Drink For The Thirst To Come Part 19

RAT TIME IN THE HALL OF PAIN.

Outside, Kagen's Fine Jewelry was an island of gentle light in the soft California evening.

Inside, Alexander Winkler made a red mess of Kagen's manager's sharp wet face.

"Ah, ah, former manager," Alex thought aloud.

Kagen's was quality. Couldn't miss the fumed oak, spotless gla.s.s, the warm flow of indirect light across their surfaces. You felt the carpet's hush. "Real wool," Alex noted, probably aloud, deep wool that made you sink, sink so you wanted to come to rest and rest forever there.

"That's Mister Hillegas," the former manager said, frowning down his nose at Alex, who dropped him with a sharp shot from a three-foot handful of two-inch pipe.

Arrogant authority. Alex hated it. Rudeness of any stamp, anathema. Mother taught that. Her nature. She, a gentle woman, alone. If father hadn't gone off with the "other one"-the "her" of tearful evenings-when Alex was (what was I?) seven (no, six), things would have been so, so different for him and so many other Mister Hillegases. He knew that. Poor mother. What had she been thinking? Well, misters like Hillegas seem. They always seem.

Behind the counter, Alex straddled the still-twitching remnant of "Mister Hillegas." Thoughtfully, almost gently, Alex shattered another square inch of flesh and muscle with. The. Pipe! Wai. Ting. For. Rat. Time. To. Come. 'Round. At. Last. For a moment the former manager's left eye dangled by the optic nerve from its splintered socket. The next blow crushed that pale wet thread and the eyeball flowed, winter honey, down Mister Hillegas's neck and settled, staring up at Alex from Kagen's good wool carpet.

Won't need that, Alex figured.

While Alex worked, Fat Marty held his cut-down boomgun on the clerks, a man and the woman. Marty's barrel quivered. The woman was a beauty. Alex wanted to look too. He venerated beauty but appreciated it at leisure and this... This was business. The woman was older than he, probably older than Hillegas, but by G.o.d, she was art! Probably deserved Hillegas's job. Oh yes, Alex knew she did. She was cla.s.s. Hillegas? Greed, need, and att.i.tude.

The other clerk was a kid in a daddy-suit, all wooly wrinkles, hair K-Y wet. The kid didn't belong. Not in Kagen's Fine. He smelled of sweat, gel, and loosened bowels.

Alex never broke rhythm. No, no, Rat Time, bless it, was almost, almost there. Another minute. Less. Come on, comeon, comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon!

Alex figured the kid in the too-big too-wooly suit knew he wouldn't make tomorrow. He'll take it quietly, he thought, use all his guts to not beg. He'll be a Man, a sweaty man, a blind scared, p.i.s.s-down-his-wooly-leg man but a Capital-M Man absolutely, a quiet good-bye good guy, yes sir, amazing that pretty woman to the end. Alex snorted. Yes. A co-worker, who should have been his boss. He kept his eye on the woman. What a beauty she was, but Beauty had thrown up twice. She was all-over fear. Dread rippled on her like static. If there was a current to her terror, Alex realized, it was no doubt concern: concern for Mister Hillegas, the Hillegas family, something. Imagine. Or about the p.r.i.c.k she worked with.

"d.a.m.n," Alex thought aloud, looking, "you should have been manager." Not Hillegas, he thought. "He doesn't deserve you!" he said, and brought the pipe hard across the jagged stew of Mister's face. Rude p.r.i.c.k. Oh yeah! Here it was, coming now: A Hillegas dance in Rat Time.Rude p.r.i.c.k probably GOT the f.u.c.king job because he was f.u.c.kin' connected. Right? f.u.c.king somebody's daughter, Right? f.u.c.king somebody's son. Yes? Maybe f.u.c.king SOMEbody somebody's-f.u.c.king-self. YES.

