Christine, Page 46

  I grinned a little, but what he said next sobered me quickly.

  "I rode in that car of LeBay's a couple of times. I never liked it. I'll be damned if I know why, but I never did. And I never would ride in it after his wife . . . you know. Jesus, that gave me the spooks."

  "I'll bet," I said, and my voice seemed to come from far away. "Listen, what did happen when he quit the Legion? You said it had something to do with the car?"

  He laughed, sounding a little pleased. "You're not really interested in all that ancient history, are you?"

  "Well, yeah. I am. My friend bought the car, remember."

  "Well then I'll tell you. It was a pretty funny goddam thing, at that. A few of the guys mention it from time to time, when we've all had a few. I ain't the only one with scars on my hands. Get right down to the bottom of it, it was sort of spooky."

  "What was?"

  "Aw, it was a kid's trick. But nobody really liked the sonofabitch, you know. He was an outsider, a loner--"

  Like Arnie, I thought.

  "--and we'd all been drinking," McCandless finished. "It was after the meeting, and LeBay had been making an even worse prick of himself than usual. So a bunch of us are at the bar, you know, and we could tell LeBay was getting ready to go home. He was getting his jacket on and arguing with Poochie Anderson about some baseball question. When LeBay went, he always went the same way, kid. He'd jump into that Plymouth of his, back up, and then floor it. That thing'd go out of the parking lot like a rocket, spraying gravel everywhere. So--this was Sonny Bellerman's idea--about four of us go out the back door to the parking lot while LeBay's shouting at Poochie. We all get behind the far corner of the building, because we know that's where he'll finish backing the car up before he takes off. He always called it by a girl's name, I told you it was like he was married to the fucking thing.

  " 'Keep your eyes open and your heads down or he'll see us,' Sonny says. 'And don't move until I give you a go.' We were all sort of tanked up, you know.

  "So about ten minutes later out he comes, drunk as a skunk and feeling around in his chinos for his keys. Sonny says, 'Get ready, you guys, and keep low!'

  "LeBay gets in the car and backs her up. It was perfect, because he stopped to light a cigarette. While he did thai, we grabbed the back bumper of that Fury and we lifted the rear wheels right off the ground so that when he tries to pull out, spraying gravel all over the side of the building like usual, you know, he's only gonna spin his wheels and not go anywhere. You see what I mean?"

  "Yeah," I said. It was a kid's trick; we had pulled the same thing from time to time at school dances, and once, for a joke, we had blocked up Coach Puffer's Dodge so that the driving wheels were off the ground.

  "We got some kind of shock, though. He gets his cigarette lit, and then he turns on the radio. That's another thing that used to drive us all fucking bugshit, the way he always listened to that rock and roll music like he was some kid instead of old enough to qualify for Social-fucking-Security. Then he put the tranny into drive. We didn't see it, because we were all hunkered down so he wouldn't see us. I remember Sonny Bellerman was kind of laughing, and just before it happened, he whispers, 'They up, men?' and I whispers back, 'Your pecker's up, Bellerman.' He was the only one who really got hurt, you know. Because of his wedding ring. But I swear to God, those wheels were up. We had that Plymouth's rear end four inches off the ground."

  "What happened?" I asked. From the way the story was going, I thought I could guess.

  "What happened? He pulled out just like always, that's what happened! Just like all four wheels was on the ground. He spun gravel and ripped that rear bumper out of our hands and pulled about a yard of skin off with it. Took most of Sonny Bellerman's third finger; his wedding ring got caught under the bumper, you know, and that finger popped off like a cork coming out of a bottle. And we heard LeBay laughing as he went out, like he knew all along we was there. He could of, you know; if he'd gone back to use the bathroom after he finished shouting at Poochie, he could have looked right out the window while he whizzed and seen us standing around behind the building waiting for him.

  "Well, that was it for him and the Legion. We sent him a letter telling him we wanted him out, and he quit. And, just to show you how funny the world is, it was Sonny Bellerman who stood up at the meeting right after LeBay died and said we ought to do the right thing by him just the same. 'Sure,' Sonny says, he says, 'the guy was a dirty sonofabitch, but he fought the war with the rest of us. So why don't we send him off right?' So we did. I dunno. I guess Sonny Bellerman's a lot more of a Christian than I'll ever be."

