CHAPTER 41
Larry woke up at half past eight to sunlight and the sound of birds. They both freaked him out. Every morning since they had left New York City, sunlight and the sound of birds. And as an extra added attraction, a Bonus Free Gift, if you like, the air smelled clean and fresh. Even Rita had noticed it. He kept thinking: Well, that's as good as it's going to get. But it kept getting better. It got better until you wondered what they had been doing to the planet. And it made you wonder if this was the way the air had always smelled in places like upstate Minnesota and in Oregon and on the western slope of the Rockies. Lying in his half of the double sleeping bag under the low canvas roof of the two-man tent they had added to their traveling kit in Passaic on the morning of July 2, Larry remembered when Al Spellman, one of the Tattered Remnants, had tried to persuade Larry to go on a camping trip with him and two or three other guys. They were going to go east, stop in Vegas for a night, then go on to a place called Loveland, Colorado. They were going to camp out in the mountains above Loveland for five days or so. "You can leave all that `Rocky Mountain High' shit for John Denver," Larry had scoffed. "You'll all come back with mosquito bites and probably with a good case of poison ivy up the kazoo from shitting in the woods. Now, if you change your mind and decide to camp out at the Dunes in Vegas for five days, give me a jingle." But maybe it had been like this. On your own, with nobody hassling you (except for Rita, and he guessed he could put up with her hassle), breathing good air and sleeping at night with no tossing and turning, just bang, fast asleep, like somebody had hit you on the head with a hammer. No problems, except which way you were going tomorrow and how much time you could make. It was pretty wonderful. And this morning in Bennington, Vermont, now headed due east along Highway 9, this morning was something special. It was the by-God Fourth of July, Independence Day. He sat up in the sleeping bag and looked over at Rita, but she was still out like a light, nothing showing but the lines of her body under the bag's quilted fabric and a fluff of her hair. Well, he would wake her up in style this morning. Larry unzipped his side of the bag and got out, buck naked. For a moment his flesh marbled into goosebumps and then the air felt naturally warm, probably seventy already. It was going to be another peach of a day. He crawled out of the tent and stood up. Parked beside the tent was a 1200-cc Harley-Davidson cycle, black and chrome. Like the sleeping bag and the tent, it had been acquired in Passaic. By that time they had already gone through three cars, two blocked by terrible traffic jams, the third stuck in the mud outside of Nutley when he had tried to swing. around a two-truck smashup. The bike was the answer. It could be trundled around accidents, pulling itself along in low gear. When the traffic was seriously piled up it could be ridden along the breakdown lane or the sidewalk, if there was one. Rita didn't like it-riding pillion made her nervous and she clung to Larry desperately-but she had agreed it was the only practical solution. Mankind's final traffic jam had been a dilly. And since they had left Passaic and gotten into the country, they had made great time. By the evening of July 2 they had recrossed into New York State and had pitched their tent on the outskirts of Quarryville, with the hazed and mystic Catskills to the
177 west. They turned east on the afternoon of the third, crossing into Vermont just as dusk fell. And here they were in Bennington. They had camped on a rise outside of town, and now as Larry stood naked beside the cycle, urinating, he could look down and marvel at the picture postcard New England town below him. Two clean white churches, their steeples rising as if to poke through the blue morning sky; a private school, gray fieldstone buildings shackled with ivy; a mill; a couple of red brick school buildings; plenty of trees dressed in summer green-gowns. The only thing that made the picture subtly wrong was the lack of smoke from the mill and the number of twinkling toy cars parked at weird angles on the main street, which was also the highway they were following. But in the sunny silence (silent, that was, except for an occasional twittering bird), Larry might have echoed the sentiments of the late Irma Fayette, had he known the lady: no great loss. Except it was the Fourth of July, and he supposed he was still an American. He cleared his throat, spat, and hummed a little to find his pitch. He drew breath, very much aware of the light morning breeze on his naked chest and buttocks, and burst into bang.
"Oh! say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed, at the twilight's last gleaming?..."
