First to die, p.5
First to Die, page 5
“Mollie,” Roberta said. “What’s your biggest regret?”
“Other than taking this job?” Roberta threw a bunched-up Kleenex at her. “Let me think.…” One obvious regret stood out, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about it. “There was a boy back home,” she began. “His name was Merle Johnsrud. He was my boyfriend. I was so in love, I would have … well, I was as much in love as you can be when you’re a sophomore in high school. Anyway, at our school they had a special dance the week of graduation, but my dad got this job here in Bayside, so we had to move, and I never got to dance with him one last time. We’d been through an awful lot together.”
“Where’s he now?”
“He’s still in Iowa,” Mollie said. “He’ll never leave. I got a letter from him saying he’d met a girl he was thinking of marrying. It’s no big deal now. What’s your biggest regret?”
“I regret I never took piano lessons,” Roberta said. “I’m serious. For years my mother tried to get me to take piano lessons. Now I’d give anything if I could make music, because I’ve got tunes in my head all the time.”
“I’ll give you piano lessons,” Johnny said. “I’ve been playing since I was six. What? What’s everybody looking at me for?”
Mollie laughed. It was odd. Johnny looked more like a Hell’s Angel than a pianist. She was beginning to think that Johnny was a lot more interesting than she’d thought at first. And attractive.
Jaime excused himself and headed once again for the storage closet.
“I have a question for Johnny,” Mollie said. “Maybe everybody else knows this, and I don’t because I’m the new kid around here, but everybody tells me you used to be a jock. Not just a jock but the star in three sports at Franklin Junior High—right? You were the quarterback on the football team.…”
“That beat a team quarterbacked by your boyfriend Jordan Bosworth forty-nine to thirty for the City Championship,” Johnny finished.
“So what happened? Why’d you quit?”
Mollie and Jordan had talked about it, back when Mollie first mentioned Chelios was a co-worker. Some talent, Jordan said of Chelios, but he can’t control it—cocky too, a dirty player.
“Yeah,” Sherman said. “Everybody figured you and J.B. would be fighting it out for starting quarterback in high school.”
Johnny shrugged. “I didn’t like having coaches telling me what to do,” he said. “Besides—Frank hated my guts before he even met me, so what was the point?” Frank Dorsey was Bayside’s varsity football coach.
“I don’t buy it,” Mollie said. “You’d have seen that as a challenge.”
“He pushed me against a locker,” Johnny said. “He told me I was wasting my life, because he’d seen me hanging out with some people he didn’t like. I lipped off, and he pushed me. It was during tryouts. Anyway, I pushed him back, not hard, but he slipped on the wet floor and hit his head. There were no witnesses. After that I knew I’d be expelled or suspended, so I just quit. Football, school, everything.”
“I heard rumors,” Roberta said.
“But we’re after the truth, right?” Johnny said. He took a deep breath.
“Wasn’t there another reason?” Meredith asked.
Johnny was silent for a moment. “Maybe I just needed an excuse,” he said when he spoke up again. “See, I had to get a job when my old man went to prison.” He paused, waiting for the news to sink in. “I live with my little sister Katie and my grandma. My mom moved to Las Vegas to be a card dealer. She sends money from Vegas whenever she feels like it, but it isn’t enough, and my grandma’s old, so I didn’t have any choice.”
“What’d he do?” Mollie asked. “Your father.”
“For a living?” Johnny said. “He was full of crap for a living.”
“I mean what’d he do to go to prison?”
“What’d he get caught doing?” Johnny said, laughing. “I actually used to admire him for never having to get a real job. Sometimes he drove trucks, and for a while he bought and sold antiques. Mostly we had a garage—we live over a big garage—and he’d do auto repairs. He could fix anything, and he taught me how to do it, too. Then he got into buying and selling cars. He never had a dealer’s license, though. He said that was just the government trying to interfere in people’s business, so sometimes he’d bring in a car and just sell the parts. Later I learned he didn’t always have all the paperwork on some of those cars. Sometimes he didn’t even have the keys.”
