Strangers (12 page)

Alvin was on his back, left leg twisted sharply beneath his rump, a pointed splinter of bone shredding the pinkish, oozing flesh of his right forearm. His eyes were wide open. The left side of his head seemed to be covered with thick pudding.

“You…hurt…me…” Each word brought a bubble of red spit to Alvin’s lips.

“You are smart, old pal, old buddy, old chum,” Jan Pretre nodded. “You are fucking perceptive.” He laughed. “Alvin had a fall. Go boom. Looks like you broke your arm and your leg and cracked your little head so all your smarty-smart brains are leaking out.”

Alvin’s mouth opened and closed. A bright red bubble popped.

“What a bad, bad accident,” Jan said. “I’m afraid old ‘Fat-Guts’ broke his neck, too!”

Jan bent, sank his fingers into the porridgy flesh under Alvin’s jaws, and, gritting his teeth, twisted and jerked. There was a series of loud cracks, like a string of ladyfingers, only louder, much louder.

Alvin’s chest heaved once and his tongue shot out of his mouth. Then he let out a long, sputtering fart.

“And I thought he liked the beans,” Jan Pretre said.

For two hours afterward, Jan talked and Michael listened. Jan told him about aura. Jan could see auras; he understood them.

Michael’s aura, that of Michael-The-Stranger, the
real Michael!
was
very bright, very red. When Michael struck Alvin with the rock, Jan could not even see Michael’s face for the brightness of it. Michael had been transfigured by the reality of himself.

And Jan told him what would happen next—and what would happen in the years to come—in the Time of the Strangers.

Yes, Jan was correct about what happened next. The police
were understanding
. It was evident that poor Alvin had suffered a fatal accident.

Because Alvin died twenty-three years ago, before it became fashionable and profitable for everyone to sue everyone else, the child’s parents did not charge negligence against either the “good Christian camp” or Alvin’s counselors. Oh, they knew how their boy had felt about Jan Pretre; all Alvin’s letters home had lauded the counselor who had been so good to him, so kind and protective.

You could tell Jan Pretre was crushed; he could hardly stop crying. This was a terrible thing and he would feel guilty forever.

And that young man who’d been with him… that Michael Louden… The way he carried on, he must have been very close to Alvin. The poor boy would probably have nightmares over this as long as he lived.

That afternoon, when Kim asked if she and Marcy could ride their bicycles to the 7-11 Store in the “mini-mall” two and a half blocks away to get “Slurpies,” a concoction of sticky-sweet syrup and ice, Beth’s first thought was to say, “No.” Then she thought better of it. Rationally, she knew the world was full of dangers, but unless you sealed your children behind walls and denied them their childhood, there was only one talisman a parent could gave a child against peril, the caution, “Be careful.”

That’s what she told the children.

At the end of Walnut Street, Kim, in the lead, turned right.

“Hey,” Marcy called, “7-11 is the other way…”

Kim
braked
her bike, scooted off the seat, and, holding the handlebars, waited for Marcy to catch up to her. “I don’t want any Slurpy. They taste like yuck. That’s just what I told Mom so we could get out and do something!”

“What do you mean?” Marcy asked. She looked worried. The “something” that Kim often wanted to do meant trouble. “Let’s just go to the 7-11 and get a Slurpy and then go home.”

Kim looked at her sister unbelievingly. “That’s what’s wrong with you, Marcy. You never want to do anything fun.”

“I do…”

“That’s why you don’t have friends!”

“I do so have friends!”

“Oh, sure,” Kim taunted, “you have lots of friends, but you don’t have any
best
friends. You’re not any fun.”

Marcy lowered her head, and then, when she looked up again at Kim, she said, “So what do you want us to do?”

Kim smiled at her “trouble-in-mind” smile. “Let’s go see them building the new houses.’

Despite the nationwide slump in the construction of new homes, Park Estates West, a new development owned by the firm responsible for Park Estates, was moving ahead, homes going up in the optimistic belief that there would be buyers, eventually, for them. The suburb in the making was on the other side of Highway 394.

“We can’t!” Marcy said. The girls were forbidden to cross 394, a four lane divided highway. “Daddy would…”

“I’m
not going to tell Dad,” Kim sneered. “And you’d better not, either!” Kim slipped up onto her bicycle seat and began pedaling slowly. She looked back over her shoulder, calling, “Come on and quit being such a wimp!”

When Kim was halfway down the block, Marcy came after her, standing up on the pedals and riding fast.

Wilbert C. Clarkson wasn’t joking when he told people that his middle initial stood for “Careful.” That was the way he lived his life and he credited that philosophy for getting him through sixty-three years—so far. No, Wilbert and his wife didn’t get swine flu shots a few years ago because of the possibility of side effects, and no, Wilbert refused to wear contact lenses because “who really knows what putting them on your eyes could do” and so Wilbert wore thick, unfashionable, old style hornrims.

Nor was it time well spent talking to Wilbert Careful Clarkson about the safety of air travel, either; the engines on a 727 went, say, you didn’t pull over to the side of the road and wait for the tow truck! You went down and that was it.

