Lisey's Story(21)

You can't unbury the dead.

Still, she tries one more time. With all her considerable force of mind and will, 2006-Lisey leans forward on her magic carpet and sends He's faking! SCOTT REMEMBERS EVERYTHING! at her younger self.

And for a wild moment she thinks she's getting through...knows she's getting through. 1988-Lisey twitches in her chair and her book actually slides out of her hand and hits the floor with a flat clap. But before that version of herself can look around, Scott Landon stares directly at the woman hovering in the doorway, the version of his wife who will live to be his widow. He purses his lips again, but instead of making the nasty chuffing sound, he blows. It's not much of a puff; how could it be, considering what he's been through? But it's enough to send the PILLSBURY'S BEST magic carpet flying backward, dipping and diving like a milkweed pod in a hurricane. Lisey hangs on for dear life as the hospital walls rock past, but the damned thing tilts and she's falling and...

9

Lisey awoke sitting bolt-upright on the bed with sweat drying on her forehead and underneath her arms. It was relatively cool in here, thanks to the overhead fan, but still she was as hot as a...

Well, as hot as a suck-oven.

"Whatever that is," she said, and laughed shakily.

The dream was already fading to rags and tatters - the only thing she could recall with any clarity was the otherworldly red light of some setting sun - but she had awakened with a crazy certainty planted in the forefront of her mind, a crazy imperative: she had to find that smucking shovel. That silver spade.

"Why?" she asked the empty room. She picked the clock off the nightstand and held it close to her face, sure it would tell her an hour had gone by, maybe even two. She was astounded to see she had been asleep for exactly twelve minutes. She put the clock back on the nightstand and wiped her hands on the front of her blouse as if she had picked up something dirty and crawling with germs. "Why that thing?"

Never mind. It was Scott's voice, not her own. She rarely heard it with such clarity these days, but oboy, was she ever hearing it now. Loud and clear. That's none of your business. Just find it and put it where...well, you know.

Of course she did.

"Where I can strap it on," she murmured, and rubbed her face with her hands, and gave a little laugh.

That's right, babyluv, her dead husband agreed. Whenever it seems appropriate.

Part III. Lisey and The Silver Spade

(Wait for the Wind to Change)

1

Her vivid dream did nothing at all to free Lisey from her memories of Nashville, and from one memory in particular: Gerd Allen Cole turning the gun from the lung-shot, which Scott might be able to survive, to the heart-shot, which he most certainly would not. By then the whole world had slowed down, and what she kept returning to - as the tongue keeps returning to the surface of a badly chipped tooth - was how utterly smooth that movement had been, as if the gun had been mounted on a gimbal. Lisey vacuumed the parlor, which didn't need vacuuming, then did a wash that didn't half-fill the machine; the laundry basket filled so slowly now that it was just her. Two years and she still couldn't get used to it. Finally she pulled on her old tank suit and did laps in the pool out back: five, then ten, then fifteen, then seventeen and winded. She clung to the lip at the shallow end with her legs trailing out behind her, panting, her dark hair clinging to her cheeks, brow, and neck like a shiny helmet, and still she saw the pale, long-fingered hand swiveling, saw the Ladysmith (it was impossible to think of it as just a gun once you knew its lethal cuntish name) swiveling, saw the little black hole with Scott's death tucked inside it moving left, and the silver shovel was so heavy. It seemed impossible that she could be in time, that she could outrace Cole's insanity. She kicked her feet slowly, making little splashes. Scott had loved the pool, but actually swam in it only on rare occasions; he had been a book, beer, and inner-tube sort of guy. When he wasn't on the road, that was. Or in his study, writing with the music cranked. Or sitting up in the guest-room rocker in the broken heart of a winter night, bundled to the chin in one of Good Ma Debusher's afghans, two in the morning and his eyes wide-widewide as a terrible wind, one all the way down from Yellowknife, boomed outside - that was the other Scott; one went north, one went south, and oh dear, she had loved them both the same, everything the same.

"Stop it," Lisey said fretfully. "I was in time, I was, so let it go. The lung-shot was all that crazy baby ever got." Yet in her mind's eye (where the past is always present), she saw the Ladysmith again start its swivel, and Lisey shoved herself out of the pool in an effort to physically drive the image away. It worked, but Blondie was back again as she stood in the changing room, toweling off after a quick rinsing shower, Gerd Allen Cole was back, is back, saying I got to end all this ding-dong for the freesias, and 1988-Lisey is swinging the silver spade, but this time the smucking air in Lisey-time is too thick, she's going to be just an instant too late, she will see all of the second flame-corsage instead of just a portion, and a black hole will also open on Scott's left lapel as his sportcoat becomes his deathcoat -

"Quit it!" Lisey growled, and slung her towel in the basket. "Give it a rest! "

She marched back to the house nude, with her clothes under her arm - that's what the high board fence all the way around the backyard was for.

2

She was hungry after her swim - famished, actually - and although it was not quite five o'clock, she decided on a big skillet meal. What Darla, second-oldest of the Debusher girls, would have called comfort-food, and what Scott - with great relish - would have called eatin nasty. There was a pound of ground beef in the fridge and, lurking on a back shelf in the pantry, a wonderfully nasty selection: the Cheeseburger Pie version of Hamburger Helper. Lisey threw it together in a skillet with the ground beef. While it was simmering, she mixed herself a pitcher of lime Kool-Aid with double sugar. By fivetwenty, the smells from the skillet had filled the kitchen, and all thoughts of Gerd Allen Cole had left her head, at least for the time being. She could think of nothing but food. She had two large helpings of the Hamburger Helper casserole, and two big glasses of Kool-Aid. When the second helping and the second glass were gone (all except for the white dregs of sugar in the bottom of the glass), she burped resoundingly and said: "I wish I had a goddam smucking cigarette."