He sang it all the way through, facing Bennington, doing a little burlesque bump and grind at the end, because by now Rita would be standing at the flap of the tent, smiling at him. He finished with a snappy salute at the building he thought might be the Bennington courthouse, then turned around, thinking the best way to start another year of independence in the good old U. S. of A. would be with a good old all-American fuck. "Larry Underwood, Boy Patriot, wishes you a very good m—" But the tentflap was still closed, and he felt a momentary irritation with her again. He squashed it resolutely. She couldn't be on his wavelength all the time. That's all. When you could recognize that and deal with it, you were on your way to an adult relationship. He had been trying very hard with Rita since that harrowing experience in the tunnel, and he thought he'd been doing pretty well. You had to put yourself in her place, that was the thing. You had to recognize that she was a lot older, she had been used to having things a certain way for most of her life. It was natural for her to have a harder job adapting to a world that had turned itself upside down. The pills, for instance. He hadn't been overjoyed to discover that she had brought her whole fucking pharmacy along with her in a jelly jar with a screw-on lid. Yellowjackets, Quaaludes, Darvon, and some other stuff that she called "my little pick-me-ups." The little pickme-ups were reds. Three of those with a shot of tequila and you would jitter and jive all the live-long day. He didn't like it because too many ups and downs and all-arounds added. up to one mean monkey on your back. A monkey roughly the size of King Kong. And he didn't like it because, when you got right down to where the cheese binds, it was a kind of slap in the face at him, wasn't it? What did she have to be nervous about? Why should she have trouble dropping off at night? He sure as hell didn't. And wasn't he taking care of her? You were damned tooting he was. He went back to the tent, then hesitated for a moment. Maybe he ought to let her sleep. Maybe she was worn out. But... He looked down at Old Sparky, and Old Sparky didn't really want to let her sleep. Singing the old Star-Speckled Banana had turned him right on. So Larry turned back the tent-flap and crawled in. "Rita?" And it hit him right away after the fresh morning cleanness of the air outside; he must have been mostly asleep before to have missed it. The smell was not overpoweringly strong because the tent was fairly well ventilated, but it was strong enough: the sweet-sour smell of vomit and sickness. "Rita?" He felt mounting alarm at the still way she was lying, just that dry fluff of her hair sticking out of the sleeping bag. He crawled toward her on his hands and knees, the smell of vomit stronger now, making his stomach knot. "Rita, you all right? Wake up, Rita!" No movement. So he rolled her over and the sleeping bag was halfway unzipped as if she had tried to struggle out of it in the night, maybe realizing what was happening to her, struggling and failing, and he all the time sleeping peacefully beside her, old Mr. Rocky Mountain High himself. He rolled her over and one of her pill bottles fell out of her hand and her eyes were cloudy dull marbles behind halfclosed lids and her mouth was filled with the green puke she had strangled on. He stared into her dead face for what seemed a very long time. They were almost nose to nose, and the tent seemed to be getting hotter and hotter until it was like an attic on a late August afternoon just before the cooling thundershowers hit. His head seemed to be swelling and swelling. Her mouth was full of that shit. He couldn't take his eyes off that. The question that ran around and
178 around in his brain like a mechanical rabbit on a dogtrack rail was: How long was I sleeping with her after she died? Repulsive, man. Reeeepulsive. The paralysis broke and he scrambled out of the tent, scraping both knees when they came off the groundsheet and onto the naked earth. He thought he was going to puke himself and he struggled with it, willing himself not to, he hated to puke worse than anything, and then he thought But I was going back in there to FUCK her, man! and everything came up in a loose rush and he crawled away from the steaming mess crying and hating the cruddy taste in his mouth and nose.
He thought about her most of the morning. He felt a measure of relief that she had died-a great measure, actually. He would never tell anyone that. It confirmed everything his mother had said about him, and Wayne Stukey, and even that silly bit of fluff with the apartment near Fordham University. Larry Underwood, the Fordham Flasher. "I ain't no nice guy," he said aloud, and having said it, he felt better. It became easier to tell the truth, and truthtelling was the most important thing. He had made an agreement with himself, in whatever back room of the subconscious where the Powers Behind the Throne wheel and deal, that he was going to take care of her. Maybe he wasn't no nice guy, but he was no murderer either and what he had done in the tunnel was pretty close to attempted murder. So he was going to take care of her, he wasn't going to shout at her no matter how pissed he got sometimes-like when she grabbed him with her patented Kansas City Clutch as they mounted the Harley-he wasn't going to get mad no matter how much she held him back or how stupid she could be about some things. The night before last she had put a can of peas in the coals of their fire without ventilating the top and he had fished it out all charred and swelled, about three seconds before it would have gone off like a bomb, maybe blinding them with flying hooks of tin shrapnel. But had he read her out about it? No. He hadn't. He had made a light joke and passed it off. Same with the pills. He had figured the pills were her business. Maybe you should have discussed it with her. Maybe she wanted you to. "It wasn't a friggin encounter session," he said aloud. It was survival. And she hadn't been able to cut it. Maybe she had known it, ever since the day in Central Park when she had taken a careless shot at a chinaberry tree with a cheaplooking . 32 that might have blown up in her hand. Maybe "Maybe, shit!" Larry said angrily. He tipped the canteen up to his mouth but it was empty and he still had that slimy taste in his mouth. Maybe there were people like her all over the country. The flu didn't just leave survivor types, why the hell should it? There might be a young guy somewhere in the country right now, perfect physical condition, immune to the flu but dying of tonsillitis. As Henny Youngman might have said, "Hey, folks, I got a million of em." Larry was sitting on a paved scenic turnout just off the highway. The view of Vermont marching away to New York in the golden morning haze was breathtaking. A sign announced that this was Twelve-Mile Point. Actually Larry thought he could see a lot farther than twelve miles. On a clear day you could see forever. At the far side of the turnout there was a knee-high rock wall, the rocks cemented together, and a few smashed Budweiser bottles. Also a used condom. He supposed that high school kids used to come up here at twilight and watch the lights come on in the town below. First they would get exalted and then they would get laid. BID, as they used to say: big fucking deal. So why was he feeling so bad, anyway? He was telling the truth, wasn't he? Yes. And the worst of the truth was that he felt relief, wasn't it? That the stone around his neck was gone? No, the worst is being alone. Being lonely. ' Corny but true. He wanted someone to share this view with. Someone he could turn to and say with modest wit: On a clear day you can see forever. And the only company was in a tent a mile and a half back with a mouthful of green puke. Getting stiff. Drawing flies. Larry put his head on his knees and closed his eyes. He told himself he wouldn't cry. He hated to cry almost as bad as he hated to puke.
