Текст книги "Revival"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

For a moment I imagined our old drummer pulling through. Lying in bed with a machine to help him breathe and watching Pastor Danny on TV. I shook the thought away. “What about Astrid? Do you know where she is?”

“Downeast somewhere. Castine? Rockland?” He shook his head. “Don’t remember. I know she dropped out of college to get married, and her folks were pissed at her. Probably double pissed when she got divorced. I think she runs a restaurant, one of those lobster shack things, but don’t quote me. You guys had it bad, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “We sure did.”

He nodded. “Young love. Nothin on earth like it. Not sure I’d want to see her these days, because the old Soda Burger was steppin dynamite back then. Steppin nitro. Wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of the ruined cabin next to Skytop. And the iron rod. How it glowed red when the lightning struck it. “Yes, she was.”

For a moment we said nothing, then he clapped me on the shoulder. “Anyway, what do you think? Gonna gig with us? You better say yes, because the band’s gonna be fuckin lame if you say no.”

“You’re in the band? The Castle Rock All-Stars? Kenny too?”

“Sure. We don’t play much anymore—not like the old days—but no way we could turn this one down.”

“Did my brother Terry put you up to this?”

“He might’ve thought you’d come up for a tune or two, but no. He just wanted a band from the old days, and me and Kenny are about the only ones from back then who are still alive, still hanging around this shit-all neck of the woods, and still playing. Our rhythm guy’s a carpenter from Lisbon Falls, and last Wednesday he fell off a roof and broke both legs.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“His ouch is my gain,” Norm Irving said. “We were gonna play as a trio, which, as you know, sucks the bird. Three out of four Chrome Roses ain’t bad, considering we played our last gig at the PAL hop up-the-city over thirty-five years ago. So come on. Reunion tour, and all that.”

“Norm, I don’t have a guitar.”

“I got three in the truck,” he said. “You can take your pick. Just remember, we still start with ‘Hang On Sloopy.’”

 • • •

We trooped onstage to enthusiastic, alcohol-fueled applause. Kenny Laughlin, as thin as ever but now sporting several less than lovely moles on his face, looked up from adjusting the strap on his Fender P-Bass and dapped me. I wasn’t nervous, as I had been the first time I stood on this stage with a guitar in my hands, but I did feel as if I were having a particularly vivid dream.

Norm adjusted his mike one-handed, just as he always had, and addressed the audience waiting to bust a few of their old-time rock-and-roll moves. “It says Castle Rock All-Stars on the drumkit, folks, but tonight we’ve got a special guest on rhythm, and for the next couple of hours, we’re Chrome Roses again. Kick it in, Jamie.”

I thought of kissing Astrid under the fire escape. I thought of Norm’s rusty microbus and of his father, Cicero, sitting on the busted-down sofa in his old trailer, rolling dope in Zig-Zag papers and telling me if I wanted to get my license first crack out of the basket, I’d better cut my fucking hair. I thought of playing teen dances at the Auburn RolloDrome, and how we never stopped when the inevitable fights broke out between the kids from Edward Little and Lisbon High, or those from Lewiston High and St. Dom’s; we just turned it up louder. I thought of how life had been before I realized I was a frog in a pot.

I shouted: “One, two, you-know-what-to-do!”

We kicked it in.

Key of E.

All that shit starts in E.

 • • •

In the seventies, we might have played until one-o’clock curfew, but this was no longer the seventies, and by eleven o’clock we were dripping sweat and exhausted. That was okay; on Terry’s orders, the beer and wine had been whisked away at ten, and with no more firewater, the crowd thinned out fast. Most of those remaining had resumed their seats, content to listen but too exhausted to dance.

“You’re a hell of a lot better than you used to be, freshie,” Norm said as we racked our instruments.

“So are you.” Which was as much a lie as you look great. At fourteen I never would have believed the day would come when I’d be a better rock guitarist than Norman Irving, but that day had come. He gave me a smile to say he knew what was better left unspoken. Kenny joined us, and the three remaining members of Chrome Roses huddled in a hug we would have called “faggot stuff” when we were in high school.

