Apocalypse (27 page)

“I don't give a shit!” Shirley had never spoken so savagely to Cally, and did not care. She went to Elspeth, tried to put her arms around her, but Elspeth shied back from her, almost whimpering, like a scared little girl with her cotton underpants down around her bony knees.

“Let me alone!” She pulled away from Shirley's embrace. Shirley had been a man.

All Cally's pain had left her. Nothing about her erstwhile wife-and-mother life with Mark seemed real. She felt an exaltation, a sense of purification and moral superiority; she was moving on another plane of existence, only vaguely aware of Shirley and Elspeth quarreling behind her, and she knew herself capable of seeing visions. But the scene outside the tall farmhouse window was no vision. Its colors, its music, its lights were so vivid to her that she muffled her ears with her hands, wished for dark glasses.

“You guys,” she insisted, “you've got to
look
at this. I don't believe it.”

Silent, Shirley came and stood by her side.

In the darkness beyond the windowglass sheen the little horses still bobbed in their defensive ring. Cally felt a vague sense of something wrong about the way they were circling, but did not pursue it; the truth would come to her in time, in the cycling fullness of time, as light came to the sky.… Rapt, she watched the wheeling spokes overhead, girders made of small amber lights sweeping past in synchronization with the majestic cavortings of the plastic ponies, spreading into an ornate rim, a cornice, over the fence posts. From the night floated the somewhat asthmatic treble notes of a Strauss waltz. A carousel waltz.

Shirley blinked and shook her head hard as if to clear her hearing. “Locusts?” she said, querulous, after a moment.

“And lightning bugs.” It had taken Cally an indeterminate span of time to realize that the lights were fireflies, the calliope music cicadas—or the all-too-human cicada creatures Hoadley called locusts.

A voice spoke. “How incredibly bizarre.” Elspeth, with some of her exquisite scorn back, had chosen her own window to look from.

Like an Apache boy fasting on a mountaintop, seeking truth, Cally turned her thin face and spoke to her across the room: “It's happening because you told it to.”

“Me!” Elspeth was startled out of her scornful pose by Cally's oracular tone. “I didn't tell anything to happen!”

“You said the fence was to keep Hoadley out. This is the way it took to do so. Shirley.” Cally shifted her glance, seeing Shirley as almost unbearably golden, Amazonian, goddesslike, just as the lights of the night's extemporized carousel were eye-throbbingly bright to her, the spiritous music as loud and clear as if a Wurlitzer thumped and ground a few feet away, in Shirley's kitchen. She apprehended existence and essence so clearly, so intensely that even time seemed almost visible to her, she could almost hear its dopplering rhythm. “Shirley. You should never have said you have AIDS.”

Elspeth came and stood staring at her lover. If Shirley was a golden Amazon, Elspeth was a dark-eyed Gypsy, the colorful one, the mysterious wanderer, the perpetual stranger, a small presence but as vehemently, unaccountably eternal as Shirley.

Speaking to Elspeth's look more than to Cally's words, Shirley protested, “You know I can't have AIDS! You know we both tested clean.” Therefore, if they had been faithful to each other since, logically Shirley could not have contracted the pestilence.

Elspeth didn't answer, but Cally averred, knowing that logic had nothing to do with it, “You should never have said you did. Lately things people say have a way of coming true.” Cally stared out the window again. Speaking, like Shirley, to Elspeth's silent fears, she said, “I'd go out and sleep in the barn, leave you two alone, if I had the nerve to get through that fence.”