“He ran a chop shop,” Jaime said. “Stripping stolen cars.”
Johnny nodded. “He tried to keep it to a minimum, but sometimes he’d lose too much money at the track. That’s not why he went to jail though.”
“Why did he?” Mollie asked.
“Arson,” Johnny said. “He and another guy were hired to torch an empty warehouse by a couple of lawyers who owned it. Three thousand each. I knew what he was doing, and I told him not to do it, but he said it was only getting even with the insurance companies, who rip people off all the time. Don’t you find it funny that now I’m working for one? I do. But my parole officer hooked me up with Nick. Anyways, my dad got caught. He’s doing six years. The lawyers got off. And, by the way, I still am a jock. But I’d rather fix cars than play sports any day—fixing cars, I got a trade.”
“You’re on parole?” Mollie asked.
“Didn’t you get busted for beating up three guys in a fight once?” Sherman said. “That’s what everybody says.”
“It was only two guys,” Johnny said. “They were guys I knew. I needed a ride home one night from a party. On the way they stop to buy some cigarettes. The next thing I know, they come running out with guns in their hands and a sack full of cash. I told them to let me out, but they said I was in it as deep as them. The fight started when they dropped me off. I got busted as an accessory anyway—what cop is going to believe the son of an arsonist when I tell them I was just hitching a ride? I guess that’s my biggest regret.”
“You beat up two guys with guns?” Sherman said.
“I took the guns away first,” Johnny said. Then he took a deep breath and cocked an eyebrow in Mollie’s direction. “What about you?”
“Why did I quit the football team?”
“No,” Johnny said. “What’s your biggest regret?”
“I’ve already answered that.”
“You gave an answer, but it wasn’t the truth. That’s the name of the game, right? Truth?” Everyone waited for Mollie to defend herself.
“How’d you know?”
“You said you’d been through a lot,” Johnny said. “With Merle. It was the way you said it. Missing a lousy dance couldn’t be anyone’s biggest regret.”
Mollie thought back to Onagle, Iowa, autumn, two years ago. A sleepy college town at the beginning of the prairie, surrounded by cornfields and soybean fields and hog farms. Nine restaurants, one high school, a sluggish river rolling gently through it all, Fourth of July picnics, winter sledding at the golf course, a downtown pedestrian mall where a girl could hang out all summer if she wanted to, meet her friends, make plans. Her life was as perfect as she could ever imagine life getting, a future full of promise, adventure, innocence. Until that fall.
“In October,” Mollie began, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging her legs. She stared at the candle flame, remembering another candle inside a pumpkin. “Two years ago—it was Halloween—my older sister Ellen was going to a party. She and her friends had dressed up like these backup singers in that Robert Palmer video, with the miniskirts and the slicked-back hair and the red lips. My mother had a fit, and they ended up having a big fight. The party was at the Larsons’ house, friends of the family, so my mother wanted Ellen to take me to the party. Ellen said she didn’t mind, but I knew she didn’t want her kid sister tagging along, so I told my mom I had a party of my own to go to. I ended up spending three hours in a bowling alley.”
“That’s it?” Meredith said. “You regret not going to a party?”
“Yeah,” Mollie said. “Because after the party, my sister and three of her girlfriends got a ride home from a kid named Gerry Hoaglund. He had a black Trans-Am. They went driving around. My sister hadn’t been drinking, but Gerry was stoned, and he ended up losing control and driving the car into a tree at ninety-five miles an hour. Gerry and one girl in the backseat lived.” Mollie could hardly get the words out. “Ellen was sitting in the front seat.”
“Oh, God,” Meredith said. She put her arm around Mollie.
“If I’d gone to the party, I could have talked her out of getting into that car. I wouldn’t have had to—there would have been too many people in the car, so Ellen and I probably would have gotten a ride home from somebody else. I think about it a lot.” Every second of that awful night was still as clear in Mollie’s memory as if it had happened yesterday. “That’s why we had to leave Onagle and move here. When something like that happens in a small town, there’s nowhere you can go to get away from the memories. You got friends to support you and all that, but if you want to really get away from it, you have to leave. My dad applied for a job out here and they hired him.”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and sniffed.
