From a Buick 8

  Shirley

  There was a great confused clatter of radio traffic, but none of it was directed to base. Why would it be, when all the action was either out at Poteenville Grammar School or headed that way? George Stankowski had gotten the kids away from the smoke, at least, I got that. Poteenville Volunteer One, aided by pumpers from Statler County, were controlling the grassfires around the school. Those fires had indeed been touched off by burning diesel and not some flammable chemical. It was chlorine liquid in the tanker, that was now confirmed. Not good, but nowhere near as bad as it might have been.

  George called to me from outside, wanting to know if I was all right. Thinking that was rather sweet, I called back and told him I was. A second or two later, Eddie called out the f-word, angry. During all this I felt strange, not myself, like someone going through ordinary chores and routines in the wake of some vast change: the death of a friend, bad news from the doctor, a declaration of war.

  Mister D was standing in the door to dispatch with his head down, whining at me. I thought the burned patches in his fur were probably paining him. There were more burned places, dottings of them, on both sides of his muzzle. I reminded myself that someone--Orv Garrett was the logical choice--should take him to the vet when things finally settled back down. That would mean making up some sort of story about how he got burned, probably a real whopper.

  "Want some water, big boy?" I asked. "Bet you do, don't you?"

  He whined again, as if to say water was a very good idea. I went into the kitchenette, got his bowl, filled it at the sink. I could hear him clicking along on the lino behind me but I never turned around until I had the bowl full.

  "Here you a--"

  I got that far, then took a good look at him and dropped the bowl on the floor, splashing my ankles. He was shivering all over--not like he was cold but like someone was passing an electric current through him. And foam was dripping out from both sides of his muzzle.

  He's rabid, I thought. Whatever that thing had, it's turned D rabid.

  He didn't look rabid, though, only confused and in misery. His eyes seemed to be asking me to fix whatever was wrong. I was the human, I was in charge, I should be able to fix it.

  "D?" I said. I dropped down on one knee and held my hand out to him. I know that sounds stupid--dangerous--but at the time it seemed like the right thing. "D, what is it? What's wrong? Poor old thing, what's wrong?"

  He came to me, but very slowly, whining and shivering with every step. When he got close I saw a terrible thing: little tendrils of smoke were coming from the birdshot-spatter of holes on his muzzle. More was coming from the burned patches on his fur, and from the corners of his eyes, as well. I could see his eyes starting to lighten, as if a mist was covering them from the inside.

  I reached out and touched the top of his head. When I felt how hot it was, I gave a little yell and yanked my hand back, the way you do when you touch a stove burner you thought was off but isn't. Mister D made as if to snap at me, but I don't think he meant anything by it; he just couldn't think what else to do. Then he turned and blundered his way out of the kitchen.

  I got up, and for a moment the whole world swam in front of my eyes. If I hadn't grabbed the counter, I think I would have fallen. Then I went after him (staggering a little myself) and saying, "D? Come back, honeybunch."

  He was halfway across the duty room. He turned once to look back at me--toward the sound of my voice--and I saw . . . oh, I saw smoke coming out of his mouth and nose, out of his ears, too. The sides of his mouth drew back and for a second it seemed like he was trying to grin at me, the way dogs will do when they're happy. Then he vomited. Most of what came out wasn't food but his own insides. And they -were smoking.

  That was when I screamed. "Help! Please! Help me! Please, please help me!"

  Mister D turned away as if all that screaming was hurting his poor hot ears, and went on staggering across the floor. He must have seen the hole in the screen, he must have had enough eyesight left for that, because he set sail for it and slipped out through it.

  I went after him, still screaming.

  Eddie

  "What's wrong with him, George?" I shouted. Mister Dillon had managed to get on his feet again. He was turning slowly around, the smoke rising from his fur and coming out of his mouth in gray billows. "What's happening to him?"

  Shirley came out, her cheeks wet with tears. "Help him!" she shouted. "He's burning up!"

  Huddie joined us then, panting as if he'd run a race. "What the hell is it?"

