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For several moments - he never had any idea how long - Thad was in the grip of a panic so utter and complete he was literally unable to function in any way. It was really amazing that he was even able to breathe. Later he would think that the only time he had ever felt remotely like this was when he was ten and he and a couple of friends had decided to go swimming in mid-May. This was at least three weeks earlier than any of them had ever gone swimming before, but it seemed a fine idea all the same; the day was clear and very hot for May in New Jersey, temperatures in the high eighties. The three of them had walked down to Lake Davis, their satiric name for the little pond a mile from Thad's house in Bergenfield. He was the first out of his clothes and into his bathing suit, hence the first into the water. He simply cannonballed in from the bank, and he still thought he might have come close to dying then - just how close was not anything he really wanted to know. The air that day might have felt like mid-summer, but the water felt like that last day in early winter before ice skims itself over the surface. His nervous system had momentarily short-circuited. His breath had stopped dead in his lungs, his heart had stopped in the very act of beating, and when he broke the surface it was as if he were a car with a dead battery and he needed a jump-start, needed it quick, and didn't know how to do it. He remembered how bright the sunlight had been, making ten thousand gold sparks on the blueblack surface of the water, he remembered Harry Black and Randy Wister standing on the bank, Harry pulling his faded gym-trunks up and over his generous butt, Randy standing there naked with his bathing suit in one hand and yelling How's the water, Thad? as he came bursting up, and all he had been able to think was I'm dying, I'm right here in the sun with my two best friends and it's after school and I have no homework and Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House is going to be on the Early Show tonight and Mom said I could eat in front of the TV but I'll never see it because I'm going to be dead. What had been easy, uncomplicated breath only seconds before was a clogged athletic sock in his throat, something he could neither push out nor suck in. His heart lay in his chest like a small cold stone. Then it had broken, he sucked in a great, whooping breath, his body rashed out in a billion goose-pimples, and he had answered Randy with the unthinking malicious glee which is the sole province of little boys: Water's fine! Not too cold! Jump in! It occurred to him only years later that he could have killed one or both of them, just as he had almost killed himself.
That was how it was now; he was in exactly the same sort of whole-body lock. They had a
name for something like this in the army - a cluster f**k. Yes. Good name. When it came to terminology, the army was great. He was sitting here in the middle of a great big cluster f**k. He sat on the chair, not in it but on it, leaning forward, the phone still in his hand, staring at the dead eye of the television. He was aware that Liz had come into the doorway, she was asking him first who it was and then what was wrong, and it was like that day at Lake Davis, just like it, his breath a dirty cotton sock in his throat, one that wouldn't go either way, all the lines of communication.between brain and heart suddenly down, we are sorry for this unscheduled stop, service will be
resumed as soon as possible, or maybe service will never be resumed, but either way, please enjoy your stay in beautiful downtown Endsville, the place where all rail service terminates. Then it just broke, as it had broken that other time, and he took a gasping breath. His heart took two rapid random galloping beats in his chest and then resumed its regular rhythm . . . although its pace was still fast, much too fast.
That scream. Jesus Christ Our Lord, that scream.
Liz was running across the room now, and he was aware that she'd snatched the telephone receiver out of his hand only when he saw her shouting Hello? and Who is this? into it again and again. Then she heard the hum of the broken connection and put it back down.
'Miriam,' he managed to say at last as Liz turned to him. 'It was Miriam and she was screaming.'
Except in books, I've never killed anyone.
The sparrows are flying.
Down here we call that fool's stuffing.
Down here we call it Endsville.
Gonna hook back north, hoss. You gotta lie me an alibi, because I'm gonna hook back north. Gonna cut me some beef.
'Miriam? Screaming? Miriam Cowley? Thad, what's going on?'
'It is him,' Thad said. 'I knew it was. I think I knew it almost from the first, and then today . . . this afternoon . . . I had another one.'