God in Concord Part 29

so must my single arm put to flight the devil and

his angels. a"Journal, January 29, 1841

There was no one outside the theater when Hope mounted her father's bicycle and began pumping up Walden Street, ramming her feet down on the pedals, throwing all the strength of her thin body into propelling the bicycle forward without benefit of multiple gears.

She was alone on the street, except for Jack Markey's car. Its taillights were moving swiftly away from her, but she knew where it was going. Hope raced after it, standing up because the seat was so high she couldn't sit down. On the steep approach to Route 2 she leaned forward, struggling, sobbing with effort, filling her lungs with strangled gulps of cool night air. Oh, G.o.d, why hadn't her father ever bought himself a new bicycle?

Jack Markey was unaware that Hope was following him. He was unaware of anything but his own seething fury. This was the last time he would ever do Grandison's bidding. It was the last time, the very last time. The sense of last times crowded in on him. It pressed inward from the dark sky. It churned in his digestive tract and constricted his breathing.

From the backseat there was a slight sound, a groan from Ananda Singh. For a moment Jack lost control of the car, and it veered to one side and b.u.mped up and down on the rough shoulder. Wildly he brought it back onto the pavement and raced across Route 2 as the yellow light turned red. Turning into the landfill, he began mumbling under his breath pa.s.sage after terrifying pa.s.sage from the book of Revelation. The evil verses had meant nothing to him when he had learned them as a show-off little kid, jumping out of his tiny chair to recite, while everyone smiled and clapped and the pastor put his big hand on Jack's head and blessed him. "And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, and the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together." And then there were the verses about the hors.e.m.e.n, and Death, and h.e.l.l following after.

The compactor was a shapeless large object halfway up the dirt road. Jack parked beside it, turned off the engine, switched off the lights, pulled on the brake, and sat for a minute, trying to accustom himself to the darkness. Then he heaved himself out of the car and looked up at the sky. At once a pair of stars dropped from the zenith, and Jack cried out and fell to his knees. They were only Perseid meteors, a couple of burning rocks from the swarm of flying stones encountered by the earth every summer in its...o...b..t around the sun, but Jack didn't know about the Perseids, he only knew about the dread warnings in the book of Revelation.

After a moment he came to his senses. The heavens had not departed like a scroll rolled together. The sky was still there, with most of its faint stars. Shakily Jack got to his feet and told himself to get the thing over with. He opened the back door of the car, took hold of Ananda Singh, and hauled him out by the shoulders.

Ananda's body was limp. Jack had no stomach for what he was about to do. It took all his strength to drag Ananda to the pit and tip him over the edge. At once he jumped in beside him and covered the prostrate body with miscellaneous refuse and a big sheet of cardboard.

Climbing out of the pit, Jack was so weak he could hardly stand. His stomach was churning, saliva poured into his mouth. He barely had time to climb the steps to the controls of the compactor and push the b.u.t.ton, before his gorge rose. Then he tumbled down the steps and fell to his knees. The contents of his churning stomach spewed out of him in volcanic spasms as the grinding noise of the machine started up behind him. He didn't see Hope Fry leap down into the pit, he didn't hear her scrambling among the rubbish, looking for Ananda Singh.

At once Hope was caught in the undertow of the sucking tide. As the far wall of the machine began shoving against everything in its path, she was lifted by the thick moving flood and propelled forward. Frantically she scrabbled with her arms and legs, feeling for Ananda. It was like trying to find a drowning man. Oh, G.o.d, where was he? Then a broken bottle gashed her hand and Ananda's head rolled against her leg. Frantically she reached for him. Plastic bags pressed against her, rose and tumbled over her face, blocked her breath, burst and released their contents all over her, while the moving wall of steel ground forward, whining, mas.h.i.+ng the contents of the pit against the jaw at the other end, to be crushed and pulverized and turned into pulp.

Hope hauled and tugged. For a moment she had Ananda by the waist. But then once again she was knocked down by buckling cardboard boxes. Squashed bags roiled around her, an avalanche of catalogs fell on her, the handle of a broom struck her chin. Once again she surfaced and heaved at Ananda.

Oh, thank G.o.d, he was beginning to help her. His hands came alive. They gripped hers feebly as she waded to the side of the narrow pitching cavity. With a last effort she hoisted Ananda's legs over the edge and rolled him free, so that he lay safely above her on the ground. At once he pulled himself up and reached down to her, and she clutched at his hands, but her foot was caught. Her leg twisted and snapped.

