Christine (38 page)

Arnie turned as if to go, and Michael pulled him back.

"Get your hand off my arm."

Michael dropped his hand. "I wanted you to be aware," he said. "I no more think you'd kill someone than I think you could walk across the Symonds' swimming pool. But the police are going to question you, Arnie, and people can look surprised when the police turn up suddenly. To them, surprise can look like guilt."

"All of this because some drunk ran over that shitter Welch?"

It wasn't like that," Michael said. "I got that much out of this fellow Junkins who called me up on the phone. Whoever killed the Welch boy ran him down and then backed over him and ran over him again and backed up
again
and—"

"Stop it," Arnie said He suddenly looked sick and frightened, and Michael had much the same feeling Dennis had had on Thanksgiving evening: that in this tired unhappiness the real Arnie was suddenly close to the surface, perhaps reachable.

"It was…hjnncd  incredibly brutal," Michael said. "That's what Junkins said. You see, it doesn't look like an accident at all. It looks like murder."

"Murder," Arnie said, dazed. "No, I never—"

"What?" Michael asked sharply. He grabbed Arnie's jacket again. "What did you say?"

Arnie looked at his father. His face was masklike again. "I never thought it could be that," he said. "That's all I was going to say."

"I just wanted you to know," he said. "They'll be looking for someone with a motive, no matter how thin. They know what happened to your car, and that the Welch boy might have been involved, or that you might
think
he was involved. Junkins may be around to talk to you."

"I don't have anything to hide."

"No, of course not," Michael said. "You'll miss your bus."

"Yeah," Arnie said. "Gotta go." But he stayed a moment longer, looking at his father.

Michael suddenly found himself thinking of Arnie's ninth birthday. He and his son had gone to the little zoo in Philly Plains, had eaten lunch out, and had finished the day by playing eighteen holes at the indoor miniature golf course on outer Basin Drive. That place had burned down in 1975. Regina had not been able to come, she had been flat on her back with bronchitis. The two of them had had a fine time. For Michael, that had been his son's best birthday, the one that symbolized for him above all others his son's sweet and uneventful American boyhood. They had gone to the zoo and come back and nothing much had happened except that they had had a great time—Michael and his son, who had been and who still was so dear to him.

He wet his lips and said, "Sell her, Arnie, why don't you? When she's completely restored, sell her away. You could get a lot of money. A couple—three thousand, maybe."

Again that frightened, tired look seemed to sweep over Arnie's face, but Michael couldn't tell for sure. The sunset had faded to a bitter orange line on the western horizon, and the little yard was dark. Then the look—if it had been there at all—went away.

"No, I couldn't do that, Dad," Arnie said gently, as if speaking to a child. "I couldn't do that now. I've put too much into her. Way too much."

And then he was gone, cutting across the, yard to the sidewalk, joining the other shadows, and there was only the sound of his footfalls coming back, soon lost.

Put too much into her? Have you? Exactly what, Arnie? What have you put into her?

Michael looked down at the leaves, then around at his yard. Beneath the hedge and under the overhang of the garage, cold snow glimmered in the coming dark, livid and stubbornly waiting for reinforcements. Waiting for winter.

32 REGINA AND MICHAEL

She's real fine, my 409,

My four-speed, dual-quad, Positraction 409.

— The Beach Boys

Regina was tired—she tired more easily these days, it seemed—and they went to bed together around nine, long before Arnie came in. They made love that was dutiful and joyless (lately they made love a lot, it was almost always dutiful and joyless, and Michael had begun having the unpleasant feeling that his wife was using his penis as a sleeping pill), and as they lay in their twin beds after, Michael asked casually: "How did you sleep last night?"

"Quite well," Regina said candidly, and Michael knew she was lying. Good.

"I came up around eleven and Arnie seemed restless," Michael said, still keeping his voice casual. He was deeply uneasy now—there had been something in Arnie's face tonight, something he hadn't been able to read because of the damned shadows. It was probably nothing, nothing at all, but it glowed in his mind like a baleful neon sign that simply would not shut off. Had his son looked guilty and scared? Or had it just been the light? Unless he could resolve that, sleep would be a long time coming tonight and it might not come at all.

