Velocity

“I’m for sure right.” Indicating the remaining colorful figures fixed to the triple-thick wall of hay bales, Lanny said, “Now before twilight spoils my aim, I want to kill the cast of Shrek.”

“I thought they were good movies.”

“I’m not a critic,” Lanny said impatiently, “just a guy having some fun and sharpening his work skills.”

“Okay, all right, I’m out of here. See you Friday for poker.”

“Bring something,” Lanny said.

“Like what?”

“Jose’s bringing his pork-and-rice casserole. Leroy’s bringing five kinds of salsa and lots of corn chips. Why don’t you make your tamale pie?”

As Lanny spoke, Billy winced. “We sound like a group of old maids planning a quilting party.”

“We’re pathetic,” Lanny said, “but we’re not dead yet.”

“How would we know?”

“If I were dead and in Hell,” Lanny said, “they wouldn’t let me have the pleasure of drawing cartoons. And this sure isn’t Heaven.”

By the time Billy reached his Explorer in the driveway, Lanny Olsen had begun to blast away at Shrek, Princess Fiona, Donkey, and their friends.

The eastern sky was sapphire. In the western vault, the blue had begun to wear off, revealing gold beneath, and the hint of red gesso under the gilt.

Standing by his SUV in the lengthening shadows, Billy watched for a moment as Lanny honed his marksmanship and, for the thousandth time, tried to kill off his unfulfilled dream of being a cartoonist.

3 (#ulink_55bb8b5f-512d-58b4-962f-6e0e09f4dcdf)

An enchanted princess, recumbent in a castle tower, dreaming the years away until awakened by a kiss, could not have been lovelier than Barbara Mandel abed at the Whispering Pines.

In the caress of lamplight, her golden hair spilled across the pillow, as lustrous as bullion poured from a smelter’s cauldron.

Standing at her bedside, Billy Wiles had never seen a bisque doll with a complexion as pale or as flawless as Barbara’s. Her skin appeared translucent, as though the light penetrated the surface and then brightened her face from within.

If he were to lift aside the thin blanket and sheet, he would expose an indignity not visited on enchanted princesses. An enteral-nutrition tube had been inserted surgically into her stomach.

The doctor had ordered a slow continuous feeding. The drip pump purred softly as it supplied a perpetual dinner.

She had been in a coma for almost four years.

Hers was not the most severe of comas. Sometimes she yawned, sighed, moved her right hand to her face, her throat, her breast.

Occasionally she spoke, though never more than a few cryptic words, not to anyone in the room but to some phantom of the mind.

Even when she spoke or moved her hand, she remained unaware of everything around her. She was unconscious, unresponsive to external stimulation.

At the moment she lay quiet, brow as smooth as milk in a pail, eyes unmoving behind their lids, lips slightly parted. No ghost breathed with less sound.

From a jacket pocket, Billy took a small wire-bound notebook. Clipped to it was a half-size ballpoint pen. He put them on the nightstand.

The small room was simply furnished: one hospital bed, one nightstand, one chair. Long ago Billy had added a barstool that allowed him to sit high enough to watch over Barbara.

Whispering Pines Convalescent Home provided good care but an austere environment. Half the patients were convalescing; the other half were merely being warehoused.

Perched on the stool beside the bed, he told her about his day. He began with a description of the sunrise and ended with Lanny’s shooting gallery of cartoon celebrities.

Although she had never responded to anything he’d said, Billy suspected that in her deep redoubt, Barbara could hear him. He needed to believe that his presence, his voice, his affection comforted her.

When he had no more to say, he continued to gaze at her. He did not always see her as she was now. He saw her as she’d once been—vivid, vivacious—and as she might be today if fate had been kinder.

After a while he extracted the folded message from his shirt pocket and read it again.

He had just finished when Barbara spoke in murmurs from which meaning melted almost faster than the ear could hear: “I want to know what it says…”

Electrified, he rose from the stool. He leaned over the bed rail to stare more closely at her.

Never before had anything she’d said, in her coma, seemed to relate to anything that he said or did while visiting. “Barbara?”

She remained still, eyes closed, lips parted, apparently no more alive than the object of mourning on a catafalque.

“Can you hear me?”

With trembling fingertips, he touched her face. She did not respond.

He had already told her what the strange message said, but now he read it to her just in case her murmured words had referred to it.

When he finished, she did not react. He spoke her name without effect.

Sitting on the stool once more, he plucked the little notebook from the nightstand. With the small pen, he recorded her seven words and the date that she had spoken them.

He had a notebook for each year of her unnatural sleep. Although each contained only a hundred three-by-four-inch pages, none had been filled, as she did not speak on every—or even most—visits.

I want to know what it says

After dating that unusually complete statement, he flipped pages, looking back through the notebook, reading not the dates but just some of her words.

lambs could not forgive

beef-faced boys

my infant tongue

the authority of his tombstone

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, prism

season of darkness