بخش 04 - فصل 36

36

There’s no way Hodges can make it back to the Expedition, but Jerome is able to muscle him into the cab of the Sno-Cat. Holly sits beside him on the outside. Jerome climbs behind the wheel and throws it into gear. Although he backs up and then circles wide around the remains of Babineau’s body, he tells Holly not to look until they’re at least up the first hill. “We’re leaving blood-tracks.”

“Oough.”

“Correct,” Jerome says. “Oough is correct.”

“Thurston told me he had snowmobiles,” Hodges says. “He didn’t mention anything about a Sherman tank.”

“It’s a Tucker Sno-Cat, and you didn’t offer him your MasterCard as collateral. Not to mention an excellent Jeep Wrangler that got me out here to the williwags just fine, thanks.”

“Is he really dead?” Holly asks. Her wan face is turned up to Hodges’s, and the huge knot on her forehead actually seems to be pulsing. “Really and for sure?”

“You saw him put a bullet in his brain.”

“Yes, but is he? Really and for sure?”

The answer he won’t give is no, not yet. Not until the trails of slime he’s left in the heads of God knows how many people are washed away by the brain’s remarkable ability to heal itself. But in another week, another month at the outside, Brady will be all gone.

“Yes,” he says. “And Holly? Thanks for programming that text alert. The home run boys.”

She smiles. “What was it? The text, I mean?”

Hodges struggles his phone out of his coat pocket, checks it, and says, “I will be goddamned.” He begins to laugh. “I completely forgot.”

“What? Show me show me show me!”

He tilts the phone so she can read the text his daughter Alison has sent him from California, where the sun is no doubt shining:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DADDY! 70 YEARS OLD AND STILL GOING STRONG! AM RUSHING OUT TO THE MARKET, WILL CALL U LATER. XXX ALLIE

For the first time since Jerome returned from Arizona, Tyrone Feelgood Delight makes an appearance. “You is sem’ny years old, Massa Hodges? Laws! You don’t look a day ovah sixty-fi’!”

“Stop it, Jerome,” Holly says. “I know it amuses you, but that sort of talk sounds very ignorant and silly.”

Hodges laughs. It hurts to laugh, but he can’t help it. He holds onto consciousness all the way back to Thurston’s Garage; is even able to take a few shallow tokes on the joint Holly lights and passes to him. Then the dark begins to slip in.

This could be it, he thinks.

Happy birthday to me, he thinks.

Then he’s gone.