Not the heat, the trip, or that fellow Dashmiel, who only ended up doing the meet-and-greet because the head of the English Department is in the hospital following an emergency gall-bladder removal the day before. It"s abroken...smucking...toothgla.s.s combined with the saying of a longdead Irish granny. And the joke of it is (as Scott will later point out), that is just enough to put her on edge. Just enough to get her at least semi-strapped.
Sometimes, he will tell her not long hence, speaking from a hospital bed (ah, but he could so easily have been on a cooling board himself, all his wakeful, thoughtful nights over), speaking in his new whispering, effortful voice, sometimes just enough is just enough. As the saying is.
And she will know exactly what he"s talking about.
4.
Roger Dashmiel has his share of headaches today, Lisey knows that, though it doesn"t make her like him any better. If there was ever an actual script for the ceremony, Professor Hegstrom (he of the emergency gall-bladder attack) was too post-op muddled to tell Dashmiel or anyone else what or where it is. Dashmiel has consequently been left with little more than a time of day and a cast of characters featuring a writer to whom he has taken an instant dislike. When the little party of dignitaries left Inman Hall for the short but exceedingly warm walk to the site of the forthcoming Shipman Library, Dashmiel told Scott they"d have to more or less play it by ear. Scott had shrugged good-naturedly. He was absolutely comfortable with that. For Scott Landon, ear was a way of life.
"Ah"ll introduce you," said the man Lisey would in later years come to think of as the southern-fried chickens.h.i.t. This as they walked toward the baked and shimmering plot of land where the new library would stand (the word is p.r.o.nounced LAH-bree in Dashmiel-ese). The photographer in charge of immortalizing all this danced restlessly back and forth, snapping and snapping, busy as a gnat. Lisey could see a rectangle of fresh brown earth not far ahead, about nine by five, she judged, and trucked in that morning, by the just-starting-to-fade look of it. No one had thought to put up an awning, and already the surface of the fresh dirt had acquired a grayish glaze.
"Somebody better do it," Scott said.
He spoke cheerfully, but Dashmiel had frowned as if wounded by some undeserved canard. Then, with a meaty sigh, he"d pressed on. "Applause follows introduction-"
"As day follows night," Scott murmured.
"-and yew"ll say a woid or tieu," Dashmiel finished. Beyond the baked wasteland awaiting the library, a freshly paved parking lot shimmered in the sunlight, all smooth tar and staring yellow lines. Lisey saw fantastic ripples of nonexistent water on its far side.
"It will be my pleasure," Scott said.
The unvarying good nature of his responses seemed to worry Dashmiel. "Ah hope you won"t want to say tieu much at the groun"breakin," he told Scott as they approached the roped-off area. This had been kept clear, but there was a crowd big enough to stretch almost to the parking lot waiting beyond it. An even larger one had trailed Dashmiel and the Landons from Inman Hall. Soon the two would merge, and Lisey-who ordinarily didn"t mind crowds any more than she minded turbulence at twenty thousand feet-didn"t like this, either. It occurred to her that so many people on a day this hot might suck all the air out of the air. Stupid idea, but- "It"s mighty hot, even fo" Nashville in August, wouldn"t you say so, Toneh?"
Tony Eddington nodded obligingly but said nothing. His only comment so far had been to identify the tirelessly dancing photographer as Stefan Queensland of the Nashville American- also of U-Tenn Nashville, cla.s.s of "85. "Hope y"all will help him out if y"can," Tony Eddington had said to Scott as they began their walk over here.
"Yew"ll finish yoah remarks," Dashmiel said, "and there"ll be anothuh round of applause. Then, Mistuh Landon-"
"Scott."
Dashmiel had flashed a rictus grin, there for just a moment. "Then, Scott, yew"ll go on and toin that all impawtant foist shovelful of oith." Toin? Foist? Oith? Lisey mused, and it came to her that Dashmiel was very likely saying turn that all-important first shovelful of earth in his only semibelievable Louisiana drawl.
"All that sounds fine to me," Scott replied, and that was all he had time for, because they had arrived.
5.
Perhaps it"s a holdover from the broken toothgla.s.s-that omenish feeling-but the plot of trucked-in dirt looks like a grave to Lisey: XL size, as if for a giant. The two crowds collapse into one around it and create that breathless suckoven feel at the center. A campus security guard now stands at each corner of the ornamental velvet-rope barrier, beneath which Dashmiel, Scott, and "Toneh" Eddington have ducked. Queensland, the photographer, dances relentlessly with his big Nikon held up in front of his face. Paging Weegee, Lisey thinks, and realizes she envies him. He is so free, flitting gnatlike in the heat; he is twenty-five and all his s.h.i.t still works. Dashmiel, however, is looking at him with growing impatience which Queensland affects not to see until he has exactly the shot he wants. Lisey has an idea it"s the one of Scott alone, his foot on the silly silver spade, his hair blowing back in the breeze. In any case, Weegee Junior at last lowers his big camera and steps back to the edge of the crowd. And it"s while following Queensland"s progress with her somewhat wistful regard that Lisey first sees the madman. He has the look, one local reporter will later write, "of John Lennon in the last days of his romance with heroin-hollow, watchful eyes at odd and disquieting contrast to his otherwise childishly wistful face."
