thought she was going to throw it away from her onto the walk. Finally she lowered the child back to her chest, where it folded itself against her. She turned away, her eyes unfocused, and slowly moved back inside and shut the door.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
RAY DROVE AWAY and got lost in Fairless Hills in the new dark, the endless developments leading one to the other, and he kept making aimless turns to try to find Route 1. He thought about the woman and the baby, and his heart knocked in his chest. He felt a hot hand on his neck, his conscience working on him in some way he couldn’t understand. He couldn’t take the baby. It couldn’t be wrong to turn the woman down, but he did get a flash of himself as he often did, heading west on the turnpike, the dying sun filling his windshield and maps of the western states fanned out on the seat. Only this time there was a bundle beside him on the seat and he wasn’t alone, and couldn’t there be something good in that?
When he was back heading north, the moon was just beginning to show. His cell rang, and he picked it up.
“Raymond?”
“Hey, Ma.”
“I’m home.”
“Good, did you have fun?”
Theresa’s voice got quiet. “You sound tired.”
His eyes clouded over, and his breath hitched in his chest like it was caught on the bones of his ribs. “I am, Ma. I’m so tired.”
“Why are you out?”
“I was just, I don’t know.”
“Come home. Come on home for a night and just rest, hon.”
“I want to.”
“Ray, I have to tell you something.”
“What? Is something wrong?”
“No. No, nothing’s wrong. Your father’s here.”
Ray didn’t know what to say. The rage he had felt for so long was as burned out of him as everything else.
“He’s sick, Ray, and he’s just lying down. He wants to see you.”
“Yeah.”
“You know he’s going to be gone soon.”
“Yeah.”
“Listen, just come over and have a meal with me and you can sleep in your room. He’s all doped up anyway, and you don’t have to see him until you want to.”
“I, uh. I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”
“I’ll see.”
“Okay, hon. I love you. He loves you, too.”
“Don’t. Don’t say that.”
“Okay.”
HE STOPPED AT a CVS on Old York Road and bought himself a toothbrush and toothpaste and a bottle of seltzer, and he brushed his teeth sitting half out of his car in the lot behind the store. He spat and swigged from the bottle and threw it back onto the seat and got out to throw away the toothbrush. He stood for a minute, looking at the traffic going by on York and rattling the change in his pocket, and finally went back into the store and bought a box of candy and a tiny spray of flowers and threw them onto the seat. The clerk was a young girl, maybe Spanish, and her skin was caramel colored and smooth. Ray smiled at her when she gave him his change, and she smiled, too.
When he finally pulled up to the house it was full dark, and for the first time since the spring he could feel the slightest cooling when he got out. Ray did math in his head, trying to remember the date. He got out and started to close the door but then remembered and reached back in for the flowers and candy. He wanted a cigarette for the first time in a while. He stood and looked at the house and listened to the motor on the Honda ticking and heard dogs barking up the street and then Shermie started up inside. The sky was full of stars and roaming clouds and the blinking lights of airplanes. Ray walked up the sidewalk. The cell he had left in the car began to ring again and he turned to see if it would keep ringing and should he get it or just let it go and a shape unfolded itself from the dark yew at the border of the yard and stepped into Ray and stuck a knife in him and he went down.
FROM A DISTANCE it must have looked like they were in an embrace. Old friends finally meeting. The man leaning into him and Ray clutching at the moving arms. Ray made a sound, something like a scream, and then he couldn’t catch his breath. He had a flash of the face, the goatee and long hair, and he knew it was the guy from the midnight blue Charger, and the guy was saying something but Ray couldn’t make it out. It wasn’t important. Ray had heard it all before, about how he had it coming and that he needed to pay, and he had heard it and he had said it even about himself and now it was prophecy coming to pass.
The pain was like a note so high it passed out of hearing. The only thing that hurt after the first seconds was his left leg, though that didn’t make sense. The guy must be swinging wild with that knife, he thought. He heard Shermie, louder now, and the door opened and there he was, the old dog moving faster than Ray had ever seen before. Shermie tore into the guy and Ray wanted to laugh but he couldn’t make sounds anymore and then there was Theresa and she began to scream and stuck her hand into her mouth and there was more he couldn’t follow, but the guy stopped to look at her. Scott, that was his name, he wanted to say it. They were both looking back at the door, at Theresa, and Ray wanted to tell her to go back inside, to get away, and the young guy had hold of Ray’s shirt with one hand and when he turned he turned Ray, too, and he saw Theresa take a step back and say something about the police and then look back into the house.
And here was Bart. His old man, looking tired and small and weird in one of Ray’s T-shirts and pants turned up at the cuff. The old man, out of prison a day, maybe, and he came through the door and the glass in the door broke and Theresa gave a little shout again from the fright of it. Bart moved right over to where Ray was on the ground and Scott crouched over him, turning back to raise the knife when Bart jerked back the kid’s head by the hair and raised Theresa’s cast- iron frying pan and brought it down hard with a hollow noise like two rocks cracking against each other. Ray dropped back and lost sight of the kid but saw Bart’s arm going up and down twice more with a harsh energy like Ray’d seen him use to kill a spider in the basement once when Ray was young.
A car door slammed, and Manny ran up. Come to see the show. He was tall and gaunt as always, and he had his shades on even though it was full dark because that was Manny, man, he lived the part every minute of the day. He was cursing, and Ray saw Manny and Bart pull the kid by his feet into the garage and close the door, looking both ways down the street to see if anyone was out, doing that heads- up check that he had done himself a thousand felonious times, nothing to see here, nothing at all.
Manny was pulling him to his feet now and that was when it was bad, the blood gone from his head and he was fainting and waking up again while the three shouted in whispers to each other and Theresa kept putting her hand out to the house and saying ambulance and Manny was saying no and that’s when Ray got what it was all about and said what he could say, maybe his last chance to weigh in on things.
“No ambulance. Get inside.”
Bart got it and knew it was the right thing even as he wanted to come with them and balled his hands and cried at the sight of Manny half- carrying Ray to the car and screamed a sound of rage that made Ray smile and try to lift his hand and wave. The last he saw of them was Theresa folding her arms around his old man and moving back into the house. Flowers, he wanted to say, and chocolates. Lottery tickets for everyone.
IT WAS a long ride to the emergency room, hours and days of watching the streetlights flash by like flying saucers tethered to wires, each radiating an orange sodium glare that felt like sand in his eyes. Manny was
