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Well, that's that. I'm
shut of her, sonny.
"Strong-willed?" LeBay smiled cynically. "Oh. yes. He was a strong-willed
son of a bitch." He appeared not to notice Arnie's shocked expression.
"Excuse me, gentlemen. I'm afraid the sun has upset my stomach a little."
He started to walk away. We stood not far from the grave and watched him
go. All at once he stopped, and Arnie's face brightened; he thought LeBay had
suddenly changed his mind. For a moment LeBay just stood there on the
grass, his head bent in the posture of a man thinking hard. Then he turned
back to us.
"My advice to you is to forget the car," he said to Arnie. "Sell her. If no one
will buy her whole, sell her for parts. If no one will buy her for parts, junk
her. Do it quickly and completely. Do it the way you would quit a bad habit. I
think you will be happier."
He stood there, looking at Arnie, waiting for Arnie to say something, but
Arnie made no reply. He only held LeBay's gaze with his own. His eyes had
gone that peculiar slatey color they got when his mind was made up and his
feet were planted. LeBay read the look and nodded. He looked unhappy and
a little ill.
"Gentlemen, good day."
Arnie sighed. "I guess that's that." He eyed LeBay's retreating back with some
resentment.
"Yeah," I said, hoping I sounded more unhappy than I felt. It was the dream. I
didn't like the idea of Christine back in that garage. It was too much like my
dream.
We started back toward my car, neither of us speaking. LeBay nagged at me.
Both LeBays nagged at me. I came to a sudden, impulsive decision—God
only knows how much different things might have been if I hadn't followed
the impulse.
"Hey, man," I said. "I gotta go take a whiz. Give me a minute or two, okay?"
"Sure," he said, hardly looking up. He walked on, hands in his pockets and
eyes on the ground.
I walked off to the left, where a small, discreet sign and an even smaller
arrow pointed the way toward the restrooms. But when I was over the first
rise and out of Arnie's view, I cut to the right and started to sprint toward the
parking lot. I caught George LeBay slowly folding himself behind the wheel
of an extremely tiny Chevette with a Hertz sticker on the windscreen.
"Mr LeBay!" I puffed. "Mr LeBay?" He looked up curiously. "Pardon me," I
said. "Sorry to bother you again."
"That's all right," he said, "but I'm afraid what I said to your friend still
stands. I can't let him garage the car here."
"Good," I said.
His bushy eyebrows went up.
"The car," I said. "That Fury. I don't like it." He went on looking at me, not
talking.
"I don't think it's been good for him. Maybe part of it's being… I don't
know…"
"Jealous?" he asked me quietly. "Time he used to spend with you he now
spends with her?"
"Well, yeah, right," I said. "He's been my friend for a long time. But I—I
don't think that's all of it."
"No?"
"No." I looked around to see if Arnie was in sight, and while I wasn't looking
at him, I was finally able to come out with it. "Why did you tell him to junk it
and forget it? Why did you say it was like a bad habit?"
He said nothing, and I was afraid he had nothing to say—at least, not to me.
And then, almost too softly to hear, he asked, "Son, are you sure this is your
business?"
"I don't know." Suddenly it seemed very important to meet his eyes. "But I
care about Arnie, you know. I don't want to see him get hurt. This car has
already gotten him into trouble. I don't want to see it get any worse."
"Come by my motel this evening. It's just off the Western Avenue exit from
376. Can you find that?"
"I hotpatched the sides of the ramp," I said, and held out my hands. "Still got
the blisters,"
I smiled, but he didn't smile back. "Rainbow Motel. There are two at the foot
of the exit. Mine is the cheap one."
"Thanks," I said awkwardly. "Listen really, th—"
"It may not be your business, or mine, or anyone's," LeBay said in his soft,
school-teacherish voice, so different from (but somehow so eerily similar to)
his late brother's wild croak.
(and that's about the finest smell in the world… except maybe for pussy)
"But I can tell you this much right now. My brother was not a good man. I
believe the only thing he ever truly loved in his whole life was that Plymouth
Fury your friend has purchased. So the business may be between them and
them alone, no matter what you tell me, or I tell you."
He smiled at me. It wasn't a pleasant smile, and in that instant I seemed to see
Roland D. LeBay looking out through his eyes, and I shivered.
"Son, you're probably too young to look for wisdom in anyone s words but
your own, but I'll tell you this: love is the enemy." He nodded at me slowly.
"Yes. The poets continually and sometimes willfully mistake love. Love is
the old slaughterer. Love is not blind. Love is a cannibal with extremely
acute vision. Love is insectile; it is always hungry."
"What does it eat?" I asked, not aware I was going to ask anything at all.
Every part of me but my mouth thought the entire conversation insane.
"Friendship," George LeBay said. "It eats friendship. If I were you, Dennis, I
would now prepare for the worst."
He closed the door of the Chevette with a soft
chuck!
and started up its
sewing-machine engine. He drove away, leaving me to stand there on the
edge of the blacktop. I suddenly remembered that Arnie should see me
coming from the direction of the comfort stations, so I headed that way as fast
as I could.
As I went it occurred to me that the gravediggers or sextons or eternal
engineers or whatever they were calling themselves these days would now
be lowering LeBay's coffin into the earth. The dirt George LeBay had thrown
at the end of the ceremony would be splattered across the top like a
conquering hand. I tried to dismiss the image, but another image, even worse,
came in its place: Roland D. LeBay inside the silk-lined casket, dressed in
his best suit and his best underwear—
sans
smelly, yellowing back brace, of
course.
LeBay was in the ground, LeBay was in his coffin, his hands crossed on his
chest and why was I so sure that a large, shit-eating grin was on his face?
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