The Santaroga Barrier

  “What the hell diff …”

  “Tell him, Josh,” Piaget said. “I confess to a certain curiosity of my own.”

  Marden looked at Piaget, back to Dasein. “Well … we inspected the bridge … We make regular inspections. We just decided to do a little preventive maintenance, put in new planks here and use the old ones on a bridge that doesn’t get as much traffic. There’s nothing unusual about …”

  “Is there any urgent road work in this valley?” Dasein asked. “Is there some job you put off to come to this …”

  “Now, look here, Mister!” Marden took a step toward Dasein. “You’ve no call to …”

  “What about the Old Mill Road?” Piaget asked. “Are those pot holes still on the curve by the ditch?”

  “Now, look, Doc,” Marden said, whirling toward Piaget. “Not you, too. We decided …”

  “Easy does it, Josh,” Piaget said. “I’m just curious. What about the Old Mill Road?”

  “Aw, Doc. It was such a nice day and the …”

  “So that work still has to be done,” Piaget said.

  “I win the bet,” Dasein said. He headed back toward his truck.

  Piaget fell into step beside him.

  “Hey!” Marden shouted. “You’ve broken county property and those boards you landed on are probably …”

  Dasein cut him off without turning. “You’d better get that bridge repaired before somebody else has trouble here.”

  He slid behind the wheel of his truck, slammed the door. Reaction was setting in now: his whole body felt tense with anger.

  Piaget climbed in beside him. The truck rattled as he closed his door. “Will it still run?” he asked.

  “Accident!” Dasein said.

  Piaget remained silent.

  Dasein put the truck in gear, eased it up to a steady thirty-five miles an hour. The rear-view mirror showed him the crew already at work on the bridge, one of their number with a warning flag trudging back around the blind corner.

  “Now, they send out a flagman,” Dasein said.

  A corner cut off the view in the mirror. Dasein concentrated on driving. The truck had developed new rattles and a front-end shimmy.

  “They have to be accidents,” Piaget said. “There’s no other explanation.”

  A stop sign came into view ahead. Dasein stopped for the main highway. It was empty of traffic. He turned right toward town. Piaget’s protestations deserved no answer, he thought, and he gave no answer.

  They entered the outskirts of town. There was Scheler’s station on the left. Dasein pulled in behind the station, drove back to the large shed-roofed metal building labeled “Garage.”

  “What’re you doing here?” Piaget asked. “This machine isn’t worth …”

  “I want it repaired sufficiently to get me out of Santaroga,” Dasein said.

  The garage doors were open. Dasein nosed the truck inside, stopped, climbed out. There was a steady sound of work all around—clanging of metal, machinery humming. Lines of cars had been angled toward benches down both sides of the garage. Lights glared down on the benches.

  A stocky, dark-skinned man in stained white coveralls came from the back of the garage, stopped in front of the truck.

  “What the devil did you hit?” he asked.

  Dasein recognized one of the quartet from the card game at the Inn—Scheler himself.

  “Doctor Piaget here will tell you all about it,” Dasein said. “I want some headlights put on this thing and you might have a look at the steering.”

  “Why don’t you junk it?” Scheler asked.

  The truck door slammed and Piaget came up on the right. “Can you fix it, Sam?” he asked.

  “Sure, but it isn’t worth it.”

  “Do it anyway and put it on my bill. I don’t want our friend here to think we’re trying to trap him in the valley.”

  “If you say so, Doc.”

  Scheler turned around, shouted: “Bill! Take that Lincoln off the rack and put this truck on. I’ll write up a ticket.”

  A young man in greasy blue coveralls came around from the left bends where he had been hidden by a Lincoln Continental lifted halfway up on a hoist. The young man had Scheler’s build and dark skin, the same set of face and eyes: bright blue and alert.

  “My son, Bill,” Scheler said. “He’ll take care of it for you.”

  Dasein felt a twinge of warning fear, backed against the side of his truck. The garage around him had taken on the same feeling of concentrated malevolence he had sensed in the river.

  Scheler started through the space between the Lincoln and an old Studebaker truck, called over his shoulder: “If you’ll sign the ticket over here, Dr. Dasein, we’ll get right at it.”

