Kiss Me Deadly Page 48

  Chuck, as though satisfied that all Trafton could do was stand there and shake, cast a quick glance at Cal.

  “You people can wait around for your dead children to come back to you, but it is never going to happen. And if I was a younger man who didn’t have four mouths— living mouths—left to feed, I’d be taking it upon myself to make sure that the dead remained uncorrupted by whatever creatures of hell are planning to take them over.”

  He grabbed his wife’s hand and pulled her toward the door. The mayor and the grief counselor called for them to stay, but Barnes’ progress was swift and inexorable.

  Cal watched them leave but the scene had ceased to register upon him. Instead, he focused on the memory of his daughter’s voice.

  I think I’m in love with him.

  ***

  When Cal returned home, the first thing he looked at was the answering machine in the kitchen because just about the only person that ever called him was Mandy.

  The red light was winking at him.

  Without taking the time to take off his coat and hat, or even to let go of his keys, he punched the button with a shaking finger.

  “Hello? Hello, Cal?” A female voice, but not Mandy’s. It was Laura. She sounded like she was crying, but there was warmth in her voice, a ray of sunlight piercing clouds.

  “Cal, he came back. My boy came back.”

  A dull pressure formed against the backs of his eyes...

  He was happy for Laura—jealous of course, but happy as well. She’d been the smart one, the one to ignore the “counseling” and the stupid group-hug (or hate, in the case of Barnes) session, to do the only thing that really mattered—stay and wait for her child. He dropped his keys on the kitchen counter where they landed with a jangling clunk.

  Maybe Laura’s presence helped her son find his way back, Cal thought. Maybe, from whatever pocket of space that Stevie existed in, he’d been able to hear his mother’s coffee-fueled heart beating, and he followed the sound back into his bruised and lifeless body.

  Laura didn’t say anything else, but there was a long pause at the end of the message before she hung up.

  Cal picked up his keys and drove back to the hospital.

  ***

  He woke up, blinking and disoriented. Someone had covered him with a blanket during the night, and he realized that he had clutched it to his chin with curling fingers. His mouth tasted of the gum of a thousand envelopes.

  “Hey, Cal,” a voice said. Cal patted his breast pocket for his glasses, but even sightless he knew who the voice belonged to. It was Bill Trafton. “I’ve got a coffee for you here if you want it.”

  “Bill,” Cal said, sitting up and pulling on his glasses, which were spotted and dusty. “Thank you.”

  “I hate the waiting,” Bill said, holding out a large coffee. “I’m sorry if it’s too cold; I thought you’d have woken up awhile ago.”

  “I’m awake,” Cal said. He accepted the cup and took a long sip. Silence stretched out between the two fathers.

  “I guess we’ll know in the next seven days, right?”

  Cal took another sip. “I guess so.”

  “Stevie Davis came back,” Bill said. Cal thought he was trying, and failing, to sound cheery and optimistic. “There’s an article in the paper about it and Laura called Sandy last night.”

  “I heard. That’s great.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it? I went upstairs and talked to the Franks,” Trafton said. “Amber still hasn’t ... she’s still comatose. Both her legs...”

  He stopped when he saw a nurse running toward them, the slap of her sneakers against the burnished floor of the corridor rising in volume. She was young, and not one of the medical staff Cal had spoken to when he’d first arrived. He and Trafton rose from their seats.

  “One woke up,” the nurse said, breathless. “You should come. One of the boys woke up.”

  One of the boys, Cal thought. But he followed Trafton down the hall anyway. They were running by the time they reached the boy—a large, stumbling figure in a pale blue hospital gown. He was with a nurse who was encouraging him to walk, but the look on her face said that she didn’t really want to touch him. The boy weaved like a drunk. When he turned his face to them, they saw that it was Jake Barnes.

  Trafton slumped against the wall, shuddering with the failed effort of holding his emotions in check.

  ***

  I wanted to see her, but they wouldn’t let me see her. There were still two bodies beneath sheets in the cold room but they were vague, almost shapeless. They could have been anybody at all but I wanted to know. I knew that I was dead and I wanted to see who else was and I hoped it wasn’t Mandy. I tried to approach the bodies but the nurse’s hand was firm on my shoulder as she steered me towards the door. I couldn’t tell that the bodies under the sheets were Curtis’s and Mandy’s but when I saw their parents outside the door of the cold room I knew. I knew and I tried to go back.

  When I saw Mandy’s father I tried to return to the cold room and find her and help her come back. I don’t know how I could help her come back but I thought if I held her or if I kissed her she would awaken like Snow White like Sleeping Beauty like any of the fairy tale princesses who’d fallen into a magic slumber.

