The Tommyknockers (74 page)

She looked from Kyle to Dick to Newt to Hazel and saw that the others looked as shocked as she felt. Thank God she was not alone, then. Tommy and Hester had gotten back all right—ahead of schedule, actually, because when Tommy started to feel really ill only three hours after they had driven out of the Haven-Troy area, he had begun to push it, moving as fast as he could.

The damn kid was really a hero,
Bobbi thought.
I guess the best we can do for him is a plot in Homeland, but he was still a hero.

She looked toward where Hester lay, pallid as a wax cameo, breathing dryly, eyes closed. They could have—maybe should have—come back when they felt the headaches coming on, when their gums began to bleed, but they hadn't even discussed it. And it wasn't only their gums. Hester, who had been menstruating lightly all during the “becoming” (unlike older women, teenage girls didn't ever seem to stop . . . or hadn't yet, anyway), made Tommy stop at the Troy General Store so she could buy heavier sanitary napkins. She had begun to flow copiously. By the time they had bought three car batteries and a good used truck battery in the Newport-Derry Town Line Auto Supply on Route 7, she had soaked four Stayfree Maxi-Pads.

Their heads began to ache, Tommy's worse than Hester's. By the time they had gotten half a dozen Allstate batteries at the Sears store and well over a hundred C, D, and double-and triple-A cells at the Derry Tru-Value Hardware (which had just gotten a new shipment in), they both knew they had to get back . . . quick. Tommy had begun to hallucinate; as he drove up Wentworth Street, he thought he saw a clown grinning up at him from an open sewer manhole—a clown with shiny silver dollars for eyes and a clenched white glove filled with balloons.

Eight miles or so out of Derry, headed back toward Haven on Route 9, Tommy's rectum began to bleed.

He pulled over, and, face flaming with embarrassment,
asked Hester if he could have some of her pads. He was able to explain why when she asked, but not to look at her while he did so. She gave him a handful and he went into the bushes for a minute. He came back to the car weaving like a drunk, one hand outstretched.

“You got to drive, Hester,” he said. “I'm not seeing so hot.”

By the time they got back to the town line, the front seat of the car was splashed with gore and Tommy was unconscious. By then Hester herself was able to see only through a dark curtain; she knew it was four of a bright summer's afternoon, but Doc Warwick seemed to come to her out of a thundery purple twilight. She knew he was opening the door, touching her hands, saying:
It's all right, my darling, you are back, you can let go of the wheel now, you are back in Haven.
She was able to give a more or less coherent account of their afternoon as she lay in the protective circle of Hazel McCready's arms, but she had joined Tommy in unconsciousness long before they got to the Doc's, even though Doc was doing an unheard-of sixty-five, his white hair flying in the wind.

Adley McKeen whispered: What about the girl?

Well, her blood pressure's dropping, Warwick said. The bleeding's stopped. She is young and tough. Good country stock. I knew her parents and her grandparents. She'll pull through. He looked around at them grimly, his watery old blue eyes not deceived by their makeup, which in this light made them look like half a dozen ghastly suntanned clowns.

But I don't think she'll ever regain her sight.

There was a numb silence. Bobbi broke it:

That's not so.

Doc Warwick turned to look at her.

She'll see again, Bobbi said. When the “becoming” is finished, she'll see. We'll all see with one eye then.

Warwick met her gaze for a moment, and then his own eyes dropped. Yes, he said. I guess. But it's a damned shame, anyway.

Bobbi agreed without heat. Bad for her. Worse for Tommy. No bed of roses for their folks. I have to go see them. I could use company.

She looked at them, but their eyes dropped away from hers a pair at a time and their thoughts dulled into a smooth hum.

All right, Bobbi said. I'll manage. I guess.

Adley McKeen spoke up humbly. I guess I'll come with you if you want, Bobbi. Keep you company.

Bobbi gave him a tired yet somehow brilliant smile and squeezed his shoulder. Thank you, Ad. For the second time, thank you.

