Multiplex Fandango (37 page)

Gibb brought his hand to his mouth.
Although he'd seen horrific things in his fifteen years as a policeman, the matter of fact way the story was being told was almost as shocking as they events they retold.

"Then she began to boil water.
She told me I was dirty.
She told me I had bugs.
She said that she knew how to get them out.
She said that she knew how to make me clean.
So there I stood, crying and begging my mother to let me go, trying to move my feet, when the first pot came to a boil.
Do you know that she smiled when she poured it over my head?"

Gibb shook his head, but it went unnoticed.

"My brain shut down at that point.
It took three years before I could think straight again."

Gibb stood, hand to his mouth, eyes wide, staring at the Burned Man.
The words
‘
when the first pot came to a boil
’
reverberated through his mind.
Part of him wondered how many pots she'd boiled.

"You were right about something," Rev Bosco
e
said, abruptly changing the subject.
"The soul of the man you killed is still here."

"What?" Gibb was taken off guard by the prono
u
ncement.

"Do you know why the Long Cool Woman never came to you?" Rev Bosco
e
asked, removing her hand from his eyes and staring at Gibb.
"You do know that the normal way this happens is that she comes to you, right?"

"I didn't know."

"Clearly.
There's a reason why she didn't come to you."

"What's the reason?"

"Better let her explain."
Rev Bosco
e
stood.

Gibb suddenly noticed that the Long Cool Woman's eyes were open.
Her attention was fixed on him.
Her face was unreadable, yet her eyes were alive.

"Take her hand," Rev Bosco
e
said.

Gibb stepped forward, took the hand into his own, and felt the grave.
If possible, her skin was even colder than the Burned Man's.
But he didn't have time to contemplate this.
Her gaze held him as firm as the gripping hand and he was unable to look away.

"What do we do now?" he asked.

Then he watched the lips writhe upon the Long Cool Woman's face like two red worms.
A hiss escaped as the eyes narrowed.
Gibb felt the grip on his hand tighten.
Her nails dug into the inside of his wrist.

"You are the one," the Long Cool Woman said, her voice low and mean.

Gibb tried to pull his hand free.

"You did this.
You killed me."

Blood began to seep from where her nails had pierced his wrist.
With his other hand, he tried to pry her fingers away.
Then a hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed it.

"You wanted this, so stop fighting it," Rev Bosco
e
whispered.

Gibb shook his head, but knew the truth of the words.
He could take a little pain.
He should take a little pain; after all, he was the one still alive.

"Yes.
I killed you," he said slowly, gritting his teeth so as not to cry out from the pain and the guilt.

The soul that
had
once been Stephen Jones hissed in reply.
"Why?" asked the Long Cool Woman.

"I wanted to make sure that you made it to Heaven.
After all that I did, I wanted to make sure you were
—
"

"No.
Why did you kill me?" asked the voice.
"Why did you run?"

"Because I was afraid."

"You were driving drunk," the Long Cool Woman stated matter-of-factly, the voice authoritarian and with a sudden mannish quality.

"Yes.
I'd been at a party at the Dean's house and had a few too many martinis," Gibb said, remembering the event.
He'd just been promoted to full professor and the Dean of the Humanities Department had thrown a party for Gibb at his resort home west of Phoenix.
"I didn't know I was drunk until I hit the interstate and by then it was too late."

"Too late," mimicked the voice.

Gibb continued, but he was flustered by the sarcasm.
"I should have stopped.
I should have let you give me a ticket or take me in
,
or anything
other
than what happened," he said
,
stumbling over the words in his rush to get them out.

"Why were you afraid?"

"Because I would have been fired."
Gibb looked into the Long Cool Woman's face.
"I know.
It's stupid.
Incredibly stupid.
I want you to know that I would have done anything, would do anything to erase that day."

"Why are you here?" the voice asked.

"To make sure you were released to Heaven," Gibb said, his eyes hopeful.

"Bullshit," spat the Long Cool Woman.
"Who the hell are you trying to kid?"

Gibb jerked back as if he'd been slapped.
He opened his mouth to say something, but he didn't have the chance.

"You came here to make yourself feel better," the Long Cool Woman said, drawing the words out into one long snarl.

"I did not," Gibb said.
"I've been
—
"

"
—
keeping me here for seventeen years while you made yourself feel better.
Don't think I didn't know what's going on.
I felt you thinking about me every day.
Each thought, each wish was a tug on my soul.
Your pathetic conscience needed to be soothed because killing me made you feel bad."

"But that's not true."

"Boo fucking hoo!
You felt bad and did all this to make yourself feel better."

After the accident, Gibb had high-tailed it home.
It wasn't until the next day that he'd discovered that the police officer had died.
He'd attended the funeral, but kept to the back.
Seeing Stephen Jones' young wife weep as she was handed the flag had broken him inside.
He'd felt responsible and knew that the responsible man would do something to make things right.

