Ruth, please stop. You couldn't have picked a worse time to start raking up all that old--
But Ruth would not be stopped. The Ruth who had once been Jessie's roommate had always been determined to have her say--every single word of it--and the Ruth who was now Jessie's headmate apparently hadn't changed a bit.
The next thing I knew, you were living off-campus with three little Sorority Susies--princesses in A-line jumpers and Ship 'n Shore blouses, each undoubtedly owning a set of those underpants with the days of the week sewn on them. I think you made a conscious decision to go into training for the Olympic Dusting and Floor-Waxing Team right around then. You unhappened that night at the Neuworth Parsonage, you unhappened the tears and the hurt and the anger, you unhappened me. Oh, we still saw each other once in awhile--split the occasional pizza and pitcher of Molson's down at Pat's--but our friendship was really over, wasn't it? When it came down to a choice between me and what happened to you in July of 1963, you chose the eclipse.
The glass of water was trembling harder.
"Why now, Ruth?" she asked, unaware that she was actually mouthing the words in the darkening bedroom. Why now, that's what I want to know--given that in this incarnation you're really a part of me, why now? Why at the exact time when I can least afford being upset and distracted?
The most obvious answer to that question was also the most unappetizing: because there was an enemy inside, a sad, bad bitch who liked her just the way she was--handcuffed, aching, thirsty, scared, and miserable--just fine. Who didn't want to see that condition alleviated in the slightest. Who would stoop to any dirty trick to see that it wasn't.
The total solar eclipse lasted just over a minute that day, Jessie... except in your mind. In there, it's still going on, isn't it?
She closed her eyes and focused all her thought and will on steadying the glass in her hand. Now she spoke mentally to Ruth's voice without self-consciousness, as if she really were speaking to another person instead of to a part of her brain that had suddenly decided this was the right time to do a little work on herself, as Nora Callighan would have put it.
Let me alone, Ruth. If you still want to discuss these things after I've taken a stab at getting a drink, okay. But for now, will you please just--
"--shut the fuck up," she finished in a low whisper.
Yes, Ruth replied at once. I know there's something or someone inside you, trying to throw dirt in the works, and I know it sometimes uses my voice--it's a great ventriloquist, no doubt about that--but it's not me. I loved you then, and I love you now. That was why I kept trying to stay in touch as long as I did ... because I loved you. And, I suppose, because us high-riding bitches have to stick together.
Jessie smiled a little, or tried to, around the makeshift straw.
Now go for it, Jessie, and go hard.
Jessie waited for a moment, but there was nothing else. Ruth was gone, at least for the time being. She opened her eyes again, then slowly bent her head forward, the rolled-up card jutting out of her mouth like FDR's cigarette holder.
Please God, I'm begging you ... let this work.
Her makeshift straw slid into the water. Jessie closed her eyes and sucked. For a moment there was nothing, and clear despair rose up in her mind. Then water filled her mouth, cool and sweet and there, surprising her into a kind of ecstasy. She would have sobbed with gratitude if her mouth hadn't been so strenuously puckered around the end of the rolled-up subscription card; as it was, she could make only a foggy hooting sound through her nose.
She swallowed the water, feeling it coating her throat like liquid satin, and then began to suck again. She did this as ardently and as mindlessly as a hungry calf working at its mother's teat. Her straw was a long way from perfect, delivering only sips and slurps and rills instead of a steady stream, and most of what she was sucking into the tube was spilling out again from the imperfect seals and crooked folds. On some level she knew this, could hear water pattering to the coverlet like raindrops, but her grateful mind still fervently believed that her straw was one of the greatest inventions ever created by the mind of woman, and that this moment, this drink from her dead husband's water-glass, was the apogee of her life.
Don't drink it all, Jess--save some for later.
She didn't know which of her phantom companions had spoken this time, and it didn't matter. It was great advice, but so was telling an eighteen-year-old boy half-mad with six months of heavy petting that it didn't matter if the girl was finally willing; if he didn't have a rubber, he should wait. Sometimes, she was discovering, it was impossible to take the mind's advice, no matter how good it was. Sometimes the body simply rose up and slapped all that good advice aside. She was discovering something else, as well--giving in to those simple physical needs could be an inexpressible relief.
