Chapter 26

ROMAN

Jim Dancey wiped his hands across the chest of his coveralls, extracted a package of Winstons, and lit one while Roman stood grinding his teeth in an agony of impatience.

"Can't tell you what's wrong with her," Dancey said through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Thunder rumbled somewhere off in the distance. The sound rolled in through the open lubrication bay of the Shell station with a chill draft.

"What do you mean you can't tell me?" Roman said.

"Just what I said. I don't know what's wrong. Everything checks out okay. She just won't go, that's all."

"I didn't need a freaking mechanic to tell me that."

"You think you can fix her, you go ahead."

"There must be other mechanics in town," Roman said. "Who's a good one?"

"Lots of good ones. Saturday's everybody's busy day. You might have trouble getting her looked at today."

Roman's anger boiled over. "Goddamn it, what kind of a town is this? First the phones are all screwed up, now you tell me I can't get my car worked on because it's Saturday."

"I got nothing to do with the telephones, mister," Dancey said.

"Well, I can't hang around here and argue with you. Who owns this place? Who's your boss?"

"You're looking at him."

Roman could only groan in his frustration.

Dancey took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it carefully. "Now, mister, I generally try to be patient with people come through here and make fun of our town and the way I do my job, but I got a limit and you just reached it. I think about now you better take your car and get you and it out of my station."

"How am I supposed to get the car out of here if it won't start?"

"That ain't my problem. You plan to pay by cash or credit card?"

"Pay? For what?"

"For the tow from the inn. For my time. For the boy's time. For taking up space in my garage."

With an effort Roman took hold of himself. "All right, look, Jim, I'm upset, and it's not your fault. I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"Accepted," Dancey said.

"If I leave the car here now, and my credit card, will you keep working on it?"

"Prob'ly won't do no good. I checked her over, couldn't find anything wrong."

"Just keep checking, okay?" Roman dug the Shell card out of his wallet.

"No need to leave that," Dancey told him. "You can pay when you come back."

Roman nodded, stuffed the wallet back into his pocket, and left the garage.

* * *

From deep within the complicated electronics that regulated the operation of the Monte Carlo, the Floater watched and laughed his silent laugh.

* * *

By the time he got back to the inn, Roman's mood was darker then ever. The angry-looking clouds that boiled overhead and the damp, oppressive heat added to his frustration. The whole world seemed to be in a conspiracy to prevent him from leaving Wolf River.

He strode across the lobby and planted both hands on the registration desk. The clerk eyed him warily.

"Have they fixed the telephones yet?" Roman demanded.

"The problem's not here at the inn," the clerk said. "It's somewhere in the phone company circuits."

"I didn't ask you where the problem was," Roman said. "I asked you if it was fixed."

"I don't know, sir," the clerk said huffily. "Why don't you try the phone in your room?"

"Thanks a lot." Roman spun on his heel and started toward the elevator.

"Oh, Mr. Dixon," the clerk called after him.

"Well?"

"I sent a visitor up to your room."

"You sent what?"

"A visitor."

"You let somebody into my room without an okay from me?" The icy finger of fear prodded his spine.

"He said it would be all right."

"I don't care what he said. You don't do that. You don't send people into somebody else's room just on their say-so. I'm holding you and this hotel responsible for anything that's missing."

"I don't think he wanted to steal anything," the clerk said. "It's your father."

Roman stared at the man for a moment, then turned and continued silently to the elevator.

He rode silently and alone to the fourth floor. He hadn't told anybody he was coming here. Especially not his father. One thing he did not need now was a meeting with the old man.

Periodically Roman had sent checks to Howard Dixon in care of a Wolf River post office box. The checks had been cashed, endorsed with the old man's ragged signature, but there had never been an acknowledgment of any kind. That was fine with Roman. He got a Christmas card yearly from Florida, where his mother lived with her new husband, and that was all the contact he wanted with his parents.