Not even Elspeth expected it of her. She slept in Shirley's spare bedroom, or watched out the window more than slept, and all night the plastic-pony, fence-post and firefly carousel kept up its impossible circling around the house. But sometime toward dawn Cally dozed, and come daylight, when she looked again, the firefly lights were gone, the music stilled, the fence motionless and in its accustomed place again, the plastic junkyard horses belly-stretched in full frozen career above their locust posts as always. The fence wire sagged broken or bent from the pressure of the mob, but no mark, no furrow, no weird circle showed on the turf of the yard.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The next day in the Perfect Rest Funeral Home's mailbox was a letter addressed to Cally. Mark had to look at the return address to recognize it as coming from her mother, so rarely had he seen that elusive woman's handwriting. Cally's mother never wrote. Why this missive? It had to be about something serious, perhaps something she didn't want Mark to overhear, or she would have phoned. Or something she didn't want the kids to overhear? Concern for his offspring overrode Mark's suspicions, and once he felt himself ennobled by a worthy emotion he was Mark the White Knight of Goodliness and Service to Mankind, he could not open someone else's mail, even though in the grip of jealous spleen, as Mark the Beast, he had been about to do so.

Mark the Goodly reached a compromise with Mark the Beast, and snooped. He held the envelope up to the light. It contained a brief note, folded only once; therefore he was able to make out a few words: “Tammy … the doctor says …” And later, “quite concerned.” This from the woman who could scarcely be concerned about anything.

Mark put the letter in his pocket, phoned his mother and made arrangements for her to answer the funeral home calls, then instructed his telephone to forward them to her home. Then he strapped on his beeper, so she could summon him if necessary. All this so that he, the funeral director, could sally forth from his establishment. He would drop the business end of the beeper off at Wilmores' on his way to find Cally.

By the time Mrs. Wilmore run away I was real worried about Joanie. She changed a lot after she done that mean trick to her mother. She didn't have nothing to say to me, but she didn't mind me hanging around either, which wasn't no good. She didn't seem to care about nothing. She didn't hardly ever go out noplace except to them park meetings of hers. Not even to get stuff to eat she didn't go out none. A lot of the time I come up the hill and found her just laying in that merry-go-round camp of hers, in the dark, with nothing to eat. I'd bring her stuff to eat. It reminded me of the way Joanie was that last year, except the old Joanie would've growled me. Ahira didn't growl me none. That bothered me.

If I'd been thinking, I would've knowed she needed me, I would've told her I knowed she was Joanie. But I'd got in the habit of her being Ahira. Another thing was, she had me half scared of her since I seen what she done to her mother. So I just brought her food and left her be.

It seems like things always go by opposites. Seemed like the less Ahira come out of her hole, the more all the Hoadley misfits come out of theirs. Of course a lot of them was healed and didn't feel so bad or look so bad no more, except for the marks on the sides of their heads, but that didn't matter. We was still misfits, and we knowed it. Being a misfit don't depend on how you look. It depends on what the world has done to your insides. Only now, see, we was proud of them scars, the ones people could see and the ones nobody could see, because them scars had made us Ahira's family. So instead of hiding ourselves away like we used to would, we was out on the streets all day, early in the morning even, just walking around Hoadley and sort of looking at it in the daylight like we wasn't used to seeing it and hugging when we met up with each other and then walking with each other and smiling. It was like we owned the town. Hardly nobody else come out that didn't have to, either because of us or because of them big black bugs all the time yelling like babies. We didn't mind them bugs none. We even carried them around like pets and sweet-talked them black baby faces of theirs. Them bugs was kin to us, and we knowed it. Them bugs was misfits too. The girl who used to was bald wore a whole nest of them in her hair. She give them names and loved them like they was her children and kept them with her wherever. A lot of us done the same.

And when Ahira come down at dusk to the park, we wouldn't just sort of creep out when we seed her to stand around like we used to. We would all be there waiting for her and sort of partying even though there wasn't no drinks or nothing, and we'd yell hi when we seen her coming, and bunches of us would run to meet her and hug her. And when she would start to go away again, we wouldn't let her go. We'd make her walk around Hoadley with us, and we'd sing stupid stuff and crack bad jokes, and a lot of us would walk in a big line with our arms around her shoulders and each other's. I never done none of them things with Ahira because I thought they would make her mad, but I was glad when the others done it and it didn't make her mad. I saw her eyes, her face, sometimes, and it looked like she wanted to cry. That was okay. People got a right to cry sometimes.

Like I said, I was worried about her, but I never would've guessed the crazy thing she would do.

