NOS4A2(94)

Under


VIC SWAM.

She was underwater, she was in the lake. She had plunged almost all the way to the bottom, where the world was dark and slow. Vic felt no need for air, was not conscious of holding her breath. She had always liked going deep, into the still, silent, shadowed provinces of fish.

Vic could’ve stayed under forever, was ready to be a trout, but Wayne was calling her from the surface world. His voice was a long way off, yet she still heard the urgency in it, heard that he was not yelling but screaming. It took an effort to kick for the surface. Her arms and legs didn’t want to move. She tried to focus on just one hand, sweeping it at the water. She opened her fingers. She closed her fingers. She opened them again.

She opened her hand in the grass. Vic was in the dirt, on her stomach, although the sluggish underwater feeling persisted. She could not fathom—ha, ha, fathom, get it?—how she had wound up sprawled in her yard. She could not remember what had hit her. Something had hit her. It was hard to lift her head.

“Are you with me, Mrs. Smarty-Pants Victoria McQueen?” someone said.

She heard him but couldn’t register what he was saying. It was irrelevant. Wayne was the thing. She had heard Wayne screaming for her, she was sure of it. She had felt him screaming in her bones. She had to get up and see that he was all right.

Vic made an effort to push herself onto all fours, and Manx brought his bright silver hammer down on her shoulder. She heard the bone crack, and the arm caved beneath her. She collapsed, bashed the ground with her chin.

“I did not say you could get up. I asked if you were listening. You will want to listen to me.”

Manx. Manx was here, not dead. Manx and his Rolls-Royce, and Wayne was in the Rolls-Royce. She knew this last fact as certainly as she knew her own name, although she had not laid eyes on Wayne in half an hour or more. Wayne was in that car, and she had to get him out.

She began to push herself up once more, and Charlie Manx came down with his silver hammer again and hit her in the back, and she heard her spine break with a sound like someone stepping on a cheap toy: a brittle, plasticky crunch. The blunt force drove the wind out of her and slammed her back to her stomach.

Wayne was screaming again, wordlessly now.

Vic wished she could look around for him, get her bearings, but it was almost impossible to pick her head up. Her head felt heavy and strange, unsupportable, too much for her slender neck to bear. The helmet, she thought. She was still wearing her helmet and Lou’s jacket.

Lou’s jacket.

Vic had moved one leg, had drawn the knee up, the first part of her plan to get back on her feet. She could feel the dirt under her knee, could feel the muscle in the back of her thigh trembling. Vic had heard Manx pulverize her spine with his second swing, and she was not sure why she could still feel her legs. She was not sure why she wasn’t in more pain. Her hamstrings ached more than anything else, bunched tight from pushing the bike half a mile. Everything hurt, but nothing was broken. Not even the shoulder she had heard pop. She drew a great shuddering breath, and her ribs expanded effortlessly, although she had heard them crack like branches in a windstorm.

Except it had never been her bones breaking. She had heard the snapping of those Kevlar plates fitted into the back and shoulders of Lou’s bulky motorcycle jacket. Lou had said you could catch a telephone pole at twenty miles an hour wearing his coat and still have a chance at getting back up.

The next time Manx hit her, in the side, she shouted—more in surprise than pain—and heard another loud snap.

“You will want to answer me when I am speaking to you,” Manx said.

Her side throbbed—she had felt that one. But the snap had only been another plate going. Her head was almost clear, and she thought if she made a great effort, she could heave herself to her feet.

No you don’t, said her father, so close he might’ve been whispering in her ear. You stay down and let him have his fun. This is not the time, Brat.

She had given up on her father. Had no use for him and kept their few conversations as short as possible. Did not want to hear from him. But now he was here, and he spoke to her in the same calm, measured tone of voice he’d used when he was explaining how to field a grounder or why Hank Williams mattered.

He thinks he’s busted you up real good, kiddo. He thinks you’re beat. You try and get up now, he’ll know you aren’t as bad as he thinks you are, and then he will get you. Wait. Wait for the right time. You’ll know it when it comes.

Her father’s voice, her lover’s jacket. For a moment she was aware of both the men in her life looking after her. She had thought they were both better off without her and that she was better off without them, but now here, in the dirt, it came to her that she had never really gone anywhere without them.

“Do you hear me? Can you hear my voice?” Manx asked.

She didn’t reply. She was perfectly still.

“P’hraps you do and p’hraps you don’t,” he said after a moment of thought. She had not heard his voice in more than a decade, but it was still the dumb-ass drawl of a country rube. “What a whore you look, crawling in the dirt in your skimpy little denim shorts. I remember a time, not so long ago, when even a whore would have been ashamed to appear in public dressed like you and to spread her legs to ride a motorbike in lewd parody of the carnal act.” He paused again, then said, “You were on a bike the last time, too. I have not forgotten. I have not forgotten the bridge either. Is this a special bike like that other one? I know about special rides, Victoria McQueen, and secret roads. I hope you gallivanted to your heart’s content. You will not be gallivanting anymore.”