For instance:
Take this thing apart, carefully, screw by screw, piece by piece, get it back somehow to the Complex, assemble it in the cellar, and then arrange for Mazzo’s ride.
Impossible.
Disconsolate, he stood there, hands thrust into his pockets, knowing that Billy the Kidney and Allie Roon were in the Complex, standing guard, riding shotgun, expecting great doings, miracles. And here he was in this terrible junkyard contemplating this fakery of a car.
Sounds reached his ears. Noise, movement. From the front of the junkyard.
Just his luck. Someone invading this distant section where he’d never seen anybody before.
Standing on tiptoe, craning his neck, looking toward the front of the place, where all the action usually went on. Everything seemed secure and serene. No more sounds. No movement.
And then he giggled.
Giggled out of the aftermaths, and the funny feeling of being tipsy. Giddy and giggling—Barney Snow, of all people, actually giggling—he smiled at the world of busted vehicles and drew the hammer out of his pocket.
But before beginning, he surveyed the object of his intention.
Had to count the parts. The parts that must be separated and then joined together. Let’s count the parts.
Two front fenders: check. Hood: check. Two back fenders: check. Trunk:
He looked at the trunk, then lifted the cover and found a hollow space within. Okay, check. Trunk cover, no trunk.
Two doors: check.
Craning his neck now, looking into the car.
Front seat: check. Instrument dashboard: check. Steering wheel: check. Floorboards: check.
Okay, now add up the sections.
Wait a minute. The wheels.
Bending down, still a bit dizzy, he counted the wheels.
Four of them.
Didn’t all cars have four wheels?
Giggled. So. Now. Count the parts. Add them up.
Forget addition. He knew what he had to do. Get to work with the screwdriver and take the car apart. Sneak the sections into the Complex and put it back together again. A simple procedure, with Billy the Kidney and Allie Roon as watchdogs.
Now he paused before beginning the job, stood for a moment without moving there in the junkyard, surrounded by all the junk. Felt like saying a prayer for some reason. He thought of Cassie and how troubled she had seemed during her last visit. Maybe he should have told her about this great adventure, make her somehow a part of it. Ah, but she was a part of it, anyway, even if she didn’t know it.
“Let’s go,” he said aloud.
He tossed the screwdriver into the air, watched it tumbling and turning and falling, caught it with a hand that was marvelously ready and waiting.
And he began to take the car apart.
The car reminded him of that old song—the hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone and the thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone—and the song sang in him as he worked out in the sunshine, coasting nicely in the light-headedness that made everything sort of unreal, as if this was happening in a dream.
Despite the wooziness his hands were steady, wielding the screwdriver expertly for the most part, dropping it once in a while, but then he had never been very clever with his hands. The wood was soft, balsa, like the kind used in making model airplanes, and it yielded the screws easily most of the time. Once in a while a screw was stubborn, refusing to come loose, and Barney closed his eyes and concentrated all his strength on getting it out. And laughed in triumph when the screw gave way.
Occasionally there was activity at the front of the junkyard, sounds of motors and men yelling to each other. But no one approached the area Barney worked in. The vehicles here were especially dilapidated, probably no longer contained usable parts. The air was pleasant, a sparkling spring day, and it was nice working on the car, feeling useful,the breeze bringing the smell of freshness to his nostrils.
He dismantled the front fender and the door on the driver’s side first, and when he removed them the remainder of the car sagged dangerously. Barney feared that it might simply fall apart, screws torn from wood, the car splintered and damaged beyond repair. But that didn’t happen. The car merely tilted a bit, listing as a foundering ship might list but with no ocean to sink into.
Sweat rolled down his forehead, stung his eyes, causing him to blink, blurring his vision. He rested, sitting with his back to a front wheel. Heart thudding, his body almost rising and falling with the thuds. He knew he had embarked on a crazy mission but didn’t care. This was better than wandering around the Complex, bored and restless, bored with everything and everybody, including himself. And it was almost a sin to be bored when life was precious and sweet and so many others were dying.