  "You must not have had the back wheels off the ground," I said, thinking of what had happened to the guys who had screwed around with Christine in November. They had lost a lot more than some skin off their fingers.

  "We did, though," McCandless said. "When we got sprayed with gravel, it was from the front wheels. I've never to this day been able to figure how he pulled that trick off. It's kind of spooky, like I said. Gerry

  Barlow--he was one of us who did it--always claimed LeBay threw a four-wheel drive into her somehow, but I don't think there's a conversion kit for something like that, do you?"

  "No," I said. "I don't think it could be done."

  "Naw, never do it," McCandless agreed. "Never do it. Well, hey! I done jawed away most of my coffee break, kid. Want to get back and grab another half a cup before it all gets away from me. I'll send you that address if we got it. I think we do."

  "Thank you, Mr. McCandless."

  "My pleasure, Dennis. Take care of yourself."

  "Sure. Use it, don't abuse it, right?"

  He laughed. "That's what we used to say in the Fighting Fifth, anyway." He hung up.

  I put the phone down slowly and thought about cars that still kept moving even when you lifted their driving wheels off the ground. Sort of spooky. It was spooky, all right, and McCandless still had the scars to prove it. That made me remember something George LeBay had told me. He had a scar to show from his association with Roland D. LeBay, as well. And as he grew older, his scar had spread.

  45 / New Year's Eve

  For this daring young star met his death

  while in his car,

  No one knows the reason why--

  Screaming tires, flashing fire, and gone

  was this young star,

  O how could they let him die?

  Still, a young man is gone, but his legend

  lingers on,

  For he died without a cause . . .

  --Bobby Troup

  I called Arnie on New Year's Eve. I'd had a couple of days to think about it, and I didn't really want to do it, but I had to see him. I had come to believe I wouldn't be able to decide anything until I actually saw him again for myself. And until I had seen Christine again. I had mentioned the car to my father at breakfast, casually, as if in passing, and he told me that he believed all the cars that had been impounded in Darnell's Garage had now been photographed and returned.

  Regina Cunningham answered the phone, her voice stiff and formal. "Cunningham residence."

  "Hi, Regina, it's Dennis."

  "Dennis!" She sounded both pleased and surprised. For a moment it was the voice of the old Regina, the one who gave Arnie and me peanut butter sandwiches with bits of bacon crumbled into them (peanut butter and bacon on stone-ground rye, of course). "How are you? We heard that they sprung you from the hospital."

  "I'm doing okay," I said. "How about you?"

  There was a brief silence, and then she said, "Well, you know how things have been around here."

  "Problems," I said. "Yeah."

  "All the problems we missed in earlier years," Regina said. "I guess they just piled up in a corner and waited for us."

  I cleared my throat a little and said nothing.

  "Did you want to talk to Arnie?"

  "If he's there."

  After another slight pause, Regina said, "I remember that in the old days you and he us
ed to swap back and forth on New Year's Eve, seeing the New Year in. Was that what you were calling about, Dennis?" She sounded almost timid, and that was not like the old full-steam-ahead Regina at all.

  "Well, yeah," I said. "Kid stuff, I know, but--"

  "No!" she said, sharply and quickly. "No, not at all! If Arnie ever needed you, Dennis--needed some friend--now is the time. He . . . he's upstairs now, sleeping. He sleeps much too much. And he's . . . he's not. . . he hasn't. . ."

  "Hasn't what, Regina?"

  "He hasn't made any of his college applications!" she burst out, and then immediately lowered her voice, as if Arnie might overhear. "Not a single one! Mr. Vickers, the guidance counsellor at school, called and told me! He scored 700s on his college boards, he could get into almost any college in the country--at least he could have before this . . . this trouble . . ." Her voice wavered toward tears, and then she got hold of herself again. "Talk to him, Dennis. If you could spend the evening with him tonight. . . drink a few beers with him and just. . . just talk to him . . ."

  She stopped, but I could tell there was something more. Something she needed to say and couldn't.

  "Regina," I said. I hadn't liked the old Regina, the compulsive dominator who seemed to run the lives of her husband and son to fit her own timetable, but I liked this distracted, weepy woman even less. "Come on. Take it easy, okay?"