The two of them went out. The others watched them, and when they heard Bobbi's truck start, they turned toward where Hester Brookline lay unconscious, hooked up to a sophisticated life-support machine whose component parts had come from two radios, a turntable record-changer, the auto-tuning device from Doc's new Sony TV . . .

. . . and, of course, lots of batteries.

Wednesday, August 10th:

In spite of his tiredness, his confusion, his inability to stop playing Hamlet, and—worst of all—the persistent feeling that things in Haven were going wronger all the time, Jim Gardener had managed the booze pretty well since the day Bobbi had come back and they had lain together on the fragrant pine needles. Part of the reason was pure self-interest. Too many bloody noses, too many headaches. Some of this was undoubtedly the influence of the ship, he thought—he hadn't forgotten that he'd had one after Bobbi had repeatedly urged him to touch her find, and he had seized the leading edge of the ship and felt that rapid, numbing vibration—but he was wise enough to know that his steady drinking was doing its part, as well. There had been no blackouts
per se,
but there had been days when his nose had bled three and four times. He had always tended toward hypertension, and he had been told more than once that steady drinking could worsen what was a borderline condition.

So he was doing fairly well until he heard Bobbi sneezing.

That sound, so terribly familiar, called up a set of memories and a sudden terrible idea exploded in his mind like a bomb.

He went into the kitchen, opened the hamper, and looked at a dress—the one she'd been wearing yesterday evening. Bobbi did not see this inspection; she was asleep. She had sneezed in her sleep.

Bobbi had gone out the previous evening with no explanation—she had seemed nervous and upset to Gardener, and although both of them had worked hard all day, Bobbi had eaten almost no supper. Then, near sundown, she had bathed, changed into the dress, and driven off into the hot, still, muggy evening. Gardener had heard her come back around midnight, had seen the brilliant flare of light as Bobbi went into the shed. He thought she came back in around first light, but wasn't sure.

All day today she had been morose, speaking only when spoken to, and only then in monosyllables. Gardener's clumsy efforts to cheer her up met with no success. Bobbi skipped supper again tonight, and just shook her head when Gardener suggested a few cribbage hands on the porch, just like in the old days.

Bobbi's eyes, looking out of that weird coating of flesh-colored makeup, had looked somber and wet. Even as Gardener noticed this, Bobbi yanked a handful of Kleenex from the table behind her and sneezed into them two or three times, rapidly.

“Summer cold, I guess. I'm going to hit the rack, Gard. I'm sorry to be such a party-pooper, but I'm whipped.”

“Okay,” Gard said.

Something—some remembered familiarity—had been gnawing at him, and now he stood here with her dress in his hands, a light sleeveless summer cotton. In the old days it would have been washed this morning, hung on the line out back to dry, ironed after supper, and back in the closet again long before bed. But these weren't the old days, these were the New and Improved Days, and they washed clothes only when they absolutely had to; after all, there were more important things to do, weren't there?

As if to confirm his idea, Bobbi sneezed twice in her sleep.

“No,” Gard whispered. “Please.” He dropped the dress back into the hamper, no longer wanting to touch it. He slammed the lid and then stood stiffly, waiting to see if the sound would wake Bobbi.

She took the truck. Went to do something she didn't want to do. Something that upset her. Something formal enough to need a dress. She came back late and went into the shed. Didn't come into the house to change. Went in like she needed to go in. Right away.
Why?

But the answer, coupled with the sneezes and what he had found on her dress, seemed inevitable.

Comfort.

And when Bobbi, who lived alone, needed comfort, who had always been there to give it? Gard? Don't make me laugh, folks. Gard only showed up to
take
comfort, not give it.

He wanted to be drunk. He wanted that more than at any time since this crazy business had begun.

Forget it.
As he turned to leave the kitchen, where Bobbi kept the alcoholic staples as well as the clothes hamper, something clitter-clicked to the boards.

He bent over, picked it up, examined it, bounced it thoughtfully on his hand. It was a tooth, of course. Big Number Two. He put a finger into his mouth, felt the new socket, looked at the smear of blood on his fingerpad. He went to the kitchen doorway and listened. Bobbi was snoring gustily in her bedroom. Sounded as if her sinuses were closed up as tight as timelocks.

