Black House

He turns into the grassy entrance and rolls up to the white farmhouse in which Henry and Rhoda Leyden had spent the fifteen lively years between their marriage and the discovery of Rhoda’s liver cancer. For nearly two years after her death, Henry went wandering through his house every evening, turning on the lights.

"Waking dreams? Where’d you get that one?"

"Waking dreams aren’t uncommon," Jack says. "Especially in people who never get enough sleep, like you." Or like me, he silently adds. "I’m not making this up, Henry. I’ve had one or two myself. One, anyhow."

"Waking dreams," Henry says in a different, considering tone of voice. "Ivey-divey."

"Think about it. We live in a rational world. People do not return from the dead. Everything happens for a reason, and the reasons are always rational. It’s a matter of chemistry or coincidence. If they weren’t rational, we’d never figure anything out, and we’d never know what was going on."

"Even a blind man can see that," Henry says. "Thanks. Words to live by." He gets out of the cab and closes the door. He moves away, steps back, and leans in through the window. "Do you want to start on Bleak House tonight? I should get home about eight-thirty, something like that."

"I’ll turn up around nine."

By way of parting, Henry says, "Ding-dong." He turns away, walks to his doorstep, and disappears into his house, which is of course unlocked. Around here, only parents lock their doors, and even that’s a new development.

Jack reverses the pickup, swings down the drive and onto Norway Valley Road. He feels as though he has done a doubly good deed, for by helping Henry he has also helped himself. It’s nice, how things turn out sometimes.

When he turns into his own long driveway, a peculiar rattle comes from the ashtray beneath his dashboard. He hears it again at the last curve, just before his house comes into view. The sound is not so much a rattle as a small, dull clunk. A button, a coin — something like that. He rolls to a stop at the side of his house, turns off the engine, and opens his door. On an afterthought, he reaches over and pulls out the ashtray.

What Jack finds nestled in the grooves at the bottom of the sliding tray, a tiny robin’s egg, a robin’s egg the size of an almond M&M, expels all the air from his body.

The little egg is so blue a blind man could see it.

Jack’s trembling fingers pluck the egg from the ashtray. Staring at it, he leaves the cab and closes the door. Still staring at the egg, he finally remembers to breathe. His hand revolves on his wrist and releases the egg, which falls in a straight line to the grass. Deliberately, he lifts his foot and smashes it down onto the obscene blue speck. Without looking back, he pockets his keys and moves toward the dubious safety of his house.

Part Two

THE TAKING OF

TYLER MARSHALL

5

WE GLIMPSED A janitor on our whirlwind early-morning tour of Maxton Elder Care — do you happen to remember him? Baggy overalls? A wee bit thick in the gut? Dangling cigarette in spite of the NO SMOKING! LUNGS AT WORK! signs that have been posted every twenty feet or so along the patient corridors? A mop that looks like a clot of dead spiders? No? Don’t apologize. It’s easy enough to overlook Pete Wexler, a onetime nondescript youth (final grade average at French Landing High School: 79) who passed through a nondescript young manhood and has now reached the edge of what he expects to be a nondescript middle age. His only hobby is administering the occasional secret, savage pinch to the moldy oldies who fill his days with their grunts, nonsensical questions, and smells of gas and piss. The Alzheimer’s ass**les are the worst. He has been known to stub out the occasional cigarette on their scrawny backs or bu**ocks. He likes their strangled cries when the heat hits and the pain cores in. This small and ugly torture has a double-barreled effect: it wakes them up a little and satisfies something in him. Brightens his days, somehow. Refreshes the old outlook. Besides, who are they going to tell?

And oh God, there goes the worst of them now, shuffling slowly down the corridor of Daisy. Charles Burnside’s mouth is agape, as is the back of his johnny. Pete has a better view of Burnside’s scrawny, shit-smeared bu**ocks than he ever wanted. The chocolate stains go all the way down to the backs of his knees, by God. He’s headed for the bathroom, but it’s just a leetle bit late. A certain brown horse — call him Morning Thunder — has already bolted from its stall and no doubt galloped across Burny’s sheets.

Thank God cleaning ’em up isn’t my job, Pete thinks, and smirks around his cigarette. Over to you, Butch.

But the desk up there by the little boys’ and girls’ rooms is for the time being unattended. Butch Yerxa is going to miss the charming sight of Burny’s dirty ass sailing by. Butch has apparently stepped out for a smoke, although Pete has told the idiot a hundred times that all those NO SMOKING signs mean nothing — Chipper Maxton could care less about who smoked where (or where the smokes were butted out, for that matter). The signs are just there to keep good old Drooler Manor in compliance with certain tiresome state laws.

Pete’s smirk widens, and at that moment he looks a good deal like his son Ebbie, Tyler Marshall’s sometime friend (it was Ebbie Wexler, in fact, who just gave Jack and Henry the finger). Pete is wondering whether he should go out and tell Butch he’s got a little cleanup job in D18 — plus D18’s occupant, of course — or if he should just let Butch discover Burny’s latest mess on his own. Perhaps Burny will go back to his room and do a little fingerpainting, kind of spread the joy around. That would be good, but it would also be good to see Butch’s face fall when Pete tells him —

"Pete."