Terry joined us, along with Terry Jr., his eldest son. My brother looked tired, but he also looked supremely happy. “Listen, Con and his friend took a bunch of folks who were too loaded to drive back to Castle Rock. Will you haul a bunch of Harlow folks in the King Cab, if I lend you Terry Jr. to copilot?”

I said I’d be happy to, and after a final so-long to Norm and Kenny (accompanied by those weird limp-fish handshakes peculiar to musicians), I gathered up my load of drunkies and set off. For awhile my nephew gave me instructions I hardly needed, even in the dark, but by the time I offloaded the last two or three couples out on Stackpole Road, he had ceased. I looked over and saw the kid was leaning against the passenger window, fast asleep. I woke him when we got back to the home place on Methodist Road. He kissed my cheek (which touched me more deeply than he could know), and stumbled into the house, where he would probably sleep until noon on Sunday, as adolescents are prone to do. I wondered if he would do so in my old room, and decided probably not; he’d be quartered in the new addition. Time changes everything, and maybe that’s okay.

I hung the King Cab’s keys on the rack in the hall, headed out to my rental car, and spied lights in the barn. I walked over, peeped in, and there was Terry. He had changed out of his party duds and into a coverall. His newest toy, a Chevy SS from the late sixties or early seventies, gleamed under the hanging lights like a blue jewel. He was Simonizing it.

He looked up when I came in. “Can’t sleep just yet. Too much excitement. I’ll buff on this baby for awhile, then toddle off to bed.”

I ran my hand up the hood. “It’s beautiful.”

“Now it is, but you should have seen it when I picked it up at auction down in Portsmouth. Looked like junk to most of the buyers there, but I thought I could bring it back.”

“Revive it,” I said. Not really talking to Terry.

He gave me a thoughtful look, then shrugged. “You could call it that, I guess, and once I drop a new tranny in er, it’ll be most of the way there. Not much like the old Road Rockets, is it?”

I laughed. “You remember when the first one went ass over teapot at the Speedway?”

Terry rolled his eyes. “First lap. Fucking Duane Robichaud. I think he got his license at Sears and Roebuck.”

“Is he still around?”

“Nah, dead ten years. Ten at least. Brain cancer. By the time they found it, poor bastard never had a chance.”

Suppose I were a neurosurgeon, Jacobs had said that day at The Latches. Suppose I told you your chances of dying were twenty-five percent. Wouldn’t you still go ahead?

“That’s tough.”

He nodded. “Remember what we used to say when we were kids? ‘What’s tough? Life. What’s Life? A magazine. How much does it cost? Fifteen cents. I only got a dime. That’s tough. What’s tough? Life.’ Around and around it went.”

“I remember. Back then we thought it was a joke.” I hesitated. “Do you think of Claire very much, Terry?”

He tossed his polishing rag into a bucket and went to the sink to wash his hands. There had been nothing but one faucet back in the day—just cold—but now there were two. He turned them on, grabbed a cake of Lava, and began to soap up. All the way to the elbows, just as Dad had taught us.

“Every damn day. I think of Andy, too, but less often. That was what you call the natural order of things, I guess, although he might have lived a little longer if he hadn’t been so fond of his knife and fork. What happened to Claire, though . . . that was just fucking wrong. You know?”

“Yes.”

He leaned against the hood of the SS, looking at nothing in particular. “Remember how beautiful she was?” He shook his head slowly. “Our beautiful sister. That bastard—that beast—cheated her out of all the years she still had coming, then took the coward’s way out.” He swiped a hand across his face. “We shouldn’t talk about Claire. It makes me emotional.”

It made me emotional, too. Claire, who had been just enough older for me to see her as a kind of backup Mom. Claire, our beautiful sister, who never hurt anyone.

We walked across the dooryard, listening to the crickets sing in the high grass. They always sing the loudest in late August and early September, as if they know summer is ending.

Terry stopped at the foot of the steps, and I saw his eyes were still wet. He’d had a good day, but a long and stressful one, just the same. I had been wrong to bring up Claire at the end of it.

