Winds of Change (9 page)

None of us were quite sure what he meant by
that, and by this point, none of us really cared. Wayne was a thorn
in all of our sides. True enough, the situation was bad, yet Wayne
made everything worse.

Putting her face in her hands, Ashley began
to weep. It was a pitiful longing sound, exactly the kind of
mewling lamentation that should accompany the end of the world.

"Fine," Wayne muttered quickly. "You want me
to confess something. I'll confess something. I slept with Julie on
our wedding day. We've had an on-off relationship ever since. I’ve
been cheating on you behind your back for the past two months."

Ashley looked up at her husband with the most
hate-filled expression I've ever seen outside of those old pictures
of Nazi Generals in their concentration camps. Somehow, I think if
she'd been capable at that point, Ashley would have skinned Wayne
Richards right then and there and shoved him headfirst into one of
those same industrial sized ovens that took the lives of so many
Jews. But she couldn't do that. All she could do was rush at him
with her fingernails poised to take out both of his eyes.

Jesse Weaver knew what was going to happen
before any of the rest of us did and acted accordingly. He was the
first to pull Ashley Richards off of her husband. She pretended to
calm down only to rush at Wayne again. This time it was all Steven
and I could do to get her under control. When all was said and
done, Wayne looked like the loser in a prizefight. His lips and
nose were both bleeding, and his left eye was starting to swell up.
None of us felt sorry for him.

“You’re turning to salt,” Chuck told him.
“Don’t even bother wrapping up in plastic. That won’t help you. It
almost makes me want to throw you outside myself just to see it
happen. You don’t deserve to live.”

None of us could have said it any better. We
didn’t have much else to say about anything at that point. I think
most of us just sat there, contemplating the course our lives had
taken and realizing that we should have seized every opportunity.
Of course, you can only wallow in regret for so long before the
game becomes tiresome. Chuck was the first one to grow weary of
playing the What-If game.

He picked up the two-way radio again and
thumbed the button. “Leland? Are you there? Please answer if you
are.”

“Right here,” Leland came back.

Chuck looked at me. I replied by shrugging my
shoulders.

“What happened a few minutes ago?” he asked.
“We heard screaming and a woman speaking in a foreign
language.”

“Oh that,” Leland said offhandedly. “One of
the cooks trapped in here is Russian. She’s also deathly afraid of
mice. She saw one and lapsed into the mother tongue. It took us
nearly ten minutes to get her calmed down. If you were trying to
speak to me then, I’m sure I didn’t hear you.”

“He’s lying,” Wayne said. “After all that
we’ve been through, I don’t think something as inconsequential as a
mouse would even register on the Richter scale.”

Chuck held his hand up for everyone to be
quiet. It was clear that he was still trying to form his own
opinion of the situation.

“I’m going out,” Wayne said, getting to his
feet. “Turning into a pile of salt can’t be any worse than staying
here with you guys. Maybe I can get Leland to tell me the secret to
staying alive.”

“I’ve got the plastic ready,” Steven replied.
“Commit suicide at any time.”

“Then wrap me up,” Wayne said, glaring at
Ashley and then at me.

“Don’t do anything foolish,” I cautioned
him.

“Listen to him, boy,” Jesse Weaver added,
backing me up. It felt good to have his stamp of approval on what I
said. It meant that the potential for conflict was that much less.
I’m not sure what I would have done at that point if forced to
argue with Wayne Richards and Jesse Weaver at the same time.

“I’m going out,” Wayne insisted. “If I make
it out alive, I’ll go to the restaurant. If not, then I won’t have
to look at any of you ever again.” He looked at Ashley as he said
that last bit. Her eyes immediately started to gloss over and tears
began to stream down her cheeks, but she didn’t break down. She
wasn’t going to give him that sort of satisfaction. It was
certainly a feather in her cap.

None of us argued anymore as we wrapped Wayne
Richards up. Whatever the outcome, it was clear that this would be
one less problem for us to deal with. Still, it was hard not to
notice the lost, injured look in Ashley’s eyes. Despite what he’d
done, she still loved her husband. She was also clearly afraid that
he was going to die the minute he walked out those doors.

