Yes, driven to do, he thought once again, though with alternate and different meaning this time. And with that meaning his mood grew suddenly dim.
Driven.
Yes. She had driven here, all the way to Plainview, and it had not happened. What the coins had foretold had not come to pass. He was supposed to be dead, and two opportunities had passed now that should have had said result. And at
her
hand, a woman whose family he had slaughtered among countless others, a woman who had been guided here by ‘feelings’ as mystical as Jay’s coins were to him. Yes, she was supposed to be here, to stop him, Jay thought. But it wasn’t happening.
And it surprised him to feel the way he did—confused. Out of touch with what was intended. For so long he’d seen the coins, long ago heads that brought him all the green he had dreamed of, and since then tails that had cast death wantonly about, and with either he always
knew
what to expect. But now? Now the heads had returned, and were imparting him
numbers
. Numbers that pointed to Mari being here and to her car hitting him at that very place and time. And what else could that mean? If it hadn’t been meant to kill him, then what? Simply to get his damn attention?
Jay scoffed at that, dismissing it with a snort.
But in the quiet and closed spaciousness in which he sat, it came right back.
To get his attention? Why? For what? Jay sat there, staring at the almost pristine carpet beyond his casted leg. Stared and considered that possibility, the implications. And what were the implications? She was here for some reason, to get his attention and...and...
But nothing came after that. He didn’t know. She was here, had gotten his attention—if that was the deal—and now...now...now what?!
Jay shook his head. God, this was so damn strange. Nothing coming to him, only a portion of the knowing, and no more. Just that bit. He felt like half an equation—
Half an equation
, he thought. That made...sense? Didn’t it. Her here for some reason, their paths crossing, the return of the heads marking the point where their paths, literally, had crossed. She plus he? Her plus him equaled...
Equaled something. Something, if this was the case, that he could not know alone. Nor she. And here they were, together, two halves of some whole, one could say. Some whole. Yes.
In the deserted stillness that surrounded him, the idea seemed to thunder.
It felt...right, Jay thought. It felt right. There was a symmetry to it. Her, him. Except...
...except to believe that it was as right as it felt, he would have to believe what she’d told him. That he had not killed her family. Had not killed any of those people. That his confessions were not a record of remarkable crimes. Yes, he would have to believe that if their coming together was to be right, and if he did cast responsibility off of himself, then what
had
been happening these past eight years?
It was easier to blame himself, he realized, than to look past for new reason.
But was the easy way out the right way?
The bottle of pills felt very suddenly present in the pocket over his heart. He took the container out and looked at it, more than half full still.
They
would be an easy way out. But he couldn’t. And then he realized something, a truism so simple that his eyes actually bugged when it surfaced in thought. There had been
many
easy ways out he had not taken. Long ago he could have turned his back on the bum, but he hadn’t. He’d felt some
need
to stay in his orbit. And the coins, the tails that later told of death, and cast him into the reaper’s vicious maw, he could have
not
looked, but he had. He had done things for the past eight plus years that...
...that in the end had brought him right here, to this place, to that spot on Charles Street where Mari (rhymes with sa
fari
) Gates’ equally strange life and his had intersected.
No, the easy way out was wrong. Had always been wrong. He might want to believe that he was responsible for the death of so many, but to do so would now be a truly easy way out of something...something bigger. Something
more
, as Mari had put it.
“My God,” he said softly but aloud, understanding it now. Not all of it, but the start. The two numbers. “God Almighty, I did need something to get my attention.”
And Mari Gates and her rattletrap blue Honda had done just that.
There was more to this, he now knew. There were two halves to this equation. And that meant...
...that meant that out there, somewhere, there had to be an answer. Some answer.
His eyes tracked upward, toward the ceiling, a barrier on the other side of which Mari was, on her own search for some answer right now. Jay had a very strong urge to take his crutches in hand and lever himself up from the chair and make his way fast up to tell her what he’d just realized, but just his first tentative move toward that endeavor, leaning forward and away from the chair’s comfortable back, squashed any thought of carrying things any further.
Darvon number two had made it to the races.
He slumped back and let his head fall against the cushion, his face angled at the ceiling now as the fog began to roll in. His left hand fumbled with the bottle of pills, getting them back into his shirt pocket, and his right settled onto the rounded top of the armrest, fingers caressing the leather like the pelt of some favored beast. His eyes batted open and closed, open and closed, the recessed lights above winking on and off as each blink took them temporarily out of the equation. He was going down fast, ready to drift, ready to let another narcotic sleep steal his consciousness away, willing even to surrender, and so he let his eyes finally close and the hand that had fumbled with the pills (the glorious, glorious pills) settle to his lap and did nothing as his right hand slipped from the armrest and...
...and thumped against something resting on the side table.
Jay brought his head up, straightening in the chair, and took from the table what his slipping hand had landed on. It was a book.
A ‘book’?
was his first reaction, maybe a strange thought in a library, but not
this
library. This meant that ol’ Calvin’s reading lounge had gotten some use, by at least one soul before Jay had come. And what had this previous person seen fit to peruse?
Jay snorted merrily at what exactly the book was—an encyclopedia.
The Book Of Knowledge
, it was called, and an older version it appeared from the wear apparent on its faux leather cover. He examined its spine. The letter S from 1976. An old one. A
very
old one, and he wondered why a library so modern would have such a dated piece of reference material. Maybe specifically because it was dated, he theorized, guessing that someone might want to see how things were presently presented in such and such a year. But
this
far back? Heck, he could remember a book just like this, actually a lot like this, that he had flipped through a long time ago in his junior high school library as he searched for a subject for a report due in history class. He had wandered up and down the aisles containing Roosevelt Junior High’s very modest collection of books, wishing that something would jump out at him.
