Four Past Midnight - 5 - The Library Policeman Read online

  Dave fell silent for a moment, thinking. Then he raised his head and looked out at the empty, fallow fields again.

  'In AA, they talk about folks who have one foot in the future and the other in the past and spend their time pissin all over today because of it. But sometimes it's hard not to wonder what might have happened if you'd done things just a little different.'

  He looked almost guiltily at Naomi, who smiled and pressed his hand.

  'Because I was good, and I did come close. But I was drinkin heavy, even back then. I didn't think much of it - hell, I was young, I was strong, and besides, don't all great artists drink? I thought they did. And I still might have made it - made something, anyway, for awhile - but then Ardelia Lortz came to Junction City.

  'And when she came, I was lost.'

  He looked at Sam.

  'I recognize her from your story, Sam, but that wasn't how she looked back then. You expected to see an old-lady librarian, and that suited her purpose, so that's just what you did see. But when she came to Junction City in the summer Of '57, her hair was ash-blonde, and the only places she was plump was where a woman is supposed to be plump.

  'I was living out in Proverbia then, and I used to go to the Baptist Church. I wasn't much on religion, but there were some fine-looking women there. Your mom was one of em, Sarah.'

  Naomi laughed in the way women do when they are told something they cannot quite believe.

  'Ardelia caught on with the home folks right away. These days, when the folks from that church talk about her - if they ever do - I bet they say things like "I knew from the very start there was somethin funny about that Lortz woman" or "I never trusted the look in that woman's eye," but let me tell you, that wasn't how it was. They buzzed around her - the women as well as the men - like bees around the first flower of spring. She got a job as Mr Lavin's assistant before she was in town a month, but she was teachin the little ones at the Sunday School out there in Proverbia two weeks before that.

  'Just what she was teachin em I don't like to think - you can bet your bottom dollar it wasn't the Gospel According to Matthew - but she was teachin em. And everyone swore on how much the little ones loved her. They swore on it, too, but there was a look in their eyes when they said so ... a far-off look, like they wasn't really sure where they were, or even who they were.

  'Well, she caught my eye ... and I caught hers. You wouldn't know it from the way I am now, but I was a pretty good-lookin fella in those days. I always had a tan from workin outdoors, I had muscles, my hair was faded almost blond from the sun, and my belly was as flat as your ironin board, Sarah.

  'Ardelia had rented herself a farmhouse about a mile and a half from the church, a tight enough little place, but it needed a coat of paint as bad as a man in the desert needs a drink of water. So after church the second week I noticed her there - I didn't go often and by then it was half-past August - I offered to paint it for her.

  'She had the biggest eyes you've ever seen. I guess most people would have called them gray, but when she looked right at you, hard, you would have sworn they were silver. And she looked at me hard that day after church. She was wearin some kind of perfume that I never smelled before and ain't never smelled since. Lavender, I think. I can't think how to describe it, but I know it always made me think of little white flowers that only bloom after the sun has gone down. And I was smitten. Right there and then.

  'She was close to me - almost close enough for our bodies to touch. She was wearin this dowdy black dress, the kind of dress an old lady would wear, and a hat with a little net veil, and she was holdin her purse in front of her. All prim and proper. Her eyes weren't prim, though. Nossir. Nor proper. Not a bit.

  ' "I hope you don't want to put advertisements for bleach and chewing tobacco all over my new house," she says.

  ' "No ma'am," I says back. "I thought just two coats of plain old white. Houses aren't what I do for a livin, anyway, but with you bein new in town and all, I thought it would be neighborly - "

  ' "Yes indeed," she says, and touches my shoulder.'

  Dave looked apologetically at Naomi.

  'I think I ought to give you a chance to leave, if you want to. Pretty soon I'm gonna start tellin some dirty stuff, Sarah. I'm ashamed of it, but I want to clean the slate of my doins with her.'

  She patted his old, chapped hand. 'Go ahead,' she told him quietly. 'Say it all.'

  He fetched in a deep breath and went on again.