  Dasein took two steps after him, hesitated. He felt the garage closing in around him.

  “We can walk to the clinic from here,” Piaget said. “Sam will call when your rig’s ready.”

  Dasein took another step, stopped, glanced back. Young Bill Scheler was right behind him. The sense of menace was a pounding drumbeat in Dasein’s head. He saw Bill reach out a friendly hand to guide him between the cars. There was no doubt of the innocent intention of that hand, the smiling face behind it, but Dasein saw the hand as the embodiment of danger. With an inarticulate cry, Dasein sprang aside.

  The young mechanic, caught off balance with nothing ahead of his thrusting arm, lurched forward, stumbled, fell. As he fell, the hoist with the Lincoln on it came crashing down. It rocked twice, subsided. Bill Scheler lay halfway under it. One of his legs twitched, was still.

  A pool of red began to flow from beneath the car.

  Piaget dashed past him shouting for Scheler to raise the hoist.

  A compressor began thumping somewhere in the background. The Lincoln jerked, began to rise. It exposed a body, its head smashed beyond recognition by one of the hoist’s arms.

  Dasein whirled away, ran out of the garage and was sick. That could’ve been me, he thought. That was meant for me. He grew aware of a great bustle of activity, the sound of a siren in the distance.

  Two mechanics emerged from the garage with a pale-faced, staggering Sam Scheler between them.

  It was his son, Dasein thought. He felt that this was of the deepest significance, but his shocked mind gave no explanation for that feeling.

  He heard one of the mechanics with Scheler say: “It was an accident, Sam. Nothing you could do.”

  They went into the station with him.

  A siren began giving voice in the distance. Its wailing grew louder. Dasein backed off to the edge of the station’s parking area, stood against a low fence.

  His truck, nosed into the garage, lurched into motion, was swallowed by the building.

  The ambulance droned its way into the parking area, turned, backed into the garage. Presently, it emerged, drove away with its siren silent.

  Piaget came out of the garage.

  He was an oddly subdued man, indecisive in his walk—short strides, soft of step. He saw Dasein, approached with an air of diffidence. There was a smear of blood down the right side of his white smock, black grease at the hem, grease on the left arm.

  Blood and grease—they struck Dasein as an odd combination but things out of which an entire scene could be reconstructed. He shuddered.

  “I … I need a cup of coffee,” Piaget said. He closed his eyes briefly, opened them to stare pleadingly at Dasein. “There’s a café around the corner. Would you …” He broke off to take a deep, trembling breath. “I brought that boy into the world.” He shook his head. “Just when you think you’re the complete doctor, immune to all personal involvement …”

  Dasein experienced a surge of compassion for Piaget, stepped away from the fence to take the doctor’s arm. “Where’s this café? I could use something myself.”

  The café was a narrow brick building squeezed between a hardware store and a dark little shop labeled “Bootery.” The screen door banged behind them. The place smelled of steam and the omnipre
sent Jaspers. One of Scheler’s station attendants—dark green jacket and white hat—sat at a counter on the left staring into a cup of coffee. A man in a leather apron, horn-callused hands, gray hair, was eating a sandwich at the far end of the counter.

  Dasein steered Piaget into a booth opposite the counter, sat down across from him.

  The station attendant at the counter, turned, glanced at them. Dasein found himself confronted by a face he knew to be another Scheler—the same set to the blue eyes, the same blocky figure and dark skin. The man looked at Piaget, said: “Hi, Doc. There was a siren.”

  Piaget lifted his gaze from the tabletop, looked at the speaker. The glaze left Piaget’s eyes. He took two shallow breaths, looked away, back to the man at the counter.

  “Harry,” Piaget said, and his voice was a hoarse croak. “I … couldn’t …” He broke off.

  The man slid off the counter stool. His face was a pale, frozen mask. “I’ve been sitting here … feeling …” He brushed a hand across his mouth. “It was … Bill!” He whirled, dashed out of the café. The door slammed behind him.

  “That’s Scheler’s other son,” Piaget said.

