“What?” Jay asked.
“‘Mutton Or Wool’,” Jude repeated patronizingly, thinking it might jog his friend’s brain. “Sheep,
farm
boy. They’re either mutton, or their wool. It’s the difference between life and death.”
The difference between life and death?
Jay wondered, thinking the bum had never crafted quite as serious a sign as that. Was that what it meant? And if so, what life, and what death did it pertain to?
“You know,” Steve said, ready to partake of this conversation and its less disturbing subject matter. “That sounds like something Sign Guy would put on his sign.”
They nodded, all but Jay, who was about to tell them that what Steve was suggesting was in fact the way it was when Jude spoke up first.
“Yeah, but did you see what he had today? Nothing. Nothing but a blank white board leaning against his knees all fucking day. How’s that for crazy as a loon?”
Jay stared at Jude, saying nothing, reacting outwardly not at all. But within, a sickly shiver stirred low in his chest. He breathed a little deeper. His heart began tapping a few extra beats. And his head swam with a mist of unease. Something was wrong. More than just the absence of his knowing. More than that. Something was...
...coming.
“Hey, buddy,” Bunker said to Jay, and Jay looked to him.
“What?”
“Put out a hand.”
“Huh?”
Bunker held his own hand out, as if ready for someone to ‘give him some skin’. “Put out your hand.”
Jay complied, his actions partly on autopilot, that shiver inside creeping out now and crawling up his back like a dread fear that something was coming, God,
coming
.
“I am in the debt of no man,” Bunker said, his hand emerging from his pocket and dropping the change he’d snagged from Jay the day before into his friend’s palm. Six coins plus one. “I repay you with interest.”
And he had, a penny now added to the three quarters, two dimes, and one nickel, all of which lay in Jay’s palm, and all of which were showing...
...tails.
Tails?
Jay thought, and then thinking became virtually impossible. His hand clenched suddenly, violently around the coins.
COLD.............
It hit him like a fist, the sensation, the most terrible, burning iciness he could have never imagined. A spike of cold so intense in his gut where the mere shiver had sparkled, so numbing, that his drink dropped from his hand, the glass shattering at his feet.
COLD......COLD......
He reeled back against the bar, his mouth gaping, the hand that held no coins grabbing at his collar, knotted fingers pulling at the tie that circled his neck. His cold and constricting neck.
“Jay!” Christine yelled, his arm yanking away from her.
“Buddy?” Jude reached out to him, but Jay rolled away, down the bar, spinning round and round on his feet, wheeling away from them.
COLD......COLD......WATER!
Oh, God! He could feel it! The cold water! All around him! Rushing at him!
“Jay!” Jude shouted at him, looking around as all eyes were now on the Golden Boy, the Maker of Green, the King of the Street. Gawking at the raucous sight of the young man seemingly come apart. “Jay, what the hell is wrong?!”
At the end of the bar he stumbled to the wall, one hand still fisted around the coins, the tails, that had shown in his hand just as he was racked by this pain, this terror, this...
...this vision of death.
“Oh, God,” he gasped, seeing it swarm at him. The water, the cold, cold water, and—
THE BRIDGE......
“NO!” he shrieked, so loud, so piercing, that it drew cries from some women in the room. He groped along the living room wall, people spilling away from this lad suddenly gone mad, his friends coming after him, pulling at his clothes, his arms as he knocked vases and lamps and chairs to the floor. Kept moving, kept feeling for the way out. Out of here. Because he had to—
THE BRIDGE......A BUS......A VAN......COLD WATER
DEATH! DEATH! COMING!! TO THE PEOPLE!!! TO FORTY ONE PEOPLE!!!
HE HAD TO GET TO THEM!!!!
“NO!” he screamed again, his tuxedo jacket coming off in his friends’ hands as he pulled away from them and bolted through clots of terrified guests for the front door. “NOOOOOO!!!”
Jude stood back for a moment with Jay’s black jacket dangling in his grip, Bunker and Steve and Christine at his side.
“Jude, what the hell’s going on?” Bunker asked.
Jude turned to Christine and asked harshly, “Has he been taking any of your shit? Any pills, or anything else ?”
She shook her head vehemently. “No. I didn’t see him take... No, he couldn’t have.”