  "I'm afraid to talk to him," she said finally. "And Michael's afraid to talk to him. He . . .he seems to explode if you cross him on some subjects. At first it was only his car; now it's college too. Talk to him, Dennis, please." There was another short pause, and then, almost casually, she brought out the heart of her dread: "I think we're losing him."

  "No, Regina, hey--"

  "I'll get him," she said abruptly, and the phone clunked down. The wait seemed to stretch out. I crooked the phone between my jaw and my shoulder and rapped my knuckles on the cast that still covered my upper left leg. I wrestled with a craven urge to just hang the telephone up and push this entire business away.

  Then the phone was picked up again. "Hello?" a wary voice asked, and the thought that burned across my mind with complete assurance was: That's not Arnie.

  "Arnie?"

  "It sounds like Dennis Guilder, the mouth that walks like a man," the voice said, and that sounded like Arnie, all right--but at the same time, it didn't. His voice hadn't really deepened, but it seemed to have roughened, as if through overuse and shouting. It was eerie, as if I were talking to a stranger who was doing a pretty good imitation of my friend Arnie.

  "Watch what you're saying, dork," I said. I was smiling but my hands were dead cold.

  "You know," he said in a confidential voice, "your face and my ass bear a suspicious resemblance."

  "I've noticed the resemblance, but last time I thought it was the other way around," I said, and then a little silence fell between us--we had gone through what passed for the amenities with us. "So what are you doing tonight?" I asked.

  "Not much," he said. "No date or anything. You?"

  "Sure, I'm in great shape," I said. "I'm going to go pick up Roseanne and take her to Studio 2000. You can come along and hold my crutches while we dance, if you want."

  He laughed a little.

  "I thought I'd come over," I said. "Maybe you and me could see the New Year in like we used to. You know?"

  "Yeah!" Arnie said. He sounded pleased by the idea--but still not

  quite like himself. "Watch Guy Lombardo and all that happy crappy. That'd be all right."

  I paused for a moment, not quite sure what to say. Finally I replied cautiously, "Well, maybe Dick Clark or someone. Guy Lombardo's dead, Arnie."

  "Is he?" Arnie sounded puzzled, doubtful. "Oh. Oh yeah, I guess he is. But Dick Clark's hanging in there, right?"

  "Right," I said.

  "I got to give it an eighty-five, Dick, it's got a good beat and you can dance to it," Arnie said, but it wasn't Arnie's voice at all. My mind made a sudden and hideously unexpected cross-connection

  (best smell in the world . . . except maybe for pussy) and my hand tightened down convulsively on the telephone. I think I almost screamed. I wasn't talking to Arnie; I was talking to Roland LeBay. I was talking to a dead man.

  "That's Dick, all right," I heard myself say, as if from a distance.

  "How you getting over, Dennis? Can you drive?"

  "No, not yet. I thought I'd get my dad to drive me over." I paused momentarily, then plunged. "I thought maybe you could drive me back, if you got your car. Would that be okay?"

  "Sure!" He sounded honestly excited. "Yeah, that'd be good, Dennis! Real good! We'll have some laughs. Just like old times."

  "Yes," I said. And then--I swear to God it just popped out--I added, "Just like in the motor pool."

  "Yeah, that's right!" Arnie replied, laughing. "Too much! See you, Dennis."

  "Right," I said automatically. "See you." I hung up, and I looked at the telephone, and presently I began to shudder all over. I had never been so frightened in my life as I was right then. Time passes: the mind rebuilds its defenses. I think one of the reasons there is so little convincing evidence of psychic phenomena is that the mind goes to work and restructures the evidence. A little stacking is better than a lot of insanity. Later I questioned what I heard, or led myself to believe that Arnie had misunderstood my comment, but in the few moments after I put the telephone down, I was sure: LeBay had gotten in him. Somehow, dead or not, LeBay was in him.

  And LeBay was taking over.

  New Year's Eve was cold and crystal clear. My dad dropped me off at the Cunninghams' at quarter past seven and helped me over to the back door--crutches were not made for winter or snow-packed paths.