  'When she touched me, I knew I had to have her or die tryin. just that one little touch made me feel better - and crazier - than any woman-touch ever made me feel in my whole life. She knew it, too. I could see it in her eyes. It was a sly look. It was a mean look, too, but somethin about that excited me more than anything else.

  ' "It would be neighborly, Dave," she says, "and I want to be a very good neighbor."

  'So I walked her home. Left all the other young fellows standin at the church door, you might say, fumin and no doubt cursin my name. They didn't know how lucky they were. None of them.

  'My Ford was in the shop and she didn't have no car, so we were stuck with shank's mare. I didn't mind a bit, and she didn't seem to, neither. We went out the Truman Road, which was still dirt in those days, although they sent a town truck along to oil it every two or three weeks and lay the dust.

  'We got about halfway to her place, and she stopped. It was just the two of us, standin in the middle of Truman Road at high noon on a summer's day, with about a million acres of Sam Orday's corn on one side and about two million of Bill Humpe's corn on the other, all of it growin high over our heads and rustlin in that secret way corn has, even when there's no breeze.

  My granddad used to say it was the sound of the corn growin. I dunno if that's the truth or not, but it's a spooky sound. I can tell you that.

  ' "Look!" she says, pointin to the right. "Do you see it?"

  'I looked, but I didn't see nothing - only corn. I told her so.

  ' "I'll show you!" she says, and runs into the corn, Sunday dress and high heels and all. She didn't even take off that hat with the veil on it.

  'I stood there for a few seconds, sorta stunned. Then I heard her laughin. I heard her laughin in the corn. So I ran in after her, partly to see whatever it was she'd seen, but mostly because of that laugh. I was so randy. I can't begin to tell you.

  'I seen her standin way up the row I was in, and then she faded into the next one, still laughin. I started to laugh, too, and went on through myself, not carin that I was bustin down some of Sam Orday's plants. He'd never miss em, not in all those acres. But when I got through, trailin cornsilk off my shoulders and a green leaf stuck in my tie like some new kind of clip, I stopped laughin in a hurry, because she wasn't there. Then I heard her on the other side of me. I didn't have no idea how she could have got back there without me seein her, but she had. So I busted back through just in time to see her runnin into the next row.

  'We played hide n seek for half an hour, I guess, and I couldn't catch her. All I did was get hotter and randier. I'd think she was a row over, in front of me, but I'd get there and hear her two rows over, behind me. Sometimes I'd see her foot, or her leg, and of course she left tracks in the soft dirt, but they weren't no good, because they seemed to go every which way at once.

  'Then, just when I was startin to get mad - I'd sweat through my good shirt, my tie was undone, and my shoes was full of dirt - I come through to a row and seen her hat hangin off a corn-plant with the veil flippin in the little breeze that got down there into the corn.

  ' "Come and get me, Dave! " she calls. I grabbed her hat and busted through to the next row on a slant. She was gone - I could just see the corn waverin where she'd went through - but both her shoes were there. In the next row I found one of her silk stockins hung over an ear of corn. And still I could hear her laughin. Over on my blind side, she was, and how the bitch got there, God only knows. Not that it mattered to me by then.

  'I ripped off my tie and tore after her, a
round and around and dosey-doe, pantin like a stupid dog that don't know enough to lie still on a hot day. And I'll tell you somethin - I broke the corn down everywhere I went. Left a trail of trampled stalks and leaners behind me. But she never busted a one. They'd just waver a bit when she passed, as if there was no more to her than there was to that little summer breeze.

  'I found her dress, her slip, and her garter-belt. Then I found her bra and step-ins. I couldn't hear her laughin no more. There wasn't no sound but the corn. I stood there in one of the rows, puffin like a leaky boiler, with all her clothes bundled up against my chest. I could smell her perfume in em, and it was drivin me crazy.

  ' "Where are you?" I yelled, but there wasn't no answer. Well, I finally lost what little sanity I had left ... and of course, that was just what she wanted. "Where the fuck are you?" I screamed, and her long white arm reached through the corn-plants right beside me and she stroked my neck with one finger. It jumped the shit out of me.

