XXXIX

Eddie

Dozing at the kitchen table, his hand wrapped around a beer can, Eddie dreamed of a hush coming over a late afternoon. Like the breeze playing over the warm sun on his face, it whispered of a repose from which he’d never wake. And that was okay. He was in Willow Run, and the lush, unreal-green grass smelled oppressively of heat and earth, obliterating everything but the faintest memories of the trailers and little walkways bordered by flowers that had once been there, right under his window. Lost dreams, too, those trailers, flowers and walkways, he thought in his dream. Someday even those faint memories will vanish.

The cicadas beckoned, the essence of all the summers he’d ever known. Elmore Willis, dim and indistinct, stirred behind him, a last thread in an unraveling string, soon to be irrelevant, too, because Eddie was tired and there wasn’t enough to hold him there anymore. He missed Charlie and the din of a life that, much as he’d loved it, would be a pain in the ass to begin over. He didn’t have the energy anymore.

Waking, Eddie found himself in mind of the morning he came home and knew his wife would never be with him again. How long ago was that, fifteen years? For all people made of it, he’d never believed in the great reward and life everlasting. These days, though, he was haunted by dreams of endless winds and dust seeping through walls, bleached grass beyond a solitary window. We are born into light, and then the light simply goes out, he thought. The light is swallowed by an endless, incomprehensible darkness, a darkness so vast that in a moment there is no longer even a hint of the light we were. The darkness isn’t good or evil. It simply is. But how senseless her death had seemed to him. How much he’d missed her, and still did! One day, he’d be gone, too, and then her darkness would be complete.

He gave his head a shake, trying to dislodge the mood, which like the dream itself felt like it might never release him. Finally he stood up from the table and went to the refrigerator to grab another beer. But he found himself thinking that memories are like threads in a rug; finally you look back and see patterns, the shape of things. Most memories grow threadbare when you keep going over the same ground. You lose the surprise and wonder of comprehension, of the pain or joy you know is there. Some memories, however—like when Skinner buried that kid at the fair, and when old Red and Puma mixed it up—would never leave him. And maybe the highest on that list: Friday night, October 6, 1972, and all that followed, especially with the election right around the corner. “The wise man and the fool die the same death.” Ecclesiastes. Lord, spare me these thoughts!

But still he looked back, as he’d been doing for days, back to that afternoon of October 6, going right into the wee hours of the following morning. Never in all his years in law enforcement had he encountered the likes of it; it had just gone on and on. All that stuff with Turner Mull, then young Reedy and his wife. And oh, Peanut! My stars!

But at last it had appeared to settle down, and Charlie, who had hung in there since eight Friday morning, went home. Junior and J. B. Fisher, looking a lot more beat than they wanted to let on, had gone off to stake out Puma, so after a while the office had cleared out. Everybody had gone except the radio operator—Ranny had just relieved Fillmore—and Winthrop, broken nose and all, sitting in the cell in the next room, looking more dazed than miserable because the shock hadn’t begun to wear off. It was not like Charlie neglected his duty, as some now claimed—he’d been on the job for almost eighteen hours that day, and it was going on half past two Saturday morning when he finally left. A man’s got to rest sometime, not to mention he had to be on duty again that next afternoon. Moreover, the way things were set up in the department and had been for generations, what finally happened was pretty much beyond Charlie’s control, if not responsibility. A whole lot of trust went into who got hired and what they did after they were.

When he finally headed home that night, Eddie had heard a little alarm go off: Junior Trainor, J. B. Fisher, Ranny Hollar. Now, why’s that troubling me? For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. The three of them talking together? What about? No, there had to be an end to that night! The light changed, and he’d driven on.

He’d called Charlie the next afternoon—that was Saturday, October 7—as soon as he found Trainor’s report about a monster out in Jessup. He told Charlie that Harlan, who had sent a reporter over, was kind of ripped because the paper had to get its local news—about a monster, no less—off the AP wire, not from the department.

“Did you see the wire copy?” Charlie had asked.

“It was about two sentences. The state museum in Raleigh allegedly may investigate the footprints. Couple of papers carried it, buried. No one’s called.”

“Then I’m not too concerned.”

“What about Harlan?”

“He knows Fisher, Trainor and Hollar. He won’t buy that monster stuff.”

Had Eddie heard a touch of doubt? He spoke his thoughts into the phone: “Charlie, he sure didn’t sound too pleased about getting that off the wire.”

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Nothing would ever be regular again, Eddie suspected. He had moved from the kitchen table and was now ensconced in a chair on the front porch watching the sun go down, his dream state fairly well cleared up. At least it would never be regular on Charlie’s watch, he thought. But then it hadn’t been regular, really, ever since the Carvers got blown off the road in April. It was like the river had decided to take a different course, and while everyone else had been trying to push it back in the old one, Charlie had known better.

Since Pemberton was bound over, a sitzkrieg had developed—Europe before World War II—only Eddie didn’t believe Charlie was fooled about that either. When Charlie came back from Alabama, Eddie had seen the calm settling in him again like the old Charlie, which was why he went back to work for him. Only now, from the luxury of his front porch, he supposed you really couldn’t go back to where you’d been. Something was different, something deep had changed in Charlie, some knowledge had occurred. Probably in both of them. The clue was when Eddie told him he ought to get rid of Trainor, and he told Eddie he didn’t have cause, that he was in enough trouble as it was. Of course, Eddie had agreed that was a fact, but Eddie hadn’t asked him what he really meant by it, like he might once have. He’d been too damned relieved just to have him back. He believed in Charlie; by that time, he’d needed to believe in him.

Now, sitting on that porch, he guessed he should have asked.

Appearing across the entire top of the front page of the Monday, October 9, Damascus Gazette & Reformer had been a headline in letters about two inches high, war-headline size: “Deputies Spot Monster.” Then a smaller headline over a couple of columns: “Jessup Woolybooger Said ‘Terrifying,’ State Officials Called To Investigate.” Right underneath the big headline, in the middle of the page, was a picture of what Deputies J. B. Fisher and Junior Trainor said they’d seen. It was a large picture, a blown-up drawing actually, signed by the reporter who wrote the story. It showed a huge, big-clawed, furry-looking creature caught in headlights, a cross between Smokey Bear and a saber-toothed tiger with eyeteeth about eight inches long, its arms raised to attack.

“Oh, hell,” Charlie had said when Eddie gently tapped the paper under his nose.