Each stroke thrilled Alex's arm and he kept it, stepped it up. Hillegas, Hillegas has something on that f.u.c.king Kagen-somebody. Alex had a f.u.c.king feeling, a G.o.dd.a.m.n motherf.u.c.king feeling, about that f.u.c.king guy and all the f.u.c.kin' somebodies it took to put together all the lousy deals that made a place like Kagen's Fine f.u.c.kin' Jewelry spin like a well-f.u.c.ked top.

In it now, Rat Time slithered up his arm, wrapped his shoulder. His jaw torqued shut, Rat Time tingling his head. His vision danced in Rat f.u.c.king Time. Cracked a molar, once, he had, clenched down in Rat Time.

Mister Hille-f.u.c.king-gas did abso-f.u.c.king-lutely not deserve the f.u.c.king manager gig and Alex was always f.u.c.king right, always-on-the-f.u.c.king-A-track about those feelings. Well, this f.u.c.king paid him f.u.c.king back! Using both hands, his full weight swept down. The pipe end drove into the open hole where the exquisite woman's boss's supercilious nose had Mistered for the last time just a few minutes before.

And now, as it always did, it ended with Alex dragged from the birth ca.n.a.l, dripping, clean, covered in new air and sucking freshness. His head rolled back. Relax, he thought. He relaxed. Caught the woman's eye. Wanted her to know, I'm with you. He understood, knew what she'd put up with from that. Hillegas. All those years. He shook his head, tired, smiling. He hoped the woman (oh she was Beauty) would appreciate this, what he'd done for her, before they married. Before he killed her. Whatever.

And, aw jeeze, Rat Time was over. Too bad. The unconscionable b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Hillegas, had taken the edge. She'd be dull now. Business. A .22 to the base of the skull. Kid wooly wrinkles? The same. His partner, Fat Marty? Later, later, tomorrow, day after, sometime when the sweaty porker was jerking off, thinking of the Woman. Fat Marty, sent to h.e.l.l, sins squirting. He shouldn't breathe in the same world as she, Fat Marty shouldn't. Soon he won't. She wouldn't be in the world by then, either, of course.

Rat Time over, Alex considered the future. The rest was business. For show, all for show. Jewelry, metal, money. Tokens in the game, how the game was scored.

Alex pushed himself up with the pipe. The pipe stuck out of whatshisname's face. "Time for the game."

He may have said that aloud because for the third time, Beauty puked.

Alex kept his foot to the floor. Highway white lines shot under; the roadway paint hissed as it pa.s.sed. Speed chattered, amped him up to a place between sleep and terror, kept him sometimes more, sometimes less awake through grainy night.

The moon split the clouds and lit the layered haze that had settled in the valley into which he plunged. The rearview was black. He almost jumped, seeing his own eye lit by dashboard green in the corner of the mirror. Behind him and ahead were mountains, dark forests, deep glens. In these pale moments of moonlight and fog the old rock and forest whispered. They're nearly dead, he thought. The east is a ghost, he thought of the coast toward which he ran. Where the h.e.l.l was he now? New York, P-A? Western Ma.s.s? d.a.m.n, he loved the east. Moody son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h, this dead country. The store out west had clinched it. (Where? California? Yes.) He'd had it with the west.

After Fat Whatsit, his partner barely remembered now, Alex hopped a Greyhound out of Berdoo, one breathing body among fifty-two. They rode a taut desert highway toward the mountains. He was surrounded by Mexicans, Indians, old ladies and drunks, pimpled soldiers and pregnant women riding alone. The bodies comforted, at first, brought warmth and scent. He leaned back in air-conditioned blue-gla.s.s comfort, lounged through miles of sun-soaked empty, breathing in the folk. He eased asleep, surrounded, supported.

When he woke, night hummed. He thought he was awake. In a while he knew he was. Greasemouth Marty, Fat Marty, that was his name, Marty Mouth, was garbage, a couple, three hundred miles back. The store? The jewelry job, yes. The name of the place? Who were the dead? Forget it. It was dollars. Not many. Enough.