Her cry of pain was overpowered by the grinding of the machine and the crus.h.i.+ng of cereal boxes and the chewing and tearing of a thousand plastic wrappers and sticky papei plates and wads of computer printouts and broken toys and torn underwear and smashed dishes and wastebasketfuls oi miscellaneous rubbish. With a violent effort that tore the ligaments around her fractured bone, Hope wrested her foot from her captured shoe, and Ananda pulled her free, as Jefferson Grandison's compactor crushed and swallowed the household debris of a hundred Concord families and solidified it into a grisly welter of flattened fragments, to be hauled away and buried somewhere in the town of North Andover.

They lay still, side by side, with their faces pressed into the dirt and Ananda's arm thrown over Hope. The machine was shuddering to a stop. The droning whine died away. In the sudden quiet they could hear Jack Markey weeping.

At least, thought Hope, he had the grace to take it hard. Poor old Jack, he thought Ananda Singh had been ground up into little pieces, and it caused him pain. Angrily Hope pressed closer to Ananda, and he squeezed her tighter, and she prayed that Jack Markey would climb back into his car and drive away without checking to see if a random arm or leg was sticking out of the jaw of the machine, unconsumed.

They lay still, listening, as Jack's snuffling became a torrent of sobs, as if he had been holding back tears all his life and were letting them out now in a single flood.

Jack's weeping went on and on. At last it petered out into gulping sobs. They could hear his stumbling footsteps. The car door slammed. The engine purred. The car moved softly away, jouncing on the rough dirt road.

Slowly, hardly daring to think themselves safe, they sat up. Ananda's head was swollen and aching, Hope's leg was broken in two places.

"I heard a wood thrush today in Gowing's Swamp," murmured Hope.

Tenderness welled up in Ananda, and he took her in his arms.

As Jack Markey turned out of the landfill onto Route 126, he was too anguished to remember to turn on the headlights. He wanted only to get away. Violently he pressed his foot on the accelerator. The car leaped forward and plunged along the road in the direction of Route 2.

But he couldn't get away from the falling stars, which were still catapulting from the heavens. In the narrow band of sky between the overarching trees he saw one star drop, and then another. Jack screamed, and screamed again, as a pale horse rushed upon him, pounding toward him with Death on its back and h.e.l.l following after.

Sarah and Pearl didn't know anything terrible was happening. Miraculously they had negotiated the crossing of Route 2 by arriving at the intersection just as the light changed to green. Gaily they plunged straight across in front of the stopped traffic, and galloped down the road. The darkened car that careened toward them was a shock, and Pearl was so surprised she dug in her forelegs and stopped cold. Poor Sarah was tossed forward, and she banged her head hard on Pearl's neck, but she wasn't really hurt.

But Jack Markey completely lost control. Screaming, he drove off the road and struck a tree with shattering force. Instantly he was crushed between the smashed winds.h.i.+eld and the crumpled hood.

Sarah was oblivious of death and destruction at the side of the road. The noise of the impact of Jack's car against the tree was lost in the tremendous accelerating roar of the trucks starting up at the traffic light on Route 2. Sarah righted herself on Pearl's back and clucked at her, and they started off again. Soon they were cantering smoothly along Route 126, keeping to the narrow shoulder, and they didn't slow down until they came to a house with a vegetable garden, where Pearl stopped of her own accord and began helping herself in the dark to some juicy carrot tops.

Far behind them at the scene of the accident, a police ambulance came streaking through the night, its siren wailing, and pulled up beside the shattered car.

There was nothing the two men in the ambulance could do to help Jack Markey. Instead they picked up a couple of young people who hobbled up to them, supporting each other, barely able to walk. In spite of their obviously traumatic injuries the two kids were grinning hugely.

"Were you in the car?" said one of the medical technicians, helping them into the ambulance.

"What car?" said Hope.

"That car, over there against the tree. You mean, you had nothing to do with the accident?"

"What accident?" said Ananda.

It was very strange. In the milling confusion of puzzled medics, and police officers routing traffic around the ambulance, and cruisers with blinking lights, and the loud blatting of the intercom, and the shouted questions of inquisitive people leaning out of pa.s.sing cars, n.o.body understood it at all.

In the ambulance Hope and Ananda lay on two cots, smiling at each other.

