Part 19 (2/2)

This last was a slap at her, because shehad been stupid. Even as I said it, though, I was thinking,I'm never going to be lucky enough for that.

A long silence followed as I petted Ready Teddy and pretended that I couldn't feel Mother's eyes on me. Then she said, ”Promise.”

I couldn't help looking up. ”Promise what?”

Now she was the one who looked away. ”Promise that you won't get anyone pregnant. If you don't promise, I'll have to leave. On a UFO. A s.h.i.+p of light. The world is hard enough as it is. I couldn't stay knowing that my son had made it worse.”

I picked up my dog and stood. ”I promise,” I said. It seemed the quickest way to get the whole scene over with.

Mother looked at me again and smiled, her eyes glistening. ”You're a good boy,” she said, turning to go inside. ”Come in and eat. Pot roast and baked potatoes.”

Of all the meals we ate together, that is the one I can still taste.

Reading Mother's letters to Uncle Mike was a lot like reading Volumes III and IV, except that her isolation comes through even more strongly. She missed her brother, and in seven of the twenty-two letters she even tells him that ”sometimes I miss Mama almost as much”-a statement that has no equivalent in the diary. Yet it rings true, especially since Mother and Grandmother did begin to spend time together after Uncle Mike's death (a trend that was destroyed, of course, when Grandmother brought me home to find Mother and Keith making love on the carpet).

I sat at Pete's desk going through the letters for two hours and was beginning to think that perhaps I would emerge from the experience unchanged. Parts of the letters were tough going, but I hadn't come across anything startling.

Then I came to the last letter in the stack, dated August 29, 1968. It could not have arrived in Vietnam until after Uncle Mike's death.

It begins with the usual letter-from-home news, but concludes with this: I am going to tell you something now, Mikey, that I have not told anyone else. I have not even put it into my diary because I don't want to read it again after writing it down, but I have to let it out this once because it has been preying on my mind. When you come home, pretend I never told you.

I had a dream during the Democratic National Convention that did not seem to be a dream at all.

I dreamed that I was walking along a sidewalk in Chicago when I became trapped between a mob of anti-war protesters and another mob of riot police. Both sides converged on me, and a policeman, thinking that I was one of the protesters, clubbed me. I fell, and they all began trampling me. I tried to crawl away, and then there were bodies falling on me, smothering me.

There was blood on my mouth and nose. My eyes were closed. I was being killed. The whole worldwas watching.

Then, just as I could feel the last of my life about to be crushed, all of the weight disappeared, and I floated up, up, up. I opened my eyes and saw that I was suspended in the center of a sphere of light high above the street. I could see through the sphere, and I looked at the riot below me.

The shouts and screams had become one loud rumble.

I though that I was dead, that I had left my body. But then I felt a vibration in the sphere that surrounded me, and a voice burrowed into my head, saying, ”You must remain until twenty-five years have pa.s.sed.”

The sphere carried me higher and flew me home, depositing me in my bed here in Topeka. When I awoke the next morning, there was blood on my pillow from a cut on my lower lip, and I had a bruise on my forehead. I covered the bruise with makeup and went to work.

I have thought about it a lot, and I am sure that I know what the sphere of light meant: I am to die on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of Buddy Holly.

It is not an easy thing to know when you will die, even if it will not happen until 1984. That is why I had to tell you, Mikey-you, who must think of death every day and find a way to live with it. I am sorry to give you more.

And now that I have written it, I will find a way to live with it myself. Pretending that I don't know will, I think, be the wisest course. Whatever works.

I read those paragraphs over and over again.

”Why didn't you tell me too?” I murmured.

But I knew that Mother never would have told me anything that she wasn't even able to tell her diary.

Besides, I had been eight years old. I couldn't have understood. Now I was twenty-nine, and I still couldn't.

When I heard Pete's truck drive up outside, I gathered the letters and replaced them in the metal box, glad that I had finished before he had returned. Then I stood and opened the blinds over the window to the left of the desk. Pete had stepped out of the truck and was petting an enormous Doberman pinscher with a galvanized chain collar.

I yelled and burst out of the room, colliding with Gretchen, who shoved me into a wall. ”Watch where you're going, lardbrain,” she said.

Mike and Laura appeared in the kitchen doorway. ”Is something wrong, Mr. Vale?” Laura asked.

”Do you own a rifle?” I gasped.

”Dad has a shotgun,” Mike said, ”but I hid the sh.e.l.ls so he wouldn't hurt himself.”

”Find them! My neighbor's dog is here!” The sound of the back door slamming shut echoed through the house. ”Hey, kids, look what I've got,”

Pete called. ”I gave him a piece of jerky, and he seems to have decided that I'm G.o.d.” A moment later he came into the dining room with Ringo trotting by his side.

I tried to become part of the wall. ”Are you crazy?” I shrieked. ”That's the monster that bit off my tail pipe!”

Pete looked at me and back to the dog. ”No kidding?”

Gretchen got down on her knees and began petting the Doberman. ”I don't care,” she said. ”He saved my b.u.t.t from the Bald Avenger, and yours too.”

”Only so he could have us for himself,” I said. ”It was one killer battling another.”

”Yeah, some killer,” Gretchen said, reaching up to scratch behind Ringo's ears. His eyes were closed, and his bobbed tail was wagging.

”He's beautiful,” Laura said, joining Gretchen in petting him.

Mike crossed his arms. ”Looks like a four-legged Gestapo officer.”

”Oh, shut up,” Laura said. ”He can't help that.”

”Who's the Bald Avenger?” Pete asked.

”Somebody who's after me,” I said. ”Just like Ringo's been after me.”

Mike gave me a look. ”Ringo?”

”I told you, he belongs to my neighbors. That's what they call him.”

Mike looked back at the Doberman. ”I don't see the resemblance. Still, a dog named Ringo isn't likely to be a fascist.” He joined Gretchen and Laura in stroking the animal, which quivered with pleasure.

”Don't trust him,” I said. I was beginning to feel foolish for standing against the wall while everyone else was falling all over the creature. ”I'm telling you, this dog ate a chunk of my motorcycle and has been following me ever since.”

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