Insomnia | Page 4

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seventy yards or so from the picnic area where the Harris Avenue Old
Crocks gathered. As the car approached the gate, Ralph recognized it as
Ed and Helen Deepneau's Datsun . . . and it was really moving.

Ralph stopped on the shoulder, unaware that his hands had curled into
anxious fists as the small brown car bore down on the closed gate.

You needed a key-card to open the gate from the outside; from the inside
an electric-eye beam did the 'Oh. But the beam was set close to the
gate, very close, and at the speed the Datsun was going ...

At the last moment (or so it seemed to Ralph), the small brown car
scrunched to a stop, the tires sending up puffs of blue smoke that made
Ralph think of the 747 touching down, and the gate began to trundle
slowly open on its track. Ralph's fisted hands relaxed.

An arm emerged from the driver's-side window of the Datsun and began to
wave up and down, apparently haranguing the gate, urging it to hurry it
up. There was something so absurd about this that Ralph began to smile.
The smile died before it had exposed even a gleam of teeth, however. The
wind was still freshening from the west, where the thunderheads were,
and it carried the screaming voice of the Datsun's driver: "You son of a
bitch fucker.t You bastard Eat my cock Bur up HurrY up and lick shit,
you fucking asshole cuntlapper. Fuckling booger! Ratdick riingmeat
Suckhole."' "That can't be Ed Deepneau," Ralph murmured. He began to
walk again without realizing it. "Can't be."

Ed was a research chemist at the Hawking Laboratories research facility
in Fresh Harbor, one of the kindest, most civil young men galph had ever
met. Both he and Carolyn were very fond of Ed's wife, Helen, and their
new baby, Natalie, as well, A visit from Natalie was one of the few
things with the power to lift Carolyn out of her own life these days,
and, sensing this, Helen brought her over frequently.

Ed never complained. There were men, he knew, who wouldn't have cared
to have the missus running to the old folks down the street every time
the baby did some new and entrancing thing, especially when the
granny-figure in the picture was ill. Ralph had an idea that Ed
wouldn't be able to tell someone to go to hell without suffering a
sleepless night in consequence, but"You fuckting whoremaster! Move your
sour shit-caked ass, you hear me? Butt-fucker. Cunt-rammer.

But it sure sounded like Ed. Even from two or three hundred yards away,
it certainly sounded like him.

Now the driver of the Datsun was revving his engine like a kid in a
muscle-car waiting for the light to turn green. Clouds of exhaust smoke
farted up from the tailpipe. As soon as the gate had retracted enough
to allow the Datsun passage, the .

car leaped forward, squirting through the gap with its engine roaring,
and when it did, Ralph got a clear look at the driver. He was close
enough now for there to be no doubt: it was Ed, all right.

The Datsun bounced along the short unpaved stretch of lane between the
gate and the Harris Street Extension. A horn blared suddenly, and Ralph
saw a blue Ford Ranger, heading west on the Extension, swerve to avoid
the oncoming Datsun. The driver of the pickup saw the danger too late,
and Ed apparently never saw it at all (it was only later that Ralph came
to consider Ed might have rammed the Ranger on purpose).

There was a brief scream of tires followed by the hollow bang of the
Datsun's fender driving into the Ford's sidewall. The pickup was driven
halfway across the yellow line. The Datsun's hood crumpled, came
unlatched, and popped up a little; headlight glass tinkled into the
street. A moment later both vehicles were dead in the middle of the
road, tangled together like some weird sculpture.

Ralph stood where he was for the time being, watching as oil spread
beneath the Datsun's front end. He had seen several roadaccidents in
his almost-seventy years, most of them minor, one or two serious, and he
was always stunned by how quickly they happened and how little drama
there was. It wasn't like in the movies, where the camera could slow
things down, or on a video tape, where you could watch the car go off
the cliff again and again if you so chose; there was usually just a
series