Four Past Midnight Read online

  "And all the time I was holdin that jug up, smellin it, I could hear the bitch queen talkin from inside the room where I locked her up. From behind the bricks, the bureau, the sheet steel, the boards and locks. Talkin like someone who's been buried alive. She was a little muffled, but I could still hear her just fine. I could hear her sayin, 'That's right, Dave, that's the answer, it's the only answer there is for folks like you, the only one that works, and it will be the only answer you need until answers don't matter anymore.'

  "I tipped that jug up for a good long drink, and then at the last second it smelled like her . . . and I remembered her face at the end, all covered with little threads . . . and how her mouth changed . . . and I threw that jug away. Smashed it on a railroad tie. Because this shit has got to end. I won't let her take another nip out of this town!"

  His voice rose to a trembling but powerful old man's shout. "This shit has gone on long enough!"

  Naomi laid a hand on Dave's arm. Her face was frightened and full of trouble. "What, Dave? What is it?"

  "I want to be sure," Dave said. "You tell me first, Mr. Peebles. Tell me everything that's been happening to you, and don't leave out nothing."

  "I will," Sam said, "on one condition."

  Dave smiled faintly. "What condition is that?"

  "You have to promise to call me Sam . . . and in return, I'll never call you Dirty Dave again."

  His smile broadened. "You got a deal there, Sam."

  "Good." He took a deep breath. "Everything was the fault of the goddam acrobat," he began.

  7

  It took longer than he had thought it would, but there was an inexpressible relief--a joy, almost--in telling it all, holding nothing back. He told Dave about The Amazing Joe, Craig's call for help, and Naomi's suggestion about livening up his material. He told them about how the Library had looked, and about his meeting with Ardelia Lortz. Naomi's eyes grew wider and wider as he spoke. When he got to the part about the Red Riding Hood poster on the door to the Children's Library, Dave nodded.

  "That's the only one I didn't draw," he said. "She had that one with her. I bet they never found it, either. I bet she still has that one with her. She liked mine, but that one was her favorite."

  "What do you mean?" Sam asked.

  Dave only shook his head and told Sam to go on.

  He told them about the library card, the books he had borrowed, and the strange little argument they had had on Sam's way out.

  "That's it," Dave said flatly. "That's all it took. You might not believe it, but I know her. You made her mad. Goddam if you didn't. You made her mad ... and now she's set her cap for you."

  Sam finished his story as quickly as he could, but his voice slowed and nearly halted when he came to the visit from the Library Policeman in his fog-gray trenchcoat. When Sam finished, he was nearly weeping and his hands had begun to shake again.

  "Could I have a glass of water?" he asked Naomi thickly.

  "Of course," she said, and got up to get it. She took two steps, then returned and kissed Sam on the cheek. Her lips were cool and soft. And before she left to get his water, she spoke three blessed words into his ear: "I believe you."

  8

  Sam raised the glass to his lips, using both hands to be sure he wouldn't spill it, and drank half of it at a draught. When he put it down he said, "What about you, Dave? Do you believe me?"

  "Yeah," Dave said. He spoke almost absently, as if this were a foregone conclusion. Sam supposed that, to Dave, it was. After all, he had known the mysterious Ardelia Lortz firsthand, and his ravaged, too-old face suggested that theirs had not been a loving relationship.

  Dave said nothing else for several moments, but a little of his color had come back. He looked out across the railroad tracks toward the fallow fields. They would be green with sprouting corn in another six or seven weeks, but now they looked barren. His eyes watched a cloud shadow flow across that Midwestern emptiness in the shape of a giant hawk.

  At last he seemed to rouse himself and turned to Sam.

  "My Library Policeman--the one I drew for her--didn't have no scar," he said at last.

  Sam thought of the stranger's long, white face. The scar had been there, all right--across the cheek, under the eye, over the bridge of the nose in a thin flowing line.

  "So?" he asked. "What does that mean?"

  "It don't mean nothing to me, but I think it must mean somethin to you, Mr.--Sam. I know about the badge ... what you called the star of many points. I found that in a book of heraldry right there in the Junction City Library. It's called a Maltese Cross. Christian knights wore them in the middle of their chests when they went into battle durin the Crusades. They were supposed to be magical. I was so taken with the shape that I put it into the picture. But . . . a scar? No. Not on my Library Policeman. Who was your Library Policeman, Sam?"

  "I don't . . . I don't know what you're talking about," Sam said slowly, but that voice--faint, mocking, haunting--recurred: Come with me, son . . . I'm a poleethman. And his mouth was suddenly full of that taste again. The sugar-slimy taste of red licorice. His tastebuds cramped; his stomach rolled. But it was stupid. Really quite stupid. He had never eaten red licorice in his life. He hated it.

  If you've never eaten it, how do you know you hate it?

  "I really don't get you," he said, speaking more strongly.

  "You're getting something," Naomi said. "You look like someone just kicked you in the stomach."

  Sam glanced at her, annoyed. She looked back at him calmly, and Sam felt his heart rate speed up.

  "Let it alone for now," Dave said, "although you can't let it alone for long, Sam--not if you want to hold onto any hope of getting out of this. Let me tell you my story. I've never told it before, and I'll never tell it again ... but it's time."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DAVE'S STORY

  1

  "I wasn't always Dirty Dave Duncan," he began. "In the early fifties I was just plain old Dave Duncan, and people liked me just fine. I was a member of that same Rotary Club you talked to the other night, Sam. Why not? I had my own business, and it made money. I was a sign-painter, and I was a damned good one. I had all the work I could handle in Junction City and Proverbia, but I sometimes did a little work up in Cedar Rapids, as well. Once I painted a Lucky Strike cigarette ad on the right-field wall of the minor-league ballpark all the way to hell and gone in Omaha. I was in great demand, and I deserved to be. I was good. I was just the best sign-painter around these parts.

  "I stayed here because serious painting was what I was really interested in, and I thought you could do that anywhere. I didn't have no formal art education--I tried but I flunked out--and I knew that put me down on the count, so to speak, but I knew that there were artists who made it without all that speed-shit bushwah--Gramma Moses, for one. She didn't need no driver's license; she went right to town without one.

  "I might even have made it. I sold some canvases, but not many--I didn't need to, because I wasn't married and I was doing well with my sign-painting business. Also, I kept most of my pitchers so I could put on shows, the way artists are supposed to. I had some, too. Right here in town at first, then in Cedar Rapids, and then in Des Moines. That one was written up in the Democrat, and they made me sound like the second coming of James Whistler."

  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 blonde 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, around 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 final
ly 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?'