Christine (52 page)

I hesitated. Did I tell him that his brother had come back from the dead? That not even the grave had been able to end his hate of the shitters? Did I tell him he had possessed my friend, had picked him out as unerringly as Arnie had picked out Christine? Did we talk about mortality, and time, and rancid love?

“Mr. Guilder? Are you there?”

“I've got a problem, Mr. LeBay. And I don't know exactly how to tell you about it. It concerns your brother.”

Something new came into his voice then, something tight and controlled. “I don't know what sort of a problem you could have that would concern him. Rollie's dead.”

“That's just it.” Now I was unable to control my own voice. It trembled up to a higher octave and then drifted back down again. “I don't think he is.”

“What are you talking about?” His voice was taut, accusing . . . and fearful. “If this is your idea of a joke, I assure you it's in the poorest possible taste.”

“No joke. Just let me tell you some of the stuff that's happened since your brother died.”

“Mr. Guilder, I have several sets of papers to correct, and a novel I want to finish, and I really don't have time to indulge in—”

“Please,”
I said. “Please, Mr. LeBay, please help me, and help my friend.”

There was a long, long pause, and then LeBay sighed. “Tell your tale,” he said, and then, after a brief pause, he added, “Goddamn you.”

• • •

I passed the story along to him by way of modern long-distance cable; I could imagine my voice going through computerized switching stations full of miniaturized circuits, under snow-blanketed wheat-fields, and finally into the ear of this man.

I told him about Arnie's trouble with Repperton, Buddy's expulsion and revenge; I told him about the death of Moochie Welch; what had happened at Squantic Hills; what had happened during the Christmas Eve storm. I told him about windshield cracks that seemed to run backward and an odometer that did for sure. I told him about the radio that seemed to receive only WDIL, the oldies station, no matter where you set it—that brought a soft grunt of surprise from George LeBay. I told him about the handwriting on my casts, and how the one Arnie had done on Thanksgiving night matched his brother's signature on Christine's original registration form. I told him about Arnie's constant use of the word “shitters.” The way he had started combing his hair like Fabian, or one of those other fifties greaseballs. I told him everything, in fact, except what had happened to me on my ride home early on New Year's morning. I had intended to, but I simply could not do it. I never let that out of myself until I wrote all of this down four years later.

When I finished, there was a silence on the line.

“Mr. LeBay? Are you still there?”

“I'm here,” he said finally. “Mr. Guilder—Dennis—I don't intend to offend you, but you must realize that what you are suggesting goes far beyond any possible psychic phenomena and extends into . . .” He trailed off.

“Madness?”

“That isn't the word I would have used. From what you say, you were involved in a terrible football accident. You were in the hospital for two months, and in great pain for some of that time. Now isn't it possible that your imagination—”

“Mr. LeBay,” I said, “did your brother ever have a saying about the little tramp?”

“What?”

“The little tramp. Like when you throw a ball of paper at the wastebasket and hit it, you say ‘Two points.' Only instead of that, ‘Watch me put it up the little tramp's ass.' Did your brother ever say that?”

“How did you know that?” And then, without giving me time to answer: “He used the phrase on one of the occasions when you met him, didn't he?”

“No.”

“Mr. Guilder, you're a liar.”

I said nothing. I was shaking, weak-kneed. No adult had ever said that to me in my whole life.

“Dennis, I'm sorry. But my brother is dead. He was an unpleasant, possibly even an evil human being, but he is dead and all of these morbid fancies and fantasies—”

“Who was the little tramp?” I managed.

Silence.

“Was it Charlie Chaplin?”

I didn't think he was going to reply at all. Then, at last, heavily, he said, “Only at second hand. He meant Hitler. There was a passing resemblance between Hitler and Chaplin's little tramp. Chaplin made a movie called
The Great Dictator.
You've probably never even seen it. It was a common enough name for him during the war years, at any rate. You would be much too young to remember. But it means nothing.”

It was my turn to remain silent.

“It means nothing!” he shouted. “Nothing! It's vapors and suggestions, nothing more! You must see this!”