  The Cunninghams' station wagon was gone, but Christine stood in the driveway, her bright red-and-white finish sheened with a condensation of ice-crystals. She had been released with the rest of the impounded cars only this week. Just looking at her brought on a feeling of dull dread like a headache. I did not want to ride home in that car, not tonight, not ever. I wanted my own ordinary, mass-produced Duster with its vinyl seat covers and its dumb bumpersticker reading MAFIA STAFF CAR.

  The back porch light flicked on, and we saw Arnie cross toward the door in silhouette. He didn't even look like Arnie. His shoulders sloped; his movements seemed older. I told myself it was only imagination, my suspicions working on me, and of course I was full of bullshit. . . and I knew it.

  He opened the door and leaned out in an old flannel shirt and a pair of jeans. "Dennis!" he said. "My man!"

  "Hi, Arnie," I said.

  "Hello, Mr. Guilder."

  "Hi, Arnie," my dad said, raising one gloved hand. "How's it been going?"

  "Well, you know, not that great. But that's all going to change. New year, new broom, out with the old shit, in with the new shit, right?"

  "I guess so," my father said, sounding a little taken aback. "Dennis, are you sure you don't want me to come back and get you?"

  I wanted that more than anything, but Arnie was looking at me and his mouth was still smiling but his eyes were flat and watchful. "No, Arnie'll bring me home . . . if that rustbucket will start, that is."

  "Oh-oh, watch what you call my car," Arnie said. "She's very sensitive."

  "Is she?" I asked.

  "She is," Arnie said, smiling.

  I turned my head and called, "Sorry, Christine."

  "That's better."

  For a moment all three of us stood there, my father and I at the bottom of the kitchen steps, Arnie in the doorway above us, none of us apparently knowing what to say next. I felt a kind of panic-somebody had to say something, or else the whole ridiculous fiction that nothing had changed would collapse of its own weight.

  "Well, okay," my dad said at last. "You two kids stay sober. If you have more than a couple of beers, Arnie, call me."

  "Don't worry, Mr. Guilder."

  "We'll be all right," I said, grinning a grin that felt plastic and false. "You go on home an
d get your beauty sleep, Dad. You need it."

  "Oh-ho," my father said. "Watch what you call my face. It's very sensitive."

  He went back to the car. I stood and watched him, my crutches propped in my armpits. I watched him while he crossed behind Christine. And when he backed out of the driveway and turned toward home, I felt a little bit better.

  I banged the snow off the tip of each crutch carefully while standing in the doorway. The Cunninghams' kitchen was tile-floored. A couple of near-accidents had taught me that on smooth surfaces a pair of crutches with wet snow on them can turn into ice-skates.

  "You really operate on those babies," Arnie said, watching me cross the floor. He took a pack of Tiparillos from the pocket of his flannel shirt, shook one out, bit down on the white plastic mouthpiece, and lit it with his head cocked to one side. The match flame played momentarily across his cheeks like yellow streaks of paint.

  "It's a skill I'll be glad to lose," I said. "When did you start with the cigars?"

  "Darnell's," he said. "I don't smoke em in front of my mother. The smell drives her bugshit."

  He didn't smoke like a kid just learning the habit--he smoked like a man who has been doing it for twenty years.

  "I thought I'd make popcorn," he said. "You up for that?"

  "Sure. You got any beer?"

  "That's affirmative. There's a six-pack in the fridge and two more downstairs."

  "Great." I sat down carefully at the kitchen table, stretching out my left leg. "Where's your folks?"

  "Went to a New Year's Eve party at the Fassenbachs'. When's that cast come off?"

  "Maybe at the end of January, if I'm lucky." I waved my crutches in the air and cried dramatically, "Tiny Tim walks again! God bless us, every one!"

  Arnie, on his way to the stove with a deep pan, a bag of popcorn, and a bottle of Wesson Oil, laughed and shook his head. "Same old Dennis. They didn't knock much of the stuffing out of you, you shitter."

  "You didn't exactly overwhelm me with visits in the hospital, Arnie."

  "I brought you Thanksgiving supper--what the hell do you want, blood?"

  I shrugged.

  Arnie sighed. "Sometimes I think you were my good-luck charm, Dennis."