At the moment, Lisey notes little more than the guy"s tumbled blond hair. She has little interest in people-watching today. She just wants this to be over so she can find a bathroom in the English Department over there across the parking lot and pull her rebellious underwear out of the crack of her a.s.s. She has to make water, too, but right now that"s pretty much secondary.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" Dashmiel says in a carrying voice. "It is mah distinct pleasure to introduce Mr. Scott Landon, author of the Pulitzer Prizewinnin Relics and the National Book Awardwinnin The Coster"s Daughter. He"s come all the way from Maine with his lovely wife Lisa to inaugurate construction- that"s right, it"s finally happ"nin-on our very own Shipman LAH-bree. Scott Landon, folks, let"s hear y"all give him a good Nashveel welcome!"
The crowd applauds at once, con brio. The lovely wife joins in, patting her palms together, looking at Dashmiel and thinking, He won the NBA for The Coaster"s Daughter. That"s Coaster, not Coster. And I think you know it. I think you smucked it up on purpose. Why don"t you like him, you petty man?
Then she happens to glance beyond him and this time she really does notice Gerd Allen Cole, just standing there with all that fabulous blond hair tumbled down to his eyebrows and the sleeves of a white shirt far too big for him rolled up to his substandard biceps. The tail of his shirt is out and dangles almost to the whitened knees of his jeans. On his feet are engineer boots with side-buckles. To Lisey they look dreadfully hot. Instead of applauding, Blondie has clasped his hands rather prissily and there"s a spooky-sweet smile on his lips, which are moving slightly, as if in silent prayer. His eyes are fixed on Scott and they never waver. Lisey pegs Blondie at once. There are guys-they are almost always guys- she thinks of as Scott"s Deep s.p.a.ce Cowboys. Deep s.p.a.ce Cowboys have a lot to say. They want to grab Scott by the arm and tell him they understand the secret messages in his books; they understand that the books are really guides to G.o.d, Satan, or possibly the Gnostic Gospels. Deep s.p.a.ce Cowboys might be on about Scientology or numerology or (in one case) The Cosmic Lies of Brigham Young. Sometimes they want to talk about other worlds. Two years ago a Deep s.p.a.ce Cowboy hitchhiked all the way from Texas to Maine in order to talk to Scott about what he called leavings. These were most commonly found, he said, on uninhabited islands in the southern hemisphere. He knew they were what Scott had been writing about in Relics. He showed Scott the underlined words that proved it. The guy made Lisey very nervous-there was a certain wall-eyed look of absence about him-but Scott talked to him, gave him a beer, discussed the Easter Island monoliths with him for a bit, took a couple of his pamphlets, signed the kid a fresh copy of Relics, and sent him on his way, happy. Happy? Dancing on the smucking atmosphere. When Scott"s got it strapped on tight, he"s amazing. No other word will do.
The thought of actual violence-that Blondie means to pull a Mark David Chapman on her husband-does not occur to Lisey. My mind doesn"t run that way, she might have said. I just didn"t like the way his lips were moving.
Scott acknowledges the applause-and a few raucous rebel yells- with the Scott Landon grin that has appeared on millions of book-jackets, all the time resting one foot on the shoulder of the silly shovel while the blade sinks slowly into the imported earth. He lets the applause run for ten or fifteen seconds, guided by his intuition (and his intuition is rarely wrong), then waves it off. And it goes. At once. Foom. Pretty cool, in a slightly scary way.
When he speaks, his voice seems nowhere near as loud as Dashmiel"s, but Lisey knows that even with no mike or batterypowered bullhorn (the lack of either here this afternoon is probably someone"s oversight), it will carry all the way to the back of the crowd. And the crowd is straining to hear every word. A Famous Man has come among them. A Thinker and a Writer. He will now scatter pearls of wisdom.
Pearls before swine, Lisey thinks. Sweaty swine, at that. But didn"t her father tell her once that pigs don"t sweat? Across from her, Blondie carefully pushes his tumbled hair back from his fine white brow. His hands are as white as his forehead and Lisey thinks, There"s one piggy who keeps to the house a lot. A stay-at-home swine, and why not? He"s got all sorts of strange ideas to catch up on.