“Stay the night, little bro. The couch is a pullout.”

“No,” I said. “I promised Connie I’d have breakfast with him and his partner at the Inn in the morning.”

“Partner,” he said, and rolled his eyes. “Right.”

“Now, now, Terence. Don’t go all twentieth century on me. These days they could get married in a dozen states, if they wanted. Including this one.”

“Oh, I don’t mind that, who marries who ain’t none of mine, but partner ain’t what that guy is, no matter what Connie may think. I know a freeloader when I see one. Christ, he’s half Con’s age.”

That made me think of Brianna, who was less than half my age.

I gave Terry a hug and a peck on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Lunch, before I head back to the airport.”

“You got it. And Jamie? You played the spots off that guitar tonight.”

I thanked him and walked to my car. I was opening the door when he spoke my name. I turned back.

“Do you remember Reverend Jacobs’s last Sunday in the pulpit? When he gave what we used to call the Terrible Sermon?”

“Yes,” I said. “Very well.”

“We were all so shocked at the time, and we chalked it up to the grief he was feeling over the loss of his wife and son. But you know what? When I think of Claire, I think I’d like to find him and shake his hand.” Terry’s arms—brawny, like our father’s—were folded over his coverall. “Because what I think now is that he was brave to say those things. What I think now is that every word was right.”

 • • •

Terry might have gotten rich, but he was still thrifty, and we ate catered leftovers for Sunday lunch. For most of it, I held Cara Lynne on my lap, feeding her tiny bits of things. When it was time for me to go and I handed her back to Dawn, the baby held her arms out to me.

“No, honey,” I said, kissing that incredibly smooth forehead. “I have to go.”

She only had a dozen words or so—one of them was now my name—but I’ve read that their understanding is much greater, and she knew what I was telling her. The little face wrinkled up, she held her arms out again, and tears filled those blue eyes that were the same shade as my mother’s and my dead sister’s.

“Go quick,” Con said, “or you’ll have to adopt her.”

So I went. Back to my rental car, back to Portland Jetport, back to Denver International, back to Nederland. But I kept thinking of those chubby outstretched arms, and those tear-filled Morton Blue eyes. She was just a year old, but she had wanted me to stay longer. That’s how you know you’re home, I think, no matter how far you’ve gone from it or how long you’ve been in some other place.

Home is where they want you to stay longer.

 • • •

During March of 2014, after most of the ski-bunnies had left Vail, Aspen, Steamboat Springs, and our own Eldora Mountain—came news of a monster blizzard approaching. Our piece of the famed Polar Vortex had dropped four feet on Greeley already.

I hung in at Wolfjaw for most of the day, helping Hugh and Mookie batten down the studios and the big house. I stayed until the wind began to pick up and the first flurries started to scatter down from the leaden skies. Then Georgia came out, dressed in a barncoat, earmuffs, and a Wolfjaw Ranch gimme cap. She was in full scold-mode.

“You send those guys home,” she told Hugh. “Unless you want them stuck side o’ the road somewhere until June.”

“Like the Donner Party,” I said. “But I’d never eat Mookie. Too tough.”

“Go on, you two, scat,” Hugh said. “Just double-check the studio doors on your way down to the road.”

We did so, and checked the barn for good measure. I even took the time to dole out apple slices, although Bartleby, my favorite, had died three years ago. By the time I dropped Mookie off at his rooming house, it was snowing hard and the wind was blowing thirty or more. Downtown Nederland was deserted, the traffic lights swinging and drifts already piling up in the doorways of shops that had closed early for the day.

“Get home fast!” Mookie shouted to be heard over the wind. He had knotted his bandanna over his mouth and nose, making him look like an elderly outlaw.

I did as he said, the wind shouldering at my car like a bad-tempered bully the whole way. It pushed me even harder as I made my way up the walk, clutching my collar to my face, which was clean-shaven and unprepared for what Colorado winter felt like when it decided to get serious. I had to use both hands to yank the foyer door shut once I was inside.