"Excuse me," said the medic, stepping over their clasped hands to apply a splint to Hope's leg.

"Pyar karta ho," said Ananda in Hindi, squeezing her hand tightly.

"What does it mean?" whispered Hope.

"It means, 'I love you.' I have never said such words before."

"Oh, ouch," said Hope. "Oh, Ananda, I'm so glad. I love you too."

"Excuse me again," said the irritated technician. In the performance of his duties he had never before been hindered by love.

*63*

GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL.

DO NOT Pa.s.s GO,.

DO NOT COLLECT $2OO.

a"Chance card, Monopoly

Mimi Pink had a habit of tippling a little too much on Sat.u.r.day nights. After a hard week of running from one store to another, keeping things moving along smoothly, poking a little here, scolding a little there, trying to keep things under control while uneasy rumblings grumbled below the surface, Mimi felt she deserved a gla.s.s of wine, and then another and another.

Tonight something was vaguely lurching and yawing at the back of her consciousness, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Muzzily she polished off the bottle of Chianti. It was only after she dropped off to sleep right after supper and awoke two hours later in total darkness with her head on the table that it struck her with an awful jolt what it was.

The moneya"what had happened to the three hundred and fifty thousand dollars Jack Markey had promised to deliver yesterday afternoon? Oh, G.o.d, he had come, he had certainly come, he had walked right into the Porcelain Parlor, he had given her a significant look, and he had set something down on the counter.

But she had been in the middle of that awful fracas with the mad-looking ragged woman with the stroller. And then when the confusion was over and things settled down, Jack was gone, and Mimi had completely forgotten him because she was still so furious about the unspeakable creature who had violated the sanct.i.ty of her pretty shop and smashed an important piece that had cost her nine hundred dollars wholesale.

Mimi sat in the dark trying to order her thoughts, which were tumbling over each other, bright flashes of perfect recall intermingled with foggy lapses of memory. Had Jack Markey brought her the money or hadn't he?

Her head swarmed with sodden recollections of other temper tantrums, old half-forgotten explosions, like the time Lee-Ann had shrieked with gloating laughter and s.n.a.t.c.hed at Mimi's Monopoly money and screeched, "That's mine! You landed on Park Place! You did! It's mine, mine, mine, all mine!" And it had been so awful, so unbearable, that once again Mimi had slapped her hard and thrown the whole game on the floor.

Then with a sharp pang of dismay, Mimi remembered what had happened. Jack Markey had been carrying something pink, a pink plastic bag, and he had set it down on the counter. Mimi closed her eyes in the dark. By a supreme effort of concentration she summoned up a crystalline image of the dumpster behind the Porcelain Parlor. She saw herself hurling the bag lady's stroller into it with all its contents. She had a vivid recollection of a conversation with the driver of the flatbed truck that came once a week to transport the dumpster to the landfill. He had come this very morning, and they had exchanged a few sharp words.

"I will thank you not to litter my premises," Mimi had said.

"I got no interest in littering your premises," shouted the driver, leaning out of his cab. "Just don't fill the G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing so full."

And then he had maneuvered his truck out onto the busy street. The last Mimi had seen of the trash she had thrown out during the week was a pink bag wobbling on top of everything else. A pink bag! It was Jack Markey's pink bag, it was Mimi Pink's pink bag, trembling and jiggling on top of the dumpster as the driver whirled the steering wheel and the big truck lumbered out of sight around the curve of Walden Street, heading for the other side of the highway and the Concord landfill.

Mimi didn't stop to gather her wits. She didn't stop to think. She didn't put on flat-soled shoes for walking or gloves for burrowing, she didn't bring a shovel for digging. Empty-handed she tore out of her condominium apartment, clattered down the stairs in her high-heeled shoes, leaped into her car, and sped down Route 2. As she turned the corner on Route 126 she had to slow down, because a tow truck and a couple of police cars were occupying half the road. An ambulance moved past her with flas.h.i.+ng lights, and a traffic policeman beckoned her forward. Mimi hoped they were all too busy to see her turn into the entrance to the landfill.

The place was new to her. She peered into the dark as her car bobbed up and down on the dirt road. Where in this G.o.dawful place would the dumpster have been emptied? Blindly she pa.s.sed the compacting machine and headed for the mountain of rubbish at the top of the rise. Surely the pink plastic bag containing her three hundred and fifty thousand dollars was somewhere in that colossal pile.

