A Face in the Crowd (5 page)

“
Help
you, sir?”

“Sorry,” Evers said. “Had a little senior moment there.”

She smiled dutifully.

“Do you happen to have a ticket for Evers? Dean Evers?”

There was no hesitation, no thumbing through a whole box of envelopes, because there was only one left. It had his name on it. She slid it through the gap in the glass. “Enjoy the game.”

“We’ll see,” Evers said.

He made for Gate A, opening the envelope and taking out the ticket. A piece of paper was clipped to it, just four words below the Rays logo:
COMPLIMENTS OF THE MANAGEMENT
. He strode briskly up the ramp and handed the ticket to a crusty usher who was standing there and watching as Elliot Johnson dug in against Josh Beckett. At the very least, the geezer was a good half century older than his employers. Like so many of his kind, he was in no hurry. It was one reason Evers no longer drove.

“Nice seat,” the usher said, raising his eyebrows. “Just about the best in the house. And you show up late.” He gave a disapproving head shake.

“I would have been here sooner,” Evers said, “but my wife died.”

The usher froze in the act of turning away, Evers’s ticket in hand.

“Gotcha,” Evers said, smiling and pointing a playful finger-gun. “That one never fails.”

The usher didn’t look amused. “Follow me, sir.”

Down and down the steep steps they went. The usher was in worse shape than Evers, all wattle and liver spots, and by the time they reached the front row, Johnson was headed back to the dugout, a strikeout victim. Evers’s seat was the only empty one—or not quite empty. Leaning against the back was a large blue foam finger that blasphemed: RAYS ARE #1.

My seat,
Evers thought, and as he picked the offending finger up and sat down he saw, with only the slightest surprise, that he was no longer wearing his treasured Schilling jersey. Somewhere between the cab and this ridiculous, padded Captain Kirk perch, it had been replaced by a turquoise Rays shirt. And although he couldn’t see the back, he knew what it said: MATT YOUNG.

“Young Matt Young,” he said, a crack that his neighbors—neither of whom he recognized—pointedly ignored. He craned around, searching the section for Ellie and Soupy Embree and Lennie Wheeler, but it was just a mix of anonymous Rays and Sox fans. He didn’t even see the sparkly-top lady.

Between pitches, as he was twisted around trying to see behind him, the guy on his right tapped Evers’s arm and pointed to the JumboTron just in time for him to catch a grotesquely magnified version of himself turning around.

“You missed yourself,” the guy said.

“That’s all right,” Evers said. “I’ve been on TV enough lately.”

Before Beckett could decide between his fastball and his slider, Evers’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

Can’t even watch the game in peace.

“Yello,” he said.

“Who’m I talkin’ to?” The voice of Chuckie Kazmierski was high and truculent, his I’m-ready-to-fight voice. Evers knew it well, had heard it often over the long arc of years stretching between Fairlawn Grammar and this seat at Tropicana Field, where the light was always dingy and the stars were never seen. “That you, Dino?”

“Who else? Bruce Willis?” Beckett missed low and away. The crowd rang their idiotic cowbells.

“Dino Martino, right?”

Jesus,
Evers thought,
next he’ll be saying who’s on first and I’ll be saying what’s on second
.

“Yes, Kaz, the artist formerly known as Dean Patrick Evers. We ate paste together in the second grade, remember? Probably too much.”

“It
is
you!” Kaz shouted, making Evers jerk the phone away from his ear. “I
told
that cop he was full of shit! Detective Kelly, my ass.”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

“Some ass-knot pretending to be a cop’s what I’m talkin’ about. I knew it couldn’t be real, he sounded too fuckin’ official
.”

“Huh,” Evers said. “An official official, imagine that.”

“Guy tells me you’re dead, so I go, if he’s dead, how come I just talked to him on the phone? And the cop—the
so-called
cop—he goes, I think you’re mistaken, sir. You must have talked to someone else. And
I
go, how come I just now saw him on TV at the Rays game? And this so-called cop goes, either you saw someone who looked like him or someone who looks like him is dead in his apartment. You believe this shit?”

