Captain Quad (3 page)

Now the concussive bleat in his head changed in quality. It deepened, seemed to exteriorize, becoming a deep-throated bellow overspread by a high keening shriek that whirled around inside his helmet.

But he was going to be all right. He knew that now. The bike was slowing, and although the world swam and the stars were out and the pain was titanic, he was still conscious. He would walk away from this one, scraped and bloodied, maybe a busted kneecap on the left—

Kelly!

The thought paralyzed him.

What about Kelly?

He was lying on his belly, still facing north, when the bike came to an abrupt, begrudging halt. He craned his neck around and spotted her, several yards back on the roadside. She was hobbling toward him, one arm flailing over her head, the other dangling at her side, a fractured butt of bone jutting obscenely through the skin. There was blood and she was yelling something, but she was up and she was moving and she was going to be okay, too.

Relief surged through him. He waved, doing his best through the pain to grin. . . but Kelly was still yelling, really howling, he realized. What was she saying? He couldn't hear her over that infernal noise inside his helmet.

Pushing up on raw palms, Peter angled his gaze another twenty degrees and glimpsed what Kelly was yelling about, beheld the source of that solid, bellowing roar.

The beer truck, rumbling like doom out of the heat shimmer, veering hard to the left in an ill-spent effort to avoid the over-turned bike. It bore down on him like the closing halves of a gargantuan jackknife, locked wheels spewing white smoke. . .

And there was nothing he could do but watch.

The truck was thunder, the truck was the serpent-hiss of air brakes, the truck was the earsplitting howl of the air horn.

The truck was everything.

Punted like a pop can, the bike entered the air in a lazy spiral.

And Peter went under, past sunlight on polished chrome, past hot breath and foul smells into dark guts and a lifetime of hideous nightmares. The right rear wheels of the cab rolled over his legs at the knees—he could actually see them going over his knees—and then he was tumbling, over and over, faster and faster, a bit of cloth in a wicked wind.

The world became a bloodied pastiche of layered sensation: alternating glimpses of road and underbelly, road and underbelly; hot whiffs of mechanical body fluids; the terrible beastly moan of metal straining against metal; raw pain screaming from every nerve fiber in hellish concert with the air horn.

A snap!

(That came)

A deep, sickening, greenstick snap!

(from inside me!)

Bright Light.

Dead? Am I dead?

no

It had passed over him. The truck had passed over him, and now he lay flat on his back on the highway. The Bright Light was not God's celestial corridor but the sun, hot as slag on his face. He had journeyed through a dark eternity that had lasted only seconds—and he was still alive. Incredibly, he was still alive.

Legs busted bad. . . can't move. . .

The sun was so terribly hot on his face, he could feel the skin blistering, he could feel that and he could hear the truck. The horn had fallen silent, but now came the earsplitting artillery blasts of steel snapping trees, and the jangling, shattering clangor of hundreds upon hundreds of exploding beer bottles.

He could feel the sun on his face—

But that was all.

Where is the pain? Why is there no pain?

In his tottering mind Peter screamed out a prayer, begging for pain, pleading for brutal, mind-eating, nerve-blasting pain—

Something hovering over him now, blocking the sun, pooling cool shadow on his face.

"Kelly?" A feeble whisper.

"Oh, Peter, yes, it's me! You're alive, thank God you're alive!"

Kelly. Above him, leaning over him, her voice hectic and high. Blood dripped from her shattered arm and freckled his forehead. . . wet, warm, tacky. He could feel that, and he wanted to tell her he could feel that and nothing else. . .

But the truth of what that meant, the unspeakable truth of what that crisp interior snap! had been, dried up the words in his throat.

The world was swimming. . .

Swimming away.

There was a voice out there now, beyond Kelly's, and Peter prayed it was God's voice, if there was a God. He prayed it was God's voice calling him Home.

But it was only the trucker, stumbling toward them from his toppled rig. "Hey! Hey! You kids all right?"

Swimming. . .

Floating? Am I floating?

Kelly's voice. Kelly's touch. Kelly's hair tenting his face.

Then nothing.

Nothing at all.

TWO

The haggard face in the west window startled her. That's me, Leona Gardner realized as her reflection resolved into ghostly focus. . . and in that moment she knew what she would look like when she got old. Not a pretty sight.