“Anyway, Johnny, that’s what Merle and I went through,” Mollie said. “Mostly we just talked and talked.” She smiled to remember. “We had this one bridge we used to sit under and watch the river and talk. I could call him up anytime, day or night, and say, ‘Meet me at the bridge,’ and he’d be there.”
Suddenly she heard music. She looked up. Johnny Chelios had turned Jaime’s boombox on. Mollie had almost forgotten music existed. Johnny rose and walked over to where Mollie was sitting. He held out his hand to her.
“I’m not Merle,” Johnny said, “but if you want to have that dance now, I’d like to fill in for him if I could.”
Under other circumstances Mollie would have been too embarrassed to accept the offer, but now she felt there was nothing she couldn’t do in front of the others. She took his hand, got to her feet, put her arms around him, and leaned her head against his chest. She could feel his strength, the thick muscles in his back and arms, but he held her gently, and she closed her eyes and simply listened to the music, imagining herself far away, swaying slowly from side to side, on a crowded dance floor in another place and time. She was in a gown, and Johnny was in a tuxedo, and Ellen was there, smiling at her, until the music began to slow down and fade out, sounding more and more distant. She kept dancing, even after the music had stopped. When she opened her eyes, Jaime was holding his tape player and shaking it.
“I guess that’s about it for the batteries,” he said, setting it down.
“Maybe we should all try to get some sleep,” Johnny said.
“I got to pee,” Jaime said, departing for the storage closet.
“Again?” Sherman said. “Sheesh. Two cups of water, and he’s peeing like a racehorse.”
“Me too,” Mollie said, following Jaime. When Jaime finished his business, Mollie stopped him, out of earshot of the others. Sherman’s observation bothered her. She spoke in a whisper.
“You’re not all right, are you Jaime?” she asked. He looked at her.
“I’m okay.”
“What’s wrong—tell me.” she insisted.
“I’m diabetic,” he said. “But don’t worry. It’s not severe.”
“Don’t you have to get insulin or something?”
“Not really,” he said. “I mean, if I had insulin in my body and no food, or lots of food in my body but no insulin, that would be bad. As it is, it just makes me feel like I have to pee a lot, but nothing comes out. And I feel a little spacey.”
“Jaime …”
“Promise you won’t tell the others.”
She promised.
CHAPTER 6
Mollie woke when she heard voices. She sat up, waking Pirate, who was curled in her arms. The others were gathered near the air duct. Something about the scene, six figures silhouetted in candlelight, was so bizarre and disorienting that for a moment she wasn’t sure she was really awake. Standing in the middle of the group was Janet. She’d taken off her shoes and socks and had something tied around one ankle. It was a rope made from lengths of cloth, and three-inch strips of a wool blanket, tied end to end.
“You’re awake,” Meredith said. “We thought we’d let you sleep.”
“What’s going on?”
“We’re busting out,” Sherman said. “Janet’s going to try crawling through the air duct.”
Mollie looked at Janet, who was doing her best to be brave, holding a two-inch candle stub in her hand to light her way.
“She’s too weak,” Mollie said. “What if she gets stuck?”
“That’s what the rope is for,” Sherman said. “If she gets stuck, we’ll pull her out.”
“What if the rope breaks?”
“You didn’t exactly wake up an optimist this morning, did you?” Janet said.
“I just think …” Mollie said, forcing the words to come out. She looked right at Pirate, who sat at her feet, wagging his tail. “There might be a way to hold out. It’s not worth it if Janet …”
“Please,” Janet said. She took Mollie by the hand and squeezed it. “I want to try. I’m the only one who can do it.” She shrugged. “Somebody’s got to get help, right?”
Mollie thought of Jaime, who looked worse than he had the night before.
“How about two ropes?” Mollie suggested. “One around each ankle.”