Beckett bounced one off the plate. He was all over the place. The crowd was loving it. “If it wasn’t a prank, I guess someone made a big mistake.”

“Ya
think
?” Kaz gave his trademark laugh, low and raspy. “Especially since I’m talkin’ to you right fuckin’ now.”

“You called to make sure I was still alive, huh?”

“Yeah.” Now that he was settling down, Kaz seemed puzzled by this.

“Tell me something—if I’d turned out to be dead after all, would you have left a voice mail?”

“What? Jesus, I don’t know.” Kaz seemed more puzzled than ever, but that was nothing new. He’d always been puzzled. By events, by other people, probably by his own beating heart. Evers supposed that was part of why he’d so often been angry. Even when he wasn’t angry, he was
ready
to be angry.

I’m speaking of him in the past tense,
Evers realized.

“The guy I talked to said they found you at your place. Said you’d been dead for a while too.”

The guy next to Evers nudged him again. “Lookin’ good, buddy,” he said.

On the JumboTron, shocking in its homely familiarity, was Evers’s darkened bedroom. In the middle of the bed he’d shared with Ellie, the pillowtop king that was now too big for him, Evers lay still and pale, his eyes half-lidded, his lips purplish, his mouth a stiff rictus. Foam had dried like old spiderwebs on his chin.

When Evers turned to his seatmate, wanting to confirm what he was seeing, the seat beside him—the row, the section, the whole Tropicana Dome—was empty. And yet the players kept playing.

“They said you killed yourself.”

“I didn’t kill myself,” Evers replied, and thought:
That damn expired Ambien. And
maybe putting it with the scotch wasn’t such a great idea
.
How long has it been? Since Friday night?

“I know, it didn’t sound like you.”

“So, are you watching the game?”

“I turned it off. Fuckin’ cop—that fuckin’ ass-knot—upset me.”

“Turn it on again,” Evers said.

“Okay,” Kaz said. “Lemme grab the remote.”

“You know, we should have been nicer to Lester Embree.”

“Water over the dam, old buddy. Or under the bridge. Or whatever the fuck it is.”

“Maybe not. From now on, don’t be so angry. Try to be nicer to people. Try to be nicer to everyone. Do that for me, will you, Kaz?”

“What the Christ is wrong with you? You sound like a fuckin’ Hallmark card on Mother’s Day.”

“I suppose I do,” Evers said. He found this a very sad idea, somehow. On the mound, Beckett was peering in for the sign.

“Hey, Dino! There you are! You sure don’t
look
dead.” Kaz gave out his old rusty cackle.

“I don’t feel it.”

“I was scared there for a minute,” Kaz said. “Fuckin’ crank yanker. Wonder how he got my number.”

“Dunno,” Evers said, surveying the empty park. Though of course he knew. After Ellie died, of the nine million people in Tampa–St. Pete, Kaz was the only person he could put down as an emergency contact. And that idea was sadder still.

“All right, buddy, I’ll let you get back to the game. Maybe golf next week if it doesn’t rain.”

“We’ll see,” Evers said. “Stay cool, Kazzie, and—”

Kaz joined him then, and they chanted the last line together, as they had many, many times before: “
Don’t let the bastards get you down!
”

That was it, it was over. He sensed things moving again, a flurry behind him, at the periphery of his vision. He looked around, phone in hand, and saw the spotted usher creakily leading Uncle Elmer and Aunt June down the stairs, and several girls he’d dated in high school, including the one who’d been sort of semiconscious—or maybe
unconscious
would be closer to the truth—when he’d had her. Behind them came Miss Pritchett with her hair down for once, and Mrs. Carlisle from the drugstore, and the Jansens, the elderly neighbors whose deposit bottles he’d stolen off their back porch. From the other side, as if it were a company outing, a second, equally ancient usher was filling in the rows at the top of the section with former Speedy employees, a number of them in their blue uniforms. He recognized Don Blanton, who’d been questioned during a child pornography investigation in the mid-nineties and had hung himself in his Malden garage. Evers remembered how shocked he’d been, both by the idea of someone he knew possibly being involved in kiddie porn and by Don’s final action. He’d always liked the man, and hadn’t wanted to let him go, but with that kind of accusation hanging over his head, what else could he do? The reputation of a company’s employees was part of its bottom line.