You were far safer in a car, if it was the
right
car. You wouldn’t find Wilbert behind the wheel of one of
those
Honda Civics or Dodge Omnis or whatever; an accident in one of those baby buggies, say “Goodbye.”

Willbert Clarkson drove a Cadillac, trading it every three years. (Rich? No, sir, his four franchise quick-print shops hadn’t made him wealthy but he did all right—all right enough to afford a sensible car.)

Wilbert drove his Caddy…carefully. The speed limit was 55—the gasoline crunch had had one good effect on American society, Wilbert figured—so Wilbert set the cruise control at 55 on the nose.

This afternoon, he was heading south from his home to Oakdale to visit the manager of his print shop in Carmody. Nice guy, that manager. He and his wife, both of them youngsters, were running the place, but they were having trouble. Of course it was trouble they didn’t have to have.
If they had only been—careful.
They just didn’t take the extra time, the extra
care,
to make sure the ink and water were mixed exactly right. You could quick print anything if you just made certain that your equipment was right—so much ink and so much water and the customer had as pretty a copy as anyone could ask for.

Okay, Wilbert would explain it all to them. If you had the right machinery and treated it properly, no sir, you never had problems.

The yellow, diamond-shaped sign on the side of Route 394 warned him: “Crossroad.” Wilbert Clarkson slowed down. You couldn’t be too careful, you know.

Then his foot, heel on floor, toe up, was ready to hit the brake, because… That kid had no brains! Look at her, just shooting out across the highway like that!

Okay… He had nothing to worry about. And neither did the kid. She had made it halfway across the road and—a quick glance showed Wilbert—it was all clear in the northbound lanes.

But then the kid lifted a hand from the handlebar and waved and
another
kid came scooting out…

And Wilbert had his foot on the brake and he hit the horn and he was saying, “Oh no, oh no,” and he had the wrenching, awful realization that, no matter how careful you were,
accidents happened!

Accidents happened!

He swerved, zigging toward the shoulder, and it made no difference. His foot on the brake pedal made no difference, slowing the Cadillac, but not enough,
not enough…
Wilbert C. Clarkson wanted to believe in magic, that somehow the day-shattering blare of the horn would transport the little girl on a bicycle into another dimension where she would be safe.

In a splinter of a second, Wilbert C. Clarkson had a revelation: as careful as he was, as careful as he had always been, he was going to have an accident, an accident—and there was not a single thing he could do to prevent it.

Then the Cadillac hit a bicycle.

There was a sound of shredding and twisting that Wilbert would never forget.

A child flew through the air.

An instant’s image burned into his mind: the girl, her face slightly distorted by his thick glasses, the tinted windshield, the haze of hot summer, as she flew from the bicycle seat, riding only air for a suspended moment, her mouth and eyes so surprised…

Wilbert C. Clarkson pulled onto the shoulder of the road.

I’ve killed her. I’ve killed her. I’ve killed her,
he thought, and then he got out of his Cadillac to do what he could for the child who had not been spared by his lifetime of “taking care.”

— | — | —

SEVEN

LIKE SO many libraries in the Midwest, Belford’s was not air-conditioned, and so the windows were open, a light breeze fluttering the American flag in its socket in the corner of the high-ceilinged room. It was warm, but not uncomfortably so, and there was the pleasant odor of old books and dark woods. Claire Wynkoop’s feeling of serenity made her think her personal vision of heaven needed neither angels nor sweet-singing choirs; she’d gladly spend the afterlife in nothing more elaborate than an other-dimensional version of the Belford Public Library.

“Mrs. Wynkoop, is this a good one? Should I take it out?”

Through her bifocals, Claire Wynkoop looked at the book the girl, Nelda Jarvis, placed on the checkout counter. It was by Judy Blume, and, like all the popular Blume titles, a frequent
check-out
of the junior high age group. Some of the more conservative parents in town didn’t like Blume’s honest treatment of frank themes, but Claire Wynkoop decided what belonged on the shelves, and besides, you didn’t have to worry about what kids read. It was the kids who
didn’t
read—or couldn’t—who found trouble for themselves and made it for others.

“Yes, Nelda,” Claire told the child. “I think you’ll enjoy it.” Stamping the return card, Claire was pleased that so many children consulted her about what to read, pleased that she—yes,
she;
nothing wrong with taking credit when credit was due
!—
had made the library a place that children frequented.

When it happened, it was sudden, so sudden that while she had reason to anticipate it—she’d awakened that morning with “the old brain itch,” the cold, menacing, ringing in her cars, her classic harbingers of premonition—it still caught her by surprise. She was looking at Nelda, knowing it was Nelda but not seeing her, seeing instead the face of the little girl who…

…
screamed
and floated, spinning in the air, wrapped in the shock of impact and enveloped by the sound of metal twisting and tearing the little girl who sees now, sees with the ultra-clarity of fear, the ground racing up toward her…

Claire Wynkoop braced the heels of her fisted hands on the countertop. The moment of clairvoyance was over but during it and now, in its aftermath, her blood pressure had shot up to 200 over 110.
The book stacks were whirling in a soundless hurricane. The ceiling was dropping to crush her. The earth itself was trying to dislodge her from its face.