'Three-Mile,' Ned said.
'Yes. Plus, there's more to that car than self-healing scratches and dust-repellent. Quite a bit more.'
I stopped. It seemed too hard too much.
'Go on, tell him,' Arky said. He sounded almost angry, a pissed-off bandleader in the gloaming. 'You told him all dis dat don't mean shit, now you tell im da rest.' He looked at Huddie, then Shirley. 'Even 1988. Yeah, even dat part.' He paused, sighed, looked at Shed B. 'Too late to stop now, Sarge.'
I got up and started across the parking lot. Behind me, I heard Phil say: 'No, hunh-unh. Let him go, kid, he'll be back.'
That's one thing about sitting in the big chair; people can say that and almost always be right. Barring strokes, heart attacks, and drunk drivers, I guess. Barring acts of what we mortals hope is God. People who sit in the big chair - who have worked to get there and work to stay there
- never just say oh fuck it and go fishing. No. Us big-chair folks continue making the beds, washing the dishes, and baling the hay, doing it the best we can. Ah, man, what would we do without you? people say. The answer is that most of them would go on doing whatever the hell they want, same as always. Going to hell in the same old handbasket.
I stood at the roll-up door of Shed B, looking through one of the windows at the thermometer.
It was down to fifty-two. Still not bad - not terrible, anyway - but cold enough for me to think the Buick was going to give another shake or two before settling down for the night. No sense spreading the tarp back over it yet, then; we'd likely just have to do it again later on.
It's winding down: that was the received wisdom concerning the Roadmaster, the gospel according to Schoondist and Wilcox. Slowing like an unwound clock, wobbling like an exhausted top, beeping like a smoke detector that can no longer tell what's hot. Pick your favorite metaphor from the bargain bin. And maybe it was true. Then again, maybe it wasn't. We knew nothing about it, not really. Telling ourselves we did was just a strategy we used so we could continue living next door to it without too many bad dreams.
I walked back to the bench, lighting another cigarette, and sat down between Shirley and Ned.
I said, 'Do you want to hear about the first time we saw what we saw tonight?'
'Yes, sir. I sure do.'
The eagerness I saw on his face made it a little easier to go on.
THEN
Sandy was there when it started, the only one who was. In later years he would say - half-joking -
that it was his one claim to fame. The others arrived on the scene soon enough, but to begin with it was only Sander Freemont Dearborn, standing by the gas-pump with his mouth hung open and his eyes squinched shut, sure that in another few seconds the whole bunch of them, not to mention the Amish and few non-Amish farmers in the area, would be so much radioactive dust in the wind.
It happened a couple of weeks after the Buick came into Troop D's possession, around the first of August in the year 1979. By then the newspaper coverage of Ennis Rafferty's disappearance was dying down. Most of the stories about the missing State Trooper appeared in the Statler County American, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a feature piece on the front page of its Sunday edition at the end of July. MISSING TROOPER'S SISTER LEFT WITH MANY QUESTIONS, the headline read, and beneath that: EDITH HYAMS CALLS FOR FULL INVESTIGATION.
Overall, the story played out exactly as Tony Schoondist had hoped it would. Edith believed the men in Troop D knew more than they were telling about her brother's disappearance; she was quoted on that in both papers. What was left between the lines was that the poor woman was half out of her mind with grief (not to mention anger), and looking for someone to blame for what might have been her own fault. None of the Troopers said anything about her sharp tongue and nearly constant fault-finding, but Ennis and Edith had neighbors who weren't so discreet. The reporters from both papers also mentioned that, accusations or no, the men in Ennis's Troop were going ahead with plans to provide the woman with some modest financial support.
The harsh black-and-white photo of Edith in the Post-Gazette didn't help her case; it made her look like Lizzie Borden about fifteen minutes before she grabbed her hatchet.
The first lightquake happened at dusk. Sandy had come off patrol around six that evening in order to have a little chat with Mike Sanders, the County Attorney. They had a particularly nasty hit-and-run trial coming up, Sandy the prime witness for the prosecution, the victim a child who had been left a quadriplegic. Mike wanted to be very sure that the coke-snorting Mr Businessman responsible went away. Five years was his goal, but ten wasn't out of the question. Tony Schoondist sat in on part of the meeting, which took place in a corner of the upstairs common room, then went down to his office while Mike and Sandy finished up. When the meeting was over, Sandy decided to top up the tank in his cruiser before hitting the road for another three hours or so.
As he walked past dispatch toward the back door, he heard Matt Babicki say in a low, just-talking-to-myself voice: 'Oh you fucking thing.' This was followed by a whack. 'Why don't you behave?'
Sandy peeped around the corner and asked if Matt was having that delicate time of the month.
Matt wasn't amused. 'Listen to this,' he said, and boosted the gain on his radio. The SQUELCH
knob, Sandy saw, was already turned as far as it would go toward +.
Brian Cole checked in from Unit 7, Herb Avery from 5 out on the Sawmill Road, George Stankowski from God knew where. That one was almost entirely lost in a windy burst of static.
'If this gets any worse, I don't know how I'm going to keep track of the guys, let alone shoot them any information,' Matt complained. He slapped the side of his radio again, as if for emphasis. 'And what if someone calls in with a complaint? Is it getting ready to thunderstorm outside, Sandy?'
'It 'was clear as a bell when I came in,' he said, then looked out the window. 'Clear as a bell now, too . . . as you could see, if your neck had a swivel in it. I was born with one, see?'
Sandy turned his head from side to side.
'Very funny. Haven't you got an innocent man to frame, or something?'
'Good one, Matt. That's a very snappy comeback.'
