bed and left the light on and didn't sleep at all. It was the longest night of my life, and several times I thought of getting up and going in with my mom and dad, the way I had done when I was small. Once I actually caught myself getting out of bed and groping for my crutches. I lay back down again. I was afraid for all of them, yes, right. But that wasn't the worst. Not anymore.
I was afraid of losing my mind. That was the worst.
The sun was just poking over the horizon when I finally dropped off and dozed uneasily for three or four hours. And when I woke up, my mind had already begun trying to heal itself with unreality. My problem was that I could simply no longer afford to listen to that lulling song. The line was blurred for good.
PART III: CHRISTINE - TEENAGE DEATH-SONGS Chapter 46 GEORGE LEBAY AGAIN
That fateful night the car was stalled
Upon the railroad track,
I pulled you out and you were safe
But you went running back . . .
- Mark Dinning
On Friday January 5th I got a postcard from Richard McCandless, secretary of the Libertyville American Legion Post. Written on the back in smudgy pencil was George LeBay's home address in Paradise Falls, Ohio. I carried the card around in my hip pocket most of the day, taking it out occasionally and looking at it. I didn't want to call him; I didn't want to talk to him about his crazy brother Roland again; I didn't want this crazy business to go any further at all.
That evening my father and mother went out to the Monroeville Mall with Ellie, who wanted to spend some of her Christmas money on a new pair of downhill skis. Half an hour after they were gone, I picked up the telephone and propped McCandless's postcard up in front of me. A call to Ohio directory assistance placed Paradise Falls in area code 513 - western Ohio. After a pause for thought I called directory assistance again and got LeBay's number. I jotted it on the card, paused for thought again - a long pause, this time - and then picked up the phone a third time. I dialled half of LeBay's number and then hung up. Fuck it, I thought, full of a nervous resentment I could not recall ever feeling before. Enough is enough, so fuck it, I'm not calling him. I'm done with it, I wash my hands of the whole crappy mess. Let him go to hell in his own handcar. Fuck it.
'Fuck it,' I whispered, and got out of there before my conscience could begin to bore into me again. I went upstairs, took a sponge bath, and then turned in. I was soundly asleep before Ellie and my folks came back in, and I slept long and well that night. A good thing, because it was a long time before I slept that well again. A very long time.
While I slept, someone - something - killed Rudolph Junkins of the Pennsylvania State Police. It was in the paper when I got up next morning. DARNELL INVESTIGATOR MURDERED NEAR BLAIRSVILLE, the headline shouted.
My father was upstairs taking a shower; Ellie and two of her friends out on the porch, giggling and cawing over a game of Monopoly; my mother working on one of her stories in the sewing room. I was at the table by myself, stunned and scared. It occurred to me that Leigh and her family were going to be back from California tomorrow, school would start again the day after, and unless Arnie (or LeBay) changed his mind, she would be actively pursued.
I slowly pushed away the eggs I had scrambled for myself. I no longer wanted them. Last night it had seemed possible to push away the whole ominous and inexplicable business of Christine as easily as I'd just pushed away my breakfast. Now I wondered how I could have been so naive.
Junkins was the man Arnie had mentioned New Year's Eve. I couldn't even kid myself that it hadn't been. The paper said he had been the man in charge of Pennsylvania's part of the Will Darnell investigation, and it hinted that some shadowy crime organization had been behind the murder. The Southern Mob, Arnie would have said. Or the crazy Colombians.
I thought differently.
Junkins's car had been driven off a lonely country road and battered to so much senseless wreckage