Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [138]
I wish it were tonight.
He was so filled with anticipation it was almost like madness.
He went home, showered, made dinner. Ate. He drank and turned on the Indians game. The White Sox were up in the third. He drank more. He lay down in bed, tried to sleep, pulled the pillow over his head. He had another drink and decided to reorganize all the jewelry he’d taken over the last two years, rings with rings, necklaces with necklaces, and so on. He looked at his watch. Barely an hour had passed.
I wish it were tonight.
He couldn’t take it any longer.
There were fireworks tonight over the lake, the pre-Fourth show a preview of tomorrow night’s big bash. He got in his car and drove back into Bay View. So many cars were jammed into Huntington Park that he had to find a space several hundred yards away. He walked toward the lake among the crowds, the families, between fathers with children on their shoulders, then climbed down to the beach and walked toward the Sheppard house, the beach full too. It was cool, windy, and as darkness descended, the first offshore salvo rose slowly, a single missile let fly, then another, the rhythm at first almost like boys playing catch, Eberling moving between people invisibly, all eyes on the water. He made his way up from the beach on the Houks’ stairs, cutting through their yard at the landing and now stood below the Sheppard house. They had company. Among the voices, he heard Marilyn say, “Oh.”
Watching their porch, he could see the faces of Dr. Sam and Chip, of the Sheppards’ guests—it looked like the Aherns and their two children—of Marilyn, all of them strobed by the detonations, turning white and black and red, a double image of them floating in his vision when he closed his eyes, a negative on which he now focused. Her mouth was open. The image was white.
I wish it were tonight.
The show was building toward its climax, salvo to salvos, drumbeat to full-on rolls, and he walked directly beneath the Sheppard house and tested the crawl-space door, and once the finale was bursting, once the hundreds of upturned faces from beach to park looked like the flicker of a million dead, as black as mountains on a stormy night, Eberling removed the screwdriver from his pocket and pried the door open and stepped inside.
He’d brought his long Eveready flashlight, and after deciding on a hiding place, should one be needed, he spent his time looking through the Sheppards’ things: old waterskis and toolboxes, outboard replacement parts, boys’ bats, stacked board games. A heavy bag hung indented in the middle of the room. When the fireworks stopped he turned out the light and sat listening in the dark. It reminded him of childhood because he could hear only grownups’ voices, and after he was sure he’d slipped off to sleep he heard a door open and a light flick on, then feet creaked downstairs.
It was Dr. Sam and his boy, who was carrying the small balsa-wood airplane, broken at the wing. The doctor looked tired. He was wearing corduroy pants and a blazer, a white T-shirt underneath, and while he helped glue the wing he rested his face in one hand, yawning and talking to the boy more impatiently than he probably realized, a tone that stung Eberling for breaking the plane in the first place. They fastened a clothespin to the wing and left it resting on the worktable, then turned off the light and clomped back upstairs.
He sat in the dark, feeling like a kid who’d just triumphed at hide-and-seek, and listened to the sounds of the radio above him, the Indians game buzzing through the speaker, the announcer sounding like a taxi dispatcher with his patchy rhythms of call, then breaking out into terrific shouts, as if witnessing the start of a race or a sudden disaster, and when Eberling woke up again the house was completely silent.
I wish it were tonight.
Or was he dreaming? He came up into