He still had some battery left. What the hell, he thought. It was a big game. They were probably watching on the Cape.

“Hey, Dad,” Pat answered.

“You watching the game?”

“The kids are. The grown-ups are playing cards.”

Next to the first usher stood Lennie Wheeler’s daughter, still in her black crepe and veil. She pointed like a dark spectre at Evers. She’d lost all her baby fat, and Evers wondered if that had happened before she died, or after.

“Go look at the game, son.”

“Hang on,” Pat said, followed by the screek of a chair. “Okay, I’m watching.”

“Right behind home, in the front row.”

“What am I looking at?”

Evers stood up behind the netting and waved his blue foam finger. “Do you see me?”

“No, where are you?”

Young Dr. Young hobbled down the steep stairs on his bad leg, using the seat backs to steady himself. On his smock, like a medal, was a coffee-colored splotch of dried blood.

“Do you see me now?” Evers took the phone from his ear and waved both arms over his head as if he was flagging a train. The grotesque finger nodded back and forth.

“No.”

So, no.

Which was fine. Which was actually better.

“Be good, Patty,” Evers said. “I love you.”

He hit END as, all around the park, the sections were filling in. He couldn’t see who’d come to spend eternity with him in peanut heaven or the far reaches of the outfield, but the premium seats were going fast. Here came the ushers with the shambling, rag-clad remnants of Soupy Embree, and then his mother, haggard after a double shift, and Lennie Wheeler in his pinstripe funeral suit and Grandfather Lincoln with his cane and Martha and Ellie and his mother and father and all the people he’d ever wronged in his life. As they filed into his row from both sides, he stuck his phone in his pocket and took his seat again, pulling off the foam finger as he did. He propped it on the now unoccupied seat to his left. Saving it for Kaz. Because he was sure Kaz would be joining them at some point, after seeing him on TV, and calling him. If Evers had learned anything about how this worked, it was that the two of them weren’t done talking just yet.

A cheer erupted, and the rattle of cowbells. The Rays were still hitting. Down the right field line, though it was far too early, some loudmouth was exhorting the crowd to start the wave. As always when distracted from the action, Evers checked the scoreboard to catch up. It was only the third and Beckett had already thrown sixty pitches. The way things were looking, it was going to be a long game.

Turn the page for a preview of Stephen King and Peter Straub’s

Black House

Coming soon in hardcover, paperback, and ebook from Scribner and Pocket Books

ONE

WELCOME TO COULEE COUNTY

1

Right here and now, as an old friend used to say, we are in the fluid present, where clear-sightedness never guarantees perfect vision. Here: about two hundred feet, the height of a gliding eagle, above Wisconsin’s far western edge, where the vagaries of the Mississippi River declare a natural border. Now: an early Friday morning in mid-July a few years into both a new century and a new millennium, their wayward courses so hidden that a blind man has a better chance of seeing what lies ahead than you or I. Right here and now, the hour is just past six
A.M.,
and the sun stands low in the cloudless eastern sky, a fat, confident yellow-white ball advancing as ever for the first time toward the future and leaving in its wake the steadily accumulating past, which darkens as it recedes, making blind men of us all.

Below, the early sun touches the river’s wide, soft ripples with molten highlights. Sunlight glints from the tracks of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad running between the riverbank and the backs of the shabby two-story houses along County Road Oo, known as Nailhouse Row, the lowest point of the comfortable-looking little town extending uphill and eastward beneath us. At this moment in the Coulee Country, life seems to be holding its breath. The motionless air around us carries such remarkable purity and sweetness that you might imagine a man could smell a radish pulled out of the ground a mile away.