"I got up around one," Regina said, and then hurried to add, "Just to use the bathroom. I checked in on him." She laughed a little wistfully. "Old habits die hard, don't they?"

"Yes," Michael said. "I guess they do."

"He was sleeping deeply then. I wish I could get him to wear pyjamas in cold weather."

"He was in his skivvies?"

"Yes."

He settled back, immeasurably relieved and more than a little ashamed of himself as well. But it was better to know… for sure. It was all very well for him to tell Arnie that he knew the boy could no more commit a murder than he could walk on water. But the mind, that perverse monkey the mind can conceive of anything and seems to take a perverse delight in doing so. Just maybe, Michael
thought,
lacing his hands behind his head and looking up at the dark ceiling, just maybe that's the peculiar damnation of the living. In the mind a wife can rut, laughing, with a best friend, a best friend can cast plots against you and plan backstabbings, a son can commit murder by auto.

Better to be ashamed and put the monkey to sleep.

Arnie had been here at one o'clock. It was unlikely Regina was mistaken about the time because of the digital clock-radio on their bureau—it told the time in numbers that were big and blue and unmistakable. His son had been here at one o'clock, and the Welch boy had been run down three miles away twenty-five minutes later. Impossible to believe that Arnie could have dressed, gone out (without Regina, who had surely been lying wakeful, hearing him), gone down to Darnell's, gotten Christine, and driven out to where Moochie Welch had been killed. Physically impossible.

Not that he had ever believed it to begin with.

The mind-monkey was satisfied. Michael rolled over on his right side, slept, and dreamed that he and his nine-year old son were playing miniature golf on an endless series of small Astro-Turfed greens where windmills turned and tiny water-hazards lay in wait and he dreamed that they were alone, all alone in the world, because his son's mother had died in childbirth—very sad; people still remarked on how inconsolable Michael had been—but when they went home, he and his son, the house would be theirs alone, they would eat spaghetti right from the pot like a couple of bachelor slobs, and when the dishes were washed they would sit at a kitchen table hidden beneath spread newspapers and build model cars with harmless plastic engines.

In his sleep Michael Cunningham smiled. Beside him, in the other bed, Regina did not. She lay awake and waited for the sound of the door that would tell her that her son had come in from the world outside.

When she heard the door open and close when she heard his step on the stairs… then she would be able to sleep.

Maybe.

33 JUNKINS

I think you better slow down and drive

with me, baby…

You say what?

Hush up and mind my own bidness?

But Baby, you are my bidness!

You gooood bidness, baby,

And I love good bidness!

What kind of car am I drivin?

I'm drive a '48 Cadillac

With Thunderbird wings

I tell you, baby, she's a movin thing,

Ride on, Josephine, ride on…

— Ellas McDaniel

Junkins turned up at Darnell's around eight-forty-five that evening. Arnie had just finished with Christine for the night. He had replaced the radio aerial that Repperton's gang had snapped off with a new one, and for the last fifteen minutes or so he had been sitting behind the wheel, listening to WDIL's Friday Night Cavalcade of Gold.

He had meant to do no more than turn the radio on and dial across once, making sure that he had hooked up the aerial plug properly and that there was no static. But he had run onto WDIL's strong signal and had sat there, looking straight through the windscreen, his gray eyes musing and far away, as Bobby Fuller sang "I Fought the Law", as Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers sang" Why Do Fools Fall in Love?", as Eddie Cochran sang "C'mon, Everybody", and Buddy Holly sang "Rave On". There were no commercials on WDIL Friday nights, and no deejays. Just the sounds. Gone from the charts but not from our hearts. Every now and then a soothing female voice would break in and tell him what he already knew—that he was listening to WDIL Pittsburgh, the sound of Blue Suede Radio.