“Are you sure, God dammit?!”
“Yes, yes. Almost positive.”
Jude gave a quick look to the faces staring their way now. Faces of the people who might have brought them their money. Might have, until now.
“Dammit,” he swore, and ran for the door, Steve and Bunker and Christine on his heels.
Twenty Five
Tale Of The Tails
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
He was outside now, on the sidewalk, across from Central Park, but it was nowhere near where he needed to be. Where he had to get. To stop it. To
save
them from—
COLDCOLDCOLDWATERRRRRRRRRR......
Jay felt something twist in his gut, a fiery jet in the cold grip within, the hot pain bursting like a rocket high into his chest, setting his lungs and his throat afire. He gasped for air, hand to his throat, and darted out into the thick traffic on Central Park West. Cars braked, and skidded, and honked, and swerved, and for sure right then there was no magical bum, no different angel to make it all safe. Screams rose as he stumbled across all lanes, the fisted hand of coins stabbed out in front like a blocker’s ready shield. Curses flew at him, at his stupidity. And none of it he heard, only the thundering surety in his head that there was a van, and a bus, and cold, cold water, and a bridge, and that he had to get there
NOW!
“You’re gonna fucking DIE, fella!” was the last cry that rose, from a cabbie who’d rolled his window down to loose the prophecy, one which chased Jay as he ran jerkily into the dark heart of Central Park.
Miles away, miles and miles away, cold water flowed beneath a bridge on the river as a van and a bus crossed into the city.
Halfway across the bus jerked right, something very, very wrong, something so very wrong, and slammed into the van that was cruising alongside. The van’s black windows shattered as it bounced off of the bus and smashed into the steel rails that skirted the roadway, caroming off as sparks fanned behind it. The bus hit it again on the rebound, and followed it right this time, grinding the smaller vehicle horribly into the metalwork once more, testing the old steel, and breaking it finally.
Someone inside screamed. Then someone else. And more people still as the van and the bus vaulted the breached rails and leapt out from the Brooklyn Bridge and spun end over end into the East River’s cold, cold flow.
“Where is he?” Steve begged the dark and empty park, into which they had run at the direction of one very pissed off cabbie.
“Do you see him?” Jude asked, jogging forward of the rest, Christine the farthest behind, having worn the three inch heels.
“I don’t,” Bunker said, but quickly changed his reply at the sight of a form on the ground not far ahead, the stark white of the tuxedo shirt blazing against the near black of the night. “THERE!”
Bunker pointed and began to run, and the others followed, racing to their friend to see if he was all right. Wanting to get to him. To get to him fast.
But when they got close to him they hesitated, and did not draw any nearer.
Jay lay on the ground on his stomach, his arm stretched forward, hand and fist pulling at the damp earth, moving his writhing body inch by inch toward something. Something none of them could understand. His legs dragged limp behind him, useless, long sacks of flesh and bone that were dead weight and no more. His mouth opened and closed, like a landed fish searching for the thing it needed to live, and his eyes were bugged rounds of white and green stricken with soundless agony. He looked as though he were dying.
“My God, Jude, what’s happening to him?” Bunker asked, pleaded, as Christine caught up. She moved past them at first, but recoiled very quickly.
“I don’t know,” Jude answered.
“Is he sick?” Christine asked tearily, retreating against Steve, who put an arm around her.
“He freaked out,” Jude said, and Jay rolled over right then onto his back, his eyes that looked almost dead staring at the stars through the canopy of trees.
A hiss of air wheezed out of him, out of his gaping mouth, locked open now, pain and terror etched upon the face around it. His chest heaved once, then twice, then settled flat. His fist opened and the coins dripped from his grasp.
He was still.
“Is he...” Christine began to ask. Her question was answered wordlessly a few seconds later as Jay’s body spasmed suddenly, violently.
“He’s alive,” Steve said, some thin kind of smile making it onto his face. But not to Jude’s, who stared down at his...friend as though he were a loathsome vermin of some kind.
Jay rolled to his side, his legs drawing up to his chest as waves of coughs roared up from within, some forcing vomit up with blasts of cold, stale air. Dead air. His eyes were clamped tight now, eyes that had gazed at the heavens just a moment before and watched the heavens go black. Blacker than black, really. Go
gone
. He curled into a ball, a hacking shivering ball, trembling against the great mass of the earth. Trembling and clutching himself and crying and knowing so very, very clearly that the cold water had swallowed them. Swallowed them all.
