The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

They didn’t have to kill her, and the Paradox Laws stopped them no more than the laws against drinking and driving had stopped Candy Rymer on her tour of southern Kentucky’s more desperate watering holes.

The parking lot of Banty’s was paved, but the buckling concrete looked like something left over from an Israeli bombing raid in Gaza. Overhead, a fizzing neon rooster flashed on and off. Hooked in one set of its talons was a moonshine jug with XXX printed on the side.

The Rymer woman’s Explorer was parked almost directly beneath this fabulous bird, and by its stuttering orange-red glow, Wesley slashed open the elderly SUV’s front tires with the butcher knife they had brought for that express purpose. As the whoosh of escaping air hit him, he was struck by a wave of relief so great that at first he couldn’t get up but only hunker on his knees like a man praying. He only wished they’d done it back at The Broken Windmill.

‘My turn,’ Robbie said, and a moment later the Explorer settled further as the kid punctured the rear tires. Then came another hiss. He had put a hole in the spare for good measure. By then Wesley had gotten to his feet.

‘Let’s park around to the side,’ Robbie said. ‘I think we better keep an eye on her.’

‘I’m going to do a lot more than that,’ Wesley said.

‘Easy, big fella. What are you planning on?’

‘I’m not planning. I’m beyond that.’ But the rage shaking through his body suggested something different.

According to The Echo, she had called Banty’s a dive in her parting shot, but apparently that had been cleaned up for family consumption. What she actually threw back over her shoulder was, ‘I’m done doing business with this shitpit!’ Only by this point she was so drunk the vulgarity came out in a slippery slur: shi’pih.

Robbie was so fascinated at seeing the news story played out before his eyes that he made no effort to grab Wesley as he strode toward her. He did call ‘Wait!’ but Wesley didn’t. He seized the woman and commenced shaking her.

Candy Rymer’s mouth dropped open; the keys she’d been holding dropped to the cracked concrete tarmac.

‘Leggo me, you bassard!’

Wesley didn’t. He slapped her face hard enough to split her lower lip, then went back on her the other way. ‘Sober up!’ he screamed into her frightened face. ‘Sober up, you useless bitch! Get a life and stop fucking up other people’s! You’re going to kill people! Do you understand that? You are going to fucking KILL people!’

He slapped her a third time, the sound as loud as a pistol shot. She staggered back against the side of the building, weeping and holding her hands up to protect her face. Blood trickled down her chin. Their shadows, turned into elongated gantries by the neon rooster, winked off and on.

He raised his hand to slap a fourth time – better to slap than to choke, which was what he really wanted to do – but Robbie grabbed him from behind and wrestled him away. ‘Stop it! Fucking stop it, man! That’s enough!’

The bartender and a couple of goofy-looking patrons were now standing in the doorway, gawking. Candy Rymer had slid down to a sitting position. She was weeping hysterically, her hands pressed to her swelling face. ‘Why does everyone hate me?’ she sobbed. ‘Why is everyone so goddam mean?’

Wesley looked at her dully, the anger out of him. What replaced it was a kind of hopelessness. You would say that a drunk driver who caused the deaths of at least eleven people had to be evil, but there was no evil here. Only a sobbing alkie sitting on the cracked, weedy concrete of a country roadhouse parking lot. A woman who, if the off-and-on light of the stuttering neon did not lie, had wet her pants.

‘You can get to the person, but you can’t get to the evil,’ Wesley said. His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else. ‘The evil always survives. It flies off like a bigass bird and lands on someone else. That’s the hell of it, wouldn’t you say? The total hell of it?’

‘Yeah, I’m sure, very philosophical, but come on. Before they get a really good look at you or the license plate of your car.’

Robbie was leading him back to the Malibu. Wesley went as docilely as a child. He was trembling. ‘The evil always survives, Robbie. In all the Urs. Remember that.’

‘You bet, absolutely. Give me the keys. I’ll drive.’

‘Hey!’ someone shouted from behind them. ‘Why in the hell did you beat up that woman? She wasn’t doing nothing to you! Come back here!’

Robbie pushed Wesley into the car, ran around the hood, threw himself behind the wheel, and drove away fast. He kept the pedal down until the stuttering rooster disappeared, then eased up. ‘What now?’

Wesley ran a hand over his eyes. ‘I’m sorry I did that,’ he said. ‘And yet I’m not. Do you understand?’

‘Yeah,’ Robbie said. ‘You bet. It was for Coach Silverman. And Josie too.’ He smiled. ‘My little mousie.’