  Then he saw. Mister Dillon had collapsed again. We walked cautiously toward him from one side. From the other, Shirley came down the steps from the stoop. She was closer and reached him first.

  "Don't touch him!" George said.

  Shirley ignored him and put a hand on D's neck, but she couldn't hold it there. She looked at us, her eyes swimming with tears. "He's on fire inside," she said.

  Whining, Mister Dillon tried to get on his feet again. He made it halfway, the front half, and began to move slowly toward the far side of the parking lot, where Curt's Bel Aire was parked next to Dicky-Duck Eliot's Toyota. By then he had to have been blind; his eyes were nothing but boiling jelly in their sockets. He kind of paddled along, pulling himself with his front paws, dragging his rump.

  "Christ," Huddie said. "Look at that."

  "Help him!" Shirley cried. By then the tears were pouring down her face and her voice was so choked it was hard to make out what she was saying. "Please, for the love of God, can't one of you help him?"

  I had an image then, very bright and clear. I saw myself getting the hose, which Arky always kept coiled under the faucet-bib on the side of the building. I saw myself turning on the spigot, then running to Mister D and slamming the cold brass nozzle of the hose into his mouth, feeding water down the chimney that was his throat. I saw myself putting him out.

  But George was already walking to him, toward the dying ruin that had been our barracks dog, taking his gun out of his holster as he went. D, meanwhile, was still paddling mindlessly along toward a spot of nothing much between Curt's Bel Aire and Dicky-Duck's Toyota, moving in a cloud of thickening smoke. How long, I wondered, before the fire inside broke through and he went up in flames like one of those suicidal Buddhist monks you used to see on television during the Vietnam war?

  George stopped and held his gun up so Shirley could see it. "It's the only thing, darlin. Don't you think?"

  "Yes, hurry," she said, speaking very rapidly.

  Now: Shirley

  For me, it was the worst part--hearing Eddie tell how I agreed with George that only a bullet would serve. I turned to Ned, who was sitting there with his head down and his hair hanging on his brow. I put my hand on his chin and tilted it up so he'd have to look at me. "There was nothing else we could do," I said. "You see that, don't you?"

  For a moment he said nothing and I was afraid. Then he nodded.

  I looked at Sandy Dearborn, but he wasn't looking at me. He was looking at Curtis's boy, and I've rarely seen him with such a troubled expression.

  Then Eddie started talking again and I sat back to listen. It's funny how close the past is, sometimes. Sometimes it seems as if you could almost reach out and touch it. Only . . .

  Only who really wants to?

  Then: Eddie

  In the end there was no more melodrama, just a Trooper in a gray uniform and the shadow of his big hat shielding his eyes bending and reaching out like you might reach out your hand to a crying child to comfort him. He touched the muzzle of his Ruger to the dog's smoking ear and pulled the trigger. There was a loud Pow! and D fell dead on his side. The smoke was still coming out of his fur in little ribbons. It was as if he'd swallowed a hotspring.

  George bolstered his weapon and stood back. Then he put his hands over his face and cried something out. I don't know what it was. It was too muffled to tell. Huddie and I walked to where he was. Shirley did, too. We put our arms around him, all of us. We were standing in the
middle of the parking lot with Unit 6 behind us and Shed B to our right and our nice barracks dog who never made any trouble for anybody lying dead in front of us. We could smell him cooking, and without a word we all moved farther to our right, upwind, shuffling rather than walking because we weren't quite ready to lose hold of one another. We didn't talk. We waited to see if he'd actually catch on fire like we thought he might, but it seemed that the fire didn't want him or maybe couldn't use him now that he was dead. He swelled some, and there was a gruesome little sound from inside him, almost like the one you get when you pop a paper lunchsack. It might have been one of his lungs. Anyway, once that happened, the smoke started to thin.

  "That thing from the Buick poisoned him, didn't it?" Huddie asked. "It poisoned him when he bit into it."

  "Poisoned him my ass," I said. "That pink-hair motherfucker firebombed him." Then I remembered that Shirley was there, and she never had appreciated that kind of talk. "Sorry," I said.