Turning away, Leona took another stiff belt of Jack Daniel's, wincing at its bite and at the hot tingle it sent capering through her body. Already comfortably plastered, she toasted the vacant chair opposite.

"Smooth sippin' Tennessee whiskey!" she cried, slurring the words. She snickered and lit another Tareyton.

Wreathed in smoke, she punched the rewind button on the reel-to-reel. Then, not wanting to, she glanced again at her reflection in the window glass.

Now it seemed to be speaking to her.

Look at you! it reproached her, its drawn lips unmoving. A fine figure of a mother. You're a mess! A weak, disgusting mess! The boy's got to fly the coop sometime.

"Fuck you," Leona growled. And in a furious reflex, the hand holding the lit Tareyton shot out and clutched the yellow sheers, jerking them hard in an effort to obscure the mocking reflection. But the force she used was too great, and the curtain rod let go, swinging down and batting a house-plant to the floor. Now there was a pungent burnt smell, and Leona realized that her cigarette had ignited the sheers. Cursing again, she crushed the tiny blue flame between her fingers. Now there was a nickel-size hole, charred black at the edges.

Leona felt the scald of bitter tears.

Sam appeared in the doorway, his eyes behind his thick glasses puzzled and afraid, one finger worrying an angry-looking zit on his chin.

Leona glared at him. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing," Sam mumbled, dropping his gaze. "I just—"

"Then go about your business."

Head hung, Sam slouched back to his room.

On the kitchen table the reel-to-reel continued to spin. It had completed the rewind cycle, and now the loose end of the tape flapped annoyingly. Ignoring the fallen curtains, Leona clumsily rethreaded the tape, then hit the play button again.

Peter's music swelled from the whirring machine, filling her heart, quelling her pointless rage. She swilled and listened, her gaze straying through the living room archway to the piano by the big bay window. A white Yamaha. A baby grand. Peter had earned the money for it all by himself, starting with a paper route when he was only eleven.

Leona smiled. Whenever she thought of her boy, all of life's troubles seemed to just glide away. They were still there, of course—she wasn't that drunk. But for the time being they lost some of their urgency, some of their nagging importance.

The telephone rang, jarring Leona out of her near stupor. "Sam?" she shouted. "Get that, will you?"

No answer.

"Sam!"

Nothing.

She turned down the volume on the recorder and wobbled to her feet. Weaving, she crossed to the wall phone by the doorway and lifted the receiver, almost fumbling it.

"Hello?"

A gruff male voice said, "Is this the Gardner residence?"

"Yes?" A tiny dagger of fear slipped between Leona's ribs.

"What—"

"To whom am I speaking?"

"Mrs. Gardner. Who is this?"

"It's Sergeant Mitchell of the Sudbury Regional Police, Mrs. Gardner."

Dread reared up and kicked Leona Gardner in the stomach. Peter! Her Peter was up in that damned airplane. . .

"Is it Peter?" she cried, abruptly sober. "Is it my boy?"

Sam reappeared in the doorway, his face expectant and pale.

"I'm afraid so, Mrs. Gardner," Mitchell said gravely. "There's been an accident."

Leona's legs failed her and she sat down hard, her teeth clacking together as her fanny struck the floor. Sam took an uncertain step toward her.

"Is he. . . ?"

"His condition is listed as critical, Mrs. Gardner. He's in surgery right now, at the University Hospital. I regret having to give you this news."

The receiver plopped into Leona's lap; her hands thudded limply to the floor. Jumping its attachments, her small engagement diamond skidded across the linoleum and vanished among the dust kitties under the stove. Leona sat with her back to the wall and gazed without seeing at her feet, her pallid face stricken with shock.

Sam took the receiver and put it to his ear.

"Mrs. Gardner?"

"No. This is Sam, Peter's brother." His finger worked a beet-red blemish on his cheek. "Please, what's happened?"

"Your brother's been involved in an accident," Mitchell said, his voice formal and low. "He's badly hurt, Sam. He's in surgery right now."

"Oh," Sam muttered, his thoughts whirling crazily. "Wha. . . what should I do?"

"You and your mom should get over to the hospital, son."

"Yes," Sam agreed. He simply could not envision his brother hurt. Peter was indestructible, Peter was. . . hurt?