She shifts from one foot to the other, and the silk of her underwear all but squeaks in the crack of her a.s.s. Oh, maddening! She forgets Blondie again in trying to calculate if she might not...while Scott"s making his remarks...very surrept.i.tiously, mind you...
Good Ma speaks up. Dour. Three words. Brooking no argument. No, Lisey. Wait.
"Ain"t gonna sermonize, me," Scott says, and she recognizes the patois of Gully Foyle, the main character of Alfred Bester"s The Stars My Destination. His favorite novel. "Too hot for sermons."
"Beam us up, Scotty!" someone in the fifth or sixth row on the parking-lot side of the crowd yells exuberantly. The crowd laughs and cheers.
"Can"t do it, brother," Scott says. "Transporters are broken and we"re all out of lithium crystals."
The crowd, being new to the riposte as well as the sally (Lisey has heard both at least fifty times), roars its approval and applauds. Across the way Blondie smiles thinly, sweatlessly, and grips his delicate left wrist with his longfingered right hand. Scott takes his foot off the spade, not as if he"s grown impatient with it but as if he has-for the moment, at least-found another use for it. And it seems he has. She watches, not without fascination, for this is Scott at his best, just winging it.
"It"s nineteen-eighty-eight and the world has grown dark," he says. He slips the ceremonial spade"s short wooden handle easily through his loosely curled fist. The scoop winks sun in Lisey"s eyes once, then is mostly hidden by the sleeve of Scott"s lightweight jacket. With the scoop and blade hidden, he uses the slim wooden handle as a pointer, ticking off trouble and tragedy in the air in front of him.
"In March, Oliver North and Vice Admiral John Poindexter are indicted on conspiracy charges-it"s the wonderful world of Iran-Contra, where guns rule politics and money rules the world.
"On Gibraltar, members of Britain"s Special Air Service kill three unarmed IRA members. Maybe they should change the SAS motto from "Who dares, wins" to "Shoot first, ask questions later.""
There"s a ripple of laughter from the crowd. Roger Dashmiel looks hot and put out with this unexpected current-events lesson, but Tony Eddington is finally taking notes.
"Or make it ours. In July we goof and shoot down an Iranian airliner with two hundred and ninety civilians on board. Sixty-six of them are children.
"The AIDS epidemic kills thousands, sickens...well, we don"t know, do we? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?
"The world grows dark. Mr. Yeats"s blood-tide is at the flood. It rises. It rises."
He looks down at nil but graying earth, and Lisey is suddenly terrified that he"s seeing it, the thing with the endless patchy piebald side, that he is going to go off, perhaps even come to the break she knows he is afraid of (in truth she"s as afraid of it as he is). Before her heart can do more than begin to speed up, he raises his head, grins like a kid at a county fair, and shoots the handle of the spade through his fist to the halfway point. It"s a showy poolshark move, and the folks at the front of the crowd go oooh. But Scott"s not done. Holding the spade out before him, he rotates the handle nimbly between his fingers, accelerating it into an unlikely spin. It"s as dazzling as a baton-twirler"s maneuver-because of the silver scoop swinging in the sun-and sweetly unexpected. She"s been married to him since 1979 and had no idea he had such a sublimely cool move in his repertoire. (How many years does it take, she"ll wonder two nights later, lying in bed alone in her substandard motel room and listening to dogs bark beneath a hot orange moon, before the simple stupid weight of acc.u.mulating days finally sucks all the wow out of a marriage? How lucky do you have to be for your love to outrace your time?) The silver bowl of the rapidly swinging spade sends a Wake up! Wake up! sunflash across the heat-dazed, sweat-sticky surface of the crowd. Lisey"s husband is suddenly Scott the Pitchman, and she has never been so relieved to see that totally untrustworthy honey, I"m hip huckster"s grin on his face. He has b.u.mmed them out; now he will try to sell them a throat-ful of dubious get-well medicine, the stuff with which he hopes to send them home. And she thinks they will buy, hot August afternoon or not. When he"s like this, Scott could sell Frigidaires to Inuits, as the saying is...and G.o.d bless the language pool where we all go down to drink, as Scott himself would no doubt add (and has).
"But if every book is a little light in that darkness-and so I believe, so I must believe, corny or not, for I write the d.a.m.ned things, don"t I?-then every library is a grand old ever-burning bonfire around which ten thousand people come to stand and warm themselves every day and night. Fahrenheit four-fifty-one ain"t in it. Try Fahrenheit four thousand, folks, because we"re not talking kitchen ovens here, we"re talking big old blast-furnaces of the brain, red-hot smelters of the intellect. We celebrate the laying of such a grand fire this afternoon, and I"m honored to be a part of it. Here is where we spit in the eye of forgetfulness and kick ignorance in his wrinkled old cojones. Hey photographer!"