  She seemed not to have heard me. She was still looking fixedly down at Mister D. "What do we do now?" she asked. "Does anyone have any ideas?"

  "I don't," I said. "This situation is totally out of control."

  "Maybe not," George said. "Did you cover up the thing in there, Hud?"

  "Yeah."

  "All right, that's a start. And how does it look out in Poteenville, Shirl?"

  "The kids are out of danger. They've got a dead bus driver, but considering how bad things looked at first, I'd say . . ." She stopped, lips pressed together so tight they were almost gone, her throat working. Then she said, "Excuse me, fellas."

  She walked stiff-legged around the corner of the barracks with the back of her hand pressed against her mouth. She held on until she was out of sight--nothing showing but her shadow--and then there came three big wet whooping sounds. The three of us stood over the smoking corpse of the dog without saying anything, and after a few minutes she came back, dead white and wiping her mouth with a Kleenex. And picked up right where she'd left off. It was as if she'd paused just long enough to clear her throat or swat a fly. "I'd say that was a pretty low score. The question is, what's the score here?"

  "Get either Curt or the Sarge on the radio," George said. "Curt will do but Tony's better because he's more level-headed when it comes to the Buick. You guys buy that?"

  Huddie and I nodded. So did Shirley. "Tell him you have a Code D and we want him here as soon as he can get here. He should know it's not an emergency, but he should also know it's damn dose to an emergency. Also, tell him we may have a Kubrick." This was another piece of slang peculiar (so far as I know) to our barracks. A Kubrick is a 2001, and 2001 is PSP code for "escaped prisoner". I had heard it talked about, but never actually called.

  "Kubrick, copy," Shirley said. She seemed steadier now that she had orders. "Do you--"

  There was a loud bang. Shirley gave a small scream and all three of us turned toward the shed, reaching for our weapons as we did. Then Huddle laughed. The breeze had blown the shed door closed.

  "Go on, Shirley," George said. "Get the Sarge. Let's make this happen."

  "And Brian Lippy?" I asked. "No APB?"

  Huddie sighed. Took off his hat. Rubbed the nape of his neck. Looked up at the sky. Put his hat back on. "I don't know," he said. "But if one does go out, it won't be any of us who puts it out. That's the Sarge's call. It's why they pay him the big bucks."

  "Good point," George said. Now that he saw that the responsibility was going to travel on, he looked a little more relaxed.

  Shirley turned to go into the barracks, then looked back over her shoulder. "Cover him up, would you?" she said. "Poor old Mister D. Put something over him. Looking at him that way hurts my heart."

  "Good idea," I said, and started toward the shed.

  "Eddie?" Huddie said.

  "Yeah?"

  "There's a piece of tarp big enough to do the job in the hutch. Use that. Don't go into the shed."

  "Why not?"

  "Because something's still going on with that Buick. Hard to tell exactly what, but if you go in there, you might not come back out."

  "All right," I said. "You don't have to twist my arm."

  I got the piece of tarp out of the hutch--just a flimsy blue thing, but it would do. On the way back to cover D's body, I stopped at the roll-up door and took a look into the shed, cupping one hand to the side of my face to cut the glare. I wanted a look at the thermometer; I also wanted to make sure my old school chum Brian wasn't skulk-assing around in there. He wasn't, and the temperature appeared to have gone up a degree or two. Only one thing in the landscape had changed. The trunk was shut.

  The crocodile had closed its mouth.

  Now: Sandy

  Shirley, Huddie, Eddie: the sound of their entwined voices was oddly beautiful to me, like the voices of characters speaking lines in some strange play. Eddie said the crocodile had closed its mouth and then his voice ceased and I waited for one of the other voices to come in and when none did and Eddie himself didn't resume, I knew it was over. I knew but Ned Wilcox didn't. Or maybe he did and just didn't want to admit it

  "Well?" he said, and that barely disguised impatience was back in his voice.

  What happened when you dissected the bat-thing? Tell me about the fish. Tell me everything. But--this is important--tell me a story, one that has a beginning and a middle and an end where everything is explained. Because I deserve that. Don't shake the rattle of your ambiguity in my face. I deny its place. I repudiate its claim. I want a story.