Jessie went on sucking through the rolled-up card, tilting the glass to keep the surface of the water brimming over the far end of the soggy, misshapen purple thing, aware in some part of her mind that the card was leaking worse than ever and she was insane not to stop and wait for it to dry out again, but going on anyway.
What finally stopped her was the realization that she was sucking nothing but air, and had been for several seconds. There was water left in Gerald's glass, but the tip of her makeshift straw could no longer quite touch it. The coverlet beneath the rolled-up blow-in card was dark with moisture.
I could get what's left, though. I could. If I could turn my hand a little farther in that unnatural backward direction when I needed to get hold of the miserable glass in the first place, I think I can stick my neck a little farther forward to get those last few sips of water. Think I can? I know I can.
She did know it, and later on she would test the idea, but for now the white-collar guys on the top floor--the ones with all the good views--had once again wrested control away from the day-laborers and shop stewards who ran the machinery; the mutiny was over. Her thirst was a long way from being entirely slaked, but her throat had quit throbbing and she felt a lot better ... mentally as well as physically. Sharper in her thoughts and marginally brighter in her outlook.
She found she was glad she'd left that last little bit in the glass. Two sips of water through a leaky straw probably wouldn't spell the difference between remaining handcuffed to the bed and finding a way to wiggle out of this mess on her own--let alone between life and death--but getting those last couple of sips might occupy her mind when and if it tried to turn to its own morbid devices again. After all, night was coming, her husband was lying dead nearby, and it looked like she was camping out.
Not a pretty picture, especially when you added the hungry stray who was camping out with her, but Jessie found she was growing sleepy again just the same. She tried to think of reasons to fight her growing drowsiness and couldn't come up with any good ones. Even the thought of waking up with her arms numb to the elbows didn't seem like a particularly big deal. She would simply move them around until the blood was flowing briskly again. It wouldn't be pleasant, but she had no doubt about her ability to do it.
Also, you might have an idea while you're asleep, dear, Goodwife Burlingame said. That always happens in books.
"Maybe you will," Jessie said. "After all, you've had the best one so far."
She let herself lie down, using her shoulder-blades to scrunch the pillow as far up against the head of the bed as she could. Her shoulders ached, her arms (especially the left one) throbbed, and her stomach muscles were still fluttering with the strain of holding her upper body far enough forward to drink through the straw ... but she felt strangely content, just the same. At peace with herself.
Content? How can you feel content? Your husband is dead, after all, and you played a part in that, Jessie. And suppose you are found? Suppose you are rescued? Have you thought about how this situation is going to took to whoever finds you? How do you suppose it's going to look to Constable Teagarden, as far as that goes? How long do you think it will take him to decide to call the State Police?
Thirty seconds? Maybe forty? They think a little slower out here in the country, though, don't they--it might take him all of two minutes.
She couldn't argue with any of that. It was true.
Then how can you feel content, Jessie? How can you possibly feel content with things like that hanging over you?
She didn't know, but she did. Her sense of tranquility was as deep as a featherbed on the night a March gale filled with sleet roars out of the northwest, and as warm as the goosedown comforter on that bed. She suspected that most of this feeling stemmed from causes which were purely physical: if you were thirsty enough, it was apparently possible to get stoned on half a glass of water.
But there was a mental side, as well. Ten years ago she had reluctantly given up her job as a substitute teacher, finally giving in to the pressure of Gerald's persistent (or maybe "relentless" was the word she was actually looking for) logic. He was making almost a hundred thousand dollars a year by then; next to that, her five to seven grand looked pretty paltry. It was, in fact, an actual annoyance at tax time, when the IRS took most of it and then went sniffing over their financial records, wondering where the rest of it was.