Marty. Marty wasn't even an emptiness beside him. Marty was a negligible a.s.set that had become a palpable liability. Partner? Partners made Alex nervous. They pinned you down. Partners were greedy, too scared, or, stupidly, not scared enough. Partners were whims with hands and anxious feet. Partners were mouths that hit and ran and never stayed shut. No, this was a business and the economic mantra of the day was Downsize. Reduce the eyes, shut the mouths.

Heck yeah, he thought, after work a partner was just a witness.

There always were witnesses. Someone somewhere always knew something and you couldn't kill them all. Much as you'd like to, you couldn't murder everyone.

Awake now, yes, in his Greyhound run to the east, surrounded in the dark gla.s.s night, the bodies breathed, each with its bouquet. Alex tasted the lives around him. He listened. They whispered. d.a.m.n. G.o.dd.a.m.n. Their chatter climbed his spine. A murmur now, in a bit it would be Rat nibbles. Third Grade again. Miss Kerkauff again. On the way to Wednesday movies again, again marching down the hall between Robby Ringler and Brenda Hebhardt. In lockstep and under eye. And Rat Time would twitch 'round. Marty had barely done it for him.

"Oh, ohh," Alex moaned and wondered again if he really was awake. Another moan. He was.

"Y'okay, Mis-ter?" The voice drawled from an angular thing next to him. The quick light of a highway marker slashed across the voice's face. Bone thin and pimple-flamed, a greasy crew cut and snaggled-teeth. Sixteen, maybe. Country doofus, just like Alex. Good ol' Al.

"Y'okay?"

"Abso-tutely," old Al drawled back. Aw Lord Jesus, yes. Rat Time drawing nigh. And here he for sure was, in the desert, wrapped in Greyhound, padded with Greasers. "Indubitably, ol' buddy." He nodded thanks to Miss Kerkauff, who'd made him study his vocabulary. Words. They gathered the world so easy-like. He looked out above his own grin. Saw the uniform. Made like he just noticed. "Oh, hey, pardon, Sarge," Alex said. He considered: Do I Rat Tango with Pimples here?

Options flickered.

"'Cause I got some aspirins here, you're feelin' poor." Kid said. "I know how's I hate travelin' with the headache or the tooth. So, you need somethin', you lemme know, y'hear?"

The boy was real. Probably real. In a few hours, he'd be someone? His mother? His mother'd be talking or moaning make-believe, like she did.

"I surely will," Alex said. Even now, the kid in wrinkled khakis was becoming less kid, more Mom. He'd watched her, Mom, through iron curlicues at the foot of the bed. Seemed to Alex he'd stood all his childhood down there, watched a dozen daddies every night, the perfumed men who'd lined up for stinky-time with Mom. He'd watched through the bucking bedstead as her a.s.s swayed, her smiling mouth gulped wet with -those daddies, square johns, rig pushers. Soldiers, like Pimples here, they all squinted at him while she slurped. They wanted to put out his light. Each one.

Mom never daddied no Mex. "Sure as s.h.i.t ain't gonna trick with them, can't bother to learn English," she'd say, making hard eyes with potential daddies pa.s.sing along the stroll. "Come here and ain't got the courtesy to learn our f.u.c.king language, expect we'll talk theirs. I don't wanna ever hear you speaking nothing but American, y'hear?"

No ma'am.

"Indian, either."

If he could see in the dark of the bus-better, if he could cut the lids off the eyes of the sleeping wetbacks and Indians around him, if he could shine a light and look-their eyes'd be the same as the white- and n.i.g.g.e.r-eyes that had stared him dead through those painted iron curlicues. All the same, Injun or Mex, they'd drain his light too if they could.

Considering the kid next to him: The next stop? Talk him off, do him hard and wet, get back on, ride away? Or do him quiet by the john? Travel a distance with the sleeping dead, one among fifty-one? Then get off, casual?

He considered. Soon the rats would crawl. He'd attend them when. Until? He'd keep them in check. It was dangerous to be not in control, hungry in the dark, surrounded by so much meat. The time would come and beyond that...?

