He flinched. And she saw such fear in him, such a profundity of dread that the rage went out of her, drained away from her all at once. "You know what?" she said. "I think I met Jesus this afternoon." Bosley looked at her warily. "At least, he was walking on water, and he had a lot of scars, so... it could have been him, right?" Still Bosley said nothing. "I'm sorry, we didn't get round to talking about you, but if we had I'd have said He should drop by your place sometime. Have a piece of pie."
"You're crazy-" Bosley said.
"You and me both," Tesla said. "Take care of yourself, Bosley." And with that she put on her helmet and drove off.
Once she was outside the town limits she gunned the bike, certain that the chief of police and his awestruck deputies would not be watching out for speed freaks tonight. She was right. With an empty road and no law keepers to flag her down she roared on her way as though to meet with Grillo, though the embrace that awaited her at the end of this ride was colder and more permanent than human arms could ever offer.
For Larry Glodoski, it was not pills that were keeping the memories hazy, it was beer, and plenty of it. He had been propped up at Hamrick's Bar for two and a half hours now, and he was finally getting to feel a little better. It was not what he'd seen at the crossroads he was dulling with alcohol, it was the pain of their departure. The women on the stairs had given him a glimpse of bliss; he'd thought his heart would crack with loss when they faded and disappeared.
"You want another of those?" Will Hamrick asked him.
There would be other years, Dorothy Bullard thought as she sat in a mildly sedated haze beside her living room window. Other festivals, other parades, other chances for things to be perfect. She had a mercifully confused memory of what had happened at the crossroads, but she'd been assured by a number of kind folks that it had not been her fault; no, not at all. She'd been under a lot of pressure, and she'd done a fine job, a wonderful job, and next year, oh next year"It'll be perfect."
"What did you say, dear?" Maisie had just come in with some fluffy scrambled eggs and a little bran muffin. "Next year, everything'll be perfect, you'll see."
"Let's not even think about next year," Maisie said. "Let's just take things as they come, shall we?"
"Keep 'em coming.
"You want to talk about it?"
Larry shook his head. "None of it makes much sense," he said.
Will passed another bottle down the bar. "I had a guy in here day before yesterday, really spooked me," he said.
"Like how?"
"It was just after Morton Cobb died. He was saying how it was better that he'd been killed that way, 'cause it was a better story."
"A better story?"
"Yeah. An' I was a-what the fuck did he call me?-a disseminator, I think that was it, yeah, a disseminator, and people liked to hear really brutal stories... " He lost his way in the midst of his recollections, and threw up his hands. "I don't know, he just seemed like a sick sonofabitch. He had this voice-it was kinda like a hypnotist or something."
The notion rang a bell. "What did he look like?" Larry asked.
"'Bout sixty, maybe. Had a heard."
"Broad guy? Wearing black?"
"That's him," Will said. "You know him?"
"He was there this afternoon," Larry said, quickly. "I think he was the one who fucked everything up."
"Somebody should talk to Jed about him."
"Jed@' Larry growled, "he's no damn good to anyone." He chugged on his beer. "I'm going to talk to some of the band. they were really pissed with what happened this afternoon."
"Be careful, Larry," Will advised. "You don't want Jed on your back for taking the law into your own hands."
Larry leaned over the bar until he was almost nose to nose with Will. "I don't give a shit," he slurred. "Something's going' on in this city, Hamrick, and Jed's not got a handle on it."
"And you have?"
Larry dug in his pocket and tossed three tens over the counter. "I will have soon enough," he said, pushing off from the bar and heading for the door. "I'll give you a call, tell you when we're ready for action."
Elsewhere in town, a fair appearance of normality had been reestablished. In the town hall the first partners for the Waltz-a-thon were already wanning up. At the library annex, which had only been completed two months ago, Jerry Totland, a local author who'd made a nice reputation for himself penning mysteries set in Portland, was reading from his newest opus. In the little Italian restaurant on Blasemont Street there was a line of twenty customers waiting to taste the glories of Neapolitan cuisine.
There were mutterings, of course; rumors and gossip about what had brought the parade to a halt that afternoon, but by and large they simply added a little piquancy to the evening's exchanges. There was little genuine unease, more a mild amusement, especially among the visitors, that the event had gone so hopelessly awry. It would be a story to dine out on, wouldn't it, when they got back home? How Everville had overstepped itself and fallen flat on its ambitious face?
After the horrors of the afternoon, Erwin had not known what to do with himself. He had lost, in one fell swoop, all the friends he'd had, as surely as if they'd been massacred at the dinner table.
He had no real comprehension of what had happened at the crossroads, nor did he really want to know. Death had shown him some strange sights in the last few days, and he'd quickly learned to take them in his stride, but this was beyond him. He wandered the streets like a lost dog for a couple of hours, looking for some place to sit and listen to a conversation that did not remind him of his fear. But everywhere he looked for solace, he found people talking in whispers about the things that discomfited him.
Few of these exchanges were overtly concerned with the events of the afternoon, but all of them had been inspired by it, he was certain. Why else were people confessing their sins to their loved ones tonight, asking for forgiveness or understanding? they had smelled their mortality today, and it had made them maudlin. He passed from one place to another, looking for solace and, finding none, he returned at dusk to only place he was certain to get some peace and quiet: cemetery.
There he wandered among the tombs as the sun set, idly perusing the epitaphs, and turning over events that had brought him to this sorry state. What had he done to deserve it? Wanted a little fame for himself? Since when had that been a capital crime? Dug too deep into secrets that should have been left to lie? That was no sin, either; not that he knew of. He'd simply had a patch of bad luck.
He took a seat, at last, on a tombstone close to the tree where he'd first met Nordhoff and the rest. His gaze fell on the stone in front of him, and he read aloud to himself the inscription there.
What Thomas doubted, I believe: Thatfrom Death's hand there is reprieve; That I, laid here, will one day rise, And smell the wind and meet the skies. My hope is tender though, and must Be keptfrom harm by those that dust Has blinded. So I pray: deliver me from Thefaithless kin of Doubting Tom.
The simplicity and the vulnerability of the words moved him deeply. As he reached the end of the poem his voice thickened and tears came, copious tears, pouring down.
He buried his face in his hands and rocked back and forth, unable to stop weeping. What was the use of living in hope of life after death if all it amounted to was this absurd, empty round? It was unendurable!
"Is the poem so bad?" said a voice somewhere above him.
He looked over his shoulder. The tree was in its last lushness before autumn, its branches thick with leaves, but he caught a glimpse of somebody moving up there.
"Show yourself," he said.
"I prefer not to," came the reply. "I learned a long time ago that there's safety in trees."
"Don't kid yourself," Erwin said.