A Face in the Crowd

sadder still.

“All right, buddy, I’ll let you get back to the game. Maybe golf next week if it doesn’t rain.”

“We’ll see,” Evers said. “Stay cool, Kazzie, and—”

Kaz joined him then, and they chanted the last line together, as they had many, many times before: “Don’t let the bastards get you down!”

That was it, it was over. He sensed things moving again, a flurry behind him, at the periphery of his vision. He looked around, phone in hand, and saw the spotted usher creakily leading Uncle Elmer and Aunt June down the stairs, and several girls he’d dated in high school, including the one who’d been sort of semiconscious—or maybe unconscious would be closer to the truth—when he’d had her. Behind them came Miss Pritchett with her hair down for once, and Mrs. Carlisle from the drugstore, and the Jansens, the elderly neighbors whose deposit bottles he’d stolen off their back porch. From the other side, as if it were a company outing, a second, equally ancient usher was filling in the rows at the top of the section with former Speedy employees, a number of them in their blue uniforms. He recognized Don Blanton, who’d been questioned during a child pornography investigation in the mid-nineties and had hung himself in his Malden garage. Evers remembered how shocked he’d been, both by the idea of someone he knew possibly being involved in kiddie porn and by Don’s final action. He’d always liked the man, and hadn’t wanted to let him go, but with that kind of accusation hanging over his head, what else could he do? The reputation of a company’s employees was part of its bottom line.

He still had some battery left. What the hell, he thought. It was a big game. They were probably watching on the Cape.

“Hey, Dad,” Pat answered.

“You watching the game?”

“The kids are. The grown-ups are playing cards.”

Next to the first usher stood Lennie Wheeler’s daughter, still in her black crepe and veil. She pointed like a dark spectre at Evers. She’d lost all her baby fat, and Evers wondered if that had happened before she died, or after.

“Go look at the game, son.”

“Hang on,” Pat said, followed by the screek of a chair. “Okay, I’m watching.”

“Right behind home, in the front row.”

“What am I looking at?”

Evers stood up behind the netting and waved his blue foam finger. “Do you see me?”

“No, where are you?”

Young Dr. Young hobbled down the steep stairs on his bad leg, using the seat backs to steady himself. On his smock, like a medal, was a coffee-colored splotch of dried blood.

“Do you see me now?” Evers took the phone from his ear and waved both arms over his head as if he was flagging a train. The grotesque finger nodded back and forth.

“No.”

So, no.

Which was fine. Which was actually better.

“Be good, Patty,” Evers said. “I love you.”

He hit END as, all around the park, the sections were filling in. He couldn’t see who’d come to spend eternity with him in peanut heaven or the far reaches of the outfield, but the premium seats were going fast. Here came the ushers with the shambling, rag-clad remnants of Soupy Embree, and then his mother, haggard after a double shift, and Lennie Wheeler in his pinstripe funeral suit and Grandfather Lincoln with his cane and Martha and Ellie and his mother and father and all the people he’d ever wronged in his life. As they filed into his row from both sides, he stuck his phone in his pocket and took his seat again, pulling off the foam finger as he did. He propped it on the now unoccupied seat to his left. Saving it for Kaz. Because he was sure Kaz would be joining them at some point, after seeing him on TV, and calling him. If Evers had learned anything about how this worked, it was that the two of them weren’t done talking just yet.

A cheer erupted, and the rattle of cowbells. The Rays were still hitting. Down the right field line, though it was far too early, some loudmouth was exhorting the crowd to start the wave. As always when distracted from the action, Evers checked the scoreboard to catch up. It was only the third and Beckett had already thrown sixty pitches. The way things were looking, it was going to be a long game.

Copyright

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan

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