Stefan Queensland snaps to, smiling.
Scott, also smiling, says: "Get one of this. The top bra.s.s may not want to use it, but you"ll like it in your portfolio, I"ll bet."
Scott holds the ornamental tool out as if he intends to twirl it again. The crowd gives a hopeful little gasp, but this time he"s only teasing. He slides his left hand down to the spade"s collar, digs in, and drives the spade-blade deep, dousing its hot glitter in earth. He tosses its load of dirt aside and cries: "I declare the Shipman Library construction site OPEN FOR BUSINESS!"
The applause that greets this makes the previous bursts sound like the sort of polite patter you might hear at a prep-school tennis match. Lisey doesn"t know if young Mr. Queensland caught the ceremonial first scoop, but when Scott pumps the silly little silver spade at the sky like an Olympic hero, Queensland doc.u.ments that one for sure, laughing behind his camera as he snaps it. Scott holds the pose for a moment (Lisey happens to glance at Dashmiel and catches that gentleman in the act of rolling his eyes at Mr. Eddington- Toneh). Then he lowers the spade to port arms and holds it that way, grinning. Sweat has popped on his cheeks and forehead in fine beads. The applause begins to taper off. The crowd thinks he"s done. Lisey thinks he"s only hit second gear.
When he knows they can hear him again, Scott digs in for an encore scoop. "This one"s for Wild Bill Yeats!" he calls. "The bull-goose loony! And this one"s for Poe, also known as Baltimore Eddie! This one"s for Alfie Bester, and if you haven"t read him, you ought to be ashamed!" He"s sounding out of breath, and Lisey is starting to feel a bit alarmed. It"s so hot. She"s trying to remember what he had for lunch-was it something heavy or light?
"And this one..." He dives the spade into what"s now a respectable little divot and holds up the final dip of earth. The front of his shirt has darkened with sweat. "Tell you what, why don"t you think of whoever wrote your first good book? I"m talking about the one that got under you like a magic carpet and lifted you right off the ground. Do you know what I"m talking about?"
They know. It"s on every face that faces his.
"The one that, in a perfect world, you"d check out first when the Shipman Library finally opens its doors. This one"s for the one who wrote that." He gives the spade a final valedictory shake, then turns to Dashmiel, who should be pleased with Scott"s showmanship-asked to play by ear, Scott has played brilliantly-and who instead only looks hot and p.i.s.sed off. "I think we"re done here," he says, and tries to hand Dashmiel the spade.
"No, that"s yoahs," Dashmiel says. "As a keepsake, and a token of ouah thanks. Along with yoah check, of co"se." His rictus smile comes and goes in a fitful cramp. "Shall we go and grab ourse"fs a little air-conditionin?"
"By all means," Scott says, looking bemused, and then hands the spade to Lisey, as he has handed her so many unwanted mementos over the past twelve years of his celebrity: everything from ceremonial oars and Boston Red Sox hats encased in Lucite cubes to the masks of Comedy and Tragedy...but mostly pen-and-pencil sets. So many pen-and-pencil sets. Waterman, Scripto, Schaeffer, Mont Blanc, you name it. She looks at the spade"s glittering silver scoop, as bemused as her beloved (he is still her beloved). There are a few flecks of dirt in the incised letters reading COMMENCEMENT, SHIPMAN LIBRARY, and Lisey blows them off. Where will such an unlikely artifact end up? In this summer of 1988 Scott"s study is still under construction, although the address works and he"s already begun storing stuff in the stalls and cubbies of the barn below. Across many of the cardboard boxes he"s scrawled SCOTT! THE EARLY YEARS! in big strokes of a black felt-tip pen. Most likely the silver spade will wind up with this stuff, wasting its gleams in the gloom. Maybe she"ll put it there herself, then tag it SCOTT! THE MIDDLE YEARS! as a kind of joke...or a prize. The kind of goofy, unexpected gift Scott calls a- But Dashmiel is on the move. Without another word-as if he"s disgusted with this whole business and determined to put paid to it as soon as possible-he tromps across the rectangle of fresh earth, detouring around the divot which Scott"s last big shovelful of earth has almost succeeded in promoting to a hole. The heels of Dashmiel"s shiny black I"m-an-a.s.sistantprofessor-on-my-way-up-and-don"t-you-forget-it shoes sink deep into the earth with each heavy step. Dashmiel has to fight for balance, and Lisey guesses this does nothing to improve his mood. Tony Eddington falls in beside him, looking thoughtful. Scott pauses a moment, as if not quite sure what"s up, then also starts to move, slipping between his host and his temporary biographer. Lisey follows, as is her wont. He delighted her into forgetting her omenish feeling (broken gla.s.s in the morning) for a little while, but now it"s back (broken hearts at night) and hard. She thinks it must be why all these details look so big to her. She"s sure the world will come back into more normal focus once she reaches the air-conditioning. And once she"s gotten that pesty swatch of cloth out of her b.u.t.t.