  ' "I've been waiting for you," she said. "What took you so long? Don't you want to see it?" She grabbed me and drawed me through the corn, and there she was with her feet planted in the dirt, not a stitch on her, and her eyes as silver as rain on a foggy day.'

  2

  Dave took a long drink of water, closed his eyes, and went on.

  'We didn't make love there in the corn - in all the time I knew her, we never made love. But we made somethin. I had Ardelia in just about every way a man can have a woman, and I think I had her in some ways you'd think would be impossible. I can't remember all the ways, but I can remember her body, how white it was; how her legs looked; how her toes curled and seemed to feel along the shoots of the plants comin out of the dirt; I can remember how she pulled her fingernails back and forth across the skin of my neck and my throat.

  'We went on and on and on. I don't know how many times, but I know I didn't never get tired. When we started I felt horny enough to rape the Statue of Liberty, and when we finished I felt the same way. I couldn't get enough of her. It was like the booze, I guess. Wasn't any way I could ever get enough of her. And she knew it, too.

  'But we finally did stop. She put her hands behind her head and wriggled her white shoulders in the black dirt we was layin in and looked up at me with those silvery eyes of hers and she says, "Well, Dave? Are we neighbors yet?"

  'I told her I wanted to go again and she told me not to push my luck. I tried to climb on just the same, and she pushed me off as easy as a mother pushes a baby off n her tit when she don't want to feed it no more. I tried again and she swiped at my face with her nails and split the skin open in two places. That finally damped my boiler down. She was quick as a cat and twice as strong. When she saw I knew playtime was over, she got dressed and led me out of the corn. I went just as meek as Mary's little lamb.

  'We walked the rest of the way to her house. Nobody passed us, and that was probably just as well. My clothes were all covered with dirt and cornsilk, my shirttail was out, my tie was stuffed into my back pocket and flappin along behind me like a tail, and every place that the cloth rubbed I felt raw. Her, though - she looked as smooth and cool as an ice-cream soda in a drugstore glass. Not a hair out of place, not a speck of dirt on her shoes, not a strand of cornsilk on her skirt.

  'We got to the house and while I was lookin it over, tryin to decide how much paint it would take, she brought me a drink in a tall glass. There was a straw in it, and a sprig of mint julep. I thought it was iced tea until I took a sip. It was straight Scotch.

  ' "Jesus!"I says, almost chokin.

  "Don't you want it?" she asks me, smilin in that mockin way she had. "Maybe you'd prefer some iced coffee."

  ' "Oh, I want it," I says. But it was more than that. I needed it. I was tryin not to drink in the middle of the day back then, because that's what alcoholics do. But that was the end of that. For the rest of the time I knew her, I drank pretty near all day, every day. For me, the last two and a half years Ike was President was one long souse.

  'While I was paintin her house - and doin everything she'd let me do to her whenever I could - she was settlin in at the Library. Mr Lavin hired her first crack outta the box, and put her in charge of the Children's Library. I used to go there every chance I got, which was a lot, since I was self-employed. When Mr Lavin spoke to me about how much time I was spendin there, I promised to paint the whole inside of the Library for free. Then he let me come and go as much as I wanted. Ardelia told me it would work out just that way, and she was right - as usual.

  'I don't have any connected memories of the time I spent under her spell - and that's what I was, an enchanted man livin under the spell of a woman who wasn't really a woman at all. It wasn't the blackouts that drunks sometimes get; it was wantin to forget things after they were over. So what I have is memories that stand apart from each other but seem to lie in a chain, like those islands in the Pacific Ocean. Archie Pelligos, or whatever they call em.

