Breathless (16 page)

He accepted basic care but refused reconstructive surgery other than some dental work. He wanted to look like what he was: broken, the nonfunctional wreckage of a man. He wanted people to see the real him and to witness their pity, their disgust.

Humiliation kept his acrimony focused on himself. He feared only that one day his bitterness would turn to hostility against others and that he would act upon his enmity. He dreaded what violence he might perpetrate, what a horror he might become.

When he panhandled, he held a sign that identified him as a veteran, the survivor of a bomb blast in one Middle East conflict or another, but he was a veteran only of the war within himself.

On this day, shaved, hair freshly washed in the sea, wearing rumpled khakis and a parrot-pattern Hawaiian shirt, Tom appeared sufficiently presentable to take in thirty dollars and change in three hours.

He was alone in the rest area when the seagulls dived at him, the vertigo overcame him, and he vomited into the barrel.

Stomach purged, he took a pint of tequila from a pants pocket to
wash the foul taste from his mouth. As he put the bottle to his lips, the incident occurred.

When Tom Bigger at last could move, he walked north from the rest area, until the sheer bluff became a steep sandstone slope. He descended in a shambling rush to the shore. On the beach, he realized that he had neither taken a swallow of the tequila nor held on to the bottle.

For some months, he had been sheltering in a ten-foot-deep cave at the base of the bluff, directly below the scenic viewpoint. With his bedroll and his few belongings, he kept a supply of tequila and a tin filled with joints of sinsemilla.

In recent years, he drank more than he smoked. Now, he wanted both, until he achieved oblivion.

For the first time in memory, however, he denied himself what he craved. Instead, he waded fully clothed into the sea and sat where the low surf broke gently against his chest.

On this stretch of state-owned coastline, in respect of certain endangered species, the beach was permanently closed to swimmers, surfers, campers, and fishermen. Bankrupt California didn’t have the funds to enforce much more than the tax laws, however, and Tom didn’t worry about being hassled by any kind of shore patrol.

The outer limits of the town lay almost a mile to the south, once a community filled with promise but now just another place where people waited for the end of one thing and the beginning of something worse. He walked into town most days, but no one from there ever came this far north on foot.

Over the years, he’d lived in many places: tents, culverts, junkyard cars, a half-collapsed barn, abandoned buildings. His hope had been that the cave in the sandstone bluff might be his last home.

Six months ago, he twice had a dream about living just above the high-tide line in a cave with smooth sinuous walls, where inflowing wind sometimes spoke in many voices. In the dream, the sea rose in a monster swell and came to him as he lay watching the water claim the stars.

After the second dream, he came to the coast and walked miles of lonely beaches and sandless shingle, until he found his current quarters with its smooth and sinuous walls. He had believed in the promise of the tsunami, and he had known what to do: Wait for the great wave, the drowning rush.

The incident in the rest area changed everything. He no longer knew what he should do.

He sat in the surf while the day waned. If the sea would not keep its promise to him, then perhaps it would wash into him an understanding of what he had seen, what it meant, and what he must do now instead of waiting for the wave.

Twice people in the rest area high above shouted down to him. He didn’t acknowledge them. Later, two young men descended from the bluff, either to see if they could help him or, more likely, to see if they could have some cruel fun with him. As they approached, one of them said, “Hey, dude, where’s your surfboard?”

When he turned to look up at them, they halted at the sight of his face. Their attitude and expressions changed, and they backed off a few steps.

As the two conferred in whispers, Tom raised his hands out of the surging water and showed them his huge fists.

The young men retreated to the bluff and did not return.

After a while, Tom moved farther back on the beach, so the surf broke at his feet.

Neither twilight nor nightfall brought understanding.

The moon silvered the froth of the breaking surf.

Far out on the black sea, ship lights moved north, moved south, grew brighter, then dwindled.

As if stepping out of time from a prehuman world, a great blue heron of singular size appeared to the south of him, a prehistoric presence almost five feet tall, wading through the shallow purling water of the collapsed surf, feeding as it progressed.

Heron often trumpeted during a hunt. This one stalked silently. The bird stopped near Tom’s feet and regarded him with its tiny moon-monocled eyes. Instead of spreading its immense wings and taking flight or issuing its threatening cry of aggression, it paused only briefly and then dismissively moved past him, continuing north along the shore, spearing small fish with its sharp bill.

The moon, the ships, the hunting heron seemed to have the same message for Tom Bigger:
Rise, go, keep moving
.

Suddenly chilled, he stripped out of his wet garments and left them on the beach. He dressed in one of his two changes of clothes: thick socks, walking shoes, jeans, and a denim shirt.

He packed six pints of tequila in his backpack and left the rest of his supply buried in the sand at the back of the cave, although he suspected that he would never return.

Because his bedroll was worn and greasy, he left it in the cave, but he packed his tin of sinsemilla joints and the pistol.

With no destination yet in mind, he took his direction from the traffic on the sea. At the moment, two clusters of ship lights were visible. Both vessels were sailing south, so Tom Bigger walked south toward the town.

He didn’t believe the town would be his ultimate destination.
On arrival, perhaps he would receive a sign by which he would know where to go from there.