“Make sure to tell Julie I said hello the
next time you see her,” Wayne prodded as we finished strapping the
plastic into place with duct tape.

“You show your wife a little respect,” Jesse
said, smacking Wayne in the back of the head. Wayne glared at Jesse
Weaver, but he wasn’t stupid enough to retaliate.

“Just let me out of here,” Wayne said.

“We thought you’d never ask,” Jesse replied.
“Now get out and die.”

Without another word or even a look back at
his wife, Wayne Richards threw the lounge door open and ran out
into the potentially contaminated store. Chuck and I were there to
shut the door behind him and resecure the makeshift seals we had
fashioned for the gap beneath the door.

We waited there for Wayne to scream, to run
back pounding on the door, something. Yet when he actually spoke to
us in a calm, normal tone, it was unexpected.

“All right, you morons can come out now. It’s
safe.”

“How can we believe you, Wayne?” Ashley said.
It was clear that her question had dual significance.

“Because, you stupid twit, I’m not dust. And
since I belong in hell for the terrible things I’ve done, I guess
the threat’s either gone or everyone was wrong about the wrath of
God in the first place.”

The next sound we heard sounded a lot like a
bagful of marbles bursting and scattering across the concrete
floor.

“Wayne?” I said.

But Wayne didn’t answer. I had a pretty good
idea about what happened out there and what that sound had been.
The winds of change had judged and transformed Wayne Richards
completely. I think I can speak for the group, Ashley included,
when I say that he was a much more likeable fellow as a pile of
salt.

Always full of surprises, Jesse Weaver was
the one to put his arms around Ashley in consolation. It had taken
the death of his own spouse to change his outlook on life, but I’ll
have to say the change was a definite improvement. The Weaver boys,
however, didn’t seem to know exactly how to respond to any of it.
Their mother was lying there on the concrete, growing colder by the
minute. Their father’s attitude had done a three-sixty. And now, he
had his arms wrapped around a beautiful twenty-something girl that
seemed the antithesis of Vera Weaver. Yes, the gesture was
obviously meant to be a gesture of consolation. But there wasn’t a
one of us, the boys included, who hadn’t given Ashley Richards the
once-over, or in Chuck’s case, the twice-over. Jesse Weaver had to
be getting a little thrill out of being that close to her. Or maybe
my mind was working overtime when it should have been taking a
break.

Trying so hard to console himself, Kenneth
Weaver kept eating candy bars. He must have consumed fifteen or
twenty of the chocolates since the whole thing started. Had there
been any alcohol nearby, Jake Weaver would have likely resorted to
drinking. As it was, he had only carbonated beverages to drown his
sorrows. Between the two, they had a pile of cans and wrappers that
could have doubled as a piece of modernistic art. I think both of
them were consuming as a means of coping with everything that was
going on around us.

At this point, we were all surviving the best
way we could. I couldn’t fault either of the boys for their
reactions. The rest of us, however, had our own methods. We spent
the rest of the day playing poker with a deck of cards that we
found in one of the associate lockers, and it took our minds off
things temporarily. Of course, reality always reasserted itself
during the short breaks we took between hands when we would call
Leland over at the restaurant to see if there were any new
developments.

Occasionally, I would reconsider Wayne
Richards’ theory that Leland Kennedy had something to do with the
tragedy around us. The whole situation was strange, and the fact
that Leland was still alive made it even stranger. But, try as I
might, I just couldn’t convince myself that he was responsible for
any of this.

I’m not sure if everyone else felt the same
way. Some thought it suspicious that he had survived. The rest of
us considered it to be a sign of hope. At that point, we were
clinging to anything that seemed like a good omen. We were also
clinging to each other.

Take Jesse Weaver and Ashley Richards, for
instance. They slept side by side that night. I think the fact that
they’d both lost a spouse brought them together. It seemed a little
bizarre that Jesse Weaver could sleep with another woman while the
corpse of his wife was still in the room. But he didn’t seem to
have any trouble. Maybe he just needed someone to console him, and
Ashley was convenient. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t fault
him.

By the end of the second day, Vera’s body was
starting to smell a little. We’d covered her up with some of the
spare towels that hadn’t been used to block up the space underneath
the door. But that hadn’t been very helpful.

