Lost Echoes (11 page)

He thought about his car as he listened to the hail hit. There wasn’t any kind of garage; place didn’t have one. But he thought maybe the big oaks on either side of the drive would protect it some. Not that it was anything special, anything to be proud of, any kind of chick wagon. It was a brown car of nondescript nothingness.

He hoped at least the hail wouldn’t crack the windshield.

The ice came down hard and beat on the roof, and some of it clattered against the glass. Harry tried to figure if there was any way some horror could be trapped in the sound made by the hunks of ice; if in their impact on the roof there was an event, colorful and loud and terrible, just waiting to leap out. What if there was a guy drowned in a lake, thrashed and screamed and slapped the water a lot before he went under; say later some water evaporated, became rain, or hail—could that hold the memory?

No, that was too much. The water would have been transformed; wouldn’t happen. He hoped.

Harry moved back a bit, and it was a good thing. A ball of hail struck the glass near the windowsill, broke through, came bouncing into the room, rolling across the floor, sprinkling glass, shedding ice slivers. It came to a stop between his feet.

He picked it up. It was cold and firm. Felt like a small baseball found in morning-dew grass. He took it into the bathroom, dropped it into the sink to let it melt. That cold touch made him think about a cold beer. He had a few in the little refrigerator. But he decided against it.

A thing the old man had said, about the drinking. It stuck with him. How did it go exactly? Something about being a self-made man.

Yeah. That was it. A self-made man. Tad said he was a self-made man, a self-made drunk.

Tad told him he was driving the same road.

Harry tore off the edge of a cardboard box and got some tape and taped the cardboard over the hole in the window. Maybe the landlord would fix it.

He got a broom out of the bathroom, where it leaned against the edge of the shower frame, swept the glass onto a piece of firm paper, picked it up, and tossed it in the garbage can.

Harry moved his chair to the center of the room and sat listening to the summer hail. It slammed against the house for about fifteen minutes, subsided. Then there was a slice of light in the darkness, and it slipped through the curtains and filled the room.

Harry didn’t move.

He sat and listened, and the last of the hail, smaller now, passed, followed by a smattering of rain, then it too was gone, and the light outside grew brighter yet and he could see clearly in the room.

He sat in the chair and listened.

There was nothing now, not even cars out on the road in front of the house.

There was only silence and sunlight, and he sat in the warmth of the light and listened to the nothingness of silence for as long as it lasted.

16

“The Beast in Me” sung by Johnny Cash was playing on the FM station as Harry drove to campus. He thought, the beast is not in me. It’s out there, and I let it in from time to time. A beast belonging to others. That’s the rub. It’s not even my beast.

As Harry drove he navigated according to his knowledge of “bad places.” He felt he was safe in the car if he stayed out on the road. He had never had one of his experiences just driving on the road, but he thought it could happen. Maybe hit a pothole where some tire had hit and blown and the car had gone off the road. If driving into a pothole frightened someone enough, it might be recorded, because things were like sponges when it came to fear; they soaked it up and held it.

And he squeezed it out.

God, was there anyone else in the world with this problem?

He couldn’t be the only one.

He drove onto campus and found a spot. When he got out of the car he slung his backpack over his shoulder, locked the car door, and started walking, keeping himself aware of where “things” had happened, at least the ones he knew about.

He had a path he always took, and he knew it was a safe path. He’d worked it out, followed it for weeks, and nothing had leaped out of the architecture at him, off of the sidewalk.

He avoided touching anything as he walked.

This way he knew he was safe.

Which was why, on this Wednesday morning, he was so upset. The path he usually took was blocked.

Construction. The sidewalk was torn up and there were barriers all about, big, burly men working at banging up the concrete with jackhammers and the like.

For a moment Harry just stood and stared.

Blocked.

Can’t go my route.

Shit.

He thought all manner of things, but none of them were any good.

Like trying to go under the wooden barriers and weave his way through the workmen.

He figured that wouldn’t work out. It would only cause him to possibly be part of a violent moment himself, though, in his own estimation, that was easier to handle. You couldn’t see what was happening to yourself, only feel it. It was seeing their faces, feeling their terror that made him crazy.

He slipped his backpack off his shoulder, laid it on the ground, got his notepad out of his back pocket, studied it.

All right. He could go left, then skirt around all this business, but he didn’t know that territory. Most likely, as was the case with much territory, it would be safe. Nothing hidden.

But you never knew. It was always a struggle.

Shit, he told himself, you go to bars. You do that, and they’re worse places to go than a college campus.

But they’ve got the beer. Enough of that, I’m okay.

It would be easier to blow it all off, buy a twelve-pack, take it home, sit in the dark inside the tested room with the cardboard and egg cartons on the wall.

There had been a rape in the bushes on the right. He had found that out by shaking the shrubs, just passing through, grabbing at them idly, shaking them, going from sunlight to late night and seeing it all, her hand clutching at the shrubs. Some girl coming back from the library most likely. Some guy she knew thought she owed him a piece, and decided to take it.

He had never found any record of it being reported.

The guy got away with it.

Son of a bitch.

From the way they were dressed, or almost dressed, it looked to have happened way back. The seventies, perhaps. Maybe she never told anyone. Maybe the guy bragged about it. Did it again.

Don’t think about that now.

Not now.

You can’t undo the past. It’s not even your past.

He studied the notepad awhile, mapped out some safe spots. Problem was, he had to go over uncharted territory to get to those known safe spots. Anything could happen.

He put up the notebook, grabbed his backpack, and went left.

17

Harry sat down and wrote:

Tad, I’m not drinking.

Right now.

I didn’t drink last night either.

And already good things have come to me.

