CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

THE TAVERN SAT BACK FROM THE MAIN STREET, CRUSHED BETWEEN a large rock formation and a clump of aspen trees; most of its customers were sitting at wooden tables in the courtyard out back. The radio competed with the dice game, in which wooden cups were smashed down hard on the tables, accompanied by raucous cries from the players.

Ron found his way across the room and sat in the far corner, his back against the wall. Tim Hadley peered at him from across the table. It was almost as if Ron had expected to find Tim Hadley sitting there.

Tim greeted him warmly and without surprise. “It’s good to see you. How are things going?”

“All right. How are you doing?”

Tim nodded. “Can I buy you a beer?”

“Why not?”

Beers in hand, both men leaned back and talked with studied casualness for a while before Ron got down to what was on his mind.

“I notice your store is closed,” Ron said.

Tim laughed. “Shoot, what store?”

Ron was silent. He could see that the man was drunk. He knew if he took his time, he might be able to get the truth out of him. He leaned in, studying the coarse, brutal face of the man seated before him, noting that his chin had come forward slightly, and that a cold, hard glitter had come into his eyes.

“You’ve been to the store?” Tim asked.

“Yes. But like you’ve said. What store?”

“Business was bad. We had to close.”

“That isn’t what your brother told me.”

“Oh?”

“The last time I was there he said you did your best business around carnival time.”

“Well, not this year.” He emphasized the statement with a twisted smile.

Ron took a deep breath and attempted to put aside his annoyance. “Everything inside has been removed.”

“Has it?”

“Just like that. Gone.”

“That’s right. Just like that.”

“Whatever you say,” Ron muttered, too tense really to understand what he was saying.

An angry flash came into Tim’s eyes, but he turned away and lifted his chin haughtily. “Hey, two beers here. And a bottle of...” He looked at Ron. “Jack Daniels all right?”

Ron nodded.

“Bottle of Daniels,” he hollered.

“I didn’t see you at the crowning last night,” Ron said. “Why’s that?”

“Don’t like it, that’s why.”

“I found it pretty sickening myself.”

Tim sniffed. “You let your daughter take part in it, didn’t you?”

“I had no choice.”

“Most of us never do.” His face clouded as he said this.

“No, I guess we don’t.”

Tim looked up and ran a measuring, speculative eye over him. “You’re a good man. I know that. A good man.” He stared at Ron admiringly. “Here’s to you.” He lifted his mug and polished off the last of his beer.

The next round arrived on cue. He put down his empty mug, picked up the full one without so much as a pause, and began to drain it.

A sudden strained silence. Ron glanced at his wristwatch. Almost two-thirty. Tim took a toothpick from his vest pocket and stuck it into his mouth. Then swilled some more beer.

It was the damndest thing Ron had ever seen. A man drinking beer with a toothpick in his mouth.

“Going to storm,” Tim said. “Cool in here though.” The toothpick between his tobacco-stained teeth wig-wagged continuously from one side of his mouth to the other as he spoke. “Tomorrow night is Last Friday. The ladies are probably over at Beatrice Wheatley’s house getting things ready, I imagine. She’s head of the committee, don’t you know.”

“No—no, I didn’t know,” Ron said.

The man sniffed. “To give blood and so a new life.”

Ron hesitated. “I don’t understand.”

“Hummm.” A sudden thought seemed to strain his white face with color.

“You just said something,” Ron pressed. “Something I didn’t quite understand.”

Tim remained silent, preferring to pour two glasses of Jack Daniels. He shoved the glass beside Ron’s elbow. Then sat back and regarded him thoughtfully. “Matthew said he’d got that car of yours fixed. I’d thought you’d be out of town by now.”

“As a matter of fact—” He stopped himself and paused.

“What?” Tim Hadley asked anxiously.

“As a matter of fact,” Ron repeated, “I had all but left town. But when I passed your store, well... I just found it interesting that it was closed all of a sudden.”

Tim began to speak. Stopped when he saw Ron’s eyes locked on his toothpick. He smiled and took it out of his mouth. “Coon dick,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s made from a coon’s dick,” he said proudly. “Daniel Boone used to have one just like it. I saw it once in a museum in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. Long glass case with all them other do-hickies in it. Never wears out.”

While Tim Hadley’s eyes stayed glued to his face, Ron struggled for the next question. “The carnival,” he said, “it isn’t like a regular carnival, is it?”

Tim gnawed at his toothpick and, looking down at his fingers, he slowly and with difficulty flexed them. “Nope, it isn’t.”

“What’s it all about anyway?”

He looked at Ron for a moment, then stared past him as if looking for someone.

“You expecting someone?” Ron asked nervously.

“You know,” he said slowly, “the only reason rabbits ain’t extinct is because of their smartness. A rabbit is plumb clever. If I was telling children how to hunt rabbit, I’d say look right under your nose. But you have to take your time and look real close. And sure enough, you’ll find a smart rabbit trying to fool you. But if you see him, you’ve got him. Just move in on him, then stand there and wait. He can’t stand that. He’ll make a break and then—then you shoot the little son of a bitch.”