Roman opened the door to his room prepared for anything, but still he recoiled at the appearance of the man who sat in an armchair watching a Cubs game on the television set. Howard Dixon had been a stocky, tough little man, five-feet-eight, but solid, with fierce eyebrows and an uncombable shock of black hair. The man who turned wearily to look at Roman was fat, carelessly fat, the belly spilling out of a T-shirt and over the too-tight khaki trousers. His eyes were watery and apologetic. The few remaining strands of hair lay across a liver-spotted scalp.

Howard Dixon started to get up, changed his mind, and sagged back into the chair. He gestured at the Jack Daniel's bottle and the glass on a table at his elbow.

"Hello, Romey. I helped myself to a drink. Hope you don't mind."

A drink, hell, Roman thought. The old man was shit-faced. He said, "Hello, Pop. How did you find me?"

"Somebody called me."

"Called you?" Roman said quickly. "Who?"

"I don't know. Funny kind of voice. Didn't give a name. Just said your son's in town. Said I ought to come over and say hello."

How come, Roman wondered, the old man's telephone was the only one in town that worked?

Howard Dixon belched. He wiped his mouth, and the whiskers rasped against his callused palm.

"So how you been, Roman?"

"I'm fine." Roman could not stop staring at the ruin of a man who was his father. "Pop... you look terrible."

"Well, I've had my share of troubles." The loose mouth turned down in a sneer; the watery eyes narrowed. "Your mother left me and run off with that guy from Chicago. You heard about that."

Roman said nothing. His mother had written to him at the time, telling of the steady abuse she had taken from his father along with the drunken tirades that had finally driven her out of the house. She had met Leonard Simon at her sister's house in Oak Park, and married him a year later. As far as Roman could tell, they were happy now in Fort Lauderdale.

"Then they fired me out at the plant. Fuckin' manager was afraid I'd do my job too good and make him look bad, so he told a bunch of lies about me drinkin', and naturally they believed him instead of me and fired my ass."

"That's too bad, Pop." Roman wished the self-pitying old fart would just go away.

"But listen, I'm okay. Got me an okay room on the South Side. Not too bad. Got my own bathroom. Got a TV, not as good as this one, but it picks up most of the stations." He wiped his lips. "Mind if I have just another little snort?"

"Go ahead," Roman told him.

The fat old man poured whiskey into the glass, carefully leaving a quarter of an inch in the bottom of the bottle. He drank, looked up, and for a moment his eyes held the fierce gaze Roman remembered.

"You let me down, Romey," he said, and his voice was stronger than it had been.

"What do you mean, Pop?"

"You know. I mean what you did to the Nunley kid. You and your friends."

Roman recoiled as though he'd been struck.

"Everybody in town knew," Howard Dixon continued, "even though nobody said anything about it. That Judge Grant and the police chief and the editor of the Chronicle, they saw to that. I could never hold my head up in this town again. People were talkin' about me behind my back. Whispering. It's your fault, what happened to me."

"You don't know what you're saying, Pop."

For a moment the old man met his eyes, then something inside him collapsed. He was a fat, defeated old drunk. Nothing more. With difficulty he hoisted himself out of the chair.

"I better go. You most likely got things you want to do."

Roman did not argue.

"Uh, just one thing, I'm runnin' a little short this month, and if you could see your way clear to -"

"Sure, Pop." Roman dug out several bills and passed them to the old man. "I'll send you more when I get back home."

"Thanks, Romey. I-I'll pay you back."

"Don't worry about it."

Roman closed the hotel room door behind his father, and for the first time in many years felt like crying. Instead, he went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth over and over.

ALEC

The cemetery, the old one out at the end of West Road, was not a place Alec McDowell really wanted to be. With the gunmetal clouds pushing down on Wolf River like heavy hands, it had to be one of the least attractive locations in town.

And yet here he was. After the unsettling talk with the old police chief, Alec had wandered around aimlessly, or so he thought, until he found himself at the row of cypress trees that bordered West Memorial Park.

He hesitated a moment, then entered through the tall black iron gates that were never closed. "Why lock 'em?" ran the town joke. "Nobody's going to break out."