When he resumed work, he looked at the watch he had borrowed from Allie Roon. He had been working about an hour, and his progress was going according to plan. The plan was to carry out the dismantling and carrying of the parts into the Complex by stages, bit by bit, all carefully timed. Because of the lightness of the material, he could comfortably carry three parts at a time. That meant six trips at a minimum. He would take the sections to the fence, rest there awhile. The next step was Allie’s contribution. He had found a room containing spare wheelchairs, not in regular use. He suggested to Barney painstakingly, spitting and sputtering, that a wheelchair could be used to transport the sections from the fence to the Complex. And from the doorway to the freight elevator. The elevator would then carry the sections to the cellar. Simple but risky. The risks small, however, as Billy the Kidney, the master planner, had pointed out, relishing his role as the strategist. The use of the freight elevator was Billy’s contribution to the plan. At least that was what Billy thought. Barney had known from the beginning that the freight elevator was strategic, but he pretended that it had been Billy’s idea. Billy positively glowed these days, quick to laugh or grin. And Allie Roon’s twitchings were almost like joyous leapings.
So, feeling nice and loose and floating with the light-headedness, he set to work again, loosening the screws, tongue in the corner of his mouth when he encountered a stubborn one, giving it his best, humming and singing along, the knee bone’s connected to the shin bone, the shin bone’s connected to the ankle bone, and here we are, doing the job, getting it done, like Humpty Dumpty, taking poor Humpty Dumpty apart after his great fall and putting him back together again.
Cassie’s visits were beautiful now.
Weary from the day’s work, he sat before her gratefully, feeling useful, as if he had earned the right to be there with her, doing something, accomplishing something.
When he asked her, hesitantly, about the Thing, she shook her head, dismissing the question.
“Forget it,” she said. “I exaggerate at times. A need to be dramatic, I guess. Things are fine.” And she blinked those marvelous eyes of hers in comic fashion, a clownish smile playing on her lips.
Warmth flooded him and goodness and love. God, how he wanted to tell her about the car, and his plans for Mazzo’s last wild ride. But he could not take the risk. He didn’t want anything to spoil the adventure. Cassie was from the outside world. He would hate to appear ridiculous in her eyes.
After he gave her the report on Mazzo—he seemed to be in better spirits and without any pain—she rose from the chair, thanked him, smiled. And just before she left, she reached out and touched his shoulder. A brief brushing of her fingers. As she left, calling good-bye over her shoulder, his hand cradled the spot that she had touched, and he stood there like that until his arm began to ache.
This boy, Barney Snow, kept touching chords within her. Chords of guilt, of course. But more than that. She sometimes suspected that he was more perceptive than she gave him credit for. Did you ever find out what the Thing was? he had asked. No, she had replied, lying, of course. And the boy had not believed her. Wanted to but hadn’t. She’d never told anyone the secret of the Thing—how could she admit it to Barney Snow in the clinic even though he affected h
er in a strange and tender way? And the guilt: using him for her own purposes. That was part of it. The deception. The Thing had turned her into a superb deceiver through the years. Particularly after she had learned its secret. She wished, in fact, that she had never learned its secret.
It had happened the night after Thanksgiving two years ago. She was home for the holiday weekend, the home that had always been a winter-holiday kind of house, storybook stuff: blazing logs in the fireplace, bow windows hung with icicles, snow like white frosting on the lawn. Papa was sentimental about holidays, always rushed the seasons, preparing for Christmas before Thanksgiving, cutting a tree up in the New Hampshire woods and nursing it along in the cellar with special secret liquids he concocted. But no tree in the cellar two years ago. No rushing of the season with Papa dead and gone. No holiday mood, either. She’d returned almost reluctantly from the Hacienda; although she was uncertain of a vocation—who was she, Cassie Mazzofono, to think she could be a nun?—she’d found a kind of fulfillment in the cheerful and bustling atmosphere. Why had she thought convents were grim and somber places?
