Risen (24 page)

***

Peg decided early that the meal was a disaster. The roast was dry and the potatoes competed with the gravy in the category of Most Lumps. She noticed that Brant ate around the mushrooms in the salad and neither he nor Tom asked for seconds of anything.

Conversation lagged. Brant seemed interested in the town's reaction to the Duffy business, but every time he brought the subject up, Tom sidetracked it by complimenting the food he'd barely touched. Peg couldn't seem to start a sentence that didn't begin with "Annie..." and that made her realize how insanely narrow her life had become in the past eight months. She dredged her memory for an amusing anecdote from the diner but couldn't come up with anything that didn't involve Cindy Robertson, another touchy subject with Tom. She tried to tell a joke that she'd overheard Carl Tompkins telling Stig Evans but she only remembered after it was all told that the three guys in the rowboat were Lutheran ministers, which was the point of the whole thing.

She couldn't fathom the reason for Tom's sullenness. She'd have assumed that he was jealous of Brant, but they'd seemed to be getting along so well in the living room. Maybe it was the you-can't-replace-my-father thing. He kept shooting hateful glances at Brant as if mentally kicking him under the table.

She saw echoes of the haunted, escaped convict in Brant's face. He'd said at the diner that he had things on his mind. Apparently a plate full of dry roast and lumpy potatoes wasn't enough to make him forget his troubles, whatever they were. He'd catch himself now and again and make the effort to smile, but clearly something was on his mind.

Something was on her mind, too. As an act of desperation during one of the long, tense silences that had become the hallmark of the evening, she said, "Madge Duffy has some strange ideas."

"Oh?" Brant said.

Tom's jaw tightened the way his father's used to do before he flew into a rage, but Peg couldn't take the strained silence any longer. She had to get this notion out into the open or she'd burst.

"She says that John's changed since he came back. He used to have bursitis in one arm. Did you know that?"

Brant said that he didn't.

"Neither did I, but I guess Madge would know. Anyway, it's gone. Just completely gone. Other things, too, little physical ailments that aren't there anymore. She said...."

Peg toyed with the green beans on her plate.

"She has this idea about Annie. She thinks maybe if it had been Annie instead of John...if Annie had come back...maybe she'd be better. Maybe...."

"Fuck Madge Duffy!" Tom's angry exclamation was like an M-80 exploding under the table.

Peg looked at Tom and saw her ex-husband staring back at her. He wore the same beastly look that she'd seen on Rod a hundred times, usually when he'd been drinking, or when he was laid off, or when fate had dealt him any unjust blow. The look spoke of a savage anger with its roots thousands of years in the past, when the line between human and animal was thin as dust and the difference between survival and extinction depended on sheer ferocity.

"Madge Duffy is an idiot!" Tom continued.

"She was only saying that"

"She was talking bullshit!"

"What did she say exactly?" Brant asked.

"It doesn't matter!" Tom shouted.

He set his hands on the table and leaned toward Peg as if getting ready to pounce. "Annie's gone! You have to face facts, Mom! She isn't going to get better and if you kill her—which is what Madge Duffy was suggesting, right?—she isn't coming back from the dead!"

"You can't know that," Peg replied coldly, returning his stare with one of her own. "John Duffy came back."

"So what? That doesn't make it right! Jesus! Can't you see that? Can't you see how fucked up that is?"

"Tom, maybe we should" Brant began, but Tom cut him off, stabbing a finger at him.

"Brant, shut up," Tom commanded. "I know what you're thinking and you're wrong, so just shut the fuck up!"

"Tom!" Peg admonished.

"It's okay," Brant said.

"No, it isn't okay!" Peg said. "We have rules in this house, and I'm pretty damned sick of being the only one who follows them!"

"I don't need this," Tom said, and he shoved his chair away from the table. It fell over with a bang and he kicked it aside as he marched out of the room. Peg heard the kitchen door slam shut, then the engine of Tom's Honda coughed and roared and finally faded into the distance.

Brant saw that Peg was trembling. She wadded up her napkin and threw it to the table.

"Shit!" she said.

Brant went over and put his hand on her shoulder.

"I am so sick of his shit!" Peg's voice shook with fury.

"Don't be too hard on him," Brant said.

Peg brushed off Brant's hand and turned to look at him incredulously.

"Me, hard on him?" she said. "Weren't you here? Didn't you see that? What did I say that deserved that?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply that it was your fault. It wasn't. But it wasn't his, either."

"Then whose? Madge Duffy's? Yours?"

Peg got up and started clearing the table, forcing Brant to answer over the clatter of dishes as she angrily stacked plates one on top of another.

"There's something going on in this town," he said. "It's thrown everybody out of whack. You saw the fight at the diner. Everybody's on edge. Would you mind not doing that right now?"

Peg slammed the plates to the table and whirled to look at him, arms folded over her chest.

"Okay, tell me how to raise my kid," she said.

"I'm not telling you how to raise Tom."

"Then what, Brant? What are you saying?"

"I'm just saying that...kids like to think the world is a stable, secure place that makes sense. When they hit Tom's age they start finding out that it isn't so, that it never was that way and never will be. Then there's the Duffy business and the Ganger boy's accident...Tom doesn't know how to deal with it all, but he's grown up enough to think he should. That's all I'm saying."

Peg closed her eyes and sighed. Some dinner. Any normal man would've made his excuses and fled. What planet did Brant come from where people were so patient and kind?

"Oh, Brant," she said. She felt suddenly very tired. "I'm such a mess."

She opened her eyes to see him looking at her and smiling for no damn reason, and when he opened his arms to her she didn't know what to do. He stepped up and embraced her and without thinking about it she threw her arms around him and held him tight. She didn't realize until she did it that this was what she'd been needing for way too long. She wondered if Brant noticed that she'd started crying and decided that he'd figure it out when the tears soaked through his shirt.

