Chariot - [Millennium Quartet 03] Page 5
The top of the stoop—no welcome mat, just weather stains and food stains and liquor stains. And cool beneath his soles.
He reached for the screen door, tugged, and after a long second let his hand slip away.
He looked at the stars.
“Well... shit!”
One more time, just to be sure, before he scratched through his hair, his beard, across his chest, and put his hands on his hips. He looked at his feet, wriggled his toes, and grinned.
“You are in your skivvies, my boy,” he said, sniffed, and hiccupped. Swayed. “You are a little drunk, you are. locked out, and you are in your skivvies. Now what have we learned from this? Aside from the fact that you’re an idiot, that is.”
He was fairly certain the front door was still unlocked. All he had to do was walk around the house without killing himself. Use the walls as a crutch and not fall into his cactus garden. Make sure no one was out there to see him—please, God, don’t let Judith be on her porch—and sneak in. No one any the wiser. An embarrassment only to him and his shadow.
An extraordinarily simple, straightforward plan, which he implemented before he had even finished thinking about it. He only wished he hadn’t left all the damn lights on, blasting out of the windows like Eula’s awful music. There was no dark here, nothing to hide in, nothing to conceal the way his legs, every few steps, decided to go their own way and had to be fought back into position. Nothing to keep the others from watching him fall on his ass four times before he reached the front corner.
Anger at himself gave way to the giggles.
“Hey, Señor Prof, you okay?”
What he hadn’t counted on was every damn human being on the planet calling him “Prof” just because he taught at a university.
Thank God he hated sports; otherwise they’d probably call him “Coach.”
He squinted, barely made out Hicaya in the street, and waved grandly, “Just making my way back home, Rick,” he said, grabbed the porch post and hauled himself up.
“How come you’re not dressed?”
Using his left hand to keep from falling, he took small steps toward the door. “It’s a professor thing,” he explained, and covered his mouth and tried to fake a cough to hide a belch he couldn’t stop. “It keeps my brain from ...” He blinked rapidly. “Fogging up.”
“Ah. You eat yet?”
He found the door, found the knob, prayed, turned it, and sighed when the door opened. “No.”
“Next time, then, when you drink, Señor Prof, eat something first. It don’t hit you so hard, then.”
Roger stared as the man laughed and headed on down the street, shaking his head. He tried to think of something to say, something witty, something so far over the jerk’s head he’d get whiplash trying to catch up, then stumbled over the threshold, closed the door, and turned the lock in the fake brass knob. Anger born of humiliation made him grind his teeth.
“Bastard,” he whispered, suddenly thought of the perfect retort, and hurried back to the porch, slamming the door behind him.
“Hey, Rick,” he called, but Hicaya only waved a hand over his shoulder without looking back.
Roger opened his mouth to shout it anyway, and froze.
“Well,” he muttered, “shit.”
He didn’t have to turn around.
He knew the door was locked.
Which probably wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t seen Lillian across the street, sitting on Eula’s front step, smoking a cigarette, and grinning.
“Nice shorts,” she called, and laughed so hard she began to choke, all the while weakly waving her cigarette hand in a not terribly sincere apology.
He hugged himself, feeling the night’s chill inside and out, and pressed his knees together when he realized how full, and how eager to be emptied, was his bladder. To make matters worse, Lillian flicked her cigarette into the street, grabbed her crutches, and stood.
“No,” he said automatically. “It’s all right, Lil, honest.”
She ignored him.
He belched, groaned, and leaned against the jamb. Not wanting to watch and unable to stop watching as she hauled herself toward him, the breeze that began to freeze him slipping her hair in and out of her eyes. She nearly fell once, and he finally closed his eyes, snapped them open instantly when all the lights behind his lids began to swirl like a tornado filled with sparks.
“No key, huh?” she said as she climbed the steps.
He shook his head, not daring to speak.
“You don’t keep a spare out here somewhere?”
“No.”
Her expression took a moment to register, and he still wasn’t sure if it was pity or disgust or isn’t that just like a man.
“Some woman dump you?” she asked idly as she examined the lock as if actually planning to pick it.
“Me?” His laugh was quick and hoarse. “No, not me.”
“So why do you drink, then?” She backed away from the door. “You don’t seem like the type.”
He didn’t want to answer. It was none of her business. “The city,” he said anyway, “my job, the world, my life, take your pick.”
“I see.” She scanned the porch floor. “You have renters’ insurance?”
“No.”
“Too bad.” She raised one of the crutches and smashed the front window with a single sharp blow.