“Mom’s starting to stink,” Kenneth said,
echoing the sentiment we all felt but were reluctant to say.

Jesse Weaver slapped his son in the back of
the head. “Don’t disrespect your mother like that,” he roared. That
anger was quickly followed by a fresh bout of tears, and I suddenly
felt bad for questioning his motives with Ashley Richards. It was
clear that he still loved his wife and was hurt by her passing.
That didn’t make Vera smell any better, of course, but it gave
Jesse Weaver a bit more respectability than I had given him credit
for earlier.

This time it was Ashley’s turn to comfort
Jesse. He seemed drawn to her like an iron filing to a magnet.
“We’ve got to put her out,” he murmured into Ashley’s shoulder.

At first, I wasn’t sure what he meant by
that.

“Put her out?” Chuck asked. “What do you
mean?”

Jesse looked up from Ashley’s tear-stained
blouse. “Burial is out of the question so we’ll have to do the next
best thing. We put her out. Let the atmosphere do to her what it’s
been doing to everyone else. It will be almost like cremation. She
won’t know the difference anyway.”

“Are you sure about what you’re saying?” I
asked.

“Positive,” he said grimly.

The boys didn’t say anything at first. They
were apparently surprised by their father’s decision to toss their
mother out like some unwanted sack of garbage.

“That’s Mom you’re talking about,” Kenneth
said. “Are you really that eager to get rid of her?”

Jesse Weaver stood up, towering over his son.
“I don’t want to hear that out of your mouth ever again,” he
roared. “Under normal circumstances, I would never consider
something like this, but these aren’t normal circumstances.”

“I don’t think it matters anyway,” Jake
Weaver said. “That’s not Mom anymore, just the place she used to
live. I say we put her out. It’s not like she won’t rot anyway.
When you look at it that way, it seems like we’re actually
preserving her memory. I don’t want to remember her after she
starts to turn icky and smells worse than she does now. I’d rather
remember her like she was when we came into this store.”

“Kenneth?” Jesse Weaver said. “I want all of
us in agreement on this.”

Kenneth bit his bottom lip to hold back the
tears. “Do it,” he whimpered.

Jesse looked at the rest of us and squared
his shoulders to show that he was ready. “Can you guys give me a
hand with Vera?”

“Sure,” we all murmured in unison as we
grabbed the body and lifted it up.

Jesse stopped at the door. “Just so you know,
Vera was one of the saintliest women that’s ever lived. She’s put
up with me for all these years, and I’ve put her through a lot.
When we put her out and she turns to salt, that isn’t going to be
an indicator that she lived a sinful life. Understand?”

It was clear that Jesse didn’t want to
consider the possibility that his wife might have kept secrets from
him during their marriage. Still, none of us saw any reason to
disagree with him. If living with a few delusions was all it took
to get him through something like this, then that was a small price
to pay.

There was no graceful way to dispose of
Vera’s body. We couldn’t leave the door open more than a fraction
of a second for fear of turning to salt ourselves. That meant we
had to actually heave the body out the door like a sack of garbage.
Both of the Weaver boys started crying as we threw their mother
out. The body didn’t last more than a couple of seconds before
changing. We didn’t actually see it happen, but the same noise that
had accompanied Wayne Richard’s transformation accompanied this one
as well. It sounded like a bag of marbles had been spilled and were
rolling across the floor. In reality, it was grains of salt
skittering across the smooth concrete, blown by winds of
change.

“Goodbye, love,” Jesse Weaver cried as Ashley
slammed the door shut.

It was the closest thing to a funeral and a
eulogy that we could give Vera Weaver. I knew we had done the best
we could. Still, there was one thing that disturbed me about the
whole process: Vera’s remains and Wayne Richards’ remains were
quite likely mixed together now. It seemed a little irreverent and
unfair to Vera and to her family, especially given the kind of man
Wayne Richards had turned out to be. Vera had seemed like a good
woman, hardly the kind that deserved to have her remains mingled
with an adulterous fool that nobody liked, but given the
circumstances, our options had been limited. I hoped she
understood.