When she complained about their suspicious behavior, Gerald had looked at her with a mixture of love and exasperation. It wasn't quite his "Why are you girls always so silly?" expression--that one didn't start to show up regularly for another five or six years--but it was close. They see what I'm making, he told her, they see two large German cars in the garage, they look at the pictures of the place on the lake, and then they look at your tax forms and see you're working for what they think of as chump change. They can't believe it--it looks phony to them, a cover for something else--and so they go snooping around, looking for whatever that something else might be. They don't know you like I do, that's all.
She had been unable to explain to Gerald what the substitute contract meant to her ... or maybe it was that he had been unwilling to listen. Either way, it came to the same: teaching, even on a part-time basis, filled her up in some important way, and Gerald didn't get that. Nor had he been able to get the fact that subbing formed a bridge to the life she had lived before she'd met Gerald at that Republican mixer, when she'd been a full-time English teacher at Waterville High, a woman on her own who was working for a living, who was well-liked and respected by her colleagues, and who was beholden to no one. She had been unable to explain (or he had been unwilling to listen) how quitting teaching--even on that final part-time, piecework basis--made her feel mournful and lost and somehow useless.
That rudderless feeling--probably caused as much by her inability to catch pregnant as by her decision to return her contract unsigned--had departed from the surface of her mind after a year or so, but it had never entirely left the deeper ranges of her heart. She had sometimes felt like a cliche to herself--young teacher-lady weds successful lawyer whose name goes up on the door at the tender (professionally speaking, that is) age of thirty. This young (well, relatively young) woman eventually steps into the foyer of that puzzle palace known as middle age, looks around, and finds she is suddenly all alone--no job, no kids, and a husband who is almost completely focused (one wouldn't want to say fixated; that might be accurate, but it would also be unkind) on climbing that fabled ladder of success.
This woman, suddenly faced with forty just beyond the next bend in the road, is exactly the sort of woman most likely to get in trouble with drugs, booze, or another man. A younger man, usually. None of that happened to this young (well ... previously young) woman, but Jessie still found herself with a scary amount of time on her hands--time to garden, time to go malling, time to take classes (the painting, the pottery, the poetry ... and she could have had an affair with the man who taught the poetry if she'd wanted to, and she had almost wanted to). There had also been time to do a little work on herself, which was how she had happened to meet Nora. Yet not one of those things had left her feeling the way she felt now, as though her weariness and aches were badges of valor and her sleepiness a justly won reward ... the handcuffed ladies' version of Miller Time, you might say.
Hey, Jess--the way you got that water really was pretty great.
It was another UFO, but this time Jessie didn't mind. Just as long as Ruth didn't show up for awhile. Ruth was interesting, but she was also exhausting.
A lot of people never would have even gotten the glass, her UFO fan continued, and using the blow-in card for a straw ... that was a master-stroke. So go ahead and feel good. It's allowed. A little nap is allowed, too.
But the dog, Goody said doubtfully.
That dog isn't going to bother you one damned bit ... and you know why.
Yes. The reason the dog wasn't going to bother her was lying nearby on the bedroom floor. Gerald was now nothing but a shadow among shadows, for which Jessie was grateful. Outside, the wind gusted again. The sound of it hissing through the pines was comforting, lulling. Jessie closed her eyes.
But be careful what you dream! Goody called after her in sudden alarm, but her voice was distant and not terribly compelling. Still, it tried again: Be careful what you dream, Jessie! I'm serious!
Yes, of course she was. The Goodwife was always serious, which meant she was also often tiresome.
Whatever I dream, Jessie thought, it won't be that I'm thirsty. I haven't had many clear victories over the last ten years--mostly one murky guerrilla engagement after another--but getting that drink of water was a clear win. Wasn't it?
Yes, the UFO voice agreed. It was a vaguely masculine voice, and she found herself wondering in a sleepy way if perhaps it was the voice of her brother, Will ... Will as he'd been as a child, back in the sixties. You bet it was. It was great.