Beyond? He laughed. There was no beyond, beyond that. Beyond Rat Time? The time when he had to go a little mad, like that freak said in that movie. When Rat Time came, it came for sure and always was obeyed. Obeyed, it always ended with someone-someone small or large, but someone-always, forever after, was always very very very dead. Then after, and for a while, he was this, what he was now, this perfect gentle man: resting, hunkered down, square-one. No. There was no "beyond" beyond Rat Time forestalled. A violation of physics, a contradiction in terms, the irresistible force, the immoveable object. Two factors that cannot exist in the same universe: Rat Time and No Rat Time.

For now, he thought, let's see how far we take it.

"No thank you, Sarge," Alex said to the thin darkness beside him. "I'm fine. Just a dream."

And like that, the boy was saved.

A buzzer shouted. Felt it in his spine. The fuel light on the car's dashboard blinked. Thank the Lord. He'd have to stop. Too early for dawn, but he was riding near empty, and he'd have to pause.

A sign grew. "Food. Fuel. Rest. 17 miles." White on green. Then gone. The road flattened along the valley of a river he didn't know and couldn't see for dark and trees. Soon, a hazy light arose ahead. A nudge of the wheel eased him onto the gentle up-curve of the off-ramp. Eighty-five bled to zero as he rolled the last hundred yards into the sodium vapor island at the oasis.

Gas clicked into the tank and its good scent filled his head. He looked over the trunk and into the gla.s.s and aluminum cashier's booth. Three people crammed in there. Two guys, one working, the other, a buddy, with the buddy, a girl. Alex balanced: a fill-up and a rest or a fill-up and a dance? Depended. Now, Alex felt polite, soft. Now. He had no idea what the world would be like when the tank was full.

Now and then he had to go, get out. City, town, the place, wherever the place was, the walls of concrete, steel and too-bright gla.s.s, the asphalt floors or the fields of brown and green, the wide domes of blue sky, chrome sun and pointy black night, wherever it was the place would get behind Alex's eyes and shove.

When these days came, he'd remember Miss Kerkauff and movie Wednesdays in the dark. He'd remember the ratchet chatter of the projector, the scratchy black and white flicker. He'd recall the narrator's voice. The wooden slats of the folding chairs pinched his scrawny a.s.s, his feet dangled from his skinny pins and made his b.u.t.t go numb. On one side, fatty Stevie Hinners.h.i.tz's wool pants rubbed Alex's legs. On the other, Hazel Gensler's grape-pop bubble gum breath filled his hunger. Whenever he grew hungry forevermore, he had only to breathe and there would be Hazel and grape and he would fill. In front, Frankie Rhodes's hard white skull and damp crew cut waited. Frankie waited for the dark of the movie to turn, a bristly silhouette with knuckles. When the dark came, Frankie monkey-punched Alex's leg, knuckles going deep into his meat and muscle.

"That hurt like f.u.c.k?" Frankie whispered.

Alex said nothing. Mouth shut.

"We'll, s'posed to," Frankie said. Four, five times each period. Wham. Wham. WhamWhamwham. Movie Wednesdays.

He'd watch the wrinkled screen with the brown Rorschach water stain across the middle. He'd wait for the pain and keep his f.u.c.kin' mouth shut when it came.

Sometimes the movie was "Be clean, brush your teeth," or "Say please, say thank you." Sometimes it was "Work hard. Be good. Thank everyone."

He saw the rat film once. Only once. The narrator's voice, manly, smart. "Our world today grows ever smaller."

Airplanes, speeding trains, liners on the sea...

"The s.p.a.ce between people narrows."

Cities. Traffic. Crowds.

The film told with pictures: Picture a rat in a cage. The cage is big. Picture a rat couple in this cage. Picture a rat family, a happy few, this band of rats. Sleek rats. Happy rat faces, clean bodies, scurrying, grooming whiskers. Mother rats nursing little ratties, hairless rat pups at suck. Mommy rat, baby rat, brother rats and sisters, daddy rat off to gather food. Beautiful. Home.