In the end he was chicken. He couldn't bury her. He summoned up the worst thoughts he could- maggots and beetles, the woodchucks that would smell her and come in for a munch, the unfairness of one human being leaving another like a candy wrapper or a discarded Pepsi can. But there also seemed to be something vaguely illegal about burying her and to tell the truth (and he was telling the truth now, wasn't he?), that was just a cheap rationalization. He could face going down to Bennington and breaking into the Ever Popular hardware store, taking the Ever Popular spade and a matching Ever Popular pick; he could even face coming back up here where it was still and beautiful and digging the Ever Popular grave near the Ever Popular Twelve-Mile Point. But to go back into that tent (which would now smell very much like the comfort station on Transverse Number One in Central Park, where 'he Ever Popular dark sweet treat woud be sitting for eternity) and unzip her side of the sleeping bag the rest of the way and pull out her stiff and baggy body and drag it up to
179 the hole by the armpits and tumble it in and then shovel the dirt over it, watching the earth patter on her white legs with their bulging nodules of varicose veins and stick in her hair... Uh-uh, buddy. Guess I'll sit this one out. If I'm a chicken, so be it. Pluckaplucka-plucka. He went back to where the tent was pitched and turned back the flap. He found a long stick. He took a deep breath of fresh air, held it, and hooked his clothes out with the stick. Backed away with them, put them on. Took another deep breath, held it, and used the stick to fish out his boots. He sat on a fallen tree and put them on, too. The smell was in his clothes. "Bullshit,",, he whispered. He could see her, half in and half out of the sleeping bag, her stiff hand held out and still curled around the pill bottle that was no longer there. Her half-lidded eyes seemed to be staring at him accusingly. It made him think of the tunnel again, and his visions of the walking dead. Quickly he used the stick to close the tent-flap. But he could still smell her on him. So he made Bennington his first stop after all, and in the Bennington Men's Shop he stripped off all his clothes and got new ones, three changes plus four pairs of socks and shorts. He even found a new pair of boots. Looking at himself in the three-way mirror he could see the empty store spread out behind him and the Harley leaning raffishly at the curb. "Sharp threads," he murmured. "Heavy-heavy." But there was no one to admire his taste. He left the store and gunned the Harley into life. He supposed he should stop at the hardware store and see if they had a tent and another sleeping bag, but all he wanted now was to get out of Bennington. He would stop farther up the line. He looked up toward where the land made its slow rise as he guided the Harley out of town, and he could see TwelveMile Point, but not where they had pitched the tent. That was really all for the best, it was Larry looked back at the road and terror jumped nimbly down his throat. An International- Harvester pickup towing a horsetrailer had swerved to avoid a car and the horsetrailer had overturned. He was going to drive the Harley right into it because he hadn't been looking where he was going. He turned hard right, his new boot dragging on the road, and he almost got around. But the left footrest clipped the trailer's rear bumper and yanked the bike out from under him. Larry came to rest on the highway's verge with a bonerattling thump. The Harley chattered on for a moment behind him and then stalled out. "You all right?" he asked aloud. Thank God he'd only been doing twenty or so. Thank God Rita wasn't with him, she'd be bullshit out of her mind with hysterics. Of course if Rita had been with him he wouldn't have been looking up there in the first place, he would have been TCB, taking care of business to the cubistic among you. "I'm all right," he answered himself, but he still wasn't sure he was. He sat up. The quiet impressed itself upon him as it did from time to time-it was so quiet that if you thought about it you could go crazy. Even Rita bawling would have been a relief at this point. Everything seemed suddenly full of bright twinkles, and with sudden horror he thought he was going to pass out. He thought, I really am hurt, in just a minute I'll feel it, when the shock wears off, that's when I'll feel it, I'm cut bad or something, and who's going to put on a tourniquet? But when the instant of faintness had passed, he looked at himself and thought he was probably all right after all. He had cut both hands and his new pants had shredded away at the right knee-the knee was also cut-but they were all just scrapes and what the fuck was the big deal, anybody could dump their cycle, it happens