He poured more bourbon into each glass, then added: “Now another thing to remember is that rabbits are like strangers.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to you.”

“Yeah,” Ron said and turned away to survey the room. He hated the place. He hated Brackston, he hated Tim and Frank Hadley, he hated Mrs. Taylor and the Wheatleys and the Carrolls. His eyes scanned over the haggard faces of the few patrons that dotted the room. Which ones, he wondered, knew what was going on? All. He was under no illusions—he was sure he was being observed from all sides.

He swallowed the bourbon before turning back to face Tim Hadley, who wasted no time pouring another drink for each of them.

“Our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction,” he said and gulped down more bourbon. Church bells tolled in the distance. Three times.

Ron was really feeling the effect of drink when it tolled an hour later. Four times. Tim had been talking about rabbits again, about hunting and fishing, and Ron found that Tim’s speech so tickled him that he laughed aloud, sharing Tim Hadley’s pleasure; he laughed at the extraordinary experience the man talked of, the perceiving of a wilderness which heretofore had seemed a malevolent world, poisonous and stagnated.

Finally, Tim whispered: “Blood is necessary to save the world and the people in it.” He giggled, the liquor spilling from the sides of his mouth. “Ask the Widow Wheatley, she’ll tell you.”

Through a haze of bourbon, Ron said: “Widow? Then she and...”

“Thomas...”

“Thomas, that’s right, Thomas.” Ron found pleasure in repeating the name. It was a wall to lean against.

“Thomas Wheatley,” Tim said, “died.” He studied Ron’s stunned reaction with private glee.

“When?” Ron asked, struggling desperately to sober. “When did he die?”

“Very recently,” whispered Tim, leaning in toward Ron until Ron could feel light drops of spittle as Tim spoke. “You see, Beatrice, she’s the Keeper...”

“TIM!” Frank Hadley appeared suddenly beside the booth.

Through a great drunkenness, Ron stared up at him. The man appeared to have just stepped out of a jungle. Sweat poured from his forehead and ran in a steady stream down his face. He wore a solid green jump suit and boots. He was carrying his rifle cocked under his arm.

“Tim, we had best be going.”

“Shoot, Frank, we was...”

“Get to your goddamn feet, boy!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You were foolish to come back,” Frank Hadley said, frowning at Ron.

“I see I was,” Ron snapped, his speech slurred.

“Get up, Tim. Now!” When Frank took his arm, Tim stumbled up, giggling, and with his hand roughed his brother’s hair affectionately, much as he might have greeted a long-forgotten son.

“Let’s go home, boy.”

Tim chuckled. “Shit, where’d that be?”

“You’re goddamned lucky I came along,” Frank said. “No telling where you’d have wound up.” He held his brother steady. “You know people around here don’t like drunks. No telling what they’d of done to you.”

Vaguely, it seemed, Tim realized the wisdom of his brother’s words. He shrugged his brother off and smiled at Ron. “Nice talking with you, Mr. Talon. Nice.” He laughed. “You poor dumb suffering brute...”

When his brother touched his shoulder, he made no effort to resist, and allowed himself to be escorted from the tavern. “Good-bye, you poor dumb...”

Frank Hadley wasted no time pushing him the rest of the way out the door. He watched as the two brothers passed in front of the window and then vanished.

Ron let his eyes drop to his empty glass. He reached out for the bottle, nearly knocking it from the table. He steadied his hand and poured. Bull’s eye. He drank.

Then panic rose. What if it were all delusion? A mocking hideous delusion? His brain started to unravel. Lousy goddamn world, he thought with unusual bitterness. What was the world but insanity? Christ died—for what? So towns like Brackston could...

In his daze, clinging to his glass, he still hadn’t noticed the figure standing outside the window. “Help me. Mother of Jesus...”

His head began to sag.

The withered face of the old woman smiled. “Let’s keep an open mind,” she whispered.

As if the darkness and pain behind him had been merely a little transitory test, the horizons of life and existence now began to grow darker, more painful. He tried to breathe, but found no air.

Now he began to feel a great distant space closing in on him. Noise dwindled, light grew dimmer, sucked, forcing him into uncharted space where he felt cold, frozen. The last faint echoes of sound died. All was quiet.

The old woman moved. A slow smile of recognition touched the corners of Ron’s mouth as he heard her say: “It’s me. The same spirit. Come.”

Elizabeth Krispin, he started to say obediently, but her smile gave her away and he saw through the trick.

No, just another old woman with a warped soul, with the smell of death about her, darkness in her eyes.

(Funny, Daddy, playing with the darkness.)

The old woman’s head drew back; her toothless gums showed through a widespread grimace of gaiety. She was laughing.

Her face branded his consciousness. He could see her still smiling—ear to ear—hysterical—even as his body escaped his control.

He fell then with a dull thud across the table.

Into darkness.