Five minutes later Jessie was sleeping deeply, arms up and splayed in a limp V-shape, wrists held loosely to the bedposts by the handcuffs, head lolling against her right shoulder (the less painful one), long, slow snores drifting from her mouth. And at some point--long after dark had fallen and a white rind of moon had risen in the east--the dog appeared in the doorway again.
Like Jessie, it was calmer now that its most immediate need had been met and the clamor in its stomach had been stilled to some extent. It gazed at her for a long time with its good ear cocked and its muzzle up, trying to decide if she was really asleep or only pretending. It decided (mostly on the basis of smell--the sweat which was now drying, the total absence of the crackling ozone stink of adrenaline) that she was asleep. There would be no kicks or shouts this time--not if it was careful not to wake her up.
The dog padded softly to the heap of meat in the middle of the floor. Although its hunger was now less, the meat actually smelled better. This was because its first meal had gone a long way toward breaking down the ancient, inbred taboo against this sort of meat, although the dog did not know this and wouldn't have cared if it did.
It lowered its head, first sniffing the now-attractive aroma of dead lawyer with all the delicacy of a gourmet, then closing its teeth gently on Gerald's lower lip. It pulled, applying pressure slowly, stretching the flesh further and further. Gerald began to look as if he were deep in some monstrous pout. The lip finally tore off, revealing his bottom teeth in a big dead grin. The dog swallowed this small delicacy in a single gulp, then licked its chops. Its tail began to wag again, this time moving in slow, contented sweeps. Two tiny spots of light danced on the ceiling high above; moonlight reflected from the fillings in two of Gerald's lower molars. These fillings had been done only the week before, and they were still as fresh and shiny as newly minted quarters.
The dog licked its chops a second time, looking lovingly at Gerald as it did so. Then it stretched its neck forward, almost exactly as Jessie had stretched hers in order to finally plop her straw into the glass. The dog sniffed Gerald's face, but it did not just sniff; it allowed its nose to go on a kind of olfactory vacation there, first sampling the faint floor-polishy aroma of brown wax buried deep in the dead master's left ear, then the intermingled odors of sweat and Prell at
the hairline, then the sharp, entrancingly bitter smell of clotted blood on the crown of Gerald's head. It lingered especially long at Gerald's nose, conducting a delicate investigation into those now tideless channels with its scratched, dirty, but oh-so-sensitive muzzle. Again there was that sense of gourmandizing, a feeling that the dog was choosing among many treasures. At last it sank its sharp teeth deeply into Gerald's left cheek, clamped them together, and began to pull.
On the bed, Jessie's eyes had begun to move rapidly back and forth behind her lids and now she moaned--a high, wavering sound, full of terror and recognition.
The dog looked up at once, its body dropping into an instinctive cringe of guilt and fear. It didn't last long; already it had begun to see this pile of meat as its private larder, for which it would fight--and perhaps die--if challenged. Besides, it was only the bitchmaster making that sound, and the dog was now quite sure that the bitchmaster was powerless.
It dipped its head down, seized Gerald Burlingame's cheek once more, and yanked backward, shaking its head briskly from side to side as it did so. A long strip of the dead man's cheek came free with a sound like strapping tape being pulled briskly off the dispenser roll. Gerald now wore the ferocious, predatory smile of a man who has just filled a straight-flush in a high-stakes poker game.
Jessie moaned again. The sound was followed by a string of guttural, unintelligible sleeptalk. The dog glanced up at her once more. It was sure she couldn't get off the bed and bother it, but those sounds made it uneasy, just the same. The old taboo had faded, but it hadn't disappeared. Besides, its hunger was sated; what it was doing now wasn't eating but snacking. It turned and trotted out of the room again. Most of Gerald's left cheek dangled from its mouth like the scalp of an infant.
11
It is August 14th, 1965--a little over two years since the day the sun went out. It is Will's birthday; he has gone around all day solemnly telling people that he has now lived a year for each inning in a baseball game. Jessie is unable to understand why this seems like a big deal to her brother, but it clearly does, and she decides that if Will wants to compare his life to a baseball game, that's perfectly okay.