“Go on, I guess. We can’t do anything for this guy.”
“Nope, can’t even call anyone,” Gendron said gloomily. “Not with my cell back there. Guess you don’t have one?”
Barbie did, but he had left it behind in his now-vacated apartment, along with some socks, shirts, jeans, and underwear. He’d lit out for the territories with nothing but the clothes on his back, because there was nothing from Chester’s Mill he wanted to carry with him. Except a few good memories, and for those he didn’t need a suitcase or even a knapsack.
All this was too complicated to explain to a stranger, so he just shook his head.
There was an old blanket draped over the seat of the Deere. Gendron shut the tractor off, took the blanket, and covered the body.
“I hope he was listenin to somethin he liked when it happened,” Gendron said.
“Yeah,” Barbie said.
“Come on. Let’s get to the end of this whatever-it-is. I want to shake your hand. Might even break down and give you a hug.”
5
Shortly after discovering Roux’s body—they were now very close to the wreck on 117, although neither of them knew it—they came to a little stream. The two men stood there for a moment, each on his own side of the barrier, looking in wonder and silence.
At last Gendron said, “Holy jumped-up God.”
“What does it look like from your side?” Barbie asked. All he could see on his was the water rising and spreading into the under-growth. It was as if the stream had encountered an invisible dam.
“I don’t know how to describe it. I never seen anything quite like it.” Gendron paused, scratching both cheeks, drawing his already long face down so he looked a little like the screamer in that Edvard Munch painting. “Yes I have. Once. Sorta. When I brought home a couple of goldfish for my daughter’s sixth birthday. Or maybe she was seven that year. I brought em home from the pet store in a plastic bag, and that’s what this looks like—water in the bottom of a plastic bag. Only flat instead of saggin down. The water piles up against that… thing, then trickles off both ways on your side.”
“Is none going through at all?”
Gendron bent down, his hands on his knees, and squinted. “Yeah, some appears to go through. But not very much, just a trickle. And none of the crap the water’s carrying. You know, sticks and leaves and such.”
They pushed on, Gendron on his side and Barbie on his. As yet, neither of them were thinking in terms of inside and outside. It didn’t occur to them that the barrier might not have an end.
6
Then they came to Route 117, where there had been another nasty accident—two cars and at least two fatals that Barbie could be sure of. There was another, he thought, slumped behind the wheel of an old Chevrolet that had been mostly demolished. Only this time there was also a survivor, sitting beside a smashed-up Mercedes- Benz with her head lowered. Paul Gendron rushed to her, while Barbie could only stand and watch. The woman saw Gendron and struggled to rise.
“No, ma’am, not at all, you don’t want to do that,” he said.
“I think I’m fine,” she said. “Just… you know, shaken up.” For some reason this made her laugh, although her face was puffy with tears.
At that moment another car appeared, a slowpoke driven by an old fellow who was leading a parade of three or four other no doubt impatient drivers. He saw the accident and stopped. The cars behind him did, too.
Elsa Andrews was on her feet now, and with-it enough to ask what would become the question of the day: “What did we hit? It wasn’t the other car, Nora went around the other car.”
Gendron answered with complete honesty. “Dunno, ma’am.”
“Ask her if she has a cell-phone,” Barbie said. Then he called to the gathering spectators. “Hey! Who’s got a cell phone?”
“I do, mister,” a woman said, but before she could say more, they all heard an approaching
Barbie and Gendron exchanged a stricken glance.
The copter was blue and white, flying low. It was angling toward the pillar of smoke marking the crashed pulp-truck on 119, but the air was perfectly clear, with that almost magnifying effect that the best days in northern New England seem to have, and Barbie could easily read the big blue 13 on its side. And see the CBS eye logo. It was a news chopper, out of Portland. It must already have been in the area, Barbie thought. And it was a perfect day to get some juicy crash footage for the six o’clock news.
“Oh, no,” Gendron moaned, shading his eyes. Then he shouted:
Barbie chimed in.
It was useless, of course. Even more useless, he was waving his arms in big go-away gestures.
Elsa looked from Gendron to Barbie, bewildered.
The chopper dipped to treetop level and hovered.
“I think it’s gonna be okay,” Gendron breathed. “The people back there must be waving em off, too. Pilot musta seen—”
But then the chopper swung north, meaning to hook in over Alden Dinsmore’s grazeland for a different view, and it struck the barrier. Barbie saw one of the rotors break off. The helicopter dipped, dropped, and swerved, all at the same time. Then it exploded, showering fresh fire down on the road and fields on the other side of the barrier.
Gendron’s side.
The outside.
7
Junior Rennie crept like a thief into the house where he had grown up. Or a ghost. It was empty, of course; his father would be out at his giant used car lot on Route 119—what Junior’s friend Frank sometimes called the Holy Tabernacle of No Money Down—and for the last four years Francine Rennie had been hanging out nonstop at Pleasant Ridge Cemetery. The town whistle had quit and the police sirens had faded off to the south somewhere. The house was blessedly quiet.
He took two Imitrex, then dropped his clothes and got into the shower. When he emerged, he saw there was blood on his shirt and pants. He couldn’t deal with it now. He kicked the clothes under his bed, drew the shades, crawled into the rack, and drew the covers up over his head, as he had when he was a child afraid of closet- monsters. He lay there shivering, his head gonging like all the bells of hell.
He was dozing when the fire siren went off, jolting him awake. He began to shiver again, but the headache was better. He’d sleep a little, then think about what to do next. Killing himself still seemed by far the best option. Because they’d catch him. He couldn’t even go back and clean up; he wouldn’t have time before Henry or LaDonna McCain came back from their Saturday errands. He could run—maybe—but not until his head stopped aching. And of course he’d have to put some clothes on. You couldn’t begin life as a fugitive buckytail naked.
On the whole, killing himself would probably be best. Except then the fucking short-order cook would win. And when you really considered the matter, all this was the fucking cook’s fault.
