Green Eyes

  ‘Now if you see a fiery fall  Of comets in the East,  Or the shadow slinkin’ ‘cross the moon  Of some wiry, haggard beast,  If you feel your blood congeal  And you’ve the urge to call a priest,

  Never fear, it’ll disappear,  You can rest tonight in peace.  ‘Well, you might want to run outside  And fall down on your face,  You might scream or you might pray  Or you might vacillate,

  You might give the United Way,  But no matter what you done,  I tell you, straight,  You can’t escape the fate  Of Harley David’s son!  Oh, the days they’ve swept away from me

  Like fires through a slum.  But when I die I’ll roam the night,  The Ghost of Harley David’s son!

  ‘Bullshit song,’ said Richmond, dejected. He leaned between the seats. ‘But what the hell, squeeze! It sure feels good to be hittin’ the highway again.’ He punched Donnell’s arm and grunted laughter. ‘Even if we never did feel it before.’

  Chapter 9

  May l7 - May 19, 1987

  A stand of stunted oaks hemmed in Sealey’s Motel-Restaurant against the highway. Bats wheeled in the parking lot lights, and toads hopped over the gravel drive and croaked under the cabins, which were tiny, shingle-roofed, with peeling white paint and ripped screen doors. Mr Sealey - Hank Jr according to the fishing trophy on the office desk - was squat and glum as a toad himself, fiftyish, jowly, wearing a sweat-stained work shirt and jeans. He hunched in a swivel chair, showing them the back of his seamed neck and gray crewcut hair, and when they asked for a room he spun slowly around; he closed his right eye, squinted at Jocundra through the trembling lowered lid of his left, clucked his tongue, then tossed them a key and resumed tying a fishing fly large and gaudy enough to be a voodoo fetish. Donnell pictured him clad in scarlet robes, dangling said fly into a fiery pit from which scaly, clawed hands were reaching.

  ‘Don’t want no screechin’ or bangin’ after midnight,’ grumbled Sealey. ‘Take Cabin Six.’

  The cabin, twelve dollars for two singles and a cot (‘You got to tote the cot yourself) was no bargain, being the home of moths and crickets and spiders. ‘All things small and horrible,’ said Donnell, trying to cheer Jocundra, who sat eyeing with disfavor a patch of mattress, one of several visible through holes in the sheet, dotting it like striped islands in a gray sea. For light there was a naked light bulb hung from the ceiling, fragments of moth wings stuck to its sides; between the beds stood an unfinished night table whose drawer contained no Bible but a palmetto bug; the walls were papered in a faded design of flesh-colored orchids and jungle leaves, and mounted cockeyed above the bathroom sink was a flyspecked Kodachrome of Lake Superior.

  Though it was poor and pestilent, Richmond made Cabin Six his castle. He cracked the twelve-pack he had bought from Sealey, chugged the first can, belched, and threw himself on the bed to chord his guitar and drink. After three beers he suggested they go for a ride, after five he insisted upon it, but Jocundra told him they were low on gas. Disgruntled, he paced the cabin, interrupting his pacing to urinate out the door and serenade the other cabins with choruses of his song. But when Donnell reminded him that rest was necessary, he grumpily agreed, saying yeah, he had to fix up some stuff anyway. Sitting on the bed, he shook his guitar until a rolled-up piece of plastic fell out; he unrolled it, removing a scalpel. Then he emptied the security guard’s gun and began to notch the tips of the bullets. At this Jocundra turned to face the wall, drawing her legs into a tight curl. ‘Sleep?’ Donnell perched on the edge of her mattress. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘You should, too.’ ‘I want to go over Magnusson’s notes a while.’ Dark hairs were fanned across her cheek. He started to brush them away, a tender response to her vulnerability, but he suddenly felt monstrous next to her, like a creature about to touch the cheek of a swooning maiden, and he drew back his hand. He had a sensation of delicate motion inside his head, something feathery-light and flowing in all directions. His breath quickened, he grasped the bedframe to steady himself, and he wished, as he always did at such moments, that he had not witnessed the autopsy or read Magnusson’s morbid self-descriptions.

  He stayed beside Jocundra until the sensation abated, then stood, his breath still ragged.