This is almost over, she reminds herself, and-how funny life can be-it is at this precise moment when the day begins to derail.
A campus security cop who is older than the others on this detail (eighteen years later she"ll identify him from Queensland"s news photo as Captain S. Heffernan) holds up the rope barrier on the far side of the ceremonial rectangle of earth. All she notices about him is that he"s wearing what her husband might have called a puffickly huh-yooge batch of orifice on his khaki shirt. Her husband and his flanking escorts duck beneath the rope in a move so synchronized it could have been ch.o.r.eographed.
The crowd is moving toward the parking lot with theprinc.i.p.als...with one exception. Blondie isn"t moving toward the parking lot. Blondie is standing still on the parking lot side of the commencement patch. A few people b.u.mp him and he"s forced backward after all, back onto the baked dead earth where the Shipman Library will stand come 1991 (if the chief contractor"s promises can be believed, that is). Then he"s actually moving forward against the tide, his hands coming unclasped so he can push a girl out of his way to his left and then a guy out of his way on the right. His mouth is still moving. At first Lisey again thinks he"s mouthing a silent prayer, and then she hears the broken gibberish-like something a bad James Joyce imitator might write-and for the first time she becomes actively alarmed. Blondie"s somehow weird blue eyes are fixed on her husband, there and nowhere else, but Lisey understands that he doesn"t want to discuss leavings or the hidden religious subtexts of Scott"s novels. This is no mere Deep s.p.a.ce Cowboy.
"The churchbells came down Angel Street," says Blondie-says Gerd Allen Cole-who, it will turn out, spent most of his seventeenth year in an expensive Virginia mental inst.i.tution and was released as cured and good to go. Lisey gets every word. They cut through the rising chatter of the crowd, that hum of conversation, like a knife through some light, sweet cake. "That rungut sound, like rain on a tin roof! Dirty flowers, dirty and sweet, that"s how the churchbells sound in my bas.e.m.e.nt as if you didn"t know!"
A hand that seems all long pale fingers goes to the tails of the white shirt and Lisey understands exactly what"s going on here. It comes to her in shorthand TV images (George Wallace Arthur Bremmer) from her childhood. She looks toward Scott but Scott is talking to Dashmiel. Dashmiel is looking at Stefan Queensland, the irritated frown on Dashmiel"s face saying he"s had Quite! Enough! Photographs! For One Day! Thank You! Queensland is looking down at his camera, making some adjustment, and Anthony "Toneh" Eddington is making a note on his pad. She spies the older campus security cop, he of the khaki uniform and the puffickly huh-yooge batch of orifice; he is looking at the crowd, but it"s the wrong smucking part. It"s impossible that she can see all these folks and Blondie too, but she can, she does, she can even see Scott"s lips forming the words think that went pretty well, which is a testing comment he often makes after events like this, and oh G.o.d, oh Jesus Mary and JoJo the Carpenter, she tries to scream out Scott"s name and warn him but her throat locks up, becomes a spitless dry socket, she can"t say anything, and Blondie"s got the bottom of his great big white shirt hoicked all the way up, and underneath are empty belt-loops and a flat hairless belly, a trout belly, and lying against that white skin is the b.u.t.t of a gun which he now lays hold of and she hears him say, closing in on Scott from the right, "If it closes the lips of the bells, it will have done the job. I"m sorry, Papa."
She"s running forward, or trying to, but she"s got such a puffickly huh-yooge case of gluefoot and someone shoulders in front of her, a strapping coed with her hair tied up in a wide white silk ribbon with NASHVILLE printed on it in blue letters outlined in red (see how she sees everything?), and Lisey pushes her with the hand holding the silver spade, and the coed caws "Hey!" except it sounds slower and draggier than that, like Hey recorded at 45 rpm and then played back at 331/3 or maybe even 16. The whole world has gone to hot tar and for an eternity the strapping coed with NASHVILLE in her hair blocks Scott from her view; all she can see is Dashmiel"s shoulder. And Tony Eddington, leafing back through the pages of his d.a.m.n notebook.