Arnie sat dreaming behind the wheel, the red dash lights glowing, tapping his fingers lightly. The aerial was fine. Yes. He had done a good job. It was like Will said; he had a light touch, Look at Christine; Christine proved it. She had been a hunk of junk sitting on LeBay's lawn and he had brought her back; then she had been a hunk of junk sitting in the long-term lot out at the airport and he had brought her back again. He had

Rave on… rave on and tell me…

Tell me… not to be lonely

He had what?

Replaced the aerial, yes. And he had popped some of the dents, he could remember that. But he hadn't ordered any glass (although it was all replaced), he hadn't ordered any new seat covers (but they were all replaced, too), and he had only looked closely under the hood once before slamming it back down in horror at the damage they had done to Christine's mill.

But now the radiator was whole, the engine block clean and glowing, the pistons moving free and clear. And it purred like a cat.

But there had been dreams.

He had dreamed of LeBay behind the wheel of Christine, LeBay dressed in an Army uniform that was spotted and splotched with blue-grey patches of graveyard mould, LeBay's flesh had sloughed and run. White, gleaming bone poked through in places. The sockets where LeBay's eyes had once been were empty and dark (but something was squirming in there, ah, yes, something). And then Christine's headlights had come on and someone had been pinned there, pinned like a bug on a white square of cardboard. Someone familiar.

Moochie Welch?

Maybe. But as Christine suddenly rocketed forward, tires screaming, it had seemed to Arnie that the terrified face out there on the street ran like tallow, changing even as the Plymouth bore down on it: now it was Repperton's face, now Sandy Galton's, now it was Will Darnell's heavy moon face.

Whoever was out there had jumped aside, but LeBay had thrown Christine into reverse, working the gear lever with black rotting fingers—a wedding ring hung on one, as loose as a hoop thrown over the branch of a dead tree—and then he threw it back into drive as the figure raced for the far side of the street. And as Christine bore down again, the head had turned, throwing a terrified glance backward, and Arnie had seen the face of his mother… the face of Dennis Guilder… Leigh's face, all eyes under a floating cloud of dark-blond hair… and finally his own face, the twisted mouth forming the words
No! No! No!

Overriding everything, even the heavy thunder of the exhaust (something underneath had been damaged for sure), was LeBay's rotting, triumphant voice, coming from a decayed larynx, passing lips that were already shrivelled away from the teeth and tattooed with a delicate spidering of dark green mould, LeBay's triumphant, shrieking voice:

Here you go, you shitter! See how you like it!

There had been the heavy, mortal thud of Christine's bumper striking flesh, the gleam of a pair of spectacles rising in the night air, turning over and over, and then Arnie had awakened in his room, curled into a trembling ball and clutching his pillow. It had been quarter of two in the morning, and his first feeling had been a great and terrible relief, relief that he was still alive. He was alive, LeBay was dead, and Christine was safe. The only three things in the world that mattered.

Oh but Arnie, how did you hurt your back?

Some voice inside, sly and insinuating—asking a question he was afraid to answer.

I hurt it at Philly Plains, he had told everyone. One of the junkers started to slip back down the ramp of Will's flatbed and I pushed it back up-didn't think about it; I just did it. Strained something really bad
. So he had said. And one of the junkers
had
started to slip, and he
had
pushed it back up, but that hadn't been how he hurt his back, had it? No.

That night after he and Leigh had found Christine smashed to hell in the parking lot, sitting on four slashed tires that night at Darnell's, after everyone was gone… he had tuned the radio in Will's office to the oldies on WDIL... Will trusted him now, why not? He was running cigarettes across the state line into New York, he was running fireworks all the way over to Burlington, and twice he had run something wrapped in flat brown-paper packages into Wheeling, where a young guy in an old Dodge Challenger traded him another, slightly larger, brown-paper package, for it. Arnie thought maybe he was trading cocaine for money, but he didn't want to know for sure.

He drove a boat on these trips, Will's private car, a 1966 Imperial as black as midnight in Persia. It was whisper-quiet, and the boot had a false bottom. If you kept to the speed limit, it was no problem. Why should it be? The important thing was that he now had the keys to the garage. He could come in after everyone else was gone. Like he had that night. And he had turned on WDIL… and he had… he had…