horrible secret. A purple secret, the color of bruises. The color of certain flowers that grow on certain
(hush Lisey oh hush)
yes, on certain hillsides. 'You…know…so don't…insult my…intelligence.' Another whistling, screaming breath. 'Or your own.'
And she supposes she does know some of it. The long boy, he calls it. Or the thing with the endless piebald side. Once she meant to look up piebald in the dictionary, but she forgot— forgetting is a skill she has had reason to polish during the years she and Scott have been together. But she knows what he's talking about, yes.
He lets go, or maybe just loses the strength to hold on. Lisey pulls back a little—not far. His eyes regard her from their deep and blackening sockets. They are as brilliant as ever, but she sees they are also full of terror and (this is what frightens her most) some wretched, inexplicable amusement. Still speaking low—perhaps so only she can hear, maybe because it's the best he can manage—Scott says, 'Listen, little Lisey. I'll make how it sounds when it looks around.'
'Scott, no—you have to stop.'
He pays no attention. He draws in another of those screaming breaths, purses his wet red lips in a tight O, and makes a low, incredibly nasty chuffing noise. It drives a fine spray of blood up his clenched throat and into the sweltering air. A girl sees it and screams. This time the crowd doesn't need the campus cop to ask them to move back; they do it on their own, leaving Lisey, Scott, and Captain Heffernan a perimeter of at least four feet all the way around.
The sound—dear God, it really is a kind of grunting—is mercifully short. Scott coughs, his chest heaving, the wound spilling more blood in rhythmic pulses, then beckons her back down with one finger. She comes, leaning on her simmering hands. His socketed eyes compel her; so does his mortal grin.
He turns his head to the side, spits a wad of half-congealed blood onto the hot tar, then turns back to her. 'I could…call it that way,' he whispers. 'It would come. You'd be…rid of my…everlasting…quack.'
She understands that he means it, and for a moment (surely it is the power of his eyes) she believes it's true. He will make the sound again, only a little louder, and in some other world the long boy, that lord of sleepless nights, will turn its unspeakable hungry head. A moment later in this world, Scott Landon will simply shiver on the pavement and die. The death certificate will say something sane, but she'll know: his dark thing finally saw him and came for him and ate him alive.
So now come the things they will never speak of later, not to others or between themselves. Too awful. Each marriage has two hearts, one light and one dark. This is the dark heart of theirs, the one mad true secret. She leans close to him on the baking pavement, sure he is dying, nevertheless determined to hold onto him if she can. If it means fighting the long boy for him—with nothing but her fingernails, if it comes to that— she will.
'Well…Lisey?' Smiling that repulsive, knowing, terrible smile. 'What…do… you…say?'
Leaning even closer. Into the shivering sweat-and-blood stink of him. Leaning in until she can smell the last palest ghost of the Prell he shampooed with that morning and the Foamy he shaved with. Leaning in until her lips touch his ear. She whispers, 'Be quiet, Scott. For once in your life, just be quiet.'
When she looks at him again, his eyes are different. The fierceness is gone. He's fading, but maybe that's all right, because he looks sane again. 'Lisey…?'
Still whispering. Looking directly into his eyes. 'Leave that smucking thing alone and it will go away.' For a moment she almost adds, You can take care of the rest of this mess later, but the idea is senseless—for awhile, the only thing Scott can do for himself is not die. What she says is, 'Don't you ever make that noise again.'
He licks at his lips. She sees the blood on his tongue and it turns her stomach, but she doesn't pull away from him. She supposes she's in this now until the ambulance hauls him away or he quits breathing right here on this hot pavement a hundred yards or so from his latest triumph; if she can stick through that last, she guesses she can stick through anything.
'I'm so hot,' he says. 'If only I had a piece of ice to suck…'
'Soon,' Lisey says, not knowing if she's promising rashly and not caring. 'I'm getting it for you.' At least she can hear the ambulance howling its way toward them. That's something.
And then, a kind of miracle. The girl with the bows on her shoulders and the new scrapes on her palms fights her way to the front of the crowd. She's gasping like someone who has just run a race and sweat is running down her cheeks and neck, but she's holding two big waxed paper cups in her hands. 'I spilled half the fucking Coke getting back here,' she says, throwing a brief, baleful glance over her shoulder at the crowd, 'but I got the ice okay. Ice is ni—' Then her eyes roll up almost to the whites and she reels backward, all looseygoosey in her sneakers. The campus cop—oh bless him with many blessings, huh-yooge batch of orifice and all—grabs her, steadies her, and takes one of the cups. He hands it to Lisey, then urges the other Lisa to drink from the remaining cup. Lisey Landon pays no attention. Later, replaying all this, she'll be a little in awe of her own single-mindedness. Now she only thinks Just keep her from falling on top of me again if she faints, Officer Friendly, and turns back to Scott.
He's shivering worse than ever and his eyes are dulling out, losing their grasp on her. And still, he tries. 'Lisey… so hot…ice…'
'I have it, Scott. Now will you for once just shut your everlasting mouth?'
'One went north, one went south,' he croaks, and then he does what she asks. Maybe he's all talked out, which would be a Scott Landon first.
Lisey drives her hand deep into the cup, sending Coke all the way to the top and splooshing over the edge. The cold is shocking and utterly wonderful. She clutches a good handful of ice-chips, thinking how ironic this is: whenever she and Scott stop at a turnpike rest area and she uses a machine that dispenses cups of soda instead of cans or bottles, she always hammers on the NO ICE button, feeling righteous—others may allow the evil soft drink companies to shortchange them by dispensing half a cup of soda and half a cup of ice, but not Dave Debusher's baby girl Lisa. What was old Dandy's saying? I didn't fall off a hayrick yesterday! And now here she is, wishing for even more ice and less Coke…not that she thinks it will make much difference. But on that one she's in for a surprise.
'Scott, here. Ice.'
His eyes are half-closed now, but he opens his mouth and when she first rubs his lips with her handful of ice and then pops one of the melting shards onto his bloody tongue, his shivering suddenly stops. God, it's magic. Emboldened, she rubs her freezing, leaking hand along his right cheek, his left cheek, and then across his forehead, where drops of Cokecolored water drip into his eyebrows and then run down the sides of his nose.
'Oh Lisey, that's heaven,' he says, and although still screamy, his voice sounds more with-it to her…more there. The ambulance has pulled up on the left side of the crowd with a dying growl of its siren and a few seconds later she can hear an impatient male voice shouting, 'Paramedics! Let us through! Paramedics, c'mon, people, let us through so we can do our jobs, whaddaya say?'
Dashmiel, the southern-fried asshole, chooses this moment to speak in Lisey's ear. The solicitude in his voice, given the speed with which he jackrabbitted, makes her want to grind her teeth. 'How is he, darlin?'
Without looking around, she replies: 'Trying to live.'
7
'Trying to live,' she murmured, running her palm over the glossy page in the U-Tenn Nashville Review. Over the picture of Scott with his foot poised on that dopey silver shovel. She closed the book with a snap and tossed it onto the dusty back of the booksnake. Her appetite for pictures—for memories—was more than sated for one day. There was a nasty throb starting up behind her right eye. She wanted to take something for it, not that sissy Tylenol but what her late husband had called head-bonkers.