Then the coed finally clears Lisey"s field of vision, and as Dashmiel and her husband come into full view again, Lisey sees the English teacher"s head snap up and his body go on red alert. It happens in an instant. Lisey sees what Dashmiel sees. She sees Blondie with the gun (it will prove to be a Ladysmith .22 made in Korea and bought at a garage sale in South Nashville for thirty-seven dollars) pointed at her husband, who has at last seen the danger and stopped. In Lisey-time, all this happens very, very slowly. She does not actually see the bullet fly out of the .22"s muzzle-not quite- but she hears Scott say, very mildly, seeming to drawl the words over the course of ten or even fifteen seconds: "Let"s talk about it, son, right?" And then she sees fire bloom from the gun"s nickel-plated muzzle in an uneven yellow-white corsage. She hears a pop-stupid, insignificant, the sound of someone breaking a paper lunchsack with the palm of his hand. She sees Dashmiel, that southern-fried chickens.h.i.t, go jackrabbitting off to his immediate left. She sees Scott buck backward on his heels. At the same time his chin thrusts forward. The combination is weird and graceful, like a dancefloor move. A black hole blinks open on the right side of his summer sportcoat. "Son, you honest-to-G.o.d don"t want to do that," he says in his drawling Lisey-time voice, and even in Lisey-time she can hear how his voice grows thinner on every word until he sounds like a test pilot in a high-alt.i.tude chamber. Yet Lisey thinks he still doesn"t know he"s been shot. She"s almost positive. His sportcoat swings open like a gate as he puts his hand out in a commanding stop-this gesture, and she realizes two things simultaneously. The first is that the shirt inside his coat is turning red. The second is that she has at last broken into some semblance of a run.
"I got to end all this ding-dong," says Gerd Allen Cole with perfect fretful clarity. "I got to end all this ding-dong for the freesias." And Lisey is suddenly sure that once Scott is dead, once the damage is done, Blondie will either kill himself or pretend to try. For the time being, however, he has this business to finish. The business of the writer. Blondie turns his wrist slightly so that the smoking barrel of the Ladysmith .22 points at the left side of Scott"s chest; in Lisey-time the move is smooth and slow. He has done the lung; now he"ll do the heart. Lisey knows she can"t allow that to happen. If her husband is to have any chance at all, this lethal goofball mustn"t be allowed to put any more lead into him.
As if repudiating her, Gerd Allen Cole says, "It never ends until you go down. You"re responsible for all these repet.i.tions, old boy. You are h.e.l.l, you are a monkey, and now you are my monkey!"
This speech is the closest he comes to making sense, and making it gives Lisey just enough time to first wind up with the silver spade-the body knows its business and her hands have already found their position near the top of the thing"s forty-inch handle-and then swing it. Still, it"s close. If it had been a horse race, the tote-board would undoubtedly have flashed the HOLD TICKETS WAIT FOR PHOTO message. But when the race is between a man with a gun and a woman with a shovel, you don"t need a photo. In slowed-down Lisey-time she sees the silver scoop strike the gun, driving it upward just as that corsage of fire blooms again (she can see only part of it this time, and the muzzle is completely hidden by the blade of the spade). She sees the business-end of the ceremonial shovel carry on forward and upward as the second shot goes harmlessly into the hot August sky. She sees the gun fly loose, and there"s time to think Holy smuck! I really put a charge into this one! before the spade connects with Blondie"s face. His hand is still in there (three of those long slim fingers will be broken), but the spade"s silver bowl connects solidly just the same, breaking Cole"s nose, shattering his right cheekbone and the bony orbit around his staring right eye, shattering nine teeth as well. A Mafia goon with a set of bra.s.s knuckles couldn"t have done better.
And now-still slow, still in Lisey-time-the elements of Stefan Queensland"s award-winning photograph are a.s.sembling themselves.
Captain S. Heffernan has seen what"s happening only a second or two after Lisey, but he also has to deal with the bystander problem-in his case a fat bepimpled fella wearing baggy Bermuda shorts and a tee-shirt with Scott Landon"s smiling face on it. Captain Heffernan shunts this young fella aside with one muscular shoulder.
By then Blondie is sinking to the ground (and out of the forthcoming photo"s field) with a dazed expression in one eye and blood pouring from the other. Blood is also gushing from the hole which at some future date may again serve as his mouth. Heffernan completely misses the actual hit.
Roger Dashmiel, maybe remembering that he"s supposed to be the master of ceremonies and not a big old bunny-rabbit, turns back toward Eddington, his protege, and Landon, histroublesome guest of honor, just in time to take his place as a staring, slightly blurred face in the forthcoming photo"s background.
