The door did not swing open; it flew open. Ed Deepneau leaped out, then simply stood stock-still beside his car, his slim shoulders squared against a background of deepening clouds, He was wearing faded jeans and a tee-shirt, and Ralph realized that before today he had never seen Ed in a shirt that didn’t button up the front. And there was something around his neck: a long white something. A scarf? It looked like a scarf, but why would anyone be wearing a scarf on a day as hot as this one had been?
Ed stood beside his wounded car for a moment, seeming to look in every direction but the right one. The fierce little pokes of his narrow head reminded Ralph of the way roosters studied their barnyard turf, looking for invaders and interlopers. Something about that similarity made Ralph feel uneasy.
He had never seen Ed look like that before, and he supposed that was part of it, but it wasn’t all of way it. The truth of the matter was simply this: he had never seen anyone look exactly like that.
Thunder rumbled in the west, louder now. And closer.
The man getting out of the Ranger would have made two of Ed Deepneau, possibly three. His vast, deep belly hung over the rolled waistband of his green chino workpants; there were sweatstains the size of dinner-plates under the arms of his open-throated white shirt.
He tipped back the bill of the West Side Gardeners gimme-cap he was wearing to get a better look at the man who had broadsided him.
His heavy-jowled face was dead pale except for bright patches of color like rouge high on his cheekbones, and Ralph thought: There’s a man who’s a prime candidate for a heart-attack. If I was closer I bet I’d be able to see the creases in his earlobes.
“Hey!” the heavyset guy yelled at Ed. The voice coming out of that broad chest and deep gut was absurdly thin, almost reedy.
“Where’d you get your license? Fuckin Sears n Roebuck?”
Ed’s wandering, jabbing head swung immediately toward the sound of the big man’s voice-seemed almost to home in, like a jet guided by radar-and Ralph got his first good look at Ed’s eyes. He felt a bolt of alarm light up in his chest and suddenly began to run toward the accident. Ed, meanwhile, had started toward the man in the sweat-soaked white shirt and gimme-cap. He was walking in a stiff-legged, high-shouldered strut that was nothing at all like his usual easygoing amble.
“Ed!” Ralph shouted, but the freshening breeze-cold now with the promise of rain-seemed to snatch the words away before they could even get out of his mouth. Certainly Ed never turned.
Ralph made himself run faster, the ache in his legs and the throbbing in the small of his back forgotten. It was murder he had seen in Ed Deepneau’s wide, unblinking eyes. He had absolutely no previous experience upon which to base such an assessment, but he didn’t think you could mistake such a naked glare; it was the look fighting cocks must wear when they launch themselves at each other, spurs up and slashing. “Ed! Hey, Ed, hold up! It’s Ralph!”
Not so much as a glance around, although Ralph was now so close that Ed must have heard, wind or no wind. Certainly the heavyset man glanced around, and Ralph could see both fear and uncertainty in his look. Then Heavyset turned back to Ed and raised his hands placatingly.
“Look,” he said. “We can talk-”
That was as far as he got. Ed took another quick step forward, reached up with one slim hand-it was very white in the rapidly darkening day-and slapped Heavyset across his far from inconsiderable jowls. The sound was like the report of a kid’s air rifle.
“How many have you killed?” Ed asked.
Heavyset pressed back against the side of his pickup, his mouth open, his eyes wide. Ed’s queer, stif strut never la tered. He walked into the other man and stood belly to belly with him, seemingly oblivious of the fact that the pickup’s driver was four inches taller and outweighed him by a hundred pounds or more. Ed reached up and slapped him again. “Come on! Fess up, brave boy-how many have you killed?” His voice rose to a shriek that was lost in the coming storm’s first really authoritative clap of thunder.
Heavyset pushed him away-a gesture not of aggression but of simple fright-and Ed went reeling backward against the crumpled nose of his Datsun. He bounced back at once, fists clenched, gathering himself to leap at Heavyset, who was cringing against the side of his truck with his gimme-cap now askew and his shirt untucked in the back and at the sides. A memory flashed across Ralph’s mind-a Three Stooges short he’d seen years ago, Larry, Curly, and Moe playing painters without a clue-and he felt a sudden surge of sympathy for Heavyset, who looked absurd as well as scared to death.
Ed Deepneau did not look absurd. With his yanked-back lips and wide, unblinking eyes, Ed looked more like a fighting cock than ever.
“I know what you’ve been doing,” he whispered to Heavyset “What kind of comedy did you think this was? Did you think you and your butcher friends could get away with it fores-” At that moment Ralph arrived, puffing and gasping like an old carthorse, and put an arm around Ed’s shoulders. The heat beneath the thin tee-shirt was unnerving; it was like putting an arm around an oven, and when Ed turned to look at him, Ralph had the momentary (but unforgettable) impression that that was exactly what he was looking into. He had never seen such utter, unreasoning fury in a pair of human eyes; had never even suspected such fury might exist.
Ralph’s immediate impulse was to recoil, but he suppressed it and stood firm. He had an idea that if he pulled back, Ed would fall on him like a rogue dog, biting and clawing. It was absurd, of course; Ed was a research chemist, Ed was a member of the Book-of-theMonth Club (the kind who took the twenty-pound histories of the Crimean War they always seemed to offer as alternates to the main selection), Ed was Helen’s husband and Natalie’s Dad. Hell, Ed was a friend.
… except this wasn’t that Ed, and Ralph knew it.
Instead of pulling back, Ralph leaned forward, grasped Ed’s shoulders (so hot under the tee-shirt, so incredibly, throbbingly hot), and moved his face until it blocked Heavyset from Ed’s creepy fixed gaze.
“Ed, quit it!” Ralph said. He used the loud but steadily firm voice he assumed one used with people who were having hysterics.
“You’re all right! just quit it!”
For a moment Ed’s fixed gaze didn’t waver, and then his eyes moved over Ralph’s face. It wasn’t much, but Ralph felt a small surge of relief just the same.
“What’s the matter with him?” Heavyset asked from behind Ralph.
“He crazy, do you think?”
“He’s fine, I’m sure,” Ralph said, although he was sure of no such thing. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, and didn’t take his eyes from Ed. He didn’t dare take his eyes from Ed-that contact felt like the only hold he had over the man, and a tenuous one at best.
“Just shaken up from the crash. He needs a few seconds to calm d-”
“Ask him what he’s got under that tarp! “Ed yelled suddenly, and pointed over Ralph’s shoulder. Lightning flashed, and for a moment the pitted scars of Ed’s adolescent acne were thrown into sharp relief, like some strange organic treasure map. Thunder rolled. “Hey, hey, Susan Day!” he chanted in a high, childlike voice that made Ralph’s forearms break out in goosebumps. “How many kids did you kill today.”
“He ain’t shook up,” Heavyset said. “He’s crazy. And when the cops get here, I’m gonna see he gets tooken in.”
Ralph glanced around and saw a blue tarpaulin stretched across the bed of the pickup. It had been tied down with bright yellow hanks of rope. Round shapes bulked beneath it, “Ralph?” a timid voice asked.
He glanced to his left and saw Dorrance Marstellar-at ninety something easily the oldest of the Harris Avenue Old Crocks standing just beyond Heavyset’s pickup truck, There was a paperback book in his waxy, liverspotted hands, and Dorrance was bending it anxiously back and forth, giving the spine a real workout.
Ralph supposed it was a book of poetry, which was all he had ever seen old Dorrance read. Or maybe he didn’t really read at all; maybe he just liked to hold the books and look at the artfully stacked words.