A summer cold, she said. Maybe so. Maybe that's what it is.

But he remembered the way Peter would sometimes leap up into her lap when Bobbi sat in her old rocker by the windows to read, or when she sat out on the porch. Bobbi said Peter was most apt to make one of his boob-destroying leaps when the weather was unsettled, just as he was more apt to bring on one of her allergy attacks when the weather was hot and unsettled.
It's like he knows,
she'd said once, and ruffled the beagle's ears.
DO you, Pete? Do you know? Do you LIKE to make me sneeze? Misery loves company, is that it?
And Pete had seemed to laugh up at her in that way of his.

Gardener remembered, when Bobbi's return had briefly wakened him last night (Bobbi's return and that flare of green light), hearing distant and meaningless heat-wave thunder.

Now he remembered that sometimes
Pete
needed a little comfort too.

Especially when it thundered. Pete was deathly afraid of that sound. The sound of thunder.

Dear Christ, has she got Peter out in that shed? And if she does, in God's name
WHY?

There had been smears of some funny green goo on Bobbi's dress.

And hairs.

Very familiar short brown and white hairs. Peter was in the shed, and had been all this time. Bobbi
had
lied about Peter being dead. God alone knew how many other things she had lied about . . . but why this?

Why?

Gardener didn't know.

He changed direction, went to the cupboard to the right and beneath the sink, bent, pulled out a fresh bottle of Scotch, and broke the seal. He held the bottle up and said, “To man's best friend.” He drank from the neck, gargled viciously, and swallowed.

First swallow.

Peter. What the fuck did you do to Peter, Bobbi?

He meant to get drunk.

Very drunk.

Fast.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

—T
HE
W
HO
, “Won't Get Fooled Again”

Over on the mountain:

thunder, magic foam,

let the people know my wisdom,

fill the land with smoke.

Run through the jungle . . .

Don't look back to see.

—C
REEDENCE
C
LEARWATER
R
EVIVAL
, “Run Through the Jungle”

I slept and I dreamed the dream. This time there was no disguise anywhere. I was the malicious male-female dwarf figure, the principle of joy-in-destruction; and Saul was my counterpart, male-female, my brother and my sister, and we were dancing in some open place, under enormous white buildings, which were filled with hideous, menacing, black machinery which held destruction. But in the dream, he and I, or she and I, were friendly, we were not hostile, we were together in spiteful malice. There was a terrible yearning nostalgia in the dream, the longing for death. We came together and kissed, in love. It was terrible, and even in the dream I knew it. Because I recognised in the dream those other dreams we all have, when the essence of love, of tenderness, is concentrated into a kiss or a caress, but now it was the caress of two half-human creatures, celebrating destruction.

—DORIS LESSING,
The Golden Notebook

“I hope you enjoyed the flight,” the stewardess by the hatch told the fortyish woman who left Delta's flight 230 with a trickle of other passengers who had stuck it out all the way to Bangor, 230's terminating point.

Bobbi Anderson's sister Anne, who was forty but who
thought
fifty as well as
looking
it (Bobbi would say—during those infrequent times she was in her cups—that sister Anne had thought like a woman of fifty since she was thirteen or so), halted and fixed the stew with a gaze that might have stopped a clock.

“Well, I'll tell you, babe,” she said. “I'm hot. My pits stink because the plane was late leaving La Garbage and even later leaving Logan. The air was bumpy and I hate to fly. The trainee they sent back to Livestock Class spilled someone's screwdriver all over me and I've got orange juice drying to a fine crack-glaze all over my arm. My panties are sticking in the crack of my ass and this little town looks like a pimple on the cock of New England. Other questions?”

“No,” the stew managed. Her eyes had gone glassy, and she felt as if she had suddenly gone about three quick rounds with Boom-Boom Mancini on a day when Mancini was pissed at the world. This was an effect Anne Anderson often had on people.