Oh my God
, he thought, dread zinging about his thoughts like wild lightning, the certainty of death, of
knowing
death, beating on him now like a pendulum whose relentless rhythm was surely driving him mad.
Or had already.
“What the fuck have you done, farmboy?” Jude asked him from the distance between them that would not diminish. Ever. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done with this little show?”
Bunker looked to Jude. “Carrillo’s never going to give us his money now.”
Jude chuckled dryly, humorlessly. “To hell with Carrillo. Wait ‘til the people who saw farmboy’s performance tonight start talking.”
“It’ll be a stampede,” Steve said, quite correctly.
Jude turned his back on Jay for a moment, the spun angrily back his way and kicked dirt at him. “DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU FUCKING DID, YOU FUCKING HICK?! YOU FUCKING RUINED US!”
Into a tighter ball Jay curled, hands over his ears now, not wanting to hear Jude’s scream. Not wanting to hear any screams. All those screams, Screams that were now silent because...
...because the reaper had come.
“You mean, the business?” Christine asked, eyes puddled, her makeup streaked.
Jude looked at her severely. “Yeah,
tits
, the business. Your fucking boyfriend...” And another kick of dirt sputtered over Jay. “...just screwed us into the fucking ground!”
She sniffled and looked to Jay, to the mess of a man cowering on the ground, whimpering like a beaten dog.
Jude stepped close to her, his eyes enraged as he flicked the diamonds dangling from her ears. “Go ask him to buy you some more of these, tits, and see what you get.”
“Jude,” Steve protested. “Come on.”
“Fuck you, Lederer,” Jude said, and kicked another load at his very former friend, then turned his back on them all and stalked off toward the street, his head shaking with disgust and fists pounding each leg.
Christine looked to Jay once more, one hand reaching up to touch the earrings he had given her. Three grand they had cost. She caressed one of the diamonds between her thumb and forefinger and eased away from Steve’s comforting arm, and backed away further from the man who had given her some very nice things, but might not be able to anymore. Backed away, slowly, her heels pecking into the cooling earth, and finally turned from the scene and walked slowly from the park.
Bunker looked to Steve, and Steve to him, and they both looked to Jay for a silent moment, wondering why he wasn’t talking. Why he wasn’t saying anything, defending himself, explaining. All he did was lay there, in the filth, hugging himself and weeping softly. Alone. He had shut them out, and shut them down.
“Bunk,” Steve said, and his friend looked to him with perplexed eyes. “Let’s get out of here. It’s over.”
It took a minute to sink in, then Bunker nodded. It really was over. Everything.
The two of them left together, looking back once, twice, then no more, their friend a friend no more. He was nothing now. Just a bum.
Twenty Six
Gone And Come Again
Some hours later Jay rose from the ground in Central Park and began to walk.
His once white shirt was soiled. One leg of his pants was torn at the knee. His face and hair were matted with dirt. His pockets were empty, his wallet and keys taken while he lay in the park. He had put up no fight. There was no point.
All that remained was one thing. One thing. A thing that he must do. A simple thing that would have been hard that morning, but now was not. Not now that he’d known the terror of cold water rolling over him, holding him, squeezing him in an icy embrace that scorched every inch of his body with the worst kind of agony. Cold water that gushed into his mouth and poured down his throat, choking him as life bubbled away, forced from his lungs, his legs going numb, his arms flailing and fighting for a way out of the water. A way that was not there. That had not been there for all those people.
And that was the one thing he must do. He must know why. Had Sign Guy done this to him, or had his gift soured? Had he changed it himself? Had he needed it too much? Wanted it too much? Quested for green so blindly that the trick of his gift had turned wicked? Or had the bum tweaked his so-called donzerly light, focusing it elsewhere? On other things. On a spot of the river far from where he had been, but not so removed from the strange universe the bum had cajoled that Jay could not see the death, and hear it, and smell it, and feel it, and know it. And live it, and then live again, to remember it. To remember it all. To suffer it as long as he had memory. Had the bum done
that
to him?