Sometimes he made decisions based on dreams that seemed to be predictive, as when he followed a dream to a cave by the sea, hoping for an obliterating tidal wave. The dreams in which he believed and from which he took direction were always death dreams, foreboding but at the same time alluring.

He never previously expected to see signs and portents in the waking world. Perhaps he would see none now. But the incident in the deserted rest area had upended him. He would not be surprised if at least he sensed being guided by mundane things—like blue herons and distant ships—that suddenly seemed to have greater significance and require interpretation.

The damp, compacted sand underfoot. The vast night-shrouded sea to his right. The sky hard and cold but stippled with stars. To his left, the land, the highways and the cities, the people and their pain, the infinite possibilities, the unspeakable horrors, the world long lost to him, everything that might have been for him but never was, perhaps now his future.

C
ammy on the footstool, holding Puzzle on her lap, started with the furry ears, the shape of which reminded her of calla lilies, and proceeded down the neck to the shoulders, working her fingers all the way into the undercoat, massaging the creature’s sleek muscles. She was surprised by what she found—or, rather, by what she didn’t find.

“I’m not feeling a tick anywhere. Not one. And she doesn’t seem to have any fleas, either.”

Grimacing, Grady said, “I didn’t think about ticks and fleas when I let them in the house.”

“No ticks, no fleas—she can’t have been roaming around fields and woods more than a day or so, probably a lot less than that.”

“When Merlin and I saw them in the meadow this afternoon, they were romping as if they’d just been set free. Maybe they were.”

“No papillomas or cysts,” Cammy reported.

She raised her hand to her face and found that no offensive odor
had been transferred from the white fur to her skin. Leaning forward, she put her nose to Puzzle’s ventral coat.

“She smells fresh, as if she was just groomed.”

Feeling ignored, Merlin dropped the toy duck and thrust his big head into the moment, resting his chin on Puzzle’s chest, rolling his eyes at Cammy.

Before Cammy could pet the dog, Puzzle took Merlin’s muzzle in both hands and began to massage his face with her small fingers, which was his favorite form of attention.

“Look,” Cammy whispered, as if a loud word would break the spell.

“I see.”

“Shouldn’t she be at least a little afraid of such a big dog?”

“I don’t think she’s afraid of anything,” Grady said. “I don’t think … well, I don’t think she even knows she should be afraid of some things.”

“What an odd idea.”

He frowned. “Yeah. Isn’t it? But there’s something about these two … something makes me think maybe they’ve never known real fear.”

Watching Puzzle stroke the wolfhound’s face, Cammy said, “If true, that would be the biggest difference about them. Everything alive knows fear.”

Leaving the cushions in disarray, Riddle sprang down from the sofa and, as if having noticed it only now, scurried to a Stickley desk that Grady had made during the first few months after his return to the mountains. It was a lovely walnut piece with hammered-copper hardware, ornamented with inlaid pewter.

Riddle sat on his hindquarters and with one finger repeatedly
flicked the dangling copper pull on the right-hand door, which rang musically against the escutcheon plate.

In Cammy’s lap, Puzzle pushed Merlin aside and raised her head far enough to see what her companion might be doing.

Riddle turned his head to look at her.

For a moment, Puzzle held his stare.

Riddle moved to the left-hand door and flicked the dangling pull as he had flicked the first. Again, he turned his head toward Puzzle.

As before, she met his stare, and after a hesitation, he turned away from the desk.

By some subtle expression or even more subtle gesture that Cammy failed to register, they seemed to have communicated with each other regarding the desk.

Grady appeared to have the same impression. “What was that about?”

Riddle scampered to the purple bunny, snatched it with his teeth, raced out of the living room, into the vestibule, and up the stairs, squeaking the toy as he went.

Game for a chase, Merlin pursued him.

I
n the bedroom closet, Henry Rouvroy listened for movement in the house and tried not to think about the body lying on its side in the bed. It was not a real body, only a dummy constructed of pillows and blankets, a deception that he had created himself, that and only that, that and nothing more.

No one could have entered the house, jammed the components of the faux body under the bed, and slipped beneath the covers, taking the place of the fake sleeper. Henry would have heard. He would have encountered the intruder in the act.

Of course, after arranging the bed, he spent as much as half an hour in the bathroom, scrubbing grime from under his fingernails. Standing at the sink, he had his back to the door and could not see the bedroom.

Thereafter, during his final search of the house, he stood for a long time at the cellar door, studying the light that leaked beneath it, listening for any sound from below. In that position, he would
have known if someone tried to come in by the back door, but he would not have been aware of an intruder entering by the front.

“Ridiculous,” Henry hissed in the dark closet where once Nora’s clothes had hung.

His faceless tormentor was bold but not reckless. No adversary this clever would make himself vulnerable by taking the place of the dummy.

Only a lunatic would pull such a stunt, a lunatic or someone who had no fear of death because …

“Don’t go there,” he muttered.

Because he had already thought
faceless tormentor
, his line of thinking progressed as inevitably as an avalanche. His brother, Jim, was faceless because he’d been shot in the face, and Jim had no fear of death because he was already dead.