Coronado - Dennis Lehane [15]
“I’ll stick right here, buddy. I’ll sit here in the kitchen and you go in and sleep.”
Blue turned his head and stared up at the ceiling again. Then he slid off the table, peeled off his T-shirt, and tossed it on top of the fridge. “All right. All right. I’m gonna try.” He stopped at the bedroom doorway. “’Member—there’s beer in the fridge. You be here when I wake up?”
Elgin looked at him. He was still so small, probably so thin you could still wrap your hand around his biceps, meet the fingers on the other side. He was still ugly and stupid-looking, still dying right in front of Elgin’s eyes.
“I’ll be here, Blue. Don’t you worry.”
“Good enough. Yes, sir.”
Blue shut the door and Elgin heard the bedsprings grind, the rustle of pillows being arranged. He sat in the chair, with the smell of whatever decayed in the back of the house swirling around his head. The sun had hit the cheap tin roof now, and after a while he realized the buzzing he’d thought was in his head came from somewhere back in the house too.
He wondered if he had the strength to open the fridge. He wondered if he should call Perkin Lut’s and tell Perkin to get the hell out of Eden for a bit. Maybe he’d just ask for Shelley, tell her to meet him tonight with her suitcases. They’d drive down 95 where the dogs wouldn’t disturb them, drive clear to Jacksonville, Florida, before the sun came up again. See if they could outrun Blue and his tiny, dangerous wants, his dog corpses, and his smell; outrun people who took two parking spaces and telephone solicitors and Jane Fonda.
Jewel flashed through his mind then, an image of her sitting atop him, arching her back and shaking that long red hair, a look in her green eyes that said this was it, this was why we live.
He could stand up right now with this rifle in his hands, scratch the itch in the back of his head, and fire straight through the door, end what should never have been started.
He sat there staring at the door for quite a while, until he knew the exact number of places the paint had peeled in teardrop spots, and eventually he stood, went to the phone on the wall by the fridge, and dialed Perkin Lut’s.
“Auto Emporium,” Shelley said, and Elgin thanked God that in his present mood he hadn’t gotten Glynnis Verdon, who snapped her gum and always placed him on hold, left him listening to Muzak versions of the Shirelles.
“Shelley?”
“People gonna talk, you keep calling me at work, boy.”
He smiled, cradled the rifle like a baby, leaned against the wall. “How you doing?”
“Just fine, handsome. How ’bout yourself?”
Elgin turned his head, looked at the bedroom door. “I’m okay.”
“Still like me?”
Elgin heard the springs creak in the bedroom, heard weight drop on the old floorboards. “Still like you.”
“Well, then, it’s all fine then, isn’t it?”
Blue’s footfalls crossed toward the bedroom door, and Elgin used his hip to push himself off the wall.
“It’s all fine,” he said. “I gotta go. I’ll talk to you soon.”
He hung up and stepped away from the wall.
“Elgin,” Blue said from the other side of the door.
“Yeah, Blue?”
“I can’t sleep. I just can’t.”
Elgin saw Woodson sloshing through the paddy, the top of his head gone. He saw the pink panties curling up from underneath Blue’s bed and a shaft of sunlight hitting Shelley’s face as she looked up from behind her desk at Perkin Lut’s and smiled. He saw Jewel Lut dancing in the night rain by the lake and that dog lying dead on the shoulder of the interstate, kicking its leg like it was trying to ride a bicycle.
“Elgin,” Blue said. “I just can’t sleep. I got to do something.”
“Try,” Elgin said and cleared his throat.
“I just can’t. I got to…do something. I got to go…” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “I can’t sleep.”
The doorknob turned and Elgin raised the rifle, stared down the barrel.
“Sure, you can, Blue.” He curled his finger around the trigger as the door opened. “Sure you can,” he repeated and took a breath, held it in.
THE SKELETON OF Eden Falls still sits on twenty-two acres of land just east of Brimmer’s Point, covered in rust thick