Praying for Sleep (25 page)

The marriage had been a stormy union, Heck was the first to admit. When you were on Jill's side, heaven's gate opened up and she rained her good nature on you and if you were her man there were plenty of other rewards. But if you didn't share her opinion or — good luck — if you opposed her, then the flesh over her cheekbones tightened and her tongue somehow contracted and she commenced to take you down.

Trenton Heck in fact had not been all that certain about getting married. Unreasonably, he was disappointed at having a fiancée with one syllable in her name. And when Jill grew angry — he couldn't always predict when this would happen — she became a tiny fireball. Her eyebrows knit and her voice grew husky, like the tone he believed hookers took when confronting obnoxious clients. She would mope aggressively if he said they couldn't afford a pair of high-heeled green shoes dusted with sequins, or a microwave with a revolving carousel.

"You're icky to me, Trenton. And I don't like it one bit."

"Jill, honey, baby..."

But the fact remained that she was a woman who'd leap into his arms at unexpected times, even at the mall, and kiss his ear wetly. She would smile with her entire face when he came home and talk nonstop about some silliness in a way that made the whole evening seem to him like good crystal and silver. And he could never forget the way she'd wake suddenly in the middle of the night, roll over on top of him, and drive her head into his collarbone, humping with so much energy that he fought hard not to move for fear it would be over too fast.

Slowly though the pouts began to outnumber the smiles and humps. The money, which was like a lubricant between their spirits, grew sparse when he was denied a raise and the mortgage on the trailer was adjusted upward. Heck began to like Jill's waitress friends and their husbands less and less; there was much drinking in that group and more silliness than seemed normal for people in their thirties. These were clues and he supposed he'd been aware of them all along. But when he finally understood that she really meant mental cruelty and abandonment —
his
mental cruelty and
his
abandonment — it knocked the wind clean out of him.

Exactly twenty-two months ago, at nine-forty-eight one Saturday night, Jill let slam the aluminum door of their trailer for the last time and went to live by herself in Dillon. The ultimate insult was that she moved into a mobile-home park. "Why didn't you just stay with me?" he blurted. "I thought you left because you wanted a house."

"Oh, Trent," she moaned hopelessly, "you don't understand nothing, do you? Not... a... thing."

"Well, you're in a trailer park, for God's sake!"

"Trent!"

"What'd I say?"

So Jill left to live in a mobile home somehow better than the one that Trenton Heck could offer her and once there, he supposed, entertain men friends. Billy Mosler, Heck's truck-driving buddy from next door, seemed relieved at the breakup. "Trenton, she wasn't for you. I'm not going to say anything bad about Jill because that's not my way —"

Watch it, you prick, Heck thought, eyeing his friend belligerently.

"— but she was too dippy for you. Bad choice in a woman. Don't look at me that way. You can do better."

"But I loved her," Heck said, his anger sadly tamed by a memory of Jill making him a lunch of egg salad one autumn afternoon. "Oh, damn, I'm whining, aren't I? Damn."

"You didn't love her," Billy Mosler said sagely. "You were in love with her. Or, in lust with her, more like. See the difference?"

Watch it, prick. Heck recovered enough to begin glaring once more.

The worst of the sting wore off after a few months though still he mourned. He drove past her restaurant a hundred times and would call her often to talk to her about the few things they could still talk about, which was not much. Many times he got her answering machine. What the hell does a waitress need an answering machine for, he brooded, except to take men's phone calls? He grew despairing when the machine picked up on the second ring, which meant that someone had called before him. Heck saw his ex-wife all over the county. At Kmart, at picnics, driving in cars he didn't recognize, in Jo-Jo's steakhouse, in liquor-store parking lots as she hiked her skirt up to adjust her slip, rolled at the waist to compensate for her being four foot eleven.

There weren't this many Jills in the universe but Trenton Heck saw them just the same.

Tonight, his ex-wife fading very reluctantly from his mind, Heck turned off the highway. Emil stirred with relief as the truck braked to a fast stop and the evil seatbelt came off. His master then hooked up the harness and track line and together they bounded off down the road.