  “He knew,” Dasein said, and he recalled the experience at the lake, the feeling of rapport.

  Life exists immersed in a sea of unconsciousness, he reminded himself. In the drug, these people gain a view of that sea.

  Piaget studied Dasein a moment, then: “Of course he knew. Haven’t you ever had a tooth pulled? Couldn’t you feel the hole where it had been?”

  A slender red-haired woman in a white apron, lines of worry on her face, came up to the booth, stood looking down at Piaget. “I’ll bring your coffee,” she said. She started to turn away, hesitated. “I … felt it … and Jim next door came to the back to tell me. I didn’t know how to tell Harry. He just kept sitting there … getting lower and lower … knowing really but refusing to face it. I …” She shrugged. “Anything besides coffee?”

  Piaget shook his head. Dasein realized with a sense of shock the man was near tears.

  The waitress left, returned with two mugs of coffee, went back to the kitchen—all without speaking. She, too, had sensed Piaget’s emotions.

  Dasein sighed, lifted his coffee, started to put the mug to his lips, hesitated. There was an odd bitter odor beneath the omnipresent Jaspers tang in the coffee. Dasein put his nose to the mug, sniffed. Bitter. A plume of steam rising from the dark liquid assumed for Dasein the shape of a hooded cobra lifting its fanged head to strike him.

  Shakily, he returned the mug to the table, looked up to meet Piaget’s questioning gaze.

  “There’s poison in that coffee,” Dasein rasped.

  Piaget looked at his own coffee.

  Dasein took the mug from him, sniffed at it. The bitter odor was missing. He touched his tongue to it—heat, the soothing flow of Jaspers … coffee …

  “Is something wrong?”

  Dasein looked up to find the waitress standing over him. “There’s poison in my coffee,” he said.

  “Nonsense.” She took the mug from Dasein’s hand, started to drink.

  Piaget stopped her with a hand on her arm. “No, Vina—this one.” He handed her the other mug.

  She stared at it, smelled it, put it down, dashed for the kitchen. Presently, she returned carrying a small yellow box. Her face was porcelain white, freckles standing out across her cheeks and nose like the marks of some disease.

  “Roach powder,” she whispered. “I … the box was spilled on the shelf over the counter. I …” She shook her head.

  Dasein looked at Piaget, but the doctor refused to meet his gaze.

  “Another accident,” Dasein said, holding his voice even. “Eh, doctor?”

  Piaget wet his lips with his tongue.

  Dasein slid out of the booth, pushing the waitress aside. He took the mug of poisoned coffee, poured it deliberately on the floor. “Accidents will happen, won’t they … Vina?”

  “Please,” she said. “I … didn’t …”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Dasein said.

  “You don’t understand,” Piaget said.

  “But I do understand,” Dasein said. “What’ll it be next time? A gun accident? How about something heavy dropped from a roof? Accidentally, of course.” He turned, strode out of the cafe, stood on the sidewalk to study his surroundings.

  It was such a normal town. The trees on the parking strip were so normal. The young couple walking down the sidewalk across from him—they were so normal. The sounds—a truck out on the avenue to his right, the cars there, a pair of jays arguing in the treetops, two women talking on the steps of a house down the street to his left—such an air of normalcy about it all.

  The screen door slapped behind him. Piaget came up to stand at Dasein’s side. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “Do you, really?”

  “I know how all this must look to you.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Believe me,” Piaget said, “all this is just a terrible series of coincidences that …”

  “Coincidence!” Dasein whirled on him, glaring. “How far can you stretch credulity, doctor? How long can you rationalize before you have to admit …”

  “Gilbert, I’d cut off my right arm rather than let anything happen to you. I’d break Jenny’s heart to …”

  “You actually don’t see it, do you?” Dasein asked, his voice filled with awe. “You don’t see it. You refuse to see it.”

  “Dr. Dasein?”

  The voice came from his right. Dasein turned to find Harry—“Scheler’s other son”—standing there, hat in hand. He looked younger than he had in the café—no more than nineteen. There was a sad hesitancy in his manner.