In her room that night after Thanksgiving, she played some old records—mostly Beatles stuff—and reread two Nancy Drews (“Will I ever grow up?”) and had just closed the second book (The Secret of Shadow Ranch) when she was assaulted with a staggering pain in her left arm, astonishing in its intensity. A pain that echoed the explosion in her head years ago the second time she’d felt the Thing. Now the pain, between wrist and elbow, made her nauseous, acid burning in her throat, knees weak and trembling, eyes dazzled as if the small lamp burning in the room was too bright. The pain brought an image to her mind of a pencil being snapped in two. It lasted for almost two hours while she clutched herself in bed, arms locked around her body, trying to diminish herself, make her body a small target. Finally the pain subsided, became muted, then disappeared altogether, although her arm continued to throb as if a giant pulse were beating beneath the surface of her flesh. Finally she fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
She awoke the next morning, still in her jeans and sweater. Showered and then shampooed her hair, arm still sensitive and throbbing.
And went downstairs to learn the secret of the Thing.
Alberto stood at the den window looking outside, then turned to greet her. His left arm was in a sling. He had a sheepish grin on his face. “Jerry Belson was driving, Cassie,” he said. “His car was totaled. Lucky I only got a broken arm.…”
She managed to keep her face from falling apart.
Coincidence, of course, she told herself later that day, the kind of impossible thing that happens all the time, flouting all the odds. But then she turned detective, like some kind of demented Nancy Drew, and led Alberto through sly interrogations.
Waylaying him in the kitchen as he gulped down a piece of Mrs. Cortoleona’s pizza while waiting for some girl to pick him up (the fractured arm didn’t inhibit Alberto’s social life), she pinned him down with questions.
“What year were you at Camp Wickwackee down in Maine?”
Tomato sauce bubbling on his lips, he said: “Camp Wickennona.” Added, “I don’t know. All those camps were alike.”
“No, they weren’t. Come on, think.”
Rolling his eyes, wolfing down the pizza, chewing vigorously, he thought. Or pretended to.
Finally, with her prodding, they pinned down the year. Cassie nodded her head with grim satisfaction.
“Anything unusual happen that summer?” Cassie asked. “On a Saturday? Early afternoon?”
“You crazy, Cassie?” he asked. “How can I remember what happened on a Saturday that long ago?”
“This would be something unusual,” Cassie said, patient and persistent. “Maybe some kind of accident.”
He poured himself a glass of milk, showing off how clever he could be with one hand.
“Think,” she commanded. And prompted him. Had he been injured, sick, threatened?
“Jeez, Cassie,” he complained. “Why all the big interest? You sound like some kind of nut.”
“Were you in some kind of danger? You’ve always done crazy things.…”
“Okay, okay,” he said, always giving in to her. “Let’s see.…” Closed his eyes for a moment. Then they flew open. “Wait. That was the summer I started climbing.”
“Climbing what?”
He looked disgusted. “Mountains. What else do you climb at summer camp? This mountain in Maine. Katahdin. Real big. A bunch of us went up, crazy, without a guide, didn’t have proper equipment.” His eyes widened. “I remember now. I slipped. At the edge of this big chasm, and actually dropped. Out in space, dangling there by this thin rope. Cripes, I thought I was done for. Never been so scared in my life.” His face turned pale as he spoke. “I actually thought I was going to die …”
… while Cassie in the parking lot outside McDonald’s, crammed with a quarter pounder and a large order of fries, had shared his danger and anguish and dread, more than shared, experienced what he was experiencing as his mirror image, his other self.
During that Thanksgiving weekend she tracked down other incidents, searching her own memory, pinning down exact or approximate times she had been struck by the Thing and matched them to Alberto’s experience. He was an athlete, always getting battered and bruised, tackled roughly. Ever cut your leg, Alberto, below the knee, deep cut? He still had the scar, showed it to her, told her how he’d always kept this kind of stuff hidden from Papa and Mother. Hey, what’s this all about, Cassie? I’m doing a term paper on athletic injuries, she told him. He seemed satisfied, his mind on other things, like the student nurse he’d met in the emergency room the night of the accident.