“There are seven people dead over here in western Pennsylvania,” I said. “That's not just vapors. There are the signatures on my casts. They're not vapors, either. I saved them, Mr. LeBay. Let me send them to you. Look at them and tell me if one of them isn't your brother's handwriting.”

“It could be a knowing or unknowing forgery.”

“If you believe that, get a handwriting expert. Ill pay for it.”

“You could do that yourself.”

“Mr. LeBay,” I said, “I don't need any more convincing.”

“But what do you want from me? To share your fantasy? I won't do that. My brother is dead. His car is just a car.” He was lying. I felt it. Even through the telephone I felt it.

“I want you to explain something you said to me that night we talked.”

“What would that be?” He sounded wary.

I licked my lips. “You said he was obsessed and angry, but he wasn't a monster. At least, you said, you didn't think he was. Then it seemed like you changed the subject completely . . . but the more I think about it, the more I think you didn't change the subject at all. The next thing you said was that he never put a mark on either of them.”

“Dennis, really. I—”

“Look, if you were going to say something, for Christ's sake, say it now!” I cried. My voice cracked. I wiped my forehead, and my hand came away slimy with sweat. “This is no easier for me than it is for you, Arnie's fixated on this girl, her name is Leigh Cabot, only I don't think it's Arnie who's fixated on her at all, I think it's your brother, your dead brother,
now talk to me, please!”

He sighed.

“Talk to you?” he said.
“Talk
to you? To talk about these old events . . . no, these old suspicions . . . that would be almost the same as to shake a sleeping fiend, Dennis. Please, I know nothing.”

I could have told him the fiend was already awake, but he knew that.

“Tell me what you suspect.”

“I'll call you back.”

“Mr. LeBay . . . please . . .”

“I'll call you back,” he said. “I've got to call my sister Marcia in Colorado.”

“If it will help, I'll call—”

“No, she would never talk to you. We've only talked of it to each other once or twice, if that. I hope your conscience is clear on this matter, Dennis. Because you are asking us to rip open old scars and make them bleed again. So I'll ask you once more: How sure are you?”

“Sure,” I whispered.

“I'll call you back,” he said, and hung up.

Fifteen minutes went past, then twenty. I went around the room on my crutches, unable to sit still. I looked out the window at the wintry street, a study in blacks and whites. Twice I went to the telephone and didn't pick it up, afraid he would be trying to get me at the same time, even more afraid that he wouldn't call back at all. The third time, just as I put my hand on it, it rang. I jerked back as if stung, and then scooped it up.

“Hi?” Ellie's breathless voice said from downstairs. “Donna?”

“Is Dennis Guilder—” LeBay's voice began, sounding older and more broken than ever.

“I've got it, Ellie,” I said.

“Well, who cares?” Ellie said pertly, and hung up.

“Hello, Mr. LeBay,” I said. My heart was thudding hard.

“I spoke to her,” he said heavily. “She tells me only to use my own judgement. But she is frightened. Together, you and I have conspired to frighten an old lady who has never hurt anyone and has nothing whatever to do with this.”

“In a good cause,” I said.

“Is it?”

“If I didn't think so, I wouldn't have called you,” I said. “Are you going to talk to me or not, Mr. LeBay?”

“Yes,” he said. “To you, but to no one else. If you should tell someone else, I would deny it. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.” He sighed. “In our conversation last summer, Dennis, I told you one lie about what happened and one lie about what I—what Marcy and I—felt about it. We lied to ourselves. If it hadn't been for you, I think we could have continued to lie to ourselves about that—that incident by the highway—for the rest of our lives.”

“The little girl? LeBay's daughter?” I was holding the phone tightly, squeezing it.

“Yes,” he said heavily. “Rita.”

“What really happened when she choked?”

“My mother used to call Rollie her changeling,” LeBay said. “Did I tell you that?”

“No.”

“No, of course not. I told you I thought your friend would be happier if he got rid of the car, but there is only so much a person can say in defense of one's beliefs, because the irrational . . . it creeps in. . . .”