I checked my mailbox and saw a single letter. I pulled it out, and one glance was enough to tell me who it was from. Jacobs’s handwriting had grown shaky and spidery, but was still recognizable. The only surprise was the return address: General Delivery, Motton, Maine. Not quite my hometown, but right next door. Too close for comfort, in my opinion.

I tapped the envelope against my palm and almost obeyed my first impulse, which was to rip it to pieces, open the door, and scatter the shreds to the wind. I still imagine doing that—every day, sometimes every hour—and wonder what might have changed if I’d done so. Instead, I turned it over. There, written in the same unsteady hand, was a single sentence: You will want to read this.

I didn’t, but tore it open, anyway. I pulled out a single sheet of paper wrapped around a smaller envelope. Written on the face of this second envelope was Read my letter before opening this one. So I did.

God help me, so I did.

March 4, 2014

Dear Jamie,

I have obtained both of your e-mail addresses, business and personal (as you know, I have my methods), but I am an old man now, with an old man’s ways, and believe that important personal business should be conducted by letter and, when possible, by hand. As you can see, “by hand” is still possible for me, although for how much longer I do not know. I had a minor stroke in the fall of 2012, and another one, rather more serious, last summer. I hope you will excuse the execrable state of my handwriting.

I have another reason for reaching out to you by letter. It’s all too easy to delete e-mails, a bit more difficult to destroy a letter someone has labored over with pen and ink. I will add a line to the back of the envelope to increase the chances of your reading this. If I get no reply, I will have to send an emissary, and that I do not want to do, as time is short.

An emissary. I didn’t like the sound of that.

When we last met, I asked you to serve as my assistant. You refused. I am asking again, and this time I am confident you will agree. You

must

agree, as my work is now in its final stage. All that remains is one last experiment. I am sure it will succeed, but I dare not proceed alone. I need help, and, just as important, I need a

witness

. Believe me when I say that you have a stake in this experiment almost as great as my own.

You think you will say no, but I know you quite well, my old friend, and I believe that after you read the enclosed letter, you will change your mind.

All best regards,

Charles D. Jacobs

The wind howled; the sound of snow hitting the panes of the door was like fine sand. The road to Boulder would be closed soon, if it wasn’t already. I held the smaller envelope, thinking something happened. I didn’t want to know what, but it felt too late to turn back now. I sat on the stairs leading to my apartment and opened the enclosure as a particularly savage gust of wind shook the building. The handwriting was as shaky as Jacobs’s, sloping down the page, but I knew it at once. Of course I did; I had received love letters, some of them quite hot, in this same hand. My stomach went soft, and for a moment I thought I might pass out. I lowered my head, the hand not holding the letter covering my eyes and squeezing my temples. When the faintness passed, I was almost sorry.

I read the letter.

Feb. 25, 2014

Dear Pastor Jacobs,

You are my last hope.

I feel crazy writing that, but it’s true. I’m trying to reach you because my friend Jenny Knowlton urges me to do so. She is an RN and says she never believed in miracle cures (although she does believe in God). Several years ago she went to one of your healing revivals in Providence, RI, and you cured her arthritis, which was so bad she could hardly open and close her hands and she was “hooked” on OxyContin. She said to me, “I told myself I only went to hear Al Stamper sing, because I had all his old records with the Vo-Lites, but down deep I must have known why I was really there, because when he asked if there were any who would be healed, I got in the line.” She said not only did the pain in her hands and arms disappear when you touched her temples with your rings, so did the need to take the Oxy. I found that even harder to believe than the arthritis being cured, because where I live a lot of people use that stuff and I know it is very hard to “kick the habit.”

Pastor Jacobs, I have lung cancer. I lost my hair during the radiation treatments and the chemo made me throw up all the time (I have lost 60 lbs), but at the end of those hellish treatments, the cancer was still there. Now my doctor wants me to have an operation to take out one of my lungs, but my friend Jenny sat me down and said, “I am going to tell you a hard truth, honey. Mostly when they do that it’s already too late, and they know it but do it anyway because it’s all they have left.”

I turned the paper over, my head thudding. For the first time in years, I wished I were high. Being high would make it possible to look at the signature waiting for me below without wanting to scream.