The morning after one of them nights—a bunch of us and Ahira had walked clear out to Mine 28 and spray-painted “666” on the railroad bridge—the next morning early, before I had to go to the funeral home to work, I tromped up the old trolley line to Joanie's place. I had a bunch of bananas and some jelly donuts and some sweet bologna for her. But as soon as I stepped in that hole the earth spirit had blowed in her merry-go-round house, I set that stuff down, because I knowed something was wrong.

I knowed it because I seen hard little glitters of glass all over the place. Then I seed Joanie. She was laying on the floor between some of them wooden horses. She wasn't dead or even knocked out, cause I seed her eyes, hard and thin and glittery, like them pieces of glass. She was watching me the whole time, but didn't move or say hi or nothing. And her eyes was looking out of dark stuff. And it was blood.

“Joanie,” I says, all shook up, not thinking about what I'm saying, “oh damn, Joanie, what'd you go and do to yourself?” I looked around and walked a few steps and grabbed her flashlight, turned it on so I could see her better. And her eyes was on me wide, and her mouth moving under strings of blood.

“Bar,” she's sort of whispering, “How—who—how'd you know—”

I'd went and called her by her real name, see. But I ain't worrying 'bout none of that. I'm worrying about her. I scrooched down beside her with the flashlight, and I can see she ain't bleeding no more, she'd been laying there awhile, the blood drips on the floor beside her are dry, and it's just sort of sticky on her face. But she'd cut her face all to a mess and busted her nose flat. She hadn't hurt her hands; they was folded on top of her. She had herself laid out tidy as a corpse.

“Bar,” she's saying, “how'd you know who I was?”

I ain't paying attention. I can see now what she'd done. She'd broke them big mirrors in the middle of the merry-go-round, all of them. There was splatters of blood and sharp pieces of broken glass everywhere. And she must've done it with her head. She must've rammed her beautiful face right into them mirrors.

I went and got her plastic milk jug she kept full of water, and I found a dishtowel or something, I don't remember what, I was so fussed, and I come back and set beside her and started trying to wash the blood off her face without hurting her worse than she was already hurt.

“Joanie,” I says, “Joanie, are you all right?”

Then all of a sudden she pushed my hands away and set straight up, and when she yelled at me she sounded like the old Joanie. “Barry Beal, you are so dumb!” she yells. “Of course I'm not all right! I—” Right then I put my arms around her. I should've done it before. She snuggled up to my shoulder and started crying. I held her as comfortable as I could. And I wasn't glad about what she'd gone and done to herself, but I was glad about one thing: I knowed right then that she needed me after all. Joanie needed me to love her.

“You're so damn skinny,” I says. She felt like a baby bird I held once, shaking and all bones. “You ain't been eating enough,” I says. She didn't answer me. She was too busy bawling.

“God damn, that hurts!” she cusses between gulps.

“What does?” I let go a little, scared I had been hugging her too tight, I'd smashed her nose worse or something. Even her voice sounds more like the old Joanie, because her nose is smashed.

“Not you. The tears.”

“Tears is good for you.”

“They're getting in the
cuts,
” she yells. She kept on crying anyways, until she was calmed down, and then she pulled away.

“I've made a real mess of your shirt,” she says, dull. She looked like she wanted to cry some more but she was too tired.

“You made a real mess of your face,” I says. I can see it better now it's mostly washed. There was a lot of shallow cuts, and one cheek was sliced open pretty good. “We gotta get you to a doctor.”

“No.” She lays down on the floor again.

“Joanie—”

“No,” she says. “I hate it. Let it be.”

“I ain't going to let it be. It's getting all swole.” It was, too, especially around the eyes and lips. I started putting the cold water on it again to keep the swelling down. “What was wrong with it?” I says. “I thought it was real nice.”

She smiles, sort of stiff because her mouth is sore, and she says, “Barry, you'll never change. How long have you known who I was?”

“A good while. Since that first night I was up here.”

“Lord. I wish you'd told me.”

I wished too now that I did, but I said, “I didn't think you'd like it.”

“Maybe not,” she says, real low. “I was pretty stupid.”

We was quiet. I kept working at her face with the cold cloth.