  He was young and that explained part of it, he was faced with something that was, as they say, not of this Earth, and that explained more of it . . . but there was something else, too, and it wasn't pretty. A kind of selfish, single-minded grubbing. And he thought he had a right. We spoil the grief-stricken, have you ever noticed that? And they become used to the treatment.

  "Well what?" I asked. I spoke in my least encouraging voice. Not that it would help.

  "What happened when Sergeant Schoondist and my father got back? Did you catch Brian Lippy? Did he see? Did he tell? Jesus, you guys can't stop there!"

  He was wrong, we could stop anyplace we chose to, but I kept that fact to myself (at least for the time being) and told him that no, we never did catch Brian Lippy; Brian Lippy remained Code Kubrick to this very day.

  "Who wrote the report?" Ned asked. "Did you, Eddie? Or was it Trooper Morgan?"

  "George," he said with a trace of a grin. "He was always better at stuff like that. Took Creative Writing in college. He used to say any state cop worth his salt needed to know the basics of creative writing. When we started to fall apart that day, George was the one who pulled us together. Didn't he, Huddie?"

  Huddie nodded.

  Eddie got up, put his hands in the small of his back, and stretched until we could hear the bones crackle. "Gotta go home, fellas. Might stop for a beer at The Tap on the way. Maybe even two. After all this talking, I'm pretty dry."

  Ned looked at him with surprise, anger, and reproach. "You can't leave just like that!" he exclaimed. "I want to hear the whole story!"

  And Eddie, who was slowly losing the struggle not to return to being Fat Eddie, said what I knew, what we all knew. He said it while looking at Ned with eyes which were not exactly friendly. "You did, kid. You just don't know it."

  Ned watched him walk away, then turned to the rest of us. Only Shirley looked back with real sympathy, and I think that hers was tempered with sadness for the boy.

  "What does he mean, I heard it all?"

  "There's nothing left but a few anecdotes," I said, "and those are only variations on the same theme. About as interesting as the kernels at the bottom of the popcorn bowl.

  "As for Brian Lippy, the report George wrote said "Troopers Morgan and Jacubois spoke to the subject and ascertained he was sober. Subject denied assaulting his girlfriend and Trooper Jacubois ascertained that the girlfriend supported him in this. Subject was then released.""

  "But Lippy kicked out th
eir cruiser window!"

  "Right, and under the circumstances George and Eddie couldn't very well put in a claim for the damages."

  "So?"

  "So the money to replace it probably came out of the contingency fund. The Buick 8 contingency fund, if you want me to cross the t's. We keep it the same place now we did then, a coffee can in the kitchen."

  "Yar, dat's where it come from," Arky said. "Poor ole coffee can's taken a fair number of hits over d'years." He stood up and also stretched his back. "Gotta go, boys n girls. Unlike some of you, I got friends--what dey call a personal life on d'daytime talk shows. But before I leave, you want to know sup'm else, Neddie? About dat day?"

  "Anything you want to tell me."

  "Dey buried D." He said the verb the old way, so it rhymes with scurried. "An right nex" to im dey buried d'tools dey use on dat t'ing poisoned im. One of em was my pos'hole digger, an I din' get no coffee-can compensation for dat!"

  "You didn't fill out a TS 1, that's why," Shirley said. "I know the paperwork's a pain in the fanny, but . . ." She shrugged as if to say That's the way of the world.

  Arky was frowning suspiciously at her. "TS 1 ? What kind of form is dat?"

  "It's your tough-shit list," Shirley told him, perfectly straight-faced. "The one you fill out every month and send to the chaplain. Goodness, I never saw such a Norwegian squarehead. Didn't they teach you anything in the Army?"

  Arky flapped his hands at her, but he was smiling. He'd taken plenty of ribbing over the years, believe me--that accent of his attracted it. "Geddout witcha!"

  "Walked right into it, Arky," I said. I was also smiling. Ned wasn't. Ned looked as if the joking and teasing--our way of winding things back down to normal--had gone right past him.