He walked among the gravestones - simple carved slabs, most of them, although there were a few more elaborate ones with angels or sorrowing saints. Alec caught himself being careful not to step on the patches of ground directly over the buried bodies. Ridiculous, he thought. What am I going to do, wake somebody up? But he continued to walk around the sodded rectangles.

The stone seemed to jump up suddenly in front of him. Plain dark marble, no embellishments. Just the engraved legend:

Phelan Alexander McDowell
1912-1971
At Rest

Alec stood at his father's feet, looking down at the simple stone, the unadorned grave. In his head he heard the boom of the long-ago gunshot that had splattered Phelan McDowall's brains over the ceiling of his garage.

"It wasn't my fault," Alec said softly. "I never meant to hurt anyone."

As he stood there, remembering, not wanting to remember, Alec had a growing sense of unease. Someone was watching him. There had been no one else around when he entered the cemetery. He had seen no other person as he crossed through the graves. But now he was as sure as he was of the dead under his feet that he was not alone. Not wanting to turn, he turned.

The woman was tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in a long gray dress and a gray hood. She stood atop a gentle rise and looked directly, unblinkingly at him.

Alec had a crazy impulse to run. Just turn and run as fast as he could the hell out of that graveyard, through the iron gates, all the way back to town and out of town, never to return.

He fought down the urge and stood his ground as the woman came toward him. He couldn't see her feet beneath the flowing gray dress, and she seemed to float over the graves as she approached. For a moment Alec thought she was going to collide with him, but the woman stopped when their faces were just inches apart.

Her skin seemed unnaturally smooth, the flesh tinted pink, the blue eyes clear and sharp. It was a much younger face than was suggested by the strands of white hair that straggled from beneath the hood.

After what seemed like an agonizingly long silence, the woman spoke. "You're back," she said. Her voice was low-pitched and cultured.

"W-what?"

"You've come back. All three of you."

Jesus God, no, haven't I had enough of this?

The woman put out a hand. Her movement was surprisingly swift; before Alec could get out of the way her fingers had clamped onto his upper arm. The strength of her grip was astonishing.

"Excuse me," Alec said, trying to pry loose the grasping fingers. "I think you've made a mistake."

"I made no mistake." The woman's voice took on an uneven quality. For the first time Alec noticed that the blue eyes were a shade too bright. "My son made the mistake. Twenty years ago. My son trusted you."

Alec could only shake his head dumbly.

"Did you come back to see him now?"

Alec pulled harder at the gripping fingers. He could not dislodge even one.

"I'll show him to you," the woman said, her voice now moving rapidly up and down the scale.

Before he could protest further, the woman was pulling him across the graves, her fingers digging painfully into his biceps. Alec looked around frantically for help, but the two of them were alone in the cemetery. He had no choice but to let himself be pulled along, striving to keep his balance as the woman swept back up the rise toward the spot where she had been standing.

They came to a stop before a pink marble headstone.

"There!" said the woman. She leveled a bony forefinger at the stone, keeping her iron grip on Alec with the other hand.

Squirming around in her grasp, he read:

Frazier David Nunley
1952-1966
Beloved Son
Taken Too Soon

"There he is," the woman continued. "There is my son, where you and your friends put him."

Alec pulled at the hand that was squeezing his arm to numbness. "Mrs. Nunley... please..."

Abruptly she released him. Alec staggered back a step before he caught himself.

"It's wrong," the woman said, madness now twisting her face. "My son is dead, and you are alive. You should have to pay for that."

She rose to her full height and seemed to Alec to tower over him. He had a terrible moment when he thought she was about to draw a hatchet or something from the folds of her dress and split his skull. Then as suddenly as she had appeared, Orva Nunley turned and drifted away from him over the graves.

Alec rubbed his aching arm and hurried toward the gate. To the north, thunder grumbled.

* * *

Suspended over the bordering row of cypress trees, the Floater observed the scene.

Don't worry, Mother. He will pay. They will all pay.