Lisey's Story(11)

"Yew'll finish yoah remarks," Dashmiel said, "and there'll be anothuh round of applause. Then, Mistuh Landon  - "

"Scott."

Dashmiel had flashed a rictus grin, there for just a moment. "Then, Scott, yew'll go on and toin that all impawtant foist shovelful of oith." Toin? Foist? Oith? Lisey mused, and it came to her that Dashmiel was very likely saying turn that all-important first shovelful of earth in his only semibelievable Louisiana drawl.

"All that sounds fine to me," Scott replied, and that was all he had time for, because they had arrived.

5

PERHAPS IT'S A HOLDOVER FROM THE broken toothglass - that omenish feeling _ but the plot of trucked-in dirt looks like a grave to Lisey: XL size, as if for a giant. The two crowds collapse into one around it and create that breathless suckoven feel at the center. A campus security guard now stands at each corner of the ornamental velvet-rope barrier, beneath which Dashmiel, Scott, and "Toneh" Eddington have ducked. Queensland, the photographer, dances relentlessly with his big Nikon held up in front of his face.

Paging Weegee, Lisey thinks, and realizes she envies him. He is so free, flitting gnatlike in the heat; he is twenty-five and all his shit still works. Dashmiel, however, is looking at him with growing impatience which Queensland affects not to see until he has exactly the shot he wants. Lisey has an idea it's the one of Scott alone, his foot on the silly silver spade, his hair blowing back in the breeze. In any case, Weegee Junior at last lowers his big camera and steps back to the edge of the crowd. And it's while following Queensland's progress with her somewhat wistful regard that Lisey first sees the madman. He has the look, one local reporter will later write, "of John Lennon in the last days of his romance with heroin - hollow, watchful eyes at odd and disquieting contrast to his otherwise childishly wistful face." At the moment, Lisey notes little more than the guy's tumbled blond hair. She has little interest in people-watching today. She just wants this to be over so she can find a bathroom in the English Department over there across the parking lot and pull her rebellious underwear out of the crack of her ass. She has to make water, too, but right now that's pretty much secondary.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Dashmiel says in a carrying voice. "It is mah distinct pleasure to introduce Mr Scott Landon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winnin Relics and the National Book Award-winnin The Coster's Daughter. He's come all the way from Maine with his lovely wife Lisa to inaugurate construction - that's right, it's finally happ'nin - on our very own Shipman LAH-bree. Scott Landon, folks, let's hear y'all give him a good Nashveel welcome!"

The crowd applauds at once, con brio. The lovely wife joins in, patting her palms together, looking at Dashmiel and thinking. He won the NBA for The Coaster's Daughter. That's Coaster, not Coster. And I think you know it. I think you smucked it up on purpose. Why don't you like him, you petty man?

Then she happens to glance beyond him and this time she really does notice Gerd Allen Cole, just standing there with all that fabulous blond hair tumbled down to his eyebrows and the sleeves of a white shirt far too big for him rolled up to his substandard biceps. The tail of his shirt is out and dangles almost to the whitened knees of his jeans. On his feet are engineer boots with side-buckles. To Lisey they look dreadfully hot. Instead of applauding, Blondie has clasped his hands rather prissily and there's a spooky-sweet smile on his lips, which are moving slightly, as if in silent prayer. His eyes are fixed on Scott and they never waver. Lisey pegs Blondie at once. There are guys - they are almost always guys - she thinks of as Scott's Deep Space Cowboys. Deep Space Cowboys have a lot to say. They want to grab Scott by the arm and tell him they understand the secret messages in his books; they understand that the books are really guides to God, Satan, or possibly the Gnostic Gospels. Deep Space Cowboys might be on about Scientology or numerology or (in one case) The Cosmic Lies of Brigham Young. Sometimes they want to talk about other worlds. Two years ago a Deep Space Cowboy hitchhiked all the way from Texas to Maine in order to talk to Scott about what he called leavings. These were most commonly found, he said, on uninhabited islands in the southern hemisphere. He knew they were what Scott had been writing about in Relics. He showed Scott the underlined words that proved it. The guy made Lisey very nervous - there was a certain wall-eyed look of absence about him - but Scott talked to him, gave him a beer, discussed the Easter Island monoliths with him for a bit, took a couple of his pamphlets, signed the kid a fresh copy of Relics, and sent him on his way, happy. Happy? Dancing on the smucking atmosphere. When Scott's got it strapped on tight, he's amazing. No other word will do.

The thought of actual violence - that Blondie means to pull a Mark David Chapman on her husband - does not occur to Lisey. My mind doesn't run that way, she might have said. I just didn't like the way his lips were moving.

Scott acknowledges the applause - and a few raucous rebel yells - with the Scott Landon grin that has appeared on millions of book-jackets, all the time resting one foot on the shoulder of the silly shovel while the blade sinks slowly into the imported earth. He lets the applause run for ten or fifteen seconds, guided by his intuition (and his intuition is rarely wrong), then waves it off. And it goes. At once. Foom. Pretty cool, in a slightly scary way.

When he speaks, his voice seems nowhere near as loud as Dashmiel's, but Lisey knows that even with no mike or battery-powered bullhorn (the lack of either here this afternoon is probably someone's oversight), it will carry all the way to the back of the crowd. And the crowd is straining to hear every word. A Famous Man has come among them. A Thinker and a Writer. He will now scatter pearls of wisdom.