made a plate of toast and strawberry jam. When she offered it to the gunman, he grabbed the plate and stuffed all four slices into his mouth. “Sure, go ahead, I can make more.” She was encouraged that he was doing something as normal as eating breakfast, although she’d seen dogs with better manners.

She made another batch of toast for herself and Harvey, then brought the coffee out in mugs. The gunman watched her, his face a shadowy blur. Lord, but he smelled. “Coffee,” she said, holding one out to him, aware that she was being a brave, plucky girl. “This is black, but if you want milk or—”

He knocked it out of her hand and Josie screamed as the coffee burned her throat and arm. It hurt like sin. The mug rolled away at her feet. She crumpled onto the couch. He aimed the gun at the mug, like nothing was broken enough to suit him, and pulled the trigger three times. Harvey had his hands over his ears. The mug was all lumps and powder. Smithereens. A silly word. The skin on her arm was reddening, beginning to blister along one edge. Her throat was probably just as bad. She wondered if she would live long enough to have scars.

Her ears were still hollow from the noise of the gun. Other people must have heard it too. They would call the police. Mitchell Crook would show up and finally do something brave. She wanted some ice for the burns but she didn’t dare move. Where were the police? The phone rang and he swore and knocked it over and it made a dull, metallic sound and landed on the floor belly-up like a dead animal. The police kept not coming.
What was the matter with the neighbors? She hated them. They were selfish, stupid people. She hated them sincerely and with conviction. The gunman was reloading. Harvey said, “Daddy had his pecker out.”

What?
Josie moaned. Her arm hurt. She could see the muzzle of the gun, the small black hole that could fit so much death in it. Harvey said, “It was all red and skinned-looking.”

“Harvey, not now.”

The muzzle of the gun drifted down, away from her line of sight.

“Daddy said kneel and pray.”

Josie moaned again. She was through being brave, she only wanted to hide and shut her eyes against death. What was Harvey talking about anyway, if she heard one more crazy thing she was going to jump out of herself like a jack-in-the-box. On the Weather Channel, trees were whipsawing back and forth in the wind, which was probably howling but you couldn’t tell.

“Down in the cellar with his shirttail out.”

Josie saw Fat Cat behind the gunman, yellow eyes taking everything in. All he’d have to do was turn to see it.

“Daddy was mean.”

“Harvey, shh.” The cat’s tail whisked around the corner, disappearing into the bedroom.

The gun dangled from his wrist. The curtain, torn loose, was wrapped around him like a cape, like he was some demented superhero. “Bang bang,” he said.

Was he making a joke? He was grinning, as if he had said something very funny. Josie nodded and tried to smile. He strutted around looking pleased with himself. At least he wasn’t shooting anything. Her arm still hurt but she was getting used to it, the way she guessed you could get used to anything, because you didn’t have a choice. He laughed and said something in Spanish.

“Who are you anyway?” she asked wearily. “Are you the Railroad … Are you from around here?”

More Spanish. Oh God, Rosa. Josie hadn’t even thought of her, but what if she showed up? Walked in expecting nothing worse than dirty dishes and instead had to clean up their dead bodies? Maybe she wasn’t coming. It was getting later minute by minute, she could tell from the pinholes in the shades that let in sunlight. Minute by minute. That was how you got through things like this. Shut down your mind. Let thought in a pinhole at a time.

Harvey was quiet, tired, probably. Josie worried that he wouldn’t be able to take much more of this. All the hinges of her body ached. She got to go to the bathroom, finally. Her throat wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, but the rest of her was all pasty and hollow-eyed. She looked like a refugee.

Just as she was flushing, the door creaked open and the gunman put one eye up to the gap. Josie screamed. He made a kissing noise, then closed the door again.

If he touched her, she would find some way to kill him.

The bathroom window was too small to climb out of. It held a rectangle of the perfectly normal world, the back fence and the orange trumpet vine and honeysuckle that grew so heavy they were pulling down the boards. If she got through this alive, she was going to go out there and smell that honeysuckle, hug that fence, splinters and all.

Later Josie had fallen back asleep, or what passed for sleep, when somebody knocked on the front door. The gunman was coming back in from the kitchen, his mouth filled with more bread. Another knock, and a hand trying the knob.

Rosa? The police? She couldn’t think. The gunman froze. His eyes were all red and cracked from not sleeping and whatever else was wrong with him. The half-chewed bread bulged from his mouth. Another knock. Josie held on to Harvey’s shoulders and
waited for the shooting to begin but it never did and the knocking stopped. Whoever it was had gone away. The gunman hissed and cursed and Josie understood that he was afraid. And that he was no longer here because he wanted something, like money, which they might have been able to give him. Now he was simply hiding.

Toward evening Josie tried talking to him again. “If you want to, you can lie down in the bedroom. Give it a try. You know, sleep.” She wasn’t sure he understood her. He had found Harvey’s collection of dull knives in the kitchen and was attempting, disquietingly, to sharpen the largest one on his leather belt. Josie put her palms together and rested her head on them, pillow-style. “Sleep.”

“No sleep,” he said, not looking up from his work with the knife. He spit on the leather and drew the blade across it.

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said. A snarl of an answer. His hands were shaking. The whites of his eyes looked ready to sizzle.

Harvey tugged at her sleeve. “Is he staying?”

“I guess so.”

“He should put that thing down.”

“Yes, he probably should.”

“He makes a lot of racket.”

At least the gunman didn’t seem to be paying much attention to them. “That’s because he’s … Look, Harvey, there’s more hurricane on.”

But Harvey didn’t want to let it go, as if he’d been working up a head of steam all this while. “Is he a communist?”

Oh Harvey
. “I don’t know, honey. I suppose he could be. Don’t be scared, OK? We’re going to be fine.”