Scott Landon, meanwhile, shock-walks right out of the awardwinning photo. He walks as though unmindful of the heat, striding toward the parking lot and Nelson Hall beyond, which is home of the English Department and mercifully airconditioned. He walks with surprising briskness, at least to begin with, and a goodly part of the crowd moves with him, unaware for the most part that anything has happened. Lisey is both infuriated and unsurprised. After all, how many of them saw Blondie with that c.u.n.tish little pistol in his hand? How many of them recognized the burst-paper-bag sounds as gunshots? The hole in Scott"s coat could be a smudge of dirt from his shoveling ch.o.r.e, and the blood that has soaked his shirt is as yet invisible to the outside world. He"s now making a strange whistling noise each time he inhales, but how many of them hear that? No, it"s her they"re looking at-some of them, anyway-the crazy chick who just inexplicably hauled off and whacked some guy in the face with the ceremonial silver spade. A lot of them are actually grinning, as if they believe it"s all part of a show being put on for their benefit, the Scott Landon Roadshow. Well, f.u.c.k them, and f.u.c.k Dashmiel, and f.u.c.k the day-late and dollar-short campus cop with his puffickly huh-yooge batch of orifice. All she cares about now is Scott. She thrusts the shovel out not quite blindly to her right and Eddington, their rent-a-Boswell, takes it. It"s either that or get hit in the nose with it. Then, still in that horrible slo-mo, Lisey runs after her husband, whose briskness evaporates as soon as he reaches the suck-oven heat of the parking lot. Behind her, Tony Eddington is peering at the silver spade as if it might be an artillery sh.e.l.l, a radiation detector, or the leaving of some great departed race, and to him comes Captain S. Heffernan with his mistaken a.s.sumption of who today"s hero must be. Lisey is unaware of this part, will know none of it until she sees Queensland"s photograph eighteen years later, would care about none of it even if she did know; all her attention is fixed on her husband, who has just gone down on his hands and knees in the parking lot. She tries to repudiate Lisey-time, to run faster. And that is when Queensland snaps his picture, catching just one half of one shoe on the far righthand side of the frame, something he will not realize then, or ever.
6.
The Pulitzer Prize winner, the enfant terrible who published his first novel at the tender age of twenty-two, goes down. Scott Landon hits the deck, as the saying is.
Lisey makes a supreme effort to pull out of the maddening time-glue in which she seems to be trapped. She must get free because if she doesn"t reach him before the crowd surrounds him and shuts her out, they will very likely kill him with their concern. With smotherlove.
-Heeeeee"s hurrrrrt, someone shouts.
She screams at herself in her own head (strap it on STRAP IT ON RIGHT NOW) and that finally does it. The glue in which she has been packed is gone. Suddenly she is knifing forward; all the world is noise and heat and sweat and jostling bodies. She blesses the speedy reality of it even as she uses her left hand to grab the left cheek of her a.s.s and pull, raking the G.o.ddam underwear out of the crack of her G.o.ddam a.s.s, there, at least one thing about this wrong and broken day is now mended.
A coed in the kind of sh.e.l.l top where the straps tie at the shoulders in big floppy bows threatens to block her narrowing path to Scott, but Lisey ducks beneath her and hits the hottop. She won"t be aware of her sc.r.a.ped and blistered knees until much later-until the hospital, in fact, where a kindly paramedic will notice and put lotion on them, something so cool and soothing it will make her cry with relief. But that is for later. Now it might as well be just her and Scott alone on the edge of this hot parking lot, this terrible black-andyellow ballroom floor which must be a hundred and thirty degrees at least, maybe a hundred and fifty. Her mind tries to present her with the image of an egg frying sunnyside up in Good Ma"s old black iron spider and Lisey blocks it out.
Scott is looking at her.
He gazes up and now his face is waxy pale except for the sooty smudges forming beneath his hazel eyes and the fat string of blood which has begun to flow from the right side of his mouth and down along his jaw. "Lisey!" That thin, whooping highalt.i.tude-chamber voice. "Did that guy really shoot me?"
"Don"t try to talk." She puts a hand on his chest. His shirt, oh dear G.o.d, is soaked with blood, and beneath it she can feel his heart running along so fast and light; it is not the heartbeat of a human being but of a bird. Pigeon-pulse, she thinks, and that"s when the girl with the floppy bows tied on her shoulders falls on top of her. She would land on Scott but Lisey instinctively shields him, taking the brunt of the girl"s weight ("Hey! s.h.i.t! f.u.c.k!" the startled girl cries out) with her back; that weight is there for only a second, and then gone. Lisey sees the girl shoot her hands out to break her fall-oh, the divine reflexes of the young, she thinks, as though she herself were ancient instead of just thirty-one-and the girl is successful, but then she is yipping "Ow, ow, OW!" as the asphalt heats her skin.
"Lisey," Scott whispers, and oh Christ how his breath screams when he pulls it in, like wind in a chimney.
"Who pushed me?" the girl with the bows on her shoulders is demanding. She"s a-hunker, hair from a busted ponytail in her eyes, crying in shock, pain, and embarra.s.sment.