He paused. I didn't prompt him. He would tell, or he wouldn't. It was as simple as that.

“My mother said he was a perfectly good baby until he was six months old. And then . . . she said that was when Puck came. She said Puck took her good baby for one of his jokes and replaced him with a changeling. She laughed when she said it. But she never said it when Rollie was around to hear, and her
eyes
never laughed, Dennis. I think . . . it was her only explanation for what he was, for why he was so untouchable in his rage . . . so single-minded in his few simple purposes.

“There was a boy—I have forgotten his name—a bigger boy who thrashed Rollie three or four times. A bully. He would start on Rollie's clothes and ask him if he'd worn his underpants one month or two this time. And Rollie would fight him and curse him and threaten him and the bully would laugh at him and hold him off with his longer arms and punch him until he was tired or until Rollie's nose was bleeding. And then Rollie would sit there on the corner, smoking a cigarette and crying with blood and snot drying on his face. And if Drew or I came near him, he would beat us to within an inch of our lives.

“That bully's house burned down one night, Dennis. The bully and the bully's father and the bully's little brother were killed. The bully's sister was horribly burned. It was supposed to have been the stove in the kitchen, and maybe it was. But the fire sirens woke me up, and I was still awake when Rollie came up the ivy trellis and into the room I shared with him. There was soot on his forehead, and he smelled of gasoline. He saw me lying there with my eyes open and he said, ‘If you tell, Georgie, I'll kill you.' And ever since that night, Dennis, I've tried to tell myself that he meant if I told he had been out, watching the fire. And maybe that was all it was.”

My mouth was dry. There seemed to be a lead ball in my stomach. The hairs along the nape of my neck felt like dry quills. “How old was your brother then?” I asked hoarsely.

“Not quite thirteen,” Lebay said with terrible false calm. “One winter day about a year later, there was a fight during a hockey game, and a fellow named Randy Throgmorton laid open Rollie's head with his stick. Knocked him senseless. We got him to old Dr. Farner—Rollie had come around by then, but he was still groggy—and Farner put a dozen stitches in his scalp. A week later, Randy Throgmorton fell through the ice on Palmer Pond and was drowned. He had been skating in an area clearly marked with
THIN ICE
signs. Apparently.”

“Are you saying your brother killed these people? Are you leading up to telling me that LeBay killed his own daughter?”

“Not that he killed her, Dennis—never think that. She choked to death. What I am suggesting is that he may have let her die.”

“You said he turned her over—punched her—tried to make her vomit—”

“That's what Rollie told me at the funeral,” George said.

“Then what—”

“Marcia and I talked it over later. Only that once, you understand. Over dinner that night. Rollie told me, ‘I picked her up by her Buster Browns and tried to whack that sonofabitch out of there, Georgie. But it was stuck down fast.' And what Veronica told Marcia was, ‘Rollie picked her up by her shoes and tried to whack whatever was choking her out of there, but it was stuck down fast.' They told exactly the same story, in exactly the same words. And do you know what that made me think of?”

“No.”

“It made me think of Rollie climbing in the bedroom window and whispering to me, ‘
If you tell, Georgie, I'll kill you.' ”

“But . . . why? Why would he—?”

“Later, Veronica wrote Marcia a letter and hinted that Rollie had made no real effort to save their daughter. And that, at the very end, he put her back in the car. So she would be out of the sun, he said. But in her letter, Veronica said she thought Rollie wanted her to die in the car.”

I didn't want to say it, but I had to.

“Are you suggesting that your brother offered his daughter up as some kind of a human sacrifice?”

There was a long, thinking, dreadful pause.

“Not in any conscious way, no,” LeBay said. “Not any more than I am suggesting that he consciously murdered her. If you had known my brother, you would know how ridiculous it is to suspect him of witchcraft or sorcery or trafficking with demons. He believed in nothing beyond his own senses . . . except, I suppose, for his own will. I am suggesting that he might have had some . . . some intuition . . . or that he might have been directed to do what he did.