The Stupidest Angel (8 page)

They'd heard it all, the dead: crying children, wailing widows, confessions, condemnations, questions that they could never answer; Halloween dares, raving drunks— invoking the ghosts or just apologizing for drawing breath; would-be witches, chanting at indifferent spirits, tourists rubbing the old tombstones with paper and charcoal like curious dogs scratching at the grave to get in. Funerals, confirmations, communions, weddings, square dances, heart attacks, junior-high hand jobs, wakes gone awry, vandalism, Handel's
Messiah,
a birth, a murder, eighty-three Passion plays, eighty-five Christmas pageants, a dozen brides barking over tombstones like taffeta sea lions as the best man gave it to them dog style, and now and again, couples who needed something dark and smelling of damp earth to give their sex life a jolt: the dead had heard it.

"Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah!" Molly cried from her seat astraddle the town constable, who was squirming on an uncomfortable bed of plastic roses a few feet above a dead schoolteacher.

"They always think they're the first ones. Ooooo, let's do it in the graveyard,"
said Bess Leander, whose husband had served her foxglove tea with her last breakfast.

"I know, there are three used condoms on my grave from this week alone,"
said Arthur Tannbeau, citrus farmer, deceased five years.

"How can you tell?"

They heard everything, but their vision was limited.

"The smell."

"That's disgusting,"
said Esther, the schoolteacher.

It's hard to shock the dead. Esther was feigning disgust.

"What's all the racket? I was sleeping."
Malcolm Cowley, antique book dealer, myocardial infarction over Dickens.

"Theo Crowe, the constable, and his crazy wife doing it on Esther's grave,"
said Arthur.
"I'll bet she's off her meds."

"Five years they've been married and they're still at this kind of thing?"
Since her death, Bess had taken a strong antirelationship stance.

"Postmarital sex is so pedestrian."
Malcolm again, ever bored with provincial, small-town death.

"Somepostmortem sex, that's what I could use,"
said the late Marty in the Morning, KGOB radio's top DJ with a bullet—a pioneer carjack victim back when hair bands ruled the airwaves.
"A rave in the grave, if you get my meaning."

"Listen to her. I'd like to slip the bone to her,"
said Jimmy Antalvo, who'd kissed a pole on his Kawasaki to remain ever nineteen.

"Which one?"
Marty cackled.

"The new Christmas tree sounds lovely,"
said Esther.
"I do hope they sing 'Good King Wenceslas' this year."

"If they do,"
spouted the moldy book dealer,
"you'll find me justly spinning in my grave."

"You wish,"
said Jimmy Antalvo.
"Hell, I wish."

The dead did not spin in their graves, they did not move—nor could they speak, except to one another, voices without air. What they did was sleep, awakening to listen, to chat a bit, then, eventually, to never wake again. Sometimes it took twenty years, sometimes as long as forty before they took the big sleep, but no one could remember hearing a voice from longer ago than that.

Six feet above them, Molly punctuated her last few convulsive climactic bucks with, "I—AM—SO — GOING—TO—WASH—YOUR—VOLVO — WHEN —WE—GET—HOME! YES! YES! YES!"

Then she sighed and fell forward to nuzzle Theo's chest as she caught her breath.

"I don't know what that means," Theo said.

"It means I'm going to wash your car for you."

"Oh, it's not a euphemism, like,
wash the old Volvo.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge?"

"Nope. It's your reward."

Now that they were finished, Theo was having a hard time ignoring the plastic flowers that were impressed in his bare backside. "I thought this was my reward." He gestured to her bare thighs on either side of him, the divots her knees had made in the dirt, her hair played out across his chest.

Molly pushed up and looked down at him. "No, this was your reward for helping me with the Christmas tree. Washing your car is your reward for this."

"Oh," Theo said. "I love you."

"Oh, I think I'm going to be sick,"
said a newly dead voice from across the woods.

"Who's the new guy?"
asked Marty in the Morning.

The radio on Theo's belt, which was down around his knees, crackled. "Pine Cove Constable, come in. Theo?"

Theo did an awkward sit-up and grabbed the radio. "Go ahead, Dispatch."

"Theo, we have a two-oh-seven-A at six-seven-one Worchester Street. The victim is alone and the suspect may still be in the area. I've dispatched two units, but they're twenty minutes out."

"I can be there in five minutes," Theo said.