Brant couldn't think of anything to say, so he just said "It's all right" about a hundred times or so. Finally Peg pulled away and looked up at him, swiping a palm across her red, wet eyes, and sniffled.

"Dessert?" she said, and Brant said that dessert sounded good.

***

Peg and Brant sat on the front porch in a swing that groaned under their weight. It had been there for twenty years, long before Peg and Rod moved in, and had seen its share of lovers' autumn moons. It was an old-fashioned thing to do, and Brant was thinking that it was one of the finest pleasures life has to offer.

"It was a stupid thought," Peg said after a long period of neither of them saying anything. "About Annie. I don't blame Tom for getting upset."

"It's not all that farfetched," Brant said. "If John Duffy can get his throat cut and come back from the dead, you'd have to think that anything was possible."

"Are you saying you believe in miracles?"

"I believe things happen that I don't understand. What I can't figure is why Duffy would be the one it happened to."

"I don't think it was meant for John's benefit. He was brought back for Madge. Otherwise she could've spent the rest of her life in prison. I think it's her miracle."

"She deserved it more than John did," Brant said. "But still, why Madge? What makes her so special?"

"She's a good person."

"So are a lot of people. You're a good person."

"I try," Peg said. "Maybe if I keep trying, I'll get a miracle of my own."

Brant was finding it hard to keep biting his tongue. He had to beat down the urge to tell her about Haws and the Ganger boy and about all his fears and suspicions. On the other hand, he didn't want to be the one to rat on Tom—he wanted and needed the boy's trust—and didn't want to sound like a paranoid idiot. As if those reasons weren't enough, he wasn't sure Peg could take any more pressure. Her daughter was in a coma, her son could be the poster boy for teenaged angst. She didn't need something else to worry about, especially something as unsubstantiated as his anxiety over the Risen.

What had they done, actually, for a fact? Nothing.

"Don't wish for too hard for a miracle," he said. "It might not look so good to you, once it came."

"But I do want it, Brant," Peg said. "I want it more than you can imagine. Like you probably wanted a BB-gun and tickets to the Beatles and your first woman, all rolled into one and multiplied by a hundred. I think about the way she used to be, how curious she was about absolutely everything. I can still see her when I peek into her bedroom at night. She's all I think about. I'd do anything to get her back. I want it so bad...."

She felt herself choking up again. Brant must have noticed because he folded his hand over hers and smiled at her. She smiled back and he put his arm around her. She scooted over closer to him and before she was sure it was going to happen, they were kissing.

Down the street, sitting in his patrol vehicle with the lights out, Deputy Haws watched. He'd stopped by to check on the Culler kid and he'd spotted Brant's car in the alley. Funny place to park, as if Brant was hiding or something. He must know that Haws was looking for him, but he must also know that he couldn't hide forever, not in a town the size of Anderson.

Haws fingered his police special. He could do both of them right now. But Seth had warned him against converting Peg. Seth was saving her for some reason, and Haws did not question Seth. It would be so easy, though, to sneak up behind them and put a bullet in each head. If they were kissing he might get both with one shot. He'd have to line it up just right, but it could be done.

No doubt about it, it could be done.

***

Frank Gunnarsen hadn't wanted to stop by the Duffys' house for coffee after dinner, but his wife Doris insisted. It wasn't every day that they were invited. In fact, Frank and Doris hadn't exchanged more than six words a month with the Duffys in all the years they'd lived next door.

Doris didn't like John Duffy. She'd heard the gossip and knew it was true by the look in his eyes the day she showed up at their door with a fresh peach cobbler. Bernice Tompkins had told her about bumping into Madge Duffy in town and that she had a black eye she tried to hide with makeup but you could still see it as plain as day. The Duffys had lived in Anderson for a few months, at that time, and Doris had heard John's yelling from time to time, but this was the first concrete evidence anyone had of physical abuse. It had to be verified before Doris could pass it on, naturally, so she had rushed home and whipped up the cobbler and taken it over to Madge with her story all ready.

"You know how it is with peach trees," she planned to say, "it's feast or famine. We're practically swimming in the darned things now so I just thought...well, here. I love to bake but Frank's already eating peaches for breakfast, lunch and dinner."

All the time, of course, she'd be checking out Madge's eye for herself and when she got home she could start making her calls.

It hadn't worked out that way because it was John who answered the door. The way his eyes seemed to burn right through her, she knew he was a wife-beater and he knew that she knew and that frightened her. Besides, she could smell the bourbon on his breath and that made him even more unpredictable. Instead of her elegant story about the peaches she mumbled something that probably didn't make any sense and shoved the cobbler at him and practically ran back to her house.

Later she caught sight of him scooping her beautiful peach cobbler, one of the nicest she'd baked, into the trash, though Madge returned her baking dish a week later ("after the swelling had gone down and the bruise had healed, no doubt," Doris had told Bernice) and lied about how delicious it was.

Doris kept her distance after that, and Frank was never one to socialize, preferring to come home from work and put his feet up and watch television over going out and seeing anybody. To him, visiting with people was a chore. "It's all that talk," he complained, and Doris never understood what was so hard about talking, it came so naturally to her.

When Doris learned that Madge had cut John's throat, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was like living next door to a time bomb, being neighbors with the Duffys. She felt sorry for Madge, figuring that she'd go to prison, but they'd never gotten close and maybe somebody less troubled would move into the house now, somebody Doris could talk to over the fence and sit beside with a glass of lemonade on a hot summer's afternoon and have over for coffee on Saturday mornings to catch up on the week's happenings.