Jenny says she has looked up your cures online and many more than hers appear to be valid. I know you are no longer touring the country. You may be retired, you may be sick, you may even be dead (although I pray not, for your sake as well as my own). Even if you are alive and well, you may no longer read your mail. So I know this is like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it overboard, but something—not just Jenny—urges me to try. After all, sometimes one of those bottles washes up on shore, and someone reads the message inside.

I have refused the operation. You really are my last hope. I know how thin that hope is, and probably foolish, but the Bible says, “With faith, all things are possible.” I will wait to hear . . . or not. Either way, may God bless and keep you.

Yours in hope,

Astrid Soderberg

17 Morgan Pitch Road

Mt. Desert Island, Maine 04660

(207) 555-6454

 • • •

Astrid. Dear God.

Astrid again, after all these years. I closed my eyes and saw her standing beneath the fire escape, her face young and beautiful, framed in the hood of her parka.

I opened my eyes and read the note Jacobs had added below her address.

I have seen her charts and latest scans. You may trust me on this; as I said in my covering letter, I have my methods. Radiation and chemotherapy shrank the tumor in her left lung, but did not eradicate it, and more spots have shown up on her right lung. Her condition is grave, but

I can save her.

You may trust me on this, too, but such cancers are like a fire in dry brush—they move fast. Her time is short, and you must decide at once.

If it’s so goddam short, I wondered, why didn’t you call, or at least send your devil’s bargain by Express Mail?

But I knew. He wanted time to be short, because it wasn’t Astrid he cared about. Astrid was a pawn. I, on the other hand, was one of the pieces in the back row. I had no idea why, but I knew it was so.

The letter shook in my hand as I read the last lines.

If you agree to assist me while I finish my work this coming summer, your old friend (and, perhaps, your lover) will be saved, the cancer expelled from her body. If you refuse, I will let her die. Of course this sounds cruel to you, even monstrous, but if you knew the tremendous import of my work, you would feel differently. Yes, even you! My numbers, both landline and cell, are below. Beside me as I write this is Miss Soderberg’s number. If you call me—with a favorable answer, of course—I will call her.

The choice is yours, Jamie.

I sat on the stairs for two minutes, taking deep breaths and willing my heart to slow. I kept thinking of her hips tilted against mine, my cock throbbing and as hard as a length of rebar, one of her hands caressing the nape of my neck as she blew cigarette smoke into my mouth.

At last I got up and climbed to my apartment, the two letters dangling from my hand. The stairs weren’t long or steep, and I was in good shape from all the bike-riding, but I still had to stop and rest twice to catch my breath before I got to the top, and my hand was shaking so badly I had to steady it with the other before I could get my key into the slot.

The day was dark and my apartment was full of shadows, but I didn’t bother to turn on any lights. What I had to do was best done quickly. I took my phone off my belt, dropped onto the couch, and dialed Jacobs’s cell. It rang a single time.

“Hello, Jamie,” he said.

“You bastard,” I said. “You fucking bastard.”

“Glad to hear from you, too. What’s your decision?”

How much did he know about us? Had I ever told him anything? Had Astrid? If not, how much had he dug up? I didn’t know and it didn’t matter. I could tell from the tone of his voice that he was only asking for form’s sake.

I told him I’d be there ASAP.

“If you want to come, of course. Delighted to have you, although I don’t actually need you until July. If you’d rather not see her . . . as she is now, I mean—”

“I’ll be on a plane as soon as the weather clears. If you can do your thing before I get there . . . fix her . . . heal her . . . then go ahead. But you will not let her leave wherever you are until I see her. No matter what.”

“You don’t trust me, do you?” He sounded as if this made him terribly sad, but I didn’t put much stock in that. He was a master at projecting emotion.

“Why would I, Charlie? I’ve seen you in operation.”

He sighed. The wind gusted, shaking the building and howling along the eaves.

“Where in Motton are you?” I asked . . . but, like Jacobs, only for form’s sake. Life is a wheel, and it always comes back around to where it started.