The picture dissolved; the narrator spoke numbers. The cage was fuller: a bustle of rat, a flow, and a marvel of rat efficiency. Roiling, busy rat paths crisscrossing, a Ratopolis, Rat Gotham. Rats carrying forth important rat tasks.

Another lap-dissolve, the narrator's voice went darker. The cage, once s.p.a.cious, friendly, home and haven, now was jam-crammed. Packed rat-jowl to rat-b.u.t.t, bodies clamored, claws raked bellies. Rats burrowed into corners or sat shivering, torn, dirty, crawled on, over, snapped at, shat upon and fouled. Rat faces in close up: terror, exhaustion. Breathless. Snarling. Big rats tore at small ones. Small ones ganged on old ones. Rats stole. Rats h.o.a.rded. Rats starved, shivered, thinned, failed, falling within inches of the food they'd gathered and held. Rats killed for nothing, yet nothing was wanting in the abundance of the cage. Rats murdered in fury while others waited calmly their turn to be torn, left twitching. The place was madness, this place, this lab-made h.e.l.l.

In memory, the images are of teeth, fur, bodies, blood. All Alex hears is projector chatter and the smart, warm, pa.s.sionless voice. Alex doesn't have the words, but the voice speaks of matricide, parricide, ratricide. This closing of the s.p.a.ce between the rats has brought out the worst in ratkind, brought out the inner rat, brought forth Rat Time. There is one final image: a small rat in a corner, death around, his twitching whiskers, bloodied, his fangs dark with blood. Blood from where? Who knew? There was blood on his fur and nothing in the tiny bright eyes but patient waiting. That picture...

...flickered, and Alex's leg ached from Frankie's monkey punches, and the sound, the memory, the memory always was such a comfort to Alex. And Hazel's grape breath.

He touched her mouth with the shotgun barrel. "Open," he said warmly. The barrel tapped her tooth. "Open," he said again, gentler still.

Tears ran down her nose and flowed onto the metal. She opened and he seated the blued hole in her mouth. "It's not like the movies," he said. He was careful. He didn't want to hurt her teeth with the little red-tipped sighting bead. Her lips closed involuntarily on the steel and she gulped, trying to breathe, swallowing deep in her throat like a cheap trick.

"Aw, the heck with her, anyway," Alex thought and said it aloud. "It's just something I want to see." He was awfully close to begging. A project, for criminy-sake.

Dad had been proud of his facility with science and numbers. "You'll be an engineer, a rocket scientist. Something. Jeeze, Alexander, the s.p.a.ce program'll heat up again. There's opportunity out there, son." His dad had pointed to the workshop ceiling. "And I don't mean the dining room." They laughed together. Heck, Alexander knew that. Dad pointed to the stars. "There are worlds out there, chances no one knew in my day. If a guy's got brains-and education, don't forget that!" He tapped Alexander's head with the screwdriver blade, then tapped his chest with his other hand. "And the guts to make something of himself, that's the ticket. You have the guts to take the chance?"

Before he could answer, there was Mom, on the stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt, smiling at her two boys. "Dinner's ready, you pioneers!"

Ap.r.o.ns and smiles was Mom. How he always remembered her, anyway. So what for all those worlds? he'd thought. Who'd want to leave here?

Then Dad swept his arm around Alexander's shoulder and the two of them climbed the steps to Mom's fragrant kitchen.