And it did—sort of. There, kind of poking out of line from the rest of the encyclopedia set, was this one volume, and he took it in hand and opened it up and began turning through the pages. And though he was looking just for a subject on which he could fill two pages of lined notebook paper semi-intelligently, he had found much more. He had found a dream—a dream back then at least. The stock market. Wall Street. Brokers. Buying. Selling. Commission. Money. He devoured what that book had to say about the financial world, and had written
three
pages about it, and had even told Carrie all about it on their way home that day. Yes, that one book poking out from the rest had started him on his way to New York, and Wall Street, and, he supposed, if one carried out the line of related events far enough, right here to the very chair in which he sat. Funny, wasn’t it? Funny.
As was the volume he now held in his hand. S from 1976. There might even be something about the stock market in this one, he thought, and turned the stout front cover back to get at the inside.
And as he did, something slipped out and onto his lap. He picked it up. It was a news clipping, some story cut from a paper whose name he would never know, the rectangular swatch of fading gray newsprint barely longer than his hand. And as he held it up he noticed that there were more clippings just like it in volume S of the 1976
Book Of Knowledge
, many of them, each stuck between pages throughout the book as if someone had been using them as place markers.
Jay held up the one that had slipped out first and read it.
Perfection Times Five
Joel Mozinga—Staff Writer
Sandymount, Tennessee—The sign out front of the Wonder Bowl Lanes on Knollwood Road still proclaims it as the place where future PBA champ Frank Coombs bowled three perfect games back to back in 1966, but that may need some changing if the home of the Sandymount and Platte spring and summer leagues is to keep up with the times. Friday night, it seems, five—count ‘em, five—league regulars bowled perfect games. Yes, that’s five in one night.
Eat your heart out, Frank Coombs.
One of the blessed regulars, Janice Lewellyn, a longtime member of the Mid-City Motors sponsored team, said that it was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. “People were hooting and hollering, and some folks were even coming in from off the street because there was so much noise.”
Wonder Bowl Lanes manager Les Runkle confirms that the crowd grew as the evening wore on. “When Charlie Cowan finished his, and then Janice threw hers, well, we started filling up.” By eight o’clock Tommy Evans and Myra Braxton had also knocked every pin presented to them down, the records show. Manager Runkle says that by eight thirty it was a madhouse. “Buzzy Flynn was on his last ball, and man he sent that thing down the lane like a rocket. And he don’t usually throw that hard, but this time all the pins didn’t just go down. They went flying. Man, there was nothing like it.”
With league season just underway, who knows what...
Five perfect games? Jay thought. In one night? What were the odds of that?
He suddenly suspected that maybe someone had left this clipping in the book by mistake, that it was a souvenir of a very special happening, so he slipped it back in and turned back a few pages until the next clipping was plain to see.
The Perfection Shootout
Joel Mozinga—Staff Writer
Sandymount, Tennessee—Who is the best? That is what throngs of bowling fans in the Sandymount and Platte communities are wondering. Four weeks of perfect games have passed into the record books, with Janice Lewellyn of Platte and Tommy Evans of Sandymount still throwing strike after strike as their once blessed equals have fallen back to the realm of the occasional spare and very ordinary scores. And with the spring league winding down, the want of a champion beyond a team victory is at a fever pitch.
And come this Friday night, the communities of Sandymount and Platte will know just who the best is. Five hundred dollars, donated by Midland Savings, will be the prize in the eagerly anticipated ‘shootout’ between Janice and Tommy. But also at stake are bragging rights for either Sandymount or Platte, each of which hopes to be able to say that its favorite son or daughter is the most perfect of the perfect.
But if Janice and Tommy keep bowling like they’ve been it could be a long, long night at the Wonder Bowl Lanes.
Manager Les Runkle says those wanting to watch this historic event should come early so...
These people took their bowling seriously, Jay thought, and slipped that clip back to and moved onto the next...
Oh, man...
Shootout Becomes One
Greg Smith—Editor
Sandymount, Tennessee—What should have been a friendly competition between two superb athletes degenerated Friday night into a bloodbath that left six dead, including Joel Mozinga, who had been covering this story in recent weeks. Witnesses say that all was fine in the match between Janice Lewellyn and Tommy Evans until Evans threw a gutter ball in the eighth frame and Sandymount residents began accusing a Platte fan of breaking their man’s concentration by coughing at an inopportune moment. From there, things quickly got out of hand.
“Someone from the Platte side told the Sandymount side to shut up,” Sandymount Police Officer Dwayne James said. “And then the Sandymount side started shouting back. And then someone threw a bottle, and then someone pulled a gun. Then someone else did. And right then we had people dying.”
Spokesman Lucy Fredericks of the Coroner’s Office reported that three people, including Janice Lewellyn, died from gunshot wounds, one person was beaten to death with a bowling ball, another one with a bowling pin, and Tommy Evans was killed after Platte fans dragged him into the parking lot and tied him to the bumper of a pickup truck that then dragged him repeatedly up and down Knollwood Road.
“Carnage,” Sandymount Mayor Mike Randolph reacted. “All because some outsiders from Platte had to get drunk and stir up trouble.” The mayor of Platte was one of those killed in the melee.
State officials are expected to step in and...
Christ. All over bowling? Jay shook his head. Six people dead. Unbelievable.
He put that clipping back in place and took a gander at the next one.
Jumpin’ Jack’s Casino Bankrupted
Gladys Pitt—Community News
McCone, Nevada—There’s not much in the small northern Nevada town of McCone. Just a few gas stations, stores, and a motel where travelers heading up or down Route 95 can stop for the night. And there’s Jumpin’ Jack’s Casino. Or at least there was.