  “I wanted to …” He broke off. “My father said to tell you … We know it wasn’t your fault that …” He looked into Dasein’s eyes, a look that pleaded for help.

  Dasein felt a pang of rapport for the young man. There was a basic decency at work here. In the midst of their own grief, the Schelers had taken time to try to ease Dasein’s feelings.

  They expected me to feel guilt about this, Dasein thought. The fact that he’d experienced no such feeling filled Dasein now with an odd questing sensation of remorse.

  If I hadn’t … He aborted the thought. If I hadn’t what? That accident was meant for me.

  “It’s all right, Harry,” Piaget said. “We understand.”

  “Thanks, Doc.” He looked at Piaget with relief. “Dad said to tell you … the car, Dr. Dasein’s truck … The new headlights are in it. That’s all we can do. The steering … You’ll just have to drive slow unless you replace the whole front end.”

  “Already?” Dasein asked.

  “It doesn’t take long to put in headlights, sir.”

  Dasein looked from the youth to Piaget. The doctor returned his stare with an expression that said as clearly as words: “They want your truck out of there. It’s a reminder …”

  Dasein nodded. Yes. The truck would remind them of the tragedy. This was logical. Without a word, he set off for the garage.

  Piaget sped up, matched his pace to Dasein’s.

  “Gilbert,” he said, “I must insist you come over to the house. Jenny can …”

  “Insist?”

  “You’re being very pig-headed, Gilbert.”

  Dasein put down a surge of anger, said: “I don’t want to hurt Jenny any more than you do. That’s why I’m going to direct my own steps. I don’t really want you to know what I’m going to do next. I don’t want any of you waiting there in my path with one of your … accidents.”

  “Gilbert, you must put that idea out of your mind! None of us want to hurt you.”

  They were on the parking area between the station and the garage now. Dasein stared at the gaping door to the garage, overcome suddenly by the sensation that the door was a mouth with deadly teeth ready to clamp down on him. The door yawned there to swallow him.

  Dasein hesitated, slowed, stopped.
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  “What is it now?” Piaget asked.

  “Your truck’s just inside,” Harry Scheler said. “You can drive it and …”

  “What about the bill?” Dasein asked, stalling for time.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Piaget said. “Go get your truck while I’m settling up. Then we’ll go to …”

  “I want the truck driven out here for me,” Dasein said. He moved to one side, out of the path of anything that might come spewing from that mouth-door.

  “I can understand your reluctance to go back in there,” Piaget said, “but really …”

  “You drive it out for me, Harry,” Dasein said.

  The youth stared at Dasein with an oddly trapped look. “Well, I have some …”

  “Drive the damn’ car out for him!” Piaget ordered. “This is nonsense!”

  “Sir?” Harry looked at Piaget.

  “I said drive the damn’ car out here for him!” Piaget repeated. “I’ve had as much of this as I can stomach!”

  Hesitantly, the youth turned toward the garage door. His feet moved with a dragging slowness.

  “See here, Gilbert,” Piaget said, “you can’t really believe we …”

  “I believe what I see,” Dasein said.

  Piaget threw up his hands, turned away in exasperation.

  Dasein listened to the sounds from the garage. They were subdued in there-voices, only a few mechanical noises, the whirring buzz of some machine.

  A door slammed. It sounded like the door to the truck. Dasein recognized the grinding of his starter. The engine caught with its characteristic banging, as drowned immediately in a roaring explosion that sent a blast of flame shooting out the garage door.

  Piaget leaped back with an oath.

  Dasein ran diagonally past him to look into the garage. He glimpsed figures rushing out a door at the far end. His truck stood in the central traffic aisle at the core of a red-orange ball of flame. As he stared at the truck, a burning something emerged from the flames, staggered, fell.

  Behind Dasein, someone screamed: “Harry!”

  Without consciously willing it, Dasein found himself dashing through the garage door to grab into the flames and drag the youth to safety. There were sensations of heat, pain. A roaring-crackling sound of fire filled the air around him. The smell of gasoline and char invaded Dasein’s nostrils. He saw a river of fire reach toward him along the floor. A blazing beam crashed down where the youth had lain. There were shouts, a great scrambling confusion.