Alexander bent his knees so the gun pointed toward the back of the girl's upper palate. "This is physics," he thought and said it aloud. "Like school." He smiled. But the girl was so gosh darned short he had to crouch, get darn-near on his knees to get it angled just so, so the wave front of expanding gases, the shot and unburned powder grains would pa.s.s at exactly the right place through her head. He never could get a decent lab partner, how the heck was he expected to...? He dipped deeper, bent to sight along the barrel, extended an imaginary line through her shaking, nodding, bobbing, gulping head. Her whole body quivered as he knelt in front of her. Kneeling, he had to say it, it felt... weird. Felt like church, like genuflecting. f.u.c.k. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, G.o.dd.a.m.n f.u.c.k it. For a moment, there was Father O'Donnell. For a moment, he flashed on Sister Marie George, smelled the chalk dust of her, the old spit and bad dentures. Why had the folks made him go to parochial school? G.o.d Darn, he really wanted to be in public school with his friends from up and down the street. Darn. He leaned into the kick as he squeezed both triggers at once.

As always, a shotgun blast in a small place was too loud to hear. He felt the concussion over his whole body. The tiles went red, black, and white. But he saw-YES-her eye sockets. They went empty! Empty in that fraction of a second before her head shoved, yes, forward onto the barrel, then jerked back and it was over.

That was the moment for this one. The moment. The moment her eye sockets went red, black, and empty, her eyeb.a.l.l.s yanked out by the optic nerves, the whole package sucked out by the speed of shot pa.s.sing, by the vacuum left as the brain vacated the open skull at supersonic, wow, speed drawing both visual-G.o.d!-stems out of her so fan-A-OK-tastically fast, spreading them with the pink gray brain against the-oh f.u.c.k-f.u.c.k-outstanding-f.u.c.k-back wall of the ladies' room. Then, doggone, he lost her in the moment. Then the moment was over and he had to get going. Back on the road, Rat Time in recess.

That had been where? The high desert west-no, east-of Denver. He'd ditched the Greyhound, waited at the stop for two days before getting a lift and by then the rats were swarming, a pot boiling over. They calmed, crouching, as soon as he got a lift. Pretty little girl. He took the person and her Ford when she stopped for gas and a pee. Great experiment! Thanks, partner.

He traded that Ford for another in Nebraska. North Dakota. Somewhere. He traded plates outside Minneapolis. Same year, same model, same color. Ha. Where'd he learn that? Reform school? That long ago? The Toyota? Along I-90 in North Nowhere, Indiana, near the College Football Hall of Fame. Christ. He swapped the Toyota for a Volvo. Cleveland. Near the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He swapped rides and rocked someone who'd roll no more. Ha! Boomtown Rat Time again.

He traded down to another Ford, a family wagon, in Cooperstown, New York at Baseball's Hall of Fame. A family, Christ, bad luck for them. If he hadn't been born in jail while his mother was waiting to take the gas for razoring his father to nothing, he might have let one of them live. Better dead than orphans. Didn't he know that. A favor. f.u.c.k 'em. He had no feeling, one way or other, for any capital-F-Family. s.h.i.t, he'd let the friggin' dog live. Anyway, that family was not the poster-posers for Family-With-A-Smile! b.a.s.t.a.r.ds couldn't stand one another. Kids, dad, mom, none of them. He could tell. No wonder they offered him, a stranger, a lift to a filling station. Not a second thought. Figured Alex, maybe, would be one friendly face for a couple miles. Bad call, Dad! And Alex. Yo! On one fine roll. Bing. Bing. Bing. Bing. The whole one, two, three, four nuclear-warring family, one after one, one wonderfully squishy time. Cleaning out the gene pool. Wop-da-bop! Just outside Cooperstown, Crack! The Crowd Goes New York Nuts! Maybe he'd catch a ballgame sometime, somewhere. A bar, maybe. Wow!

He ditched the family boat a couple miles along. This was the good old crammed-together east. One jurisdiction shoved against another, one town across the street from the last.

He stopped at Canastota, still in New York, because he saw the sign for the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Amusing, this spate of museums, halls of fame.

He let an elderly lady pick him up. A Chrysler. He let her live. He hadn't liked her that much but she'd sussed-out his story from the start. One sharp old lady. A bad boy, was she right? Like her last husband, yes? Ivy League, if she didn't mistake the look of him. Yes?