Lisey leans close to Scott. The heat of him terrifies her and fills her with pity deeper than any she thought it was possible to feel. He is actually shivering in the heat. Awkwardly, using only one arm, she strips off her jacket. "Yes, you"ve been shot. So just be quiet and don"t try to-"
"I"m so hot," he says, and begins to shiver harder. What comes next, convulsions? His hazel eyes stare up into her blue ones. Blood runs from the corner of his mouth. She can smell it. Even the collar of his shirt is soaking in red. His tea-cure wouldn"t be any good here, she thinks, not even sure what it is she"s thinking about. Too much blood this time. Too smucking much. "I"m so hot, Lisey, please give me ice."
"I will," she says, and puts her jacket under his head. "I will, Scott." Thank G.o.d he"s wearing his sportcoat, she thinks, and then has an idea. She grabs the hunkering, crying girl by the arm. "What"s your name?"
The girl stares as if she were mad, but answers the question. "Lisa Lemke."
Another Lisa, small world, Lisey thinks but does not say. What she says is, "My husband"s been shot, Lisa. Can you go over there to..." She cannot remember the name of the building, only its function. "...to the English Department and call an ambulance? Dial 911-"
"Ma"am? Mrs. Landon?" This is the campus security cop with the puffickly huh-yooge batch, making his way through the crowd with a lot of help from his meaty elbows. He squats beside her and his knees pop. Louder than Blondie"s pistol, Lisey thinks. He"s got a walkie-talkie in one hand. He speaks slowly and carefully, as though to a distressed child. "I"ve called the campus infirmary, Mrs. Landon. They are rolling their ambulance, which will take your husband to Nashville Memorial. Do you understand me?"
She does, and her grat.i.tude (the cop has made up the dollar short he owed and a few more, in Lisey"s opinion) is almost as deep as the pity she feels for her husband, lying on the simmering pavement and trembling like a distempered dog. She nods, weeping the first of what will be many tears before she gets Scott back to Maine-not on a Delta flight but in a private plane and with a private nurse on board, and with another ambulance and another private nurse to meet them at the Portland Jetport"s Civil Aviation terminal. Now she turns back to the Lemke girl and says, "He"s burning up-is there ice, honey? Can you think of anywhere that there might be ice? Anywhere at all?"
She says this without much hope, and is therefore amazed when Lisa Lemke nods at once. "There"s a snack center with a c.o.ke machine right over there." She points in the direction of Nelson Hall, which Lisey can"t see. All she can see is a crowding forest of bare legs, some hairy, some smooth, some tanned, some sunburned. She realizes they"re completely hemmed in, that she"s tending her fallen husband in a slot the shape of a large vitamin pill or cold capsule, and feels a touch of crowd-panic. Is the word for that agoraphobia? Scott would know.
"If you can get him some ice, please do," Lisey says. "And hurry." She turns to the campus security cop, who appears to be taking Scott"s pulse-a completely useless activity, in Lisey"s opinion. Right now it"s down to either alive or dead. "Can you make them move back?" she asks. Almost pleads. "It"s so hot, and-"
Before she can finish he"s up like Jack from his box, yelling "Move it back! Let this girl through! Move it back and let this girl through! Let him breathe, folks, what do you say?"
The crowd shuffles back...very reluctantly, it seems to Lisey. They don"t want to miss any of the blood, it seems to her.
The heat bakes up from the pavement. She has half-expected to get used to it, the way you get used to a hot shower, but that isn"t happening. She listens for the howl of the approaching ambulance and hears nothing. Then she does. She hears Scott, saying her name. Croaking her name. At the same time he twitches at the side of the sweat-soaked sh.e.l.l top she"s wearing (her bra now stands out against the silk as stark as a swollen tattoo). She looks down and sees something she doesn"t like at all. Scott is smiling. The blood has coated his lips a rich candy red, top to bottom, side to side, and the smile actually looks more like the grin of a clown. No one loves a clown at midnight, she thinks, and wonders where that came from. It will only be at some point during the long and mostly sleepless night ahead of her, listening to what will seem like every dog in Nashville bark at the hot August moon, that she"ll remember it was the epigram of Scott"s third novel, the only one both she and the critics hated, the one that made them rich. Empty Devils.
Scott continues to twitch at her blue silk top, his eyes still so brilliant and fevery in their blackening sockets. He has something to say, and-reluctantly-she leans down to hear it. He pulls air in a little at a time, in half-gasps. It is a noisy, frightening process. The smell of blood is even stronger up close. Nasty. A mineral smell.
It"s death. It"s the smell of death.
As if to ratify this, Scott says: "It"s very close, honey. I can"t see it, but I..." Another long, screaming intake of breath. "I hear it taking its meal. And grunting." Smiling that b.l.o.o.d.y clown-smile as he says it.
"Scott, I don"t know what you"re talk-"