“Thanks. You make me feel real important.”
“Well, we don’t, do we?”
“Dennis, I have an idea. Why don’t you work out some kind of laymen’s service they could do without you if they wanted? Leave it up to them. If they want a Christmas service, they can have one without you. If not, everybody can stay home and have fun.”
“Judy—”
“We could go skiing….”
“Get thee behind me, Satan,” Dennis said. “I’ll think about it. We’ve got time.”
“If we’re going, we have to make plane reservations.”
“I’ll think about it. Go to bed.”
“Nuzzle me.”
Dennis leaned to kiss her, but she said, “Not on the mouth, idiot.” He kissed her neck just below the ear. Her skin was too warm.
“You’re not going to try to teach tomorrow, I hope,” Dennis said.
“No. I still feel lousy.” She groaned. “I’d better set the alarm to call Wilkes. He gets upset if he has to find a substitute after seven thirty.”
“Won’t they use the same one they had today?”
“Well, he’ll have to call her before she gets assigned to somebody else.”
“Go to bed, then.” Dennis stood up and grasped Judy’s hands and helped her from the couch. He held her close for a moment, then released her and backed away. “Take some aspirin.”
Judy pulled her robe closely about her and shivered and turned toward the bedroom. “Don’t work too long,” she said.
Dennis returned to the typewriter and stared at the page, while Judy brushed her teeth and set the alarm. His head ached. He had smoked too much. The coffee was making him nervous. He searched for his train of thought, wondering if he even had one. He longed for something to click in his mind, for some door to open and let light in. But he couldn’t wait for it. He touched the tabulator key for a new paragraph.
Micah thought it was time somebody said something. So he did.
BULL
“There it is.” Bull Waggoner pointed past the sweeping windshield wipers at the crumpled mass of metal against the bridge abutment, now glistening in the periphery of the patrol car’s headlights.
“Jesus,” the rookie said.
Bull eased the car into the emergency lane behind the wreck. Miraculously, the taillights of the ruined car still burned. The car was tilted against the abutment, as if trying to climb to the bridge above. The revolving red lights of the patrol car moved across the crumpled hood, then off, then on again, then off. The drizzle pelting Bull’s windshield and the sweep of the wipers gave the wreck the aspect of a grotesque Christmas tree.
“You seen many dead bodies, Larry?” Bull asked the kid.
“Just my grandmother.”
“Well, this ain’t going to be like your grandmother.”
Bull grabbed his flashlight and stepped out of the patrol car, and the kid followed. Bull went to the driver’s side of the wrecked car, and the kid went to the other. Bull tried the door, but it wouldn’t open. He shined the light through the shattered side window. The driver had been a young man. Now he was pressed between the steering wheel and the back of his seat, like a flower between the pages of a book. He must not have had a whole bone left in his chest. “This one’s gone,” Bull said. He shined the flashlight across the seat and the dashboard. The woman had been young, too, he guessed although he really couldn’t tell. Her blood on the dashboard reflected his light, and he saw bits of brain.
“Jesus,” Larry said. Bull heard him retching on the other side of the wreck. He had retched himself once, when he was a rookie, but it had been over a suicide—a guy who had stuck a shotgun in his mouth.
“Call for the meat wagon,” he told Larry. “Call for a wrecker. Tell the dispatcher there ain’t no way we can get them out. Tell them how bad it is.”
The kid wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and opened the patrol door and leaned across the seat for the mike. He wouldn’t sleep tonight. He would lie awake a long time, wondering why he had become a cop, wishing he hadn’t. He would consider other career possibilities, maybe go for a couple of job interviews. Then the memory of the bodies in the wrecked car would fade, and the next time he saw one, he wouldn’t think much about it. He would remember these two, though, just as Bull remembered that guy who stuck the shotgun in his mouth. Bull didn’t remember many of the corpses he had seen since then, but he still remembered that one.
Traffic was light on the North Central Expressway, but the drivers were slowing down, first, because they saw revolving lights of the patrol car, then, to rubberneck at the wreck. One seemed to be stopping, and Bull waved him by with the flashlight, throwing his whole huge body into the wave, ordering him away.
Bull went to the patrol car and got some flares. Larry was hanging up the mike, and Bull said, “Stay with the radio.” He set out the flares, listening to the frying sound of the tiny raindrops hitting their bright pinkish light. The drizzle was wetter than it seemed from inside the car, and he was getting chilled. He should put on his slicker, but there wasn’t time. He stood in the light of the flares, waving his flashlight. One of the drivers stopped anyways. Bull yanked off his hat and charged at the car, his crew cut bristling. The driver rolled down his window and spoke quickly, frightened. “I’m the one that called the police,” he said. “They told me to come back to the scene.”
“You a witness?” Bull asked.
“Yeah. I seen it happen.”
“OK. Pull in over there behind the patrol car. I’ll be with you in a minute. Don’t get out of the car.”
The driver rolled up the window and eased his car within the perimeter of the flares. There were sirens in the distance now. First the fire engine, and then the ambulance, then another police car. The firemen arrived first, and the rookie got out of the car to meet them. They began their work on the doors of the wreck. Then the ambulance arrived, then the police car, and finally the wrecker.
“You got a torch?” one of the firemen asked.
“Sure do,” the wrecker driver called.
“Well, get it.”
McDonald, the cop from the backup car, carried a yellow slicker to Bull, grinning. “Put this on, old man,” he said. “You trying to get some sick leave?”
“I could use some,” Bull said. He took the slicker, but didn’t put it on. “Put Larry on traffic,” he said. “I got a witness over there.”
“Right. It’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
“Go look for yourself.”
“Captain wants you to come in and write your report and then go home,” McDonald said. “Rest up for the big day.”
“Right. Soon as I talk to my witness.”
The wrecker man was wearing goggles now, working at the door with his torch. Sparks were flying amid the revolving lights and the dark figures of men. Bull folded the slicker and walked to the beat-up Chevy and climbed into the front seat beside the driver.
“They dead?” the driver asked.
“Don’t know,” Bull said. “May I see your driver’s license?”
The man took off his cowboy hat and tossed it into the back seat, then fumbled in his hip pocket. He brought out a wallet and opened it and offered it to Bull.
“Just the license, please,” Bull said.
The man took