Night Shift(91)

'Get up,' he said gently. 'I know what you need. Get up, Beth.'

And she could get up. She sobbed with relief. She tried to thank him; her words spilled out on top of each other. And Ed only smiled gently and nodded. She took his hand and looked down to see her footing. And when she looked up again, she was holding the paw of a huge, slavering timber wolf with red hurricane-lantern eyes and thick, spiked teeth open to bite.

She woke up sitting bolt upright in bed, her nightgown drenched with sweat. Her body was shaking uncontrollably. And even after a warm shower and a glass of milk, she could not reconcile herself to the dark. She slept with the light on.

A week later Tony was dead.

She opened the door in her robe, expecting to see Tony, but it was Danny Kilmer, one of the fellows he worked with. Danny was a fun guy; she and Tony had doubled with him and his girl a couple of times. But standing in the doorway of her second-floor apartment, Danny looked not only serious but ill.

'Danny?' she said. 'What -'

'Liz,' he said. 'Liz, you've got to hold on to yourself. You've. . . ah, God!' He pounded the jamb of the door with one big-knuckled, dirty hand, and she saw he was crying.

'Danny, is it Tony? Is something.'

'Tony's dead,' Danny said. 'He was -' But he was talking to air. She had fainted.

The next week passed in a kind of dream. The story pieced itself together from the woefully brief newspaper account and from what Danny told her over a beer in the Harbor Inn.

They had been repairing drainage culverts on Route 16. Part of the road was torn up, and Tony was flagging traffic. A kid driving a red Fiat had been coming down the hill. Tony had flagged him, but the kid never even slowed. Tony had been standing next to a dump truck, and there was no place to jump back. The kid in the Fiat had sustained head lacerations and a broken arm; he was hysterical and also cold sober. The police found several holes in his brake lines, as if they had overheated and then melted through. His driving record was A-1; he had simply been unable to stop. Her Tony had been a victim of that rarest of automobile mishaps: an honest accident.

Her shock and depression were increased by guilt. The fates had taken out of her hands the decision on what to do about Tony. And a sick, secret part of her was glad it was so. Because she hadn't wanted to marry Tony. . . not since the night of her dream.

She broke down the day before she went home.

She was sitting on a rock outcropping by herself, and after an hour or so the tears came. They surprised her with their fury. She cried until her stomach hurt and her head ached, and when the tears passed she felt not better but at least drained and empty.

And that was when Ed Hamner said, 'Beth?'

She jerked around, her mouth filled with the copper taste of fear, half expecting to see the snarling wolf of her dream. But it was only Ed Hamner, looking sunburned and strangely defenceless without his fatigue jacket and blue jeans. He was wearing red shorts that stopped just ahead of his bony knees, a white T-shirt that billowed on his thin chest like a loose sail in the ocean breeze, and rubber thongs. He wasn't smiling and the fierce sun glitter on his glasses made it impossible to see his eyes.

'Ed?' she said tentatively, half convinced that this was some grief-induced hallucination. 'Is that really -'

'Yes, it's me.'

'How -'

'I've been working at the Lakewood Theatre in Skowhegan. I ran into your room-mate . . . Alice, is that her name?'

'Yes.'

'She told me what happened. I came right away. Poor Beth.' He moved his head, only a degree or so, but the sun glare slid off his glasses and she saw nothing wolfish, nothing predatory, but only a calm, warm sympathy.

She began to weep again, and staggered a little with the unexpected force of it. Then he was holding her and then it was all right.

They had dinner at the Silent Woman in Waterville, which was twenty-five miles away; maybe exactly the distance she needed. They went in Ed's car, a new Corvette, and he drove well - neither showily nor fussily, as she guessed he might. She didn't want to talk and she didn't want to be cheered up. He seemed to know it, and played quiet music on the radio.

And he ordered without consulting her - seafood. She thought she wasn't hungry, but when the food came she fell to ravenously.

When she looked up again her plate was empty and she laughed nervously. Ed was smoking a cigarette and watching her.

'The grieving damosel ate a hearty meal,' she said. 'You must think I'm awful.'

'No,' he said. 'You've been through a lot and you need to get your strength back. It's like being sick, isn't it?'

'Yes. Just like that.'

He took her hand across the table, squeezed it briefly, then let it go. 'But now it's recuperation time, Beth.'

'Is it? Is it really?'

'Yes,' he said. 'So tell me. What are your plans?'

'I'm going home tomorrow. After that, I don't know.'

'You're going back to school, aren't you?'

'I just don't know. After this, it seems so. . so trivial. A lot of the purpose seems to have gone out of it. And all the fun.'

'It'll come back. That's hard for you to believe now, but it's true. Try it for six weeks and see. You've got nothing better to do.' The last seemed a question.

'That's true, I guess. But. . . Can I have a cigarette?'