"Suspect is a white male, over six feet, long blond hair, wearing a long black raincoat or overcoat."

"Roger, Dispatch. I'm on my way." Theo was trying to pull his pants up with one hand while working the radio with the other.

Molly was on her feet already, naked from the waist down, holding her jeans and sneakers rolled up under her left arm. She extended a hand to help Theo up.

"What's a two-oh-seven?"

"Not sure," said Theo, letting her lever him to his feet. "Either an attempted kidnapping or a possum with a handgun."

"You have plastic flowers stuck to your butt."

"Probably the former, she didn't say anything about shots fired."

"No, leave them. They're cute."

THE SEASON FOR MAKING 

NEW FRIENDS

Theo was doing fifty up Worchester Street when the blond man stepped from behind a tree into the street. The Volvo had just lurched over a patched strip in the asphalt, so the grille was pointed up and caught the blond man about hip-high, tossing him into the air ahead of the car. Theo stood on the brake, but even as the antilocks throbbed, the blond man hit the tarmac and the Volvo rolled over him, making sickening crunching and thumping noises as body parts ricocheted into wheel wells.

Theo checked the rearview as the car stopped and saw the blond man flopping to a stop in the red wash of the brake lights. Theo pulled the radio off his belt as he leaped from the car, and stood ready to call for help when the figure lying in the road started to get up.

Theo let the radio fall to his side. "Hey, buddy, just stay right there. Just stay calm. Help is on the way." He started loping toward the injured man, then pulled up.

The blond guy was on his hands and knees now; Theo could also see that his head was twisted the wrong way and the long blond hair was cascading back to the ground. There was a crackling noise as the guy's head turned around to face the ground. He stood up. He was wearing a long black coat with a rain flap. This was "the suspect."

Theo started backing away. "You just stay right there. Help is on the way." Even as he said it, Theo didn't think this guy was interested in any help.

The foot that faced backward came around to the front with another series of sickening crackles. The blond man looked up at Theo for the first time.

"Ouch," he said.

"I'm guessing that smarted," Theo said. At least his eyes weren't glowing red or anything. Theo backed into the open door of the Volvo. "You might want to lie down and wait for the ambulance." For the second time in as many hours, he wished he had remembered to bring his gun along.

The blond man held an arm out toward Theo, then noticed that the thumb on the outstretched hand was on the wrong side. He grabbed it with his other hand and snapped it back into place. "I'll be okay," the blond man said, monotone.

"You know, if that coat dry-cleans itself while I'm watching, I'll nominate you for governor my own self," Theo said, trying to buy time while he thought of what he was going to say to the dispatcher when he keyed the button on the radio.

The blond man was now coming steadily toward him—the first few steps limping badly, but the limp getting better as he got closer. "Stop right there," Theo said. "You are under arrest for a two-oh-seven-A."

"What's that?" asked the blond man, now only a few feet from the Volvo.

Theo was relatively sure now that a 207A was not a possum with a handgun, but he wasn't sure what it was, so he said, "Freakin' out a little kid in his own home. Now stop right there or I will blow your fucking brains out." Theo pointed the radio, antenna first, at the blond guy.

And the blond guy stopped, only steps away. Theo could see the deep gouges cut in the man's cheeks from contact with the road. There was no blood.

"You're taller than I am," said the blond man.

Theo guessed the blond man to be about six-two, maybe three. "Hands on the roof of the car," he said, training the antenna of the radio between the impossibly blue eyes.

"I don't like that," said the blond man.

Theo crouched quickly, making himself appear shorter than the blond man by a couple of inches.

"Thanks."

"Hands on the car."

"Where's the church?"

"I'm not kidding, put your hands on the roof of the car and spread 'em." Theo's voice broke like he was hitting second puberty.

"No." The blond man snatched the radio out of Theo's hand and crushed it into shards. "Where's the church? I need to get to the church."

Theo dove into the car, scooted across the seat, and came out on the other side. When he looked back over the roof of the car the blond man was just standing there, looking at him like a parakeet might look at himself in the mirror.

"What!?" Theo screamed.

"The church?"

"Up the street you'll come to some woods. Go through them about a hundred yards."

"Thank you," said the blond man. He walked off.

Theo jumped back into the Volvo, threw it into drive. If he had to run over the guy again, so be it. But when he looked up from the dash, no one was there. It suddenly occurred to him that Molly might still be at the old chapel.