  'I remember she put the poster of Little Red Ridin Hood up on the door to the Children's Room about a month before Mr Lavin died, and I remember her takin one little boy by the hand and leadin him over to it. "Do you see that little girl?" Ardelia asked him. "Yes," he says. "Do you know why that Bad Thing is getting ready to eat her?" Ardelia asks. "No," the kid says back, his eyes all big and solemn and full of tears. "Because he forgot to bring back his library book on time," she says. "You won't ever do that, Willy, will you?" "No, never," the little boy says, and Ardelia says, "You better not." And then she led him into the Children's Room for Story Hour, still holdin him by the hand. That kid - it was Willy Klemmart, who got killed in Vietnam - looked back over his shoulder at where I was, standin on my scaffold with a paintbrush in my hand, and I could read his eyes like they were a newspaper headline. Save me from her, his eyes said. Please, Mr Duncan. But how could I? I couldn't even save myself.'

  Dave produced a clean but badly wrinkled bandanna from the depths of one back pocket and blew a mighty honk into it.

  'Mr Lavin began by thinkin Ardelia just about walked on water, but he changed his mind after awhile. They got into a hell of a scrap over that Red Ridin Hood poster about a week before he died. He never liked it. Maybe he didn't have a very good idea of what went on durin Story Hour - I'll get to that pretty soon -but he wasn't entirely blind. He saw the way the kids looked at that poster. At last he told her to take it down. That was when the argument started. I didn't hear it all because I was on the scaffold, high above them, and the acoustics were bad, but I heard enough. He said somethin about scaring the children, or maybe it was scarring the children, and she said somethin back about how it helped her keep "the rowdy element" under control. She called it a teachin tool, just like the hickory stick.

  'But he stuck to his guns and she finally had to take it down. That night, at her house, she was like a tiger in the zoo after some kid has spent all day pokin it with a stick. She went back and forth in great big long strides, not a stitch on, her hair flyin out behind her. I was in bed, drunk as a lord. But I remember she turned around and her eyes had gone from silver to bright red, as if her brains had caught afire, and her mouth looked funny, like it was tryin to pull itself right out of her face, or somethin. It almost scared me sober. I hadn't ever seen nothin like that, and never wanted to see it again.

  ' "I'm going to fix him," she said. "I'm going to fix that fat old whoremaster, Davey. You wait and see."

  'I told her not to do anything stupid, not to let her temper get the best of her, and a lot of other stuff that didn't stand knee-high to jack shit. She listened to me for awhile and then she ran across the room so fast that ... well, I don't know how to say it. One second she was standin all the way across the room by the door, and the next second she was jumpin on top of me, her eyes red and glaring, her mouth all pooched out of her face like she wanted to kiss me so bad she was stretchin her skin somehow to do it, and I had an idea that instead of just scratchin me this time, she was gonna put her nails into my throat and peel me to the backbone.<
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  'But she didn't. She put her face right down to mine and looked at me. I don't know what she saw - how scared I was, I guess - but it must have made her happy, because she tipped her head back so her hair fell all the way down to my thighs, and she laughed. "Stop talking, you damned souse," she said, and stick it in me. What else are you good for?"

  'So I did. Because stickin it in her - and drinkin - was all I was good for by then. I surely wasn't paintin pitchers anymore, I lost my license after I got clipped for my third OUI - in '58 or early '59, that was - and I was gettin bad reports on some of my jobs. I didn't care much how I did them anymore, you see; all I wanted was her. Talk started to circulate about how Dave Duncan wasn't trustworthy no more ... but the reason they said I wasn't was always the booze. The word of what we were to each other never got around much. She was careful as the devil about that. My reputation went to hell in a handbasket, but she never got so much as a splash of mud on the hem of her skirts.

  'I think Mr Lavin suspected. At first he thought I just had a crush on her and she never so much as knew I was makin calfs eyes at her from up on my scaffold, but I think that in the end he suspected. But then Mr Lavin died. They said it was a heart attack, but I know better. We were in the hammock on her back porch that night after it happened, and that night it was her that couldn't get enough of it. She screwed me until I hollered uncle. Then she lay down next to me and looked at me as content as a cat that's had its fill of cream, and her eyes had that deep-red glow again. I am not talking about something in my imagination; I could see the reflection of that red glow on the skin of my bare arm. And I could feel it. It was like sitting next to a woodstove that's been stoked and then damped down. "I told you I'd fix him, Davey," she says all at once in this mean, teasin voice.