"Where. . . ?"

"University Hospital. Is your mother all right?"

Sam looked down at his mother, who was still gaping doll-eyed at her feet. "I don't think so."

'Is there someone you can get to help?" the police sergeant asked. "Is your father home?"

"I—I'll get a neighbor."

Mitchell apologized again.

"Good-bye," Sam said, and broke the connection.

Five minutes later Jimmy Maslak, the Gardners' nearest neighbor, was helping Peter's mother into the front seat of his Buick Le Sabre. Sam sat in back. They drove in silence to the hospital, six blocks away on Paris Street.

THREE

Kelly's parents were already there, seated in the small angular enclosure that served as a waiting room for the OR and the ICU. Otherwise featureless, the room contained a dozen orange vinyl chairs, a compact color TV, and a single threadbare couch. In a far corner an ancient Indian woman sat alone, rocking in her seat and murmuring low, throaty prayers, working a worn set of beads through fingers that were crabbed with arthritis.

Sam, who had met the Wheelers only once, greeted them somberly after seating his mother by the door. No, they told him, there had been no news; they had arrived only minutes ahead of Sam and his mother.

While they waited, Sam did his best to calm his mother, though it was all he could do to keep from going to pieces himself. Not in his bleakest nightmares had he imagined that any harm might come to his brother. In Sam's admiring, fourteen-year-old mind, all of this was unthinkable.

He looked gravely at his mother, dreading what might happen should Peter not survive.

Sometime later, a thin carrot-haired man in a lab coat two sizes too big for him strode into the room. Every face tilted up and beheld him. . . but he moved to the corner where the Indian woman sat praying, and drew up a chair. Compassionately he took her withered hand. Fragments of his speech reached Sam's ears.

". . . very sorry. . . all we could, but. . .”

The old woman began to weep, her tears seeming to Sam almost foreign, coursing down those dry, weather-worn cheeks. She continued to rock a while longer. Then, with the doctor's help, she rose to her feet. Hunched forward, she shuffled out of the room, leaning heavily on a carved wood cane.

For her, at least, it was over.

News for the Wheelers came about an hour later, and it was good: Kelly had suffered a few minor friction burns, none of them disfiguring, and a compound fracture of her left forearm. Her fracture, the surgeon assured them, would heal nicely, and he anticipated no loss of function.

Without a backward glance, the Wheelers accompanied the doctor to the recovery room.

Following this, Leona withdrew into silence, her face set like hardened wax. Even through the shock and her lingering drunkenness she understood that their turn was next, and the prospect paralyzed her.

Oh, Peter, her mind kept repeating. Oh, Peter, oh, Peter, oh, Peter. . .

His own mind a blank, Sam gazed out the window overlooking Ramsey Lake, at the westering sun and its streaked, blazing glory.

At ten past five the next morning, nine hours following the Gardners' arrival at the hospital, a tall, tired-looking man in OR greens shuffled into the waiting room. He glanced around briefly, then moved stiffly toward them.

"Mrs. Gardner?"

Leona's face tightened, as if preparing for a physical blow.

"Yes," Sam answered, taking a deep breath. "And my name is Sam. I'm Peter's brother."

The doctor—dr. lund, his name tag said—scanned the room once more. Then he drew up a chair and sat facing them, the harsh light of the overheads casting his eyes into deep, unreadable shadow. Sam remembered the Indian woman and braced himself.

"Is he dead?" Leona blurted, the shrillness of her voice startling both the surgeon and Sam. "Please don't tell me he's dead."

"He's not dead—"

"Oh, thank you," Leona cried, clutching the doctor's coat sleeve. "Thank you, thank you, thank—"

"But he is seriously injured."

Leona released the man's arm and shrank back in her chair. In that instant of silence the hard-wax consistency of her face seemed to soften and run.

"Both of his legs were badly broken," the surgeon pressed on. "His right shoulder blade, clavicle, and forearm were also fractured, but not as badly as his legs. Six ribs—"

"Will he. . .” Sam swallowed hard. "Will he walk again?"

For the space of an instant the doctor looked cornered to Sam, as if wanting only to flee this knife blade of truth. For many years afterward, in the fretful sweats of his slumber, Sam wished that he'd kept his mouth shut. It was as if, by asking, he'd created the terrible answer.