Emil easily picked up Hrubek's scent and trotted down the highway, mimicking more or less the bicycle's passage. Because they were on the asphalt with good visibility, Heck saw no need to keep the hound short-lined; Hrubek wouldn't be setting traps on the surface of the road. They made good time, coursing past abandoned shacks and farms and lowlands and pumpkin fields. Still, after passing two intersections — and verifying that the madman was continuing west on Route 236 — Heck ordered Emil back to the truck. Because of the bicycle, which Hrubek could pedal at fifteen or twenty miles an hour, Heck continued to drop-track-driving for several miles then stopping just long enough to let Emil make sure they were still on scent. For a diligent dog like Emil to follow a bicyclist was certainly possible — especially on a damp night like this — but doing so would exhaust him quickly. Then too Heck, with his damaged leg, was hardly up for a twenty-mile run after a man on wheels.

As he drove, scanning the road before him for a bicycle reflector or Hrubek's back, Trenton Heck thought about the meeting with Richard Kohler. He recalled the doctor's slight scowl when Heck had rejected his offer. This reinforced Heck's fear that maybe he'd blown it bad, that he'd chosen exactly the opposite from what a smart person would've picked. He often had trouble choosing the sensible thing, the thing everybody else just knew was best. The thing that both Jill and his father would appraise and say, "Damn good choice, boy."

He supposed in some ways it was crazy to turn down that money. But when he actually pictured taking the check, folding it up, going home — no, no, he just couldn't have done it. Maybe God hadn't made him like Emil, doling out to him a singular, remarkable knack. But Trenton Heck felt in his heart that if he had any purpose at all, it was to spend his hours tracking behind his dog through wilderness just like this. Even if he never found Hrubek tonight, even if he never caught a glimpse of him, being here had to be better than sitting in front of the tube with a quart of beer in his hand and Emil fidgeting on the back deck.

What troubled Heck more than turning down Kohler's offer was altogether different, maybe something more dangerous. If it was really his goal to catch Hrubek before he hurt someone, then why didn't he just call Don Haversham and tell him that Hrubek had changed direction? Heck was in Gunderson now and would be coming up on Cloverton soon. Both towns had police departments and, despite the storm, probably a few men to spare for a roadblock. Calling Haversham, he thought, was the prudent thing to do, the proper procedure. It promised the least risk to everyone.

But of course if the local police or troopers caught Hrubek, Adler would surely balk at paying Heck the ten thousand.

So, steeped in guilt and uneasiness, Heck pressed the stiff accelerator with his left foot and continued after his prey, speeding west in secret and under cover of the night — just like, he laughed grimly, Michael Hrubek himself.

He was twenty-two miles from Ridgeton when the idea of an automobile slipped into his mind and rooted there.

A car'd be so much nicer than a bicycle, so much more fashionable. Hrubek had mastered pedaling and now found the bike a frustrating way to travel. It flicked sideways when it hit rocks and there were long stretches of inclines that required him to ride so slowly that he could have walked faster. His teeth ached from the air he sucked into his lungs with the effort of low-gear pedaling. When he hit a bump the heavy animal traps bounced and jabbed him in the kidney. But more than anger at the bike, Hrubek simply felt the desire for a car. He believed he had the confidence to drive. He'd fooled the orderlies and whipped the cops and tricked all the fucker conspirators who were after him.

And now he wanted a car.

He recalled the time he'd pumped a tank of gas for Dr. Anne when she'd driven Hrubek and several other patients to a bookstore in a mall near Trevor Hill Psychiatric Hospital. Knowing — and compulsively reciting — the statistics on auto fatalities on American highways, he was terrified at the thought of the drive but reluctantly agreed to go along. The psychiatrist asked him to sit in the front seat. When they stopped at the gas station, she asked, "Michael, will you help me fill up the tank?"

"Noooo."

"Please?"

"Not on your life. It's not safe and it's not fashionable."

"Let's do it together."

"Who knows what comes out of those pumps?"

"Come on, Michael. Get out of the car."

"Nice try."

But he did it — opening the tank door, unscrewing the lid, turning on the pump, squeezing the nozzle handle. Dr. Anne thanked Hrubek for his help and, glowing with pride, he climbed back into the front seat, snapping his belt on without her telling him to do so. On their next outing she let him drive the gray Mercedes through the hospital parking lot, arousing the envy of the patients and the amusement — and awe — of several doctors and nurses.

Yep, he now decided, the bike's got to go.