She learned that the Thing and its effects were not reciprocal. Alberto could not recall unexplained aches or pains. Cramps had often accompanied Cassie’s menstrual flow, but Alberto scoffed at the idea of stomachaches and cramps. Posing in a parody of muscle-beach characters, he said: “Look at this body. Narry an ache or pain.”
Oh yeah, Cassie wanted to say, remembering the hundreds of times she’d absorbed a vicious blow to the head or neck or chest, mystified then and terrified, but knowing now the reason. A sudden thought alarmed her: Suppose Alberto had fallen that summer day, plunged into the depths of that canyon in Maine? She had shared the sensations of his danger. What else would she have shared? If he had fallen to his death …
She recoiled at the thought, panic racing along her bones and sinews, rushing through her veins and arteries. Calm down, calm down. Maybe she ought to talk to someone, make a furtive appointment with Dr. Langley, present him with the evidence of her investigation. But she’d feel silly exposing herself that way, certain he would dismiss her as a hopeless neurotic or explain it all away as psychosomatic.
Before returning to the Hacienda that Sunday night, she wondered whether she should tell Alberto, risking his ridicule and disbelief. If she couldn’t tell him, then she should at least warn him to be careful. Take care of yourself, buddy. Think twice before sliding into third base or climbing another mountain. Whither thou goest, I will go. But she didn’t tell him anything.
Before going off to the Hacienda, she made a trip to the library. She remembered dimly a movie she’d seen long ago on late-night television, an old adventure derived from a book, about two brothers sharing a condition similar to hers and Alberto’s, a tale of derring-do, swordplay and galloping horses. She’d reached back in her memory but been unable to remember the title of the movie or the book. She knew it had something to do with brothers. Or cousins. The title teased at the edges of her mind, flirting, beckoning. Brothers something, Brothers Karamazov? No, that was Tolstoy. Carpathian Brothers? No. Something brothers. An Alexandre Dumas Three Musketeers kind of thing brought to the screen.
At the library she was dismayed to find in an encyclopedia that there were three Alexandre Dumas entries—father, son, grandson—studied the array of titles, in French yet, some recognizable, anyway, Le Comte de Monte Cristo and Les Trois M
ousquetaires and finally, the name of the movie leaping before her, not from the encyclopedia but from a memory dislodged from her brain. The Corsican Brothers. In which twin brothers had shared each other’s wounds and injuries. The library did not stock the book. She searched secondhand bookstores in the next few months and then stopped looking altogether. What solution or solace could she find in a book?
Returning to the Hacienda after that Thanksgiving holiday, she decided to play it cool. She knew that at least she didn’t harbor some strange and perverted disease in her body. Alberto was a strong and healthy person, if a bit reckless. But what young guy wasn’t reckless as he played the games of youth? Anyway, he wasn’t a child anymore, and the hazards of adolescent antics in summer camps were over. Eventually he’d lose interest in contact sports and settle down. She felt immeasurably cheered. She also found a kind of peace at the Hacienda among the murmuring nuns and the other students and loved those quiet moments in the chapel when she did not really pray but knelt there, content, almost happy.
Until.
Sitting in the car, in the driveway, looking up at the house that she used to call home—was the Hacienda her real home now?—she was tempted to drive back to the clinic and confess to Barney Snow how she had used him for her own purposes, as a source of information, listening to Alberto’s symptoms and comparing them with her own. Ah, but what use would confession be? And whether or not she saw him, her symptoms would continue—the headaches, the fever that seemed to course through her body most of the time, the awful feeling of disaster lurking ahead and, of course, the question that tormented her every waking hour: What happens to me when Alberto dies?
15
TROUBLE.”
Allie Roon had never before uttered a word without tortured pronouncement complete with flying spit and darting tongue, but this time the word came out of his mouth without hesitation, no vocal fireworks of any kind.