Lullaby

Chapter 30

Mona stands at my elbow. She holds a glossy brochure open, pushing it in my face, saying, «Can we go here? Please? Just for a couple hours? Please?»

Photographs in the brochure show people screaming with their hands in the air, riding a roller coaster. Photos show people driving go-carts around a track outlined in old tires. More people are eating cotton candy and riding plastic horses on a merry-go-round. Other people are locked into seats on a Ferris wheel. Along the top of the brochure in big scrolling letters it says: LaughLand, The Family Place.

Except in place of the a 's are four laughing clown faces. A mother, a father, a son, a daughter.

We have another eighty-four books to disarm. That's dozens more libraries in cities all over the country. Then there's the grimoire to find. There's people to bring back from the dead. Or just castrate. Or there's all of humanity to kill, depending on whom you ask.

There's so much we need to get fixed. To get back to God, as Mona would say. Just to break even.

Karl Marx would say we've made every plant and animal our enemy to justify killing it.

In the newspaper today, it says the husband of one of the fashion models is being held under suspicion of murder.

I'm standing at a public phone outside some small-town library while Helen's inside trashing another book with Oyster.

A man's voice on the phone says, «Homicide Division.»

Into the phone, I ask, who is this?

And the voice says, «Detective Ben Danton, Homicide Division.» He says, «Who is this?»

A police detective. Mona would call him my savior, sent to wrangle me back into the fold with the rest of humanity. This is the number that's been appearing on my pager for the past couple days.

Mona turns the brochure over and says, «Just look.» Braided in her hair are broken windmills and train trestles and radio towers.

Photos show smiling children getting hugged by clowns. It shows parents strolling hand in hand and riding little skiffs through a Tunnel of Love.

She says, «This trip doesn't have to be all work.»

Helen comes out of the library doors and starts down the front steps, and Mona turns and rushes at her, saying, «Helen, Mr. Streator said it was okay.»

And I put the pay phone receiver to my chest and say, I did not.

Oyster is hanging back, a step behind Helen's elbow.

Mona holds the brochure in Helen's face, saying, «Look how much fun.»

On the phone, Detective Danton says, «Who is this?»

It was okay to sacrifice the poor guy in his race car boxer shorts. It's okay to sacrifice the young woman in the apron printed with little chickens. To not tell them the truth, to let them suffer. And to sacrifice the widower of some fashion model. But sacrificing me to save the millions is another thing altogether.

Into the phone, I say my name, Streator, and that he paged me.

«Mr. Streator,» he says, «we'd like you to come in for questioning.»

I ask, about what?

«Why don't we talk about that in person?» he says.

I ask if this is about a death.

«When can you make it in?» he says.

I ask if this is about the series of deaths with no apparent cause.

«Sooner would be better than later,» he says.

I ask if this is because one victim was my upstairs neighbor and three were my editors.

And Danton says, «You don't say?»

I ask if this is because I passed three more victims in the street the moment before they each died.

And Danton says, «That's news to me.»

I ask if this is because I stood within spitting distance of the young sideburns guy who died in the bar on Third Avenue.

«Uh-huh,» he says. «You'd mean Marty Latanzi.»

I ask if this is because all the dead fashion models show signs of postmortem sex, the same way my wife did twenty years ago. And no doubt they have security camera film of me talking to a librarian named Symon at the moment he dropped dead.

You can hear a pencil somewhere scratching fast notes on paper.

Away from the phone, I hear someone else say, «Keep him on the line.»

I ask if this is really a ploy to arrest me for suspicion of murder.

And Detective Danton says, «Don't make us issue a bench warrant.»

The more people die, the more things stay the same.

Officer Danton, I say. I ask, can he tell me where to find him at this exact moment?

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but here we go again. Fast as a scream, the culling song spins through my head, and the phone line goes dead.

I've killed my savior. Detective Ben Danton. I'm that much further from the rest of humanity.

Constructive destruction.

Oyster shakes his plastic cigarette lighter, slapping it against the palm of one hand. Then he gives it to Helen and watches while she takes a folded page out of her purse. She lights the page 27 and holds it over the gutter.

While Mona's reading the brochure, Helen holds the burning page near the edge of it. The photos of happy, smiling families puff into flame, and Mona shrieks and drops them. Still holding the burning page, Helen kicks the burning families into the gutter. The fire in her hand gets bigger and bigger, stuttering and smoking in the breeze.

And for whatever reason, I think of Nash and his burning fuse.

Helen says, «I don't do fun. » With her other hand, Helen jingles her car keys at me.

Then it happens. Oyster has his arm locked around Helen's head from behind. That fast, he knocks her off her feet and as she throws her arms out for balance, he grabs the burning poem. The culling song.

Helen drops to her knees, drops out of his grip, she cries just one little scream when her knees hit the concrete sidewalk, and she tumbles into the gutter. Her keys still in her fist.

Oyster beats the burning page against his thigh. He holds it in both hands, his eyes twitching back and forth, reading down the page as the fire rolls up from the bottom.

Both his hands are on fire before he lets go, yelling, «No!» and sticks his fingers into his mouth.

Mona steps back, her hands pressed over her ears. Her eyes squeezed shut.

Helen on her hands and knees in the gutter, next to the burning families, she looks up at Oyster. Oyster as good as dead. Helen's hairdo is broken open and pink hair hangs in her eyes. Her nylons are torn. Her knees, bloody.

«Don't kill him!» Mona yells. «Don't kill him, please! Don't kill him!»

Oyster drops to his knees and grabs at the burned paper on the sidewalk.

And slow, slow as the hour hand on a clock, Helen rises to her feet. Her face is red. It's not the red of a Burmese ruby. It's more the red of the blood running down from her knees.

With Oyster kneeling. With Helen standing over him. With Mona holding both hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes shut. Oyster's sifting through his ashes. Helen's bleeding. Me, I'm still watching from the phone booth, and a flock of starlings flies up from the roof of the library.

Oyster, the evil, resentful, violent son Helen might have, if she still had a son.

Just the same old power grab.

«Go ahead,» Oyster says, and he lifts his head to meet Helen's eyes. He smiles with just half his mouth and says, «You killed your real son. You can kill me.»

And then it happens. Helen slaps him hard across the face, dragging her fistful of keys through each cheek. A moment later, more blood.

Another scarred parasite. Another mutilated cockroach armoire.

And Helen's eyes snap up from Oyster bleeding to the starlings circling above us, and bird by bird, they drop. Their black feathers flashing an oily blue. Their dead eyes just staring black beads. Oyster holds his face, both his hands full of blood. Helen glaring up into the sky, the shining black bodies hiss down and bounce, bird by bird, around us on the concrete.

Constructive destruction.