She was good. So few people realized that Penn was even part of the League. Huh! She dropped him two blocks from her home. He waited, then strolled over, hotwired the Chrysler and slid. She was a sn.o.b but he appreciated cla.s.s. Like he did. Yes.

He laughed at the sign for the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Ma.s.s. He traded tags there-he liked that Chrysler-and tossed a goodbye wave to that Hall.

Then he was pumping gas and, oh G.o.d, it was wonderful being him. Free and on the open road, touching every museum along this highway of Halls. Didn't cost much and he'd met so many nice people. Last couple hundred miles, he felt he didn't even need a gun. The baseball bat he'd gotten... Where? Yes, in Cooperstown. The souvenir ballbat from Cooperstown was wholly adequate.

The pump nozzle was cold in his hand. The three young people in the booth looked warm, focused, slack mouthed, and tube-glued. By gosh he was glad Mom resisted getting a set. He'd complained, of course he complained. A kid's job. All his friends laughed over last night's shows the next day. Something to talk about. TV stuck them all together. Left him out. But Mom. She got him to read instead, encouraged him to pick up a couple musical instruments, learn a language or two. Made him, G.o.d bless her, made him want to take part in life, real life, "be part of the world!" she'd always said. To this day-and he hadn't played in years-he'd bet he could pick out a tune or two on the piano. Trombone? Probably not. That was how long ago? He chuckled. Young people today? He looked at the two boys and the girl in the cashier's booth. They know reality shows, soaps, sit-coms. Faux life, toy music. Trillions of images flicking across the night. All TV did was pile up heaps of people in rooms across America, the world, people alone or in twos and threes, but gathered by the ton. Gazillions of eyes, mouths, and armpits gathered and delivered, sold...

The pump clicked off. Tank full. Time? Could he go farther without Rat Time biting his b.u.t.t? Should he bring it on? Now? Right here? Those wasted empty faces? G.o.d, give him the strength of character to know...

He hung up the hose, screwed on the cap. Over the trunk of the car, he saw the three faces in the booth, dead-eyed, licked by flicking TV color. They laughed.

"Huh," said Alex. His eyelids flickered.

Five miles down the road, he saw the first sign for the Hall of Pain.

Rain. Rhode Island, he was certain, but the states flowed together so. Every town, a black coc.o.o.n of brick and wood spun around a shut-down mill. Jesus. Dead buildings by nameless rivers. Everybody sat down to die when the factory closed. f.u.c.k yeah, he knew what that was all about. He remembered Uncle Ben. Ben, who'd cared for him after Dad and Mum were killed on vacation. Little Al, what, maybe five? Life would have been...

f.u.c.k it.

It was still raining when he stopped. The name of the town wouldn't stay in his head. Something-Tucket. Tucket was dark wet streets and left-over light. Tucket's streets were narrow canyons of brick warehouses, meandering coaster rides between houses that sagged this or that way, slate or brick sidewalks. Tucket was roads, cobbled or shattered, frost-heaved concrete, veins of tar sticking it all together. That was Tucket.

For the last hour he'd followed signs for The Hall of Pain. He cruised curved streets that slimmed to alleys, alleys that shriveled to paths and paths that died at brick walls or fenced lots. At every ending or turning, a sign: "See The Hall of Pain" or "Don't Miss The Hall of Pain," then an arrow and a decreasing number of miles then fractions of miles.

"This must be the place," he said aloud. The rain stepped up as he crawled from one island of yellow light to the next along the sad dark dead-ends.

This one ended at a river. Ahead was a black iron pedestrian bridge. By the bridge, a sign and an arrow: "H LL F P N." Below: "Y r The e! His headlights kicked back from the white wall of rain and mist. He switched off. Across the bridge a black silhouette stood against the sky. His vision was grainy. Static sparks snapped in his blood; his body sang with exhaustion. Coffee nerves or Rat Time? He'd run too long. 3,000 miles at speed on I-buzzing-90, I-friggin'-80. Whatever f.u.c.king "I" he'd had to run, he'd run it.

"Stay or hit the road?" he wondered.