At first he would have said that the scarlet-and-gold brightness of the spectacle was the primary thing that arrested him. This self-conscious analysis, however, missed the truth.
The construction was pale gray, but reflections of the sun’s fury blazed in the glossy enamel. This glistering glaze and the heat shimmering the air as it rose off the hot painted surfaces combined to create the illusion of the mural afire.
And briefly this seemed to be what pulled Billy to the side of the highway: this clairvoyant vision of the blazing construct, which would indeed be razed after it had been completed.
Here was an eerie foretelling by a fluke of seasonal light and atmospheric conditions. The fire to come. And even the ultimate ashes could be glimpsed as a grayness underlying the phantom flames.
As the intensity of these pyrotechnics increased simultaneously with the distillation of the sun’s last light, a truer reason for the hypnotic power of the scene grew clear to Billy. What riveted him was the great figure caught in the stylized machinery, the man struggling to survive among the giant grinding wheels, the tearing gears, the hammering pistons.
193
During the weeks of construction, as the mural had been crafted and refined, the man in the machine had always appeared to be trapped by it, just as the artist intended. He had been a victim of forces larger than himself. Now by the peculiar grace of the setting sun, the man didn’t appear to be burning as did the machine shapes around him. He was luminous, yes, but uniquely so, luminous and solid and strong, not being consumed by the flames but impervious to them.
Nothing about the phantasmagoric machine made engineering sense. A mere assemblage of symbols of machines, it had no functional purpose. A machine without productive function is without meaning. It can not serve even as a prison.
The man could step out of the machine whenever he wished. He was not trapped. He only believed himself to be imprisoned, a belief born of selfindulgent despair and herewith revealed as fallacious. The man must walk away from meaninglessness, find meaning, and from meaning at last take upon himself a worthwhile purpose.
Billy Wiles was not a man given to epiphanies. He had spent his life fleeing them. Insight and pain were all but synonymous to him. He recognized this as an epiphany, however, and he did not flee from it. Instead, as he drove back onto the highway and continued homeward into the darkling twilight, he climbed a mental stairway of ascending implications, came to a turning in the stair, and climbed, and came to another turning. He could not foresee what he would make of this sudden intuitive perception. He might not be man enough to make anything worthwhile of it, but he knew that he would make something.
When he arrived home under an indigo sky with one thin smear of evidence remaining in the west, Billy drove off the driveway, onto the back lawn. He parked with the tailgate near the porch steps, to facilitate the loading of Ralph Cottle.
He could not be seen from the county road or from the property of the nearest neighbor. Getting out of the SUV, he heard the first hoot of a night owl. Only the owl would see him, and the stars.
Inside, he took the stepladder out of the pantry and checked the video-disk recorder in the cabinet above the microwave. Replayed at high speed in the review screen, the security recording revealed that no one had entered the house in Billy’s absence, at least not through the kitchen. He hadn’t expected to see anyone. Steve Zillis was working at the tavern.
194
After putting away the stepladder, he dragged Cottle through the house, onto the back porch and down the steps, using the rope handle that he had fashioned around the tarp-wrapped corpse. Loading Cottle into the back of the Explorer required more patience and muscle than Billy had expected. He gazed across the dark yard at the black woods, the regimented ranks of sentinel trees. He did not have a sense of being watched. He felt deeply alone. Although locking the house seemed pointless, he locked it and then drove the Explorer to the garage.
At the sight of his table saw and drill press and tools, Billy irrationally wanted to turn from the crisis at hand. He wanted to smell fresh-cut wood, experience the satisfaction of a well-made dovetail joint. In recent years, he had built so much for the house, for himself, all for himself. If now he were to build for others, with what would he begin except with what was needed: coffins. He had built for himself a career in coffins. Grimly, he stowed another plastic tarp, a coil of sturdy rope, strapping tape, a flashlight, and other needed items in the Explorer. He added a few folded moving blankets and a couple of empty cardboard boxes atop and around the wrapped corpse to disguise its telltale shape.
Before Billy lay a long night of death and graveyard work, and he was afraid not solely of the homicidal freak but of many things in the darkness ahead. Darkness conjures infinite terrors in the mind, but it is true—and he took hope from this—it is true that darkness also reminds us of light. The light. Regardless of what waited in the hours immediately ahead, he did believe that he would live in the light again.
195
Four hours of sleep facilitated by Vicodin and Elephant beer had not been sufficient rest.
More than twelve active hours had passed since Billy had rolled out of bed. He still had physical resources, but the wheels of his mind, so long racing, were not spinning as fast as they had been, as fast as he needed them to spin. Confident that the Explorer did not look like the death wagon that it was, he stopped at a convenience store. He bought Anacin for a swelling headache and a package of No-Doz caffeine tablets.
He’d eaten two English muffins for breakfast and later a ham sandwich. He was in a calorie deficit, and shaky.
The store offered vacuum-packaged sandwiches and a microwave in which to heat them. For some reason, just the thought of meat stirred a billowing sensation in his stomach.
He bought six Hershey’s bars for sugar, six Planters Peanut Bars for protein, and a bottle of Pepsi to wash down the No-Doz.
Referring to all the candy, the cashier said, “Is it Valentine’s Day in July or something?”
“Halloween,” Billy said.
Sitting in the SUV, he took the Anacin and the No-Doz.