to everybody once in a while. But he knew what the big deal was. He could have hit his head the right way and fractured his skull and he would have lain there in the hot sun until he died. Or strangled to death on his own puke like a certain now-deceased friend of his. He walked shakily over to the Harley and stood it up. It didn't seem to be damaged in any way, but it looked different. Before, it had just been a machine, a rather charming machine that could serve the dual purpose of transporting him and making him feel like James Dean or Jack Nicholson in Hell's Angels on Wheels. But now its chrome seemed to grin at him like a sideshow barker, seeming to invite him to step right up and see if he was man enough to ride the twowheeled' monster. It started on the third kick, and he putted out of Bennington at no more than walking speed. He was wearing bracelets of cold sweat on his arms and suddenly he had never, no never, in his whole life wanted so badly to see another human face. But he didn't see one that day.
In the afternoon he made himself speed up a little, but he could not force himself to twist the throttle any farther once the speedometer needle had reached twenty, not even if he could see the
180 road was clear ahead. There was a sporting goods and cycle shop on the outskirts of Wilmington, and he stopped there and got a sleeping bag, some heavy gloves, and a helmet, and even with the helmet on he could not force himself to go faster than twenty-five. On blind corners he slowed down until he was walking the big cycle along. He kept having visions of lying unconscious at the side of the road and bleeding to death unattended. At five o'clock, as he was approaching Brattleboro, the Harley's overheat light went on. Larry parked it and turned it off with mingled feelings of relief and disgust. "You might as well have pushed it," he said. "It's meant to run at sixty, you goddam fool!" He left it and walked into town, not knowing if he would come back for it. He slept on the Brattleboro Municipal Common that evening, under the partial shelter of the bandshell. He turned in as soon as it was dark, and fell asleep instantly. Some sound woke him with a jerk a time later. He looked at his watch. The thin radium lines on the dial scratched out eleventwenty. He got up on one elbow and stared into the darkness, feeling the bandshell huge around him, missing the little tent that had held in body heat. What a fine little canvas womb it had been! If there had been a sound, it was gone now; even the crickets had fallen silent. Was that right? Could it be right? "Is someone there?" Larry called, and the sound of his own voice frightened him. He groped for the . 30-. 30 and for a long and increasingly panicky moment could not find it. When he did, he squeezed the trigger without thinking, just as a man drowning in the ocean will squeeze a thrown life preserver. If the safety hadn't been on, he would have fired it. Possibly into himself. There was something in the silence, he was sure of it. Perhaps a person, perhaps some large and dangerous animal. Of course, a person could be dangerous, too. A person like the one who had repeatedly stabbed the poor monstershouter or like John Bearsford Tipton, who had offered him a million in cold cash for the use of his woman. "Who is it?" He had a flashlight in his pack, but in order to hunt for it, he would have to let go of the rifle, which he had drawn across his lap: Besides... did he really want to see who it was? So he just sat there, willing movement or a repetition of the sound which had awakened him (had it been a sound? or just something he had dreamed?), and after a little while he first nodded, then dozed off. Suddenly his head jerked up, his eyes wide, his flesh shrinking against his bones. Now there was sound, and if the night hadn't been cloudy, the moon, nearly full, would have shown him— But he didn't want to see. No, he most definitely didn't want to see. Yet he sat forward, head cocked, listening to the sound of dusty bootheels clocking away from him down the sidewalk of Main Street, Brattleboro, Vermont, moving west, fading, until they were lost in the open hum of things. Larry felt a sudden mad urge to stand up, letting the sleeping bag slither down around his ankles, to shout: Come back, whoever you are! I don't care! Come back! But did he really want to issue such a blank check to Whoever? The bandshell would amplify his shout-his plea. And what if those bootheels actually did return, growing louder in a stillness where not even the crickets sang? Instead of standing, he lay back down and curled up in the fetal position with his hands wrapped around the rifle. I won't sleep again tonight, he thought, but he was asleep in three minutes and quite sure the next morning that he had dreamed the whole thing.