  But what I’d returned from didn’t feel like slumber. There was pain, there was raw ache when I moved, each muscle felt twisted and dry, like overcooked bacon.

  But they wouldn’t let me return. “It isn’t permitted,” the nurse said. As though saying so made it real, as though all manner of permissions hadn’t been revoked or granted. I could have forced her but then what? That’s what I thought. I wasn’t thinking about being dead—that would come later—I was just thinking about seeing Mandy again. That’s all.

  I tried to speak but I couldn’t make any sound at all. My tongue was like a mouthful of cold meat; I could feel it lying there, pressing against my teeth, but I couldn’t move it at all.

  When I fell, it was Mandy’s father that lifted me up. There was something in his eyes, some message, but it wasn’t one of fear like with the nurse.

  “Come on,” her father said. “I’ll take you home.”

  I followed. But I knew there was no home to return to.

  ***

  Cal sat in the truck with the engine running as Jake got out of the cab. Cal had started to get out himself, but Jake’s hand—surprisingly gentle—fell upon his arm, and the boy shook his head. Jake didn’t say anything, but Cal didn’t think there was really anything to say at that moment.

  I think I love him, Daddy.

  Cal watched him make slow, shuffling progress through the snow toward his front door. He was about halfway across the front lawn when the door opened, and his father strode out onto the steps. Chuck was wearing a tattered sweatshirt and paint-splattered jeans tucked into the tops of work boots he’d not had time to lace up. He was holding a shotgun.

  “Get out of here!” he yelled. Like he was shooing an animal. He waved the shotgun in a tight arc. Behind him, Cal could see his wife holding back one of Jake’s younger brothers—Andy, he thought—and trying to cover his eyes with her hands, as though she was afraid that he’d turn to salt.

  “Go on! You aren’t welcome here!” Cal could see the heat rising from Chuck’s head and shoulders even across the yard, as though there were a tiny furnace being stoked within him. Jake stood rooted in his tracks, motionless. Chuck brought the shotgun up.

  “Don’t do it, Barnes!” Cal called out, opening his car door.

  “Do not move, Cal Wilson,” Barnes said. “I have a right to defend my property. I have every right.”

  Cal watched the man’s eyes and the barrel of the gun. They were both steady and insane, the eyes of a fanatic who’d found his purpose. Cal had left his own gun at home.

  “He’s your son, Chuck.”

  “My son is dead,” Barnes replied. “Whatever this thing is, it isn’t my son.” He cocked the hammer on the shotgun and spoke to the boy. “This will be the l
ast time I tell you. You aren’t welcome here.”

  Jake took a step backward, as though he wanted to be certain that his father knew he was going. Then he turned away.

  Cal remained by the truck, wondering if he should call to Jake. But before he could, the boy shuffled away—away from his family, from the road, from Cal and his waiting truck—and into the woods across the street.

  When he was no longer visible through the trees, Cal turned back to see Barnes squinting off into the distance. Cal watched him spit into the snow and return to his house, his voice audible through the closed door as he shouted at his wife and remaining children.

  Cal returned to the warm cab of his truck and drove back to the hospital.

  ***

  “The Franks would like it if you visited them sometime today, Cal,” Sandy Trafton was telling him. “Amber regained consciousness a few hours ago. It’s almost like a miracle.”

  He could hear the anxiety in her voice, and he watched her involuntary glance toward the room where their dead children were waiting.

  “Maybe I’ll do that,” Cal said, rising to his feet. The joints of his knees popped like a sheet of bubble wrap. “Can I get you something from the cafeteria on my way back? Coffee, or a sandwich?”

  “No, thank you, Cal.” She gave him directions to Amber’s room, and he walked away.

  You should have stopped the boy, he thought, passing doctors and people he knew from town, all of whom gave him a wide berth, as though it were he that had returned from the dead. You should have stopped him and you didn’t. What would Mandy think of you?

  He knew what she’d think. And she’d be right to think it.

  He’d been angry when he’d waved them good-bye. Angry and jealous. Because from the moment that his daughter—in her soft, cautious way—said that what she felt for Jake might actually be Love, capital L, Jake had ceased to be the boyfriend and had instead had become the boy that would take his little girl away from him. He knew it was wrong, but as he stood there, grinning through gritted teeth and waving like an idiot as they pulled away, that was what he’d been thinking.

  And, in the end, he’d been right. Jake Barnes had taken his little girl away from him. Forever.

  No. No, she’ll come back. She has to come back.