“If she gets stuck, I’ll personally rip the walls apart to get her out,” Johnny said.
“Why don’t you try it now?” Janet asked him.
“You first,” Johnny told her. “I wouldn’t want to spoil your moment.”
“Here goes nothing,” Janet said, climbing the ladder.
If Janet got stuck, she was to tap her foot three times. In answer to a question, one tap meant yes and two meant no. She would only be able to inch her way forward, holding the candle in one hand, pulling with her other hand and pushing with her toes. She managed to get her arms, head, and shoulders in by herself, repeating the words “I am thin as a snake” in Chinese over and over, after which Johnny and Roberta lifted her legs and gave her a push. The ropes were double-and triple-checked. Janet had a few inches of vertical clearance, slightly less than that to either side. She began to crawl forward slowly, first six inches, then a foot, then a yard.
“Can you hear us?” Mollie called out.
One tap.
The light from Janet’s candle flickered in the upper corners of the vent. Mollie could only imagine what Janet could see ahead of her. She couldn’t imagine what Janet was feeling.
“You’re a snake, Janet,” Sherman called out. “Thin as a snake.”
One tap.
She moved forward another few feet, but then suddenly she stopped. Mollie couldn’t see the light any longer.
“Are you all right? Did your candle blow out?”
No response.
“Can you still hear me?”
One tap.
“Can you move?”
One tap. Janet pushed forward another three inches, then stopped again.
“Can you move? Are you okay?” Mollie called.
No response. Then two taps.
“We’re pulling you out!”
Two urgent taps. She was twelve feet down the duct, too far for anyone to reach her now. Mollie could see only the soles of Janet’s bare feet.
“Come on, Janet. Come on,” Mollie said. “Are you still okay?”
One tap.
Then two taps.
Then three.
“Pull her out,” Johnny said. “Slowly—slow and steady. No sudden pressure.” Mollie crossed her fingers. At first Janet wouldn’t budge. Johnny spoke calmly but urgently. “Try to relax your whole body, because if you get all clenched up, it’s harder to pull.”
One tap.
Janet slid back, three inches, six. The ropes held. When they could reach Janet’s ankles, Johnny and Roberta grabbed them and pulled her out the rest of the way. She had a scrape on one cheek, but other than that, she was no worse for wear.
“It comes to a T,” Janet said, trying to catch her breath. “No way to go around the corner. I need to sit.”
No one said a word. Mollie knew what everyone was thinking. It had been their last hope. They’d yet to hear any noise from the surface, any jackhammers or bulldozers. Without a sound, and without communications, it was easy to feel as if they’d been forgotten, abandoned. Mollie sat on the couch, holding Pirate in her lap, stroking his head. His stomach growled constantly now, and he’d refused water the last time she’d offered it. Johnny sat down next to her.
“We should probably eat pretty soon,” he said softly. “I’ll do it when the time comes. It’ll be quick.”
“I know,” Mollie said. “Just give me a minute to say good-bye.” She stood up, holding Pirate in her arms. She lit a second candle and went into the storage closet, where she sat on an empty civil-defense drum and held the puppy close to her.
“It’s not your fault,” she told him. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
She set the candle on a shelf, next to one of the Geiger counters. Bomb shelters. What a concept. Places to hide while the world came to an end. Was it really worth surviving if everyone you loved ended up dead? The walls were concrete block. It was almost appropriate, being trapped in a tomb, a perfectly logical place to die. For the first time she was able to say the word. Death. There was always the possibility that death was incredibly pleasurable. Fearing it was just one more case of people making assumptions without information.
“Whatever death is, we all have to face it sometime, don’t we?” she asked Pirate. “That includes dogs, too.” A spider crawled along the edge of the shelf, in no apparent hurry. At least the spider had nothing to worry about. For him the earthquake probably opened up a world of new opportunities. Mollie moved the Geiger counter when the spider crawled behind it. She watched as the spider moved from the shelf to the wall, strolled casually down the wall, and disappeared into a crack in the plaster.
