Time passed.
Then Wellstone found that he was crawling on his hands and knees in the darkness, tears running from his eyes and snot from his nose. He encountered something wet and sticky and, with no guidance from himself, his body slipped around it. One hand found a worn stone step and, unbidden, his body pulled itself closer: up the step, then the next, then the next. A faint gleam of light now was visible above, and his body moved toward it.
Reaching the top, he saw a room and, past it, the open door of the mausoleum. The light he’d seen was beyond the ruined doors. He crawled toward the light, advancing one knee, then one hand, then one knee, moving slowly and without thought.
Finally he passed through the door. The light was on his right, shining brightly, and a machine to his left was pushing out a stream of fog. He could hear the thrum of a generator.
There was a woman here. Sitting cross-legged on the ground. A blond woman, splattered in blood, with her head buried in her hands. She looked up at him as he emerged from the tomb, her face a perfect blank. The blood on her face looked like ghastly red freckles.
She looked at him for a while, then she lowered her head into her hands again.
Now Wellstone’s body decided it could crawl no more. It was as if his agency had departed. He lay down next to the woman and curled up, once again in a fetal position, covering his head with his hands. Vaguely, he sensed that he was waiting, but for what, or whom, he could not say…any more than he could, or would, say anything else—ever again.
61
TERRY O’HERLIHY PUSHED DEUCE off his lap, got up from his living room couch, walked through the doorway into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. After a brief inspection, he took out a diet iced tea, unscrewed the lid, and walked back to the couch. With a sigh, he flopped down, his form fitting easily into the depression in the springs in front of the TV. A moment later, Deuce jumped back up. Deuce was a black Pomeranian, his wife’s pride and joy. It was his job to take Deuce for his nightly walk, and the way people snickered at his leading a toy lapdog by the leash made him feel like a prison punk.
He took a sip of iced tea, muttered a curse, then screwed the top back on. A humid breeze came through the open windows, stirring the embroidered lace curtains, and he held the bottle to his temple. The window air-conditioning unit had broken two days before, and his social security check wouldn’t be coming until next week. If the damn stuff wasn’t fit to drink, it could at least cool him off a little.
He glanced around the dimly lit room: at the shabby dining room table, the shabby hooked rug, the photos of family members in carefully dusted but yellowing frames. Forty-two years at the tool and die factory, five days a week, waiting to retire—and now he was retired, all right. Good and retired.
His wandering gaze fell on the ashtray atop the coffee table. Molly had wiped it so clean that it almost sparkled in the dark room. She was a tidy woman, but this was something that had nothing to do with tidiness; she didn’t want ash, or butts, or anything in the room that would put his mind to smoking.
Same with the liquor. One at a time, she’d thrown out his bottles of rye, stuffing knickknacks in the places they’d been. The shelf in the kitchen that once held booze was now piled with dishes. She’d found the bottle he kept in the basement, too—made a big production out of disposing of that one. She was a stone bloodhound, that woman.
“Shit-fire,” he muttered, putting the iced tea down with a bang. Why couldn’t the woman stop dogging him? He’d spent his whole life working. What was wrong with a pack of smokes and a half-pint? Well, all right then, a pint? He felt fine; he didn’t care what the doctors at Memorial said. It wasn’t like he was stepping out on the battle-ax or something. A man deserved his little pleasures.
The fact was, he did have something stashed away for a rainy day—a carton of Kools and a couple bottles of Old Overholt Bonded—somewhere Molly would never find them. Just knowing they were there made him feel better.
He raised one cheek off the sofa and busted ass. Deuce pricked up his ears and looked at him reproachfully. “Come on, boy,” he said a little guiltily, rising from the couch again with a grunt and reaching for the dog’s leash. “Let’s get this over with.”
Stepping outside, he found the night air was cooler than the house, but only a little. He paused. The clouds were clearing from the night sky. The Avondale district of east Savannah was quiet, but in the distance he could make out lights and hear some kind of racket: that senator was in town again, making a nuisance of himself.