[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

crevices along his cheek, the way his hairline started
so high on one side, the way the blisters still grew
along the ridge of his earlobe.
Tears came to his eyes, and instead of a god, he felt
like an ugly little boy, and he hated everyone on the
face of the earth, including this girl, and his father,
and the old woman, and Monkey.
Lex ran across the cellar, up the wooden steps into
the main room of the great house, down the corri-
dors, until he pushed open the dark wooden door,
and rushed out into the vineyard.
He fell to his knees, weeping, wishing someone
were there to hold him, but not the old woman,
not her, not any of the others, but someone he had
only dreamed of, someone who would hold him
and not care that he was ugly, not even care that he
was a god incarnate, but just that he was nine and
himself.
312
dark of the eye
He pounded his fists into the ground as he wept,
wanting to bring out what the old woman called the
blood of the earth. It never seemed to come, but he
kept pounding, pounding.
One day I'm gonna get back at all of them for what they
did to me, he vowed. One day I'm gonna make them feel
what I got inside me!
And then, as the tears subsided, he saw the first
rays of the sun, in the east, beyond Empire.
A bird — it looked like a dove to him — flew across
that early light. I'll make her wish she'd never been born!
he screamed inside his head.
Even if she is my sister!
313
chapter 52
townies, continued
6:30 A.M.
The sunlight was slow to overtake the shadows in
Empire.
There was an unusual noise of trucks out on the
outer reaches of the main roads; normally the trucks
went through town, but this morning none did.
Empire, California, had only two churches, both on
Main Street, inside the loop of town, across the circu-
lar park from each other. One was very old and had
been, many years before, San Miguel, a Catholic
church, but then, when most of the Catholics started
going to Saint Bernardine's over in Perdito, it fell
into the hands of the Episcopalians, although the
Seventh-Day Adventists shared space on Saturdays;
the other, a more modern building, was Christian
Science and was the smaller of the two churches. But
both clung to dying congregations, and even the
Right Reverend Hub Radcliffe, who preached while
314
dark of the eye
standing on a milk crate right in the middle of the
park, Fridays through Sundays, had to admit that
Christ had pretty much passed Empire by, at least as
far as settling down went. All the more reason for
Hub, who had slept in the park since losing his horse
trailer in a rigged poker game, to keep preaching,
because all around him were the minions of dark-
ness. Including the New Agers and the former hip-
pies, whom he considered quite pagan and corrupt,
as well as those in town who had just petered out on
religion, at least in any formal sense. As he awoke, he
looked across the street at the statue of the Known
Soldier, and then down to King Tut's bar, where a sin-
ner lay, passed out and snoring like thunder, on its
steps. He watched as a little boy rode by on his bicy-
cle. At first Hub thought it was some paperboy, and
he was about to ask if he could buy a newspaper from
him. Then the boy braked his bicycle alongside the
curb of the park and let it fall, its wheels still spin-
ning, as he ran off to the center of the park, where
the pigeons gathered and cooed with the annoying
crows and the occasional dove. The boy set some-
thing down in the middle of the birds and then
stepped back. Hub scratched his head. Had the boy
set down birdseed or bread crumbs?
And then the birds began attacking whatever the
boy had brought them.
Hub figured the birds must've been starving; the
boy must've fed them something good.
315
douglas clegg
And then the boy, as if sensing the preacher lying
upon the bench, turned to stare at him.
One side of the boy's face was discolored, almost
like a port wine stain, but it seemed to obliterate his
features.
Hub Radcliffe did not believe the devil resided in
gambling (unless he was losing that night), nor did
he believe that the devil resided in the loins of men
or women (unless the woman he wanted was not
interested in him). What he did believe was that the
human capacity for evil was enormous, and that each
human being had a key with which to lock the door
to that very capacity.
Or they turned the key in the opposite direction,
and that capacity for evil was loosed upon creation.
He knew this from his time spent at the Empire
State facility, after having been put there for drown-
ing a baby, accidentally, while baptizing it. His lawyer
had been good, and so Hub had spent ten years at
Empire State before being released. In that time,
through Bible study and grace beyond knowing, he
had learned about the evil in man and how it could
be controlled.
When he saw the boy, he knew.
The boy had turned the key and opened the door-
way within him, and behind that door: the abyss.
The boy grinned, as if reading Hub's thoughts,
and then ran off to his bike, lifting it up, and riding
away on it, down the streets of town. He flew past the
316
dark of the eye
rows of shops and the houses, and zigzagged in
between parked cars and around the garbage truck as
it came through the alley to load up from a
Dumpster. He would do what boys did when they
rode bicycles so early in the morning: own the town.
Hub shuddered with the thought, with the chill
that was both outside and within. He watched the
pigeons finish whatever meal the boy had offered.
Hub Radcliffe started praying, frantically and furi-
ously, as if saying the words fast and aloud would ward
off whatever that boy had let out from himself.
Other people lived in Empire, too, although its
population had been dwindling since the early sev-
enties. But there was a woman who got up every
morning at six-thirty to jog up and down the Empire
Road and three miles up the Sand Canyon Road
before making a loop on a dirt road and jogging
back to her house. Her name was Ellen Fremont,
and she had come to Empire in 1973, from Los
Angeles, having married a man who was destined to
do nothing with his life, while she was a recreational
counselor at Empire State, having gotten her degree
and her first taste of the criminally insane, by the
legal definition, down at Patton State Hospital in San
Bernardino. She had a lot of stress in her life, both
from her husband and from her job, so she found
jogging to be one of the best cures available. She
stayed in good shape, and at forty-seven was often
mistaken for someone much younger. The air was
317
douglas clegg
clean in Empire, and she enjoyed it, in particular, on
this morning, after the rain, when she could smell
the grass. She noted that the mission asistencia
needed a new paint job, and she wished those
weirdos who owned it would keep it up. She had
tried to organize some kind of grass-roots historical
society to preserve some of the more interesting
homes in town, but no one seemed to be interested.
It bothered her when things weren't taken care of.
Like her husband — not that he could even take [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]