He was too astonished to react, didn’t even flinch when she patted his cheek as she headed for the stairs. “I’m not climbing in,” she told him. “You’ll have to do that yourself.”
She was halfway down the walk before he looked at the glass-littered porch, looked to her and said, “My...my feet are bare.”
“Tough,” she answered without looking back. “It’s the end of the world, Rog, or hadn’t you noticed? A couple of lousy cuts here and there aren’t going to make a bit of difference either way.”
“You’re crazy,” he said, but not loud enough for her to hear. Then he looked at the glass, at the shattered window, and couldn’t decide which to do first—throw up or cry.
He did neither.
Rage overwhelmed him, and he kicked the door viciously with the sole of his right foot, lost his balance and fell on his back, and watched helplessly as the door swung slowly inward.
He would have screamed, but he heard Lillian’s voice, high and sweet, singing one of Eula’s godawful gospel songs as loud as she could.
When his eyes closed, the sparking tornado returned, and he couldn’t really tell as he passed out if he were crying, or throwing up.’
* * * *
5
She had gotten used to the pain.
She had gotten used to the crutches.
She had gotten used to the physical therapist who came out three times a week to torture her good leg and scold her for not doing the exercises on her own, what was she thinking of, did she want to use the damn crutches for the rest of her life?
She had even gotten used to the way people looked at her, either when they thought she wasn’t looking, or with those sideways glances that tried in a split second to figure out what was wrong.
She would never get used to not riding again.
Never.
Oh, they told her she’d eventually be able to do trails if she was careful; they told her she could hang around corrals on the back of some old nag that could barely put one leg in front of the other.
That didn’t count.
The important thing was, she would never be able to really ride again. Take that animal around the ring at speed, bareback, doing backflips and side jumps and handstands and headstands while over five hundred people twice a day screamed their lungs out, pounded their tables, and cheered and whistled when she was finished.
She would never again wear the Hollywood-style medieval clothes with the ruffles and frills and billowing sleeves and rawhide fringe and sequins and rhinestones that flared in the laser light that flashed across the arena; she would never again watch from behind the curtain
the hokey King Arthur show, knights jousting and swordfighting and ax-fighting and just plain fighting while the crowd did what the crowd was urged to do— scream and cheer and yell and boo, all while eating a halfway decent meal with their fingers.
Over a year, now.
Over a year.
She had tried to kill herself, twice, and had told no one about it—she didn’t need a rubber-wall room to go with the crutches.
Then Eula had moved into the neighborhood, driving everyone nuts with her loud music, and at the same time making most everyone feel just a little better about how things were. Lillian didn’t know how the woman did it, but she did. There was no preaching, no proselytizing, no New Age bromides, no Bible quotations, no phony sympathy, no manufactured empathy. She just talked, and played her music, and Lillian just listened.
“Child,” Eula had said last month, “you don’t have to be that way, you know,” pointing to the crutches.
That’s all.
Nothing else.
Just; “You don’t have to be that way.”
Tonight, she had answered, “Show me.”
And Eula had said, “You think about it first, dear. Think about it hard. Ain’t no free ride in this world.”
Lillian had grinned. “Pay the piper, huh?”
“Something like that.”
That’s all.
Nothing else.
The acres between Eula’s house and hers, on a good night, seemed like a mile. Now it seemed like ten.
Ride; never ride.
If it had been anybody else—doctors, shrinks, nurses, therapists, letters from nuts who promised miracle cures—she would have laughed. Somehow, though, Eula was different. Others recognized it too, so she knew she wasn’t imagining things that weren’t there. A special something, a special caring, a special way of checking out the world to find the right places to be at the right times...with the right words.
She had only said something about it once to Muriel, who had rolled her eyes and said, “What’s she going to do, Lillian, cast a voodoo spell on you? Make you bathe in some kind of stinky herbs and mud?” Her voice had softened. “Lillian, this is real, not a dream. Do what the doctors tell you, and you’ll soon enough get as good as you’ll ever be. Not like you were, you know that, but as close as you can get. No shortcuts, Lil. There are no shortcuts.”
Lillian hated it when her mother was right. She knew there were no shortcuts, no spells, no magical herbs. She knew that. But then, Muriel had never sat long enough with Eula to listen to that voice. Really listen to it.
Different; something different.
Ride; never ride.
What, she wondered, did she have to lose?
If it didn’t work . . . well, they say the third time’s the charm.
* * * *
6
The Levin sisters sat on rickety lawn chairs on the concrete slab that was their front porch. Paper plates in their laps held sandwiches; paper cups on the floor held milk. Paper napkins lay unused next to the cups; it was easier to swipe a palm over a knee or thigh than bend over.
