to say, so I guess it’s best to just keep it simple and hope she understands. “I’m done with this town, Iris, and it’s more than done with me. I should’ve handed over the reins years ago to someone who might have done something more than stand around watching people die. Can’t do it anymore.”
“Then don’t, but that don’t mean you have to leave.”
“I’m afraid it does.”
Her grip tightens on my shoulders. “Then let me come with you.”
“I would if I could.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because you wouldn’t much like where I’m going.” I bring my hand up to hers, squeeze it tight.
“What if I don’t let you leave? What if I keep you prisoner? I could do it you know.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
She pulls her hand free, withdraws her arms and sits up. “What’s going to happen?”
“Something good,” I tell her. “And something bad.”
She says nothing else, just watches as I get dressed. She doesn’t cry, won’t cry, but I can tell she wants to.
When I’m ready to go, I carefully pick my way through the candles until I’m at the door. There’s no mad rush from Iris, no sobbing farewell. She just sits there, knees drawn up, hand on her chin, studying me.
With my fingers on the door handle, I give one last look at her. “You know just because you can’t leave with me, doesn’t mean you can’t leave.”
“I know.”
“Big world out there. Could be a better place for you in it. Never know.”
“Never know,” she echoes, and scoots down under the sheets.
“Wish I’d had more time to get to know you.”
“You had plenty of time, Tom. We’ve lived a stone’s throw from each other for a long time.”
“True. Guess I was busy.”
“Guess you were. And blind.”
I can’t argue with that, so I don’t, but when I start to open the door, she starts talking again.
“I’ve never loved anyone, Tom, and I’m not goin’ to say I love you, because I don’t. But I know people, and I know you better than you think.”
“Yeah, seems everyone but me does.”
“Your wife loved you though. No doubt about that.”
“Hope so.”
“I saw it in her eyes every time she looked at me. ’Course, we weren’t friends or nothin’ but you can tell a lot by the way someone looks at you. She was wonderin’ if you’d ever spent time with me, or if you wanted to, if maybe when you were in bed you were thinkin’ about me, and every time I saw that look, I shook my head, and she’d smile just a little bit. The kind of smile someone gives you when they’ve accepted a whore’s wisdom but don’t want them to know it.”
Our eyes meet and something powerful passes between us, maybe it’s some of that same power she has that knocks lights out. Maybe it’s trying to quench my soul before I do more damage.
“You should go” I tell her. “Get the hell out of Milestone. Find some place where the people are still alive.”
“I’m still alive, Tom. And with all the things I got stuck in here,” she says, tapping a finger against her forehead, “it don’t matter where I go. They’ll follow. So I might as well stay right here. Same as it don’t matter where you’re headin’. You’ll still be the same man tryin’ to run away from his shadow in a place where the sun never stops shinin’.”
“Iris…”
“Now you best get on if you’re goin’.”
“Take care.”
“Take care yourself.”
She turns away from me, and I guess that’s my cue to leave, so I do.
Three steps from the bottom of the stairs, I hear her sobbing.
Cadaver dreams of two young boys, one blond, the other raven-haired, sitting in vibrant green grass, the sun warming their legs as they play with toy soldiers, which are scattered around them in the frenzied order unique to combat. The blond boy giggles as his plastic tank appears from nowhere and mows down his brother’s army. The raven-haired child swats him, hurt and frustration on his face.
This particular war is defused in an instant by the soft calming voice of the woman sitting in a lawn chair a few feet away, a magazine spread open, obscuring her face. “No fighting,” she says, “Or you can go right back in the house and help your father clean out the attic.”
The boys are quiet, sulking, but once the raven-haired child locates a soldier the tank missed in its calamitous charge, a victorious smile crosses his face as he guns down his brother’s ranks. They are caught unaware and fall accordingly. The blond boy shrieks, and calls in reinforcements. The battle is on.
The woman in the lawn chair sighs, but it is a ‘boys will be boys’ sigh, and not at all annoyed.
In this summer-lit yard, life is good.
Cadaver awakes, and he is smiling too.
He is sitting on a smooth flat limestone rock at the bottom of the hill, head bowed, and though his eyes are gone, the cool breeze invigorates him, reminds him of all he has lost and all he will soon gain.
Minutes pass. Night sounds carry on waves to his ears. He waits, ragged breaths whistling through the rent in his throat above the box that gives him his words.
It grows dark.
And then, ice crawls through his veins, chilling him from the inside out. As anticipated, there is pain, for he is aware that he cannot be released from his duties without being reminded of the suffering that has been his stock-in-trade. These are secondhand agonies, all of them hard earned, all of them real. He grunts. Something touches the back of his hand, then again. The breeze seems to be blowing through him now and he relishes the feel of it.
“Soon,” he says and the smile cracks his face. Teeth drop into his lap, tumble and hit the floor with a sound like pebbles. The flesh begins to slide. The box in his throat starts to rust, disintegrate.
“Soon,” he says, one last time, his hair shedding and tickling what remains of his face as it falls.
Flesh withers; organs shrivel. Bones begin to crumble.
Cadaver sighs.
In his mind, the woman in the lawn chair is peering at him above her magazine. He can tell by the wrinkles around her eyes that she is smiling—
Chapter Nineteen
“If you’re plannin’ on goin’, now’d be the time, boy.”
The animals have filled the yard now, necks straight, eyes glittering, but still they make no noise. It’s as if they’re waiting for something. The sight of them standing there motionless, ears pricked up, is unsettling, but Brody knows better than to be threatened by so docile an animal, no matter how many of them there are. Hell, for all he knows the old man’s got a vegetable patch out back and they’re here to raid it. The only threat they could possibly present is if they stampeded and rushed him, but even then the car’s much closer to him than they are.
“
“Because of a bunch of deer? Man, take it easy.” But as the words leave his mouth, the calm he has forced into them sounds utterly false.
“To