  He’d arrived at Amber Frank’s room on autopilot. Her father—Cal couldn’t recall his name—saw him and rushed over to shake his hand, at once thanking him for coming and offering condolences for his loss. Cal imagined that he was so numb that he couldn’t feel either the kindness of his words or the pressure of the other man’s hand.

  “Amber wanted to talk to you, Officer Wilson,” Mr. Frank was saying. “I realize this is a very, very difficult time, but once she started to get a sense of where she was and what happened to her, it became very important that we contact you.”

  Cal nodded without really comprehending what the man was trying to say. He allowed Mr. Frank to guide him into his room where Mrs. Frank was sitting by her daughter’s bedside. Cal looked down at the girl in the bed. Her face was mottled and bruised, her cheeks puffed and swollen. Cal closed his eyes, remembering how her legs had been twisted when they’d found her in the snow.

  “I can come back later,” Cal whispered to Mrs. Frank, who shook her head as Amber tried to speak. Her eyes were so swollen Cal hadn’t been able to tell that she was awake.

  “You might have to lean close,” Mrs. Frank—Helen, he remembered—said to him. He lowered his head toward Amber.

  “Jake,” she whispered. “Jake.”

  Cal closed his eyes and opened them again when the vision inside his head was of Jake and his daughter, driving away.

  “Jake ... wasn’t ... drinking,” she said. “Mandy ... neither.”

  Cal looked at her, and then at Helen, who was smiling at her daughter and patting her hand. He straightened up and cleared his throat.

  “Thank you, Amber,” he said. “Thank you for telling me. You get better, okay?”

  Mr. Frank stopped him in the hallway.

  “Thank you,” he said. “It was really important for Amber to tell you that. From what I gather, she and the other boys had had a few beers, but Jake refused because he was driving.”

  “And Mandy doesn’t drink,” Cal said. His own throat was dry.

  Mr. Frank nodded. “That’s right. That’s what Amber said. ‘Mandy doesn’t drink.’”

  Cal turned to go, but before he could escape, Mr. Frank’s hand was on his arm.

  “I hope ... I hope she comes back,” Mr. Frank said, faltering as Cal’s eyes met his own. “If that’s what you want.”

  Cal didn’t know if he should thank him or punch his lights out, so instead he just nodded and moved away.

  It is what I want, he thought.

  But three days later, she still hadn’t come back.

  ***

  Chuck Barnes found out about the milk and the peanut butter on toast on the third day.

  The first few times, Andy had gotten away with it because Chuck was up earlier than everyone and out the door by the time they all came down for breakfast, so he never saw Andy leaving it out on the deck. Nor did he see his wife Molly, once the children had all been packed off onto the morning bus, go out onto the deck in her housecoat and slippers to retrieve the milk and toss the peanut butter toast out into the backyard for the birds and the squirrels to eat. And he was never there in time to hear Andy’s first words upon arriving home from school, which were: “Did Jake come and get his breakfast?” And he wasn’t there to see him run to the sliding door and look out onto the deck for any sign or trace that his brother had been there. Nor did he hear Molly’s assurances that Jake had, in fact, come home to have his breakfast. Andy was nine, but he still believed in both Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny; it wasn’t such a stretch for his imagination to picture the arrival of his deceased brother coming to collect his breakfast, whom he had actually seen with his own eyes.

  Andy was up early again on Saturday to fix Jake his breakfast. He was excited about it because he thought that if he sat really quietly just inside the door and behind the curtain, he might actually get to see Jake. If Jake didn’t get scared, then maybe he could even talk to him. He really missed his older brother. If he saw Jake, he’d talk to him about school and TV and stuff, but Andy didn’t think he’d mention that last night he’d cried a little at bedtime thinking about him. Jake had enough to worry about without knowing his brother was a crybaby.

  Andy was proud of himself when he went downstairs into the kitchen and poured Jake a big glass of milk. So proud and so elated at the thought of helping Jake that he didn’t hear his father flush the toilet down the hall and walk into the kitchen. Andy’d unlocked the sliding door and was just about to set the glass of milk down in a nice little pile of snow when his father’s voice startled him so badly he spilled half the milk onto the deck.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?”

  Andy didn’t want to turn around. He wanted to keep facing toward the backyard, where at any moment Jake could be walking out of the woods, ready to take Andy away with him. Andy rose to his feet and blinked against the chill air, wishing it to happen.

  “Turn around!” his father yelled. “Answer me!”

  Andy turned, aware that the remaining milk was in danger of spilling because his hands were shaking. His father was glowering at him, the gray black tufts of his hair still wild from sleep. “I ... I...”

  “Out with it!”