He coasted to the bottom of a long hill, where he stopped at a darkened gas station, its windows spattered with mud and grease. What had caught his interest was an old lime-green Datsun parked beside the air pump. Hrubek climbed off the bicycle. The car's door was unlocked. He sat in the driver's seat, smelling oil and mold. He practiced driving. He was very tense at first then relaxed and gradually remembered what he knew about cars. He moved the steering wheel. He put the gearshift lever in D. He practiced pushing the accelerator and the brake.

He looked down at the wheel pedestal and saw a key in the ignition. He turned it. Silence. He climbed out. He supposed the car might need a battery or maybe gasoline. He opened the hood and found that what the car needed, however, was an engine. Some fucker had stolen it, he observed, and slammed the hood closed.

Can't trust anybody.

Hrubek walked to the front of the store and looked in. A soda machine, a snack machine, a wire tray holding, boxes of doughnuts and pastries. Twinkies. He liked Twinkies. He muttered a line he had once heard on TV: "A, wholesome snack." Repeating this phrase over and over he walked to the back of the station. "Be smart," he whispered. "Use the back door." He hoped there was an engine lying around inside. Could he install it himself in the green car? he wondered. You probably just plugged them into the engine compartment. (Hrubek knew all about plugs; because the electrical appliances in his parents' house contained listening devices or cameras, Michael had settled into the daily routine of unplugging them every morning. The VCR in the Hrubek household was perpetually flashing' 12:00).

He strode to the back door of the gas station and knocked out the glass in the window then undid the deadbolt. He walked inside and perused the place. He found no ready-to-mount auto engines, which was an immense disappointment though this setback was largely mitigated by the doughnuts on the rack by the door. He immediately ate an entire package and put another in his backpack.

Taste That Beats the Others Cold promised the torn and faded poster taped to the ancient Pepsi machine in the front of the store. He easily ripped open its door and pulled out two bottles of soda. He had forgotten all about glass containers — in mental hospitals you get soda in plastic cups or not at all. He popped the cap off with his teeth and, sitting down, he began to drink.

In five minutes the parking lot outside turned silver, then white. This attracted Hrubek's attention and he rose, walking to the greasy glass to determine the source of the light. A glistening metallic-blue 4x4 truck pulled into the driveway. The door opened and the driver climbed out. She was a pretty woman with frothy blond hair. To a phone poll beside the air pump she taped a poster advertising a church auction to be held tomorrow night.

"Will they auction their memorabilia?" Hrubek whispered. "Will they sell their memory-labia? Will the priest stick his finger in your pussy?" He glanced inside the truck. The woman's passenger was a teenage girl, her daughter, it seemed. He continued, speaking now in a conversational tone, addressing the girl. "Oh, you're very beautiful. Do you like al-ge-bra? Are you wearing one over your tits? Did you know that ninety-nine percent of schizophrenics have big cocks? The cock crowed when Jesus got betrayed — just like Eve. Say, is the priest going to stick his snake in you? You may know that as a serpent."

The driver returned to the truck. Oh, she looks beautiful, Hrubek thought, and couldn't decide whom he liked best, mother or daughter. The 4x4 turned back onto the highway and a moment later pulled into a driveway or side road a hundred yards west on Route 236. It vanished. He stood for a long moment at the window, then blew hot breath onto the cold glass in front of him, leaving a large white Circle of condensation, in the center of which he drew a very good likeness of an apple, complete with leaves and stem and pierced by what appeared to be a worm hole.

Their Maginot Line, four feet high, was starkly illuminated by another sudden flash of distant lightning.

The women, both exhausted, stepped back from their work as they waited for thunder that never sounded. Portia said, "We oughta break a bottle of champagne over it." She leaned heavily on the shovel. "Might not hold."

"Fucking well better." The water in the culvert leading the dam was already six inches high. "Let's finish taping the greenhouse and get out of here." They stowed the tools and Lis pulled a battered tarp over the depleted pile of sand. She still felt hurt by Portia's rebuff earlier but, as they strolled back to the house like two workers at day's end, Lis nonetheless had a sudden urge to put her arm around her sister's shoulders. Yet she hesitated. She could picture the contact but not the effect and that was enough to stop the gesture. Lis recalled bussing cheeks with relatives on holidays, she recalled handshakes, she recalled palms on buttocks.