The Hotel Eden(32)

MR. RICK ROYALTUBER

CASSIE WAS NEVER even cranky all these years. I mean, of all people, she’s the last I’d expect to crack up. It was tough to send her off. It hurt me to put her up on the hill, but there it was, we couldn’t deny she’d lost control of her senses when she tried to harm Mrs. Narkenpie. How do you think I feel knowing she’s up there, locked up in a nuthouse night and day, wearing a straitjacket or what-have-you. But the doctor said it was for the best, and I believe him. These things, so many of them, are beyond ordinary folks.

SHERIFF CURTIS MANSARACK

INCIDENTAL TO MY call on the Royaltubers Halloween night, I had the Cramble boy pop open his trunk, and I found the following:

nylon rope, 100 yards

hammer

hatchet

power screwdriver

small grappling hook

duct tape, two rolls

canvas, 12x12

flashlights, two

pepper spray, two canisters

bolt cutters

Doritos, large bag, taco-flavored

JILL ROYALTUBER

I NEVER SAW his face. I never saw anything really. All I heard was some vibrations, I guess—maybe footsteps in the leaves, and then a kind of metallic clicking like scritch, scritch, and I was begging Jack to pull out, to just pull out of there. We hadn’t been doing anything. Jack had hurt his hand in the game against Bark City, and I had been massaging that. We were trying to relax.

MRS. CASSIE ROYALTUBER

I LOVED HOWARD from Moment Number One, when we met seventeen years ago, on the night of the construction of our high school’s homecoming float, which was a big ram. We were the Cragview Rams. He and I were part of the tissue brigade, two dozen kids handing Kleenex each to each in a line that ended at the chicken-wire sculpture, which slowly filled with the red, white, and blue paper. He was standing next to me and our hands touched once a second as the tissue flowed through us, my left hand, his right hand, which he would lose that spring, touch, touch, touch. He was the first tender boy I ever knew, and I was happy when he invited me to the homecoming dance. There is no need to explain every delicate step of that fall, Moment Number Two and Moment Number Three, except to say that when we gave our hearts, we gave our hearts completely, and everything else followed. It was the year I died and went to heaven for a while.

Moment Number Four I discovered that I was pregnant, and even that seemed magical, until my father found out thanks to my jealous classmate, wicked Maggie Rayne, who also told him that Howard and I always met after school in the Knopdish junkyard. And it was there, Moment Number Five, that my father found us in the rear seat of an old VW van, which had been like a haven for us, and he yanked me out onto the ground and slammed that rusty door forever, or so I thought, on my one good thing—Howard Lugdrum.

Howard, I heard, lost his arm in the “accident,” and my father moved us far away, here to Griggs. The Moments now go unnumbered. Before the summer was over, young, handsome Ricky Royaltuber was coming round, and I didn’t care, I did my part. I wasn’t even there, and I guess I’ve been away a long time.

I didn’t care when Maggie Rayne moved to town with her fancy doctor, and I didn’t care that she went after and got Ricky. It freed me in a way. I can hardly remember who came and went in our house—Jill’s friends, neighbors, boys.

But when I heard that the stars had relented and uncrossed and again lined up my way, that Howard had come to Griggs, working at this very loony bin in which I now live, I woke up, and in a major way. Afternoons, he comes in with a cup of tea, and we sit and he lets me hold it while we talk. These days are sweet days again, full of sweet moments. Even now I can see him through these bars, cleaning the windows of the van with the big circles of his left hand.

JACK CRAMBLE

I DON’T CARE who knows it now: I was going to spring her. Last year, when I was a nobody from nowhere, she was the only person in town who would listen. I was the new kid in town then, not captain of the football team, and she was always there for me. I told her everything. It was easier and better than talking to my own folks, and she was different, a woman, more woman than anybody I’ll ever meet again. I loved her and I loved the way she talked, putting my problems in perspective a, b, c, or 1, 2, 3. To keep seeing her I started dating that dipweed Jill, who has been nothing but a pain in the neck with all her “sharing,” “caring,” and “daring.” Such a girl. Such a needy little girl. Just thinking about her makes my skin crawl. Let’s go up to the Point, she’d say, so she could crawl all over me. I’ll tell you flat, she knows nothing about being a real woman like her mother. We went up there on Halloween after the game so I could scope out the fence and the approach to Cassie’s room. The plan was for midnight. Of course, Jill jumped me when we parked, and lucky for me the watchman came along or I’d have had to go all the way. As it was, her pants were already to her ankles, and he got a hell of a view of her bare ass in the window.