Stillness & Shadows by John Gardner (accelerated reader books TXT) 📕

on one of those excursions, “worshipped wicked, filthy things.” “What things?” he’d asked. “You’ll learn when you’re older,” his aunt had said. “Like snakes?” he’d said. “Well—” she’d said, “well, yes. Like snakes.” Intuition had leaped in him, and he’d looked at her, cunning. “Horrible dark caves?” She glanced at him, then looked casually over at the guard. “I don’t know if the Babylonians had caves or not,” she’d said.

For all its galaxy of associations, the image of his aunt at the table flashed only for a moment in Craine’s mind, then receded, taking all it had brought with it—sank away to darkness. Its passing, as if it were the passing of his life, left him numb. The world was pink now, as if he were seeing it through a sickly ruby. He felt alarm. Something had gotten into him. It made his stomach convulse, and for an instant he believed he would vomit. But the sidewalk he stared at eased back toward focus—at the edges of his vision small animals scurrying: rats, perhaps, yet not so definite as rats. Whatever they were, they were suddenly gone; the jagged lines of the sidewalk had closed like steel jaws, and his stomach quieted. He remembered, with a start, why he was here. Royce, up the street, was looking at him oddly; and no wonder, no wonder—old Craine planted on the sidewalk like an oak, three fingers on his beard, staring into dazzles of nothing like an old-time prophet out too long in the sun. Had he spoken? he wondered, glancing around in embarrassment. He was speaking now. I’m speaking now, he was saying.

He snapped his mouth shut and started walking.

It was in front of the Varsity Theater that Elaine Glass first became definitely aware that Royce was tailing her. It came about because Craine abruptly stopped, struck by a perfectly terrifying thought—a vision, rather—a great electric flash like an explosion of blinding white snow across his mind, a sudden, awful silence as if all the Muzak in the world had been ended by the indifferent flick of some stellular switch. The wide intersection into which Craine had been preparing to lower his left foot was shoetop deep, from curb to curb, in blood. Staggered by the sight, gaunt and trembling, as gray as a terminal cancer case, Craine turned on his heel (carefully, carefully) and started back in the direction from which he’d come, that is, walked straight toward bearded, stooped Elaine Glass. She stopped, open-mouthed, looking horror-stricken, awkwardly bent forward like an upright ant, then quickly pretended to be studying the glassed-in Coming Attractions. She looked to be maybe eighteen or nineteen, twenty at most. (Her type could fool you though.) She had a sickly, sulfur-yellow doughy complexion, hands so long-fingered you’d have thought she could fly with them. So far as you could tell, considering the baggy, shapeless coat, she was skinnier even than Gerald Craine. Royce nearly bumped into her, coming right behind her when she suddenly stopped dead; and when she turned toward the theater posters, Royce also turned and brazenly pretended he too was interested in the Coming Attractions. She seemed not to know him. If she’d been spying on the agency, as she’d claimed, she was a very bad spy. Craine looked, full of apprehension, above their heads.

It was a theater from the thirties. Over the marquee and on the walls around the entrance there were comets, stars, planets, also large Egyptian-looking symbols, probably meaningless. Great, mindless red lines flowed out from a tombstonelike central wedge, then plunged toward the sidewalk like the copper-wire groundings of a lightning rod. The girl was clearly frightened—though not, like Craine, of the theater’s strange symbols. She could think of no escape, merely stood there, bent toward the picture of a man who held a rifle with a telescopic sight and a woman in a partly torn-away red gown, her hands covering her breasts. Craine walked by, quiet as the moon, watching like a man in grave peril, listening behind him without turning his head. As if absentmindedly, but making it obvious, Royce slowly drew out his pistol enough to expose the barrel. Then, as if encouraged, he drew it all the way out from the left-side pocket of his scruffy leather jacket and shifted it to the right. Elaine Glass, adjusting her beard, froze, then turned her head, mouth gaping, and stared at him, then swiftly turned back to look at Craine. The lenses of her glasses, especially the right one, were extremely thick. Royce smiled. His silver tooth was like stainless steel.

Craine shuddered, unthinkingly checked to see that his gun was still there and his headpiece straight, then hurried on.

Earl Denham, standing at the door of his tobacco shop, said, “Morning, Craine.” Craine paused and turned, touching the black beard and looking up at the man from the shadow of his hat. Denham was a large man of English stock, a tasteful moustache, a Yorkshire vest. Inside his store, full of tobaccos and teas, it was the nineteenth century. Except for an occasional whimsical pipe, he sold no novelties, no gewgaws, no trifles, but a customer could get from him curlicued signs like the one hanging over his cash register: DUE AND REGULAR CONDUCT.

“Good morning,” Craine said. He shifted the Bible around in front of him, to hold it in both arms.

“I see you’ve got the Word this morning,” Denham said, and grinned. He fit the pipe back in between his gold-framed teeth.

“So I have,” Craine said thoughtfully, as if with perfect seriousness, and decided, on sudden inspiration, to go in. He gave Royce the signal for the sandwich.

The capture went, an observer might have said, as smoothly as a person in Craine’s condition could reasonably expect. He stood at the antique, greenish glass counter looking down at the pipes, both hands and elbows still closed on the Bible. Denham went around behind the counter, the soul of dignity and duty, thoughtfully smoking, bent forward just slightly