"That isn't fair," Gibb said.
"I did this for you.
I changed my life for you."

"Not fair?
Not fair?" sputtered the Long Cool Woman.
"You kill me and tell me I'm not being fair?"

After the funeral, Gibb had quit his job, the same job he'd been worried about losing that night of the accident.
Keeping it would have been a laugh in the face of responsibility.
Kierkegaard would have rolled over in his grave.
So Gibb had taken a sabbatical at St. David's Monastery down by Tombstone as he contemplated his future.
Three months later, his conclusion was that the ethical thing, the existential thing, the responsible thing, would be to live the life of the man he'd killed.
His goal was to fulfill the dreams of the dead man, so at the age of 29 he'd become a highway patrol officer.

"I was trying to be responsible.
I was trying to
—
"

"Shut up.
Just shut the hell up.
It's because of your irresponsibility that I died.
It's because of your misplaced responsibility that I have not passed through the shroud."

"No.
The violence of the accident is what kept you here."
He glanced up at Rev Bosco
e
.
"Tell him, Rev.
Tell him it was the violence that kept him from passing on."
Gibb trailed off as he noticed the sad look in Rev Bosco
e
's eyes.
"What?
Tell me."

Rev Bosco
e
cleared his throat before he spoke.
"Memory and heartache.
Sure, the violence of the death carries a certain resonance.
But unremembered, the soul will pass on just as quickly as if he'd died in his sleep."

"I don't understand," Gibb said, looking at the shrine he'd erected.
"Do you mean that these," he said pointing to the cross atop the concrete based, "are responsible for keeping the souls in place."

Rev Bosco
e
nodded.

"But they're no different than tombstones in a cemetery," Gibb argued.

"They are very different," Rev Bosco
e
said.
"These things along the road commemorate the event, rather than the person.
In a graveyard, only the person is remembered.
Graves are where people are buried.
Shrines are where memories are buried."

Gibb stared at the shrine in shock.
What had he done?
He hadn't meant to make matters worse.
He'd only thought to pay respect and be responsible.
"But these are everywhere," he said.

"Yes," Rev Bosco
e
sighed.
"They are."

"And now you're a policeman," came the edgy voice of the Long Cool Woman.

"Yes.
I thought it was the proper thing to do."

"To replace me?"

"No," said Gibb.
"To show respect for you."

"By becoming me?"

"Yes.
No."
Gibb suddenly found the need to defend himself.
"By doing the things you had done so that the world wasn't at a loss."

"What the hell kind of logic is that?"

"It's good logic.
It's the way a great many people believe.
It's about responsibility and existentialism."

"It's about you wanting to make yourself feel better," said the Long Cool Woman.
"That's it.
Nothing more."

Then the Long Cool Woman released his hand.
Her eyes narrowed, then closed, her face returning to the soft features of a woman asleep.

"Wait," said Gibb, picking up the limp hand.
"Come back.
Please," he sobbed.

Rev Bosco
e
knelt beside him and gently, yet forcefully, removed the hand of the Long Cool Woman from his grasp.
He placed the hand back on the woman's chest, then placed the other on top of this one.

"You wanted forgiveness, didn't you?" Rev Bosco
e
asked.

"I
—
" Gibb's chest felt incredibly tight.
Tears burned his eyes.

"I never forgave my mother, either.
Not only didn't she deserve it, but I can hold a grudge if I want to.
I can be pissed off.
If she'd killed me, I'd have haunted her," Rev Bosco
e
said as he finished smoothing out the Long Cool Woman's dress.

Finally the fist around Gibb's heart relented allowing him to release a long sob-filled sigh.

"Kind of selfish to take things into your own hands, don't you think?"

Gibb stared miserably at Rev Bosco
e
as he stood, then extended a hand to help Gibb to his feet.
When they were both standing, Rev Bosco
e
continued.
"Did you think he'd be eager to accept your apology?
Life and death is not some Ro
d
gers and Hammerstein Broadway show.
My mother found that out when my Dad shot her with the pistol we kept up on the refrigerator.
According to the police report I read when I'd reached adulthood, she was singing a song from
Oklahoma
."
His voice switched to a ca
p
pella sing-song as he sung, "O what a beautiful morning, O what a beautiful day.
I've got a beautiful feeling, everything's going my way."
Rev Bosco
e
shook his head, as he gestured for the bikers to come over.
"Pretty fucking audacious that you'd think so highly of yourself to take on his life."

Gibb couldn't take anymore.
Everything he'd become
,
everything he'd done, had been put to the test and found to be wrong.
How could he have done it so badly?
He took off at a dead run towards his police cruiser.
He reached it, unlocked the door, leapt inside, then jammed the car into gear.
Within seconds he was racing down the highway at a hundred miles per hour, lights flashing, siren keening his agony into the night.