Jumping out of her car, Mimi hurried over the uneven ground, staggering on her stiletto heels. Swiftly she clawed her way to the top of the mountain, her hands digging into the soft covering of dirt, her heels puncturing the plastic bags just below the surface. At the top she stood up, balancing with difficulty, and looked around, feeling desolate. She was alone, all alone. There was no one in the whole world to help her now.

Somewhere below her lay the pink bag of money. She must find it, she must. Bending over, Mimi began the search, thrusting her fingers through the layer of dirt, clutching at one of the submerged bags. Her sharp fingernails pierced a hole, and at once her ankles were engulfed in a tumble of cat-food cans. Before long she was down on all fours, reaching for bag after bag, and then she lay full length on the hill of debris, hauling bags aside, dragging out one bag after another, seeking a smaller one, a paler one, a pink bag stuffed with money. One of her shoes came off and lost itself in a sea of damp paper towels. Her delicate panty hose were ripped from hip to toe. She was engulfed in smelly fish papers and greasy wads of aluminum foil and sticky jam jars and noisome tissues and p.r.i.c.kly chicken bones and oily b.u.t.ter wrappers.

The daily effluvium of Concord's domestic life was different in detail from the expensive schlock lining the shelves in all her sumptuous stores, but not in its essential nature. Mimi's merchandise was not toxic to human life, but it was still pollution. In the mounded trash of the Concord dump she found at last the Park Place and Boardwalk that were hers by right.

For two desperate hours Mimi crept and crawled and slithered among the sedimented rubbish without finding the pink bag full of money. At last, shaking with frustration, she gave up. Trembling with anger and self-loathing, she tottered to her knees and made her way, slipping and sliding, back down the hill of mounded garbage to her car.

She did not drive back to her condominium. Jerking the car into action, she bucked it out onto Route 126, darted left and then almost immediately left again into the Pond View Trailer Park, and pulled up with a squeal of brakes beside one of the mobile homes. Leaping out, she stumbled in her wrecked stockings up the steps, and pounded savagely on the door.

Lee-Ann opened it and stared at her sister. Mimi's hair was in strings, her face was streaked with dirt, her clothes were grimed with filth. There was scrambled egg in her ear, dog food crusted on her blouse, nameless slime stuck to her from head to toe.

"Christ, Mimi," said Lee-Ann, "there's people here. Jesus, what happened to you?" Then she took Mimi by the shoulders and shook her, and whispered, "My money! Did you bring me my money?"

Mimi pushed violently past her sister. She had no regard for the people who were visiting Lee-Ann. "No," she shouted, "I didn't bring your money. There isn't any money. Where the h.e.l.l do you think I'm going to get any money?'' And then she reached out her foul hands with their broken fingernails and scratched the pink pudding of Lee-Ann's face.

Lee-Ann fought back. "What do you mean," she whimpered, grabbing Mimi's hands in a fierce grip, "there isn't any money?"

"Because there isn't," wept Mimi. Jerking her hands free, she shoved Lee-Ann to the floor and fell on her.

Homer Kelly and Julian Snow jumped out of their chairs and pulled them apart. Mary Kelly dragged Honey Mooney to her feet. Charlotte Harris hurried into Honey's kitchen and dampened a paper towel and dabbed at Mimi Pink's face and hands, while Mimi sobbed and blubbered.

It was just like always. Mimi was in the wrong. She always got the blame. n.o.body knew what she had been through. n.o.body understood. Lee-Ann always won, Mother's little honey-child.

*64*

Goodness is the only investment

that never fails. a"Walden, "Higher Laws"

In her furious rage against her sister, in her vengeful anxiety to destroy her, Mimi told everything. She stood amid the smoking ruins of her life, shaking her fist. Oh, it had been good to Lord it over Lee-Ann, to keep her on a string and tell her what to do, to dole out money in dribs and drabs. Now everything was smashed up, but it didn't matter, as long as Lee-Ann was smashed up, too, and so was Buzzie, and so was Annie.

Look at Buzzie Grandison! Just look at him now! He had married Annie Finney, not Mimi, and then he got rich, and after that Annie turned up her nose at Mimi, and only the other day she had pa.s.sed Mimi on Newbury Street in Boston as if she didn't recognize her at all, only of course she did, because Mimi saw that little flicker in her eyes before Annie looked away.

Mimi did not merely talk to Homer Kelly, she babbled, she gushed, she spouted, she divulged everything.