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“We’ll give it an hour,” he said.
We gave it two. Most of the black tendrils were gone by then but there were yet a few and Elgin donned nitrile gloves and a facemask from one of his desk drawers and collected them in a plastic bag. I tried to stop him but he wouldn’t listen. I thought they might melt away in his hand but they didn’t. One of them curled around his gloved forefinger and he had to detach it by scraping along the inside of the bag.
“You’re a fool to mess with those things,” I said, and he repeated “Proof.”
It wasn’t good to be chained to him as I now was. The teacher of mathematics had become a drooling mannequin who showed no signs of coming back and I had to deal with that, not for Elgin but for myself. At least the former teacher and present idiot wasn’t married with children.
I thought I am on the hook.
I thought Fuck it. Drive on.
“Did you give him the check?”
“What? No. I always keep the check until after the run is complete and they’re ready to go home. You know that.”
“Burn it. He never came. Like the other one. Bilson.”
What a way to wake up to the world.
I got his keys out of a pissdamp pocket. We got him out to his car carrying him like a sack of laundry that’s still wet and heavy and put him in the passenger seat. He leaned forward and put his forehead on the Chevy’s dashboard as if praying to Allah. I told Elgin to push him back and I fastened the seatbelt. Not all cars had them but this one did. It was a three-point harness, the kind with a chest strap, and that held him more or less upright, although his head was down with his chin on his chest. I thought that was all right, anybody who saw him might think he was asleep. One of those black filaments came out of his nose and floated toward me but Elgin was still wearing his nitrile gloves. He snatched it out of the air and blew it away. I wondered if there were more inside Devereaux.
“What are you going to do with him?”
“I don’t know.”
I got in the Chevy and drove away back down Lake Road. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw Elgin standing in his driveway and watching.
I drove with the windows open and the air conditioner on full. I was wearing a pair of Elgin’s nitrile gloves, had been since I got in the car. Twice more black things came out of his nose and once from his gaping mouth but the moving air took them out the passenger window. I drove in the direction of Lewiston-Auburn but had no intention of going that far. I knew where he lived, his Minot Avenue address had been on the release form, but there was no way I was going to drive him into the Twin Cities, not with still having to get him over into the driver’s seat. I needed a quiet place to do that.
I was on Route 119 in Waterford when I came to the Wolf Claw rest area. In the heat of the day no one was there. I parked under the trees and went around to the passenger side and opened the door and unclipped the seatbelt and Devereaux went leaning forward until his forehead was resting on the dashboard again. I wished I had asked the Gentleman Scientist for one of his masks, but what good would covering my mouth and nose do? The black filaments had come out of Devereaux’s eyes; they could just as easily go into mine. I would just have to hope they were all gone. I hadn’t seen any for the last ten miles or so but they might have come out and flown away through the open window while I was watching the road.
I tilted him toward me and caught him and pulled him out of the car and dragged him around the hood. He was wearing loafers and one of them came off. His blank eyes stared raptly into the sun. I got him behind the wheel but it took time and wasn’t easy. I hadn’t expected it to be. He was breathing but dead inside and I knew from Nam that dead people are heavier. They shouldn’t be but they are. Gravity is greedy for the dead and wants them in the ground. Just my opinion but others share it.
He tilted forward again and I grabbed him by the backhair and pulled him up before his forehead could hit the horn. I fastened his seatbelt and his head sank until his chin was on his chest. I thought that was all right. I hoped no one would come until I got the righteous fuck out of there. I put the keys in the ignition and closed the door and started down Route 119. I had walked about a quarter of a mile before I remembered the shoe and went back. Somebody will be there by now, I thought, someone who looked in the open window of the Chevy with the St. Dom’s sticker on the bumper and said hey mister wake up and hey mister are you all right and by the way mister what are those black things coming out of your nose?
But no one was there. I picked up the loafer and opened the driver’s door again and put it on his foot. Then I brushed out the tracks going around the front of the car, the ones his heels had made, and set off walking again. About five miles down the road, my shadow now starting to drag out long behind me, I came to a combination general store and gas station with a phonebooth on the side. I had enough change in my pocket so I didn’t have to go into the store where someone might see and remember me. That probably would have been all right but by then I was thinking like a thief or a murderer. I called Elgin, wanting a ride. Elgin didn’t answer and I had come alive enough to feel scared. I had a plan now, one that might get me and the Gentleman Scientist in the clear, but plans change. I kept thinking of him saying proof, proof. I kept thinking he was crazy and then I thought of how I knew that. I knew it all along but said fuck it and drove on.
I turned back the other way, my shadow now drawing out longer and longer before me rather than behind. A car came and I stuck out my thumb. It passed me by. So did the next one but then came a pickup that slowed and stopped. The man driving had a weathered red face under a gray brushcut.
“How far you going?”
“Castle Rock. It’s where my father lives.”
“Well hop in. Did you serve? You got that look about you and you’re the right age for the current fuckadiddle.”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“So did I. About ten thousand years ago. Semper fi if you like it and semper fi if you don’t.”
He let out the clutch with a jerk and talked about Korea and asked me what about those peaceniks. I said that’s right. He said ship them all out there to Haight-Fucksberry and I said that’s right. He offered me a beer from behind the seat. I took it and when he said “Take another, sojer” I did. Half an hour later he pulled over to the curb of Main Street in the Rock.
“We’re going to beat those gook sonsofbitches.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take care of yourself, son.”
“That’s the plan.”