For one thing, when I woke up this morning I didn’t have a headache and feel like forty miles of bad road.

I know you haven’t been sitting up nights, between drunks, thinking about me, worrying if I was drinking, but there was no one else I could tell but you.

No one else I could turn to.

Well, there are others. I could tell Joey, but he’s a dick and wouldn’t get it. And my mom, but she’s got enough worries. And there’s a special reason I’m writing you.

I want to stop drinking.

No, that’s not true. I like drinking. I
need
to stop drinking. That’s different.

You see, I don’t really think I drink to forget, like you. I drink to numb, so I won’t have, you know, the experiences.

Okay. I drink to forget as well. I’ve seen some bad business, stuff to do with the ghosts in the noise.

But I’ve told you that.

Let me put it like this: You haven’t always been as fucked-up as you are now. Me, I’ve been pretty much like I am always: insecure, worried, and confused since I was a kid.

My parents didn’t do it.

The sounds did.

I’m not going to tell you what I already told you, and I’m not going to try to convince you I’m not a fruitcake (I’m not, by the way), but I am going to say it again.

You haven’t always been so fucked-up.

Me, I have. For a long time.

You once had a center.

Before the mumps, as a little kid, maybe I was centered. I don’t know for sure.

Maybe when my mom and I used to watch cartoons out the windows, watch them at the drive-in theater across the way. I might have had a center then.

Shit. I don’t remember if I told you about all that. The drive-in and stuff. But it’s unimportant. It’s not the point.

What I’m saying is this.

I want to find my center.

You know how to do that.

Maybe we can help each other. You can relocate yours, and I can find mine.

And there’s a real special reason I want to do this. Something wonderful happened to me today, Tad. Something fucking extraordinary. I haven’t felt this way since I was a teenager and Kayla, my neighbor, gave me a kiss, and I thought, at least for a moment, I was Emperor of the Universe.

With a gearshift.

Think on that one.

But this feeling, I’m crazy with it. I’m consumed with it. I’m on fire with it. I’m covered up in it and eaten up by it.

I’m talking about love here, Tad.

The arrow through the heart, my man. Cupid’s straight shot.

It’s what I’ve always wanted.

And you know what? She might even like me.

Here’s what happened.

Dig this. Because of construction, I have to walk around my usual path. For me, this is a BIG FUCKING DEAL. No shit. A big deal. I’m like Superman doing this, taking a different route, because the world—again, for me—is full of all kinds of uncomfortable surprises.

It’s like a world filled with dog doo and I’ve got to thread my way around it blindfolded. Only the dog doo, it’s not just messy, it explodes, and I see—

Again, been over all that.

But this construction thing, this holdup, this snag, this snafu…Guess what? I gird my loins, and—

I do it.

I go around the construction that’s messing up my path, and nothing happens. I didn’t really expect anything, but you never know. Stuff is out there lurking.

So I’m moving along, you know, preoccupied, and as I go, guess what happens?

I get knocked down.

That’s right. I’m going into the building, to my class, running up the steps, almost to the top, head down, and the door blows open, and bam, I’m knocked on my ass.

Fortunately, no one has taken a beating there before, so my rolling over the steps doesn’t excite anything in the stone, and I wonder if, in that sudden moment of surprise, or fear of falling, if my own thoughts are registering there, and would I be able to read them, wondering all that while I’m falling, see, and I’m pissed too, because all I was trying to do was go to class, and someone has thoughtlessly and carelessly knocked me on my ass, and then—

You know what, Tad? All of a sudden, I’m not wondering about any of that stuff at all.

Because, what they say about there being angels, and how they show up in times of need, at least for some people, it’s all true.

An angel was looking down at me.

I’m at the bottom of the steps, on my back, legs almost over my head, my pack has slipped off, and the books have come out, and there’s a paper of mine twisting in the wind over my face, and as it floats down past me, it’s replaced with the face of that angel I was telling you about.

A really good-looking angel, but with features that are, well, a little devilish. A really fine mouth, thick lips, and you know what some anthropologists say—the reason women with full lips are attractive is that the lips, they remind us of those other lips, down there; and man, maybe that’s true. And her hair, it was black, black, black, and long, long, long, the eyes, big doe eyes, and she’s leaning over me, and she’s just absolutely fucking gorgeous. And I’m trying not to look down her shirt, which is hard, because she’s right there bending over me, and she looks so frightened, and those breasts are banging together like two wrecking balls.

She says, “Oh, shit. Are you all right?”

“Sure,” I say, and I’m witty, Tad, get this, I really said this, said: “The concrete broke my fall.”

She grinned.

Let me tell you. She has the most beautiful teeth you have ever seen. A brand-new piano doesn’t have ivory like that.

Nice teeth.

She puts out a hand, and I take it, and she helps pull me up (strong girl), and I grin at her, and she says, “Really, you okay?”

I tell her, “Yeah, I’m fine. You ought to see how I look when I jump out of a plane without a parachute.”

Okay, I was reaching. But it wasn’t bad, and she laughed a little, and she started helping me pick up my books and recover my papers, put them in my backpack.

Then she sees the papers.

She says, “You got old man Timpson for Psychology.”

“Oh, yeah,” I say.

“Well, I’ll tell you a little something: He talks stuff in class, but if you take notes, it doesn’t do you that much good.”

“I’m finding that out.”

“Yeah, he gives tests on the book. You can forget his lectures. Read the book from cover to cover, and that’s the test.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Now I’m really looking at her, Tad, and she’s got on some really tight jeans, and there are no bulges. She looks like a model. A movie star. A goddess.

“Well,” she says, and she’s really smiling at me all the time she’s saying this, “I’d take you out for coffee, to make up for the fall, but I don’t want to keep you from class.”