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White Heat.
"Take that, you dirty rats." It drives my
mother crazy." I was babbling.
She laughed. Ice-cubes clinked in glasses. Shortly she came back with two
glasses of ice and two cans of Canada Dry.
"Thanks," I said, taking mine.
"No, thank
you,"
she said, and now her blue eyes were dark and sober.
"Thanks for being around. If I had to deal with this alone, I think I'd I don't
know."
"Come on," I said. "It's not that bad."
"Isn't it? Do you know about Darnell?" I nodded.
"And that other one? Don Vandenberg."
So she had made the connection too.
I nodded again. "I saw it. Leigh, what is it about Christine that bothers you?"
For a long time I didn't know if she was going to answer. If she would be
able
to answer. I could see her struggling with it, looking down at her glass,
held in both hands.
At last in a very low voice, she said, "I think she tried to kill me."
I don't know what I had expected, but it wasn't that. "What do you mean?"
She talked, first hesitantly, then more rapidly, until it was pouring out of her.
It is a story you have already heard, so I won't repeat it here; suffice to say
that I tried to tell it pretty much as she told it to me. She hadn't been kidding
about being scared. It was in the pallor of her face, the little hitches and
gulps of her voice, the way her hands constantly caressed her upper arms, as
if she was too cold in spite of the sweater. And the more she talked, the more
scared I got.
She finished by telling me how, as consciousness dwindled, the dashboard
lights had seemed to turn into watching eyes. She laughed nervously at this
last, as if trying to take the curse off an obvious absurdity, but I didn't laugh
back. I was remembering George LeBay's dry voice as we sat in cheap patio
chairs in front of the Rainbow Motel, his voice telling me the story of
Roland, Veronica, and Rita. I was remembering those things and my mind
was making unspeakable connections. Lights were going on. I didn't like
what they were revealing. My heart started to thud heavily in my chest, and I
couldn't have joined in her laughter if my life had depended on it.
She told me about the ultimatum she had given him—her or the car. She told
me about Arnie's furious reaction. That had been the last time she went out
with him.
"Then he got arrested," she said, "and I started to think think about what had
happened to Buddy Repperton and those other boys… and Moochie
Welch…"
"And now Vandenberg and Darnell."
"Yes. But that's not all." She drank from her glass of ginger ale and then
poured in more. The edge of the can chattered briefly against the rim of the
glass. "Christmas Eve, when I called you, my mom and dad went out for
drinks at my dad's boss's house. And I started to get nervous. I was thinking
about oh, I don't know what I was thinking about."
"I think you do."
She put a hand to her forehead and rubbed it, as if she was getting a
headache. "I suppose I do, I was thinking about that car being out.
Her.
Being
out and getting them, But if she was out on Christmas Eve, I guess she had
plenty to keep her busy without bothering my par—" She slammed the glass
down, making me jump. "And why do I keep talking about that car as if it was
a person?" she cried out, Tears had begun to spill down her checks. "Why do
I keep doing that?"
On that night, I saw all too clearly what comforting her could lead to. Arnie
was between us—and part of myself was, too. I had known him for a long
time. A long good time.
But that was then; this was now.
I got my crutches under me, thumped my way across to the couch, and
plopped down beside her. The cushions sighed. It wasn't a raspberry, but it
was close.
My mother keeps a box of Kleenex in the drawer of the little endtable. I
pulled one out, looked at her, and pulled out a whole handful. I gave them to
her and she thanked me. Then, not liking myself much, I put an arm around her
and held her.
She stiffened for a moment and then let me draw her against my shoulder. She
was trembling. We just sat that way, both of us afraid of even the slightest
movement, I think. Afraid we might explode. Or something. Across the room,
the clock ticked importantly on the mantelpiece. Bright winterlight fell
through the bow windows that give a three-way view of the street. The storm
had blown itself out by noon on Christmas Day, and now the hard and
cloudless blue sky seemed to deny that there even was such a thing as snow
—but the dunelike drifts rolling across lawns all up and down the street like
the backs of great buried beasts confirmed it.
"The smell," I said at last. "How sure are you about that?"
"It was
there
!" she said, drawing away from me and sitting up straight. I
collected my arm again, with a mixed sensation of disappointment and relief.
"It really was there a rotten, horrible smell," She looked at me. "Why? Have
you smelled it too?"
I shook my head. I never had. Not really.
"What do you know about that car, the she asked. "You know something. I can
see it on your face."
It was my turn to think long and hard, and oddly what came into my mind was
an image of nuclear fission from, some science textbook. A cartoon. You
don't expect to see cartoons in science books, but as someone once said to
me, there are many devious twists and turns along the path of public
education in point of fact, that someone had been Arnie himself. The cartoon
showed two hotrod atoms speeding toward each other and then slamming
together. Presto! Instead of a lot of wreckage (and atom ambulances to take
away the dead and wounded neutrons), critical mass, chain reaction, and one
hell of a big bang.
Then I decided the memory of that cartoon really wasn't odd at all. Leigh had
certain information I hadn't had before. The reverse was also true. In both
cases a lot of it was guesswork, a lot of it was subjective feeling and
circumstance… but enough of it was hard information to be really scary. I
wondered briefly what the police would do if they knew what we did. I
could guess: nothing. Could you bring a ghost to trial? Or a car?
"Dennis?"
"I'm thinking," I said, "Can't you smell the wood burning?"
"What do you know?" she asked again
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