Starshine chewed as if she were eating steak. “You think he’s coming back?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Momma says it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If means,” said Judith Levin from behind the screen door, “that there’s always a next time.”
Moonbow jumped, scowling at her sister for not warning her. “He’s staying.”
Her mother’s voice, a soft rasping: “How do you know?”
The girl waved vaguely. “They’re getting sick out there, and they’re not sick here. He won’t take the chance.”
Starshine snickered for what her sister didn’t say, and yelped and almost dropped her plate when the screen door opened slightly and a hand reached out to whack her lightly across the top of her head.
“Don’t laugh. It never hurts to have faith.”
Moonbow looked up the empty street. Lillian had long since gone inside, and Ricardo had long since driven away to his fancy waiter’s job on the Strip. The music was over. Early evening, not yet eight o’clock, and it felt as though she should have been in bed hours ago.
“What do you have faith in, Momma?”
Her mother’s shadow, stretched thin across the porch, shifted as if the woman had turned away.
“Momma?”
Starshine pinched her thigh, warning her to shut up.
“Come on, Momma, fair’s fair.”
A quiet chuckle. “You’re right.”
“You can come out, Momma,” Starshine said over her shoulder. “Nobody’s around.”
The door remained closed.
“Lillian,” Judith said, “had faith in her horse until it threw her. She doesn’t really believe she’ll ever walk without crutches again. Who knows, maybe she’s right.”
A distant high roar and a flare of red as a fighter climbed over the mountains.
“Muriel won’t diet anymore, she doesn’t think she’ll ever lose weight again. I even offered to do it with her, but she said no, she was happy the way she was. A walking heart attack begging for a stroke. And Ricardo wears a glove to keep people from staring at his hand. Six operations, I think it’s six, and it still looks the same. He won’t have another.”
Grumbling this time, an invisible jet liner heading for the airport.
When that faded, an outsider would have said the neighborhood was quiet, unable to hear the whisper of the wind across the sand in the yards, in the street.
“Boy,” Starshine said into the silence, “that’s pretty gloomy, Momma.”
Her mother laughed. “Yes, I guess it is.”
A glint of light distracted Moonbow. She looked down toward the end of the road and saw headlights approaching slowly, as if the driver didn’t know where he was. “Company.”
A moment later she heard a table drawer open, and she knew Momma had taken out the gun. Every house but Trey’s had one. Everyone on the block knew how to use one.
Most of the time it was someone lost. They’d stop at the first house with lights, ask directions, and get out a whole lot faster than when they came in. Once in a great while it was someone who heard something about Emerald City and came looking for stuff to steal. They never expected the way the people who were left knew what was up; they sure never expected to look at a gun. They never came up slow.
Starshine thought it was exciting, better than television.
Moonbow usually hid in the kitchen until it was over.
Carefully she placed her plate on the floor and stood, dusting her hands on her jeans, reaching around to scratch her back.
The headlights softened, curls of dust rising through the beams.
“Moonbow.”
“It’s okay, Momma.” She deepened her voice, tried to imitate Southern syrup, the way Eula did. “They just be lost travelers, lookin’ for a way out.”
Starshine snorted, then cursed as milk shot out of her nostrils. “Aw, gross.”
“Use the napkin,” her mother told her, laughing. “I’ll get some paper towels.”
Moonbow stepped down to the walk, making sure the driver saw her. Now this was exciting. Strangers. Maybe they were millionaires looking for Wayne Newton’s ranch, or some bigshot Mafia guy who took a wrong turn, or a movie star thinking maybe this would be where she would make her next film.
When it was close enough, when the headlight glare no longer obscured it, she sighed a little. An ordinary car, rental plates. A tourist who didn’t realize how big the night was.
A shrug, and she moved down to the absent curb, one hand fiddling with a braid, smiling politely as the car pulled abreast.
A woman in the driver’s seat, wavy hair and bangs, kind of a small nose. As Moonbow bent down to ask what she could do to help, the passenger door opened and a man got out.
“Holy shit,” she heard Starshine whisper from the porch, and heard a hard
er whack and a louder yelp.
Still, her sister wasn’t far from wrong.
The man was old. Really old. Not very tall, and dressed in a white suit with dark piping on the lapels and yoke like country singers wore. A white straw cowboy hat with a red band. A bolo tie. He walked around the front of the car, smiling, wiping his hands with a handkerchief, and she almost said, “Holy shit,” herself when she saw the silver snakeskin boots.