Free The Throat by Peter Straub Page A

was
speeding across a lake. He was wearing a gray suit. I knew where he was
going, and took out my notebook and wrote: Charlie—speedboat—suit—sunrise—docks at
Lily's house— hides boat in reeds . I saw fine drops of mist on
the lapels of Charlie's nice gray suit.
    So that was what Charlie Carpenter was up to.
    I began walking up Fifth Avenue, looking at all the people going to
work, and saw Charlie concealing his motorboat behind the tall reeds at
the edge of Lily Sheehan's property. He jumped out onto damp ground,
letting the boat drift back out into the lake. He moved through the
reeds and wiped his face and hands with his handkerchief. Then he
dabbed at the damp places on his suit. He stopped a moment to comb his
hair and straighten his necktie. No lights showed in Lily's windows. He
moved quickly across the long lawn toward her porch.
    At Fourteenth Street I stopped for a cup of coffee. At Twenty-fourth
Street Lily came out of her kitchen and found Charlie Carpenter
standing inside her front door. Decided
to stop off on your way to work, Charlie? She was wearing a long
white cotton robe printed with little blue flowers, and her hair was
shapeless. I saw that Lily had recently applied eggplant-colored polish
to her toenails. You're full of
surprises.
    Then it stopped moving, at least until it would start again. At
Fifty-second Street, I went into the big B. Dalton to look for some
books. In the religion section downstairs I bought Gnosticism , by Benjamin Walker, The Nag Hammadi Library , and The Gospel According to Thomas . I
took the books outside and decided to walk to Central Park.
    When I got past the zoo I sat on a bench, took out my notebook, and
looked for Charlie Carpenter and Lily Sheehan. They had not moved. Lily
was still saying You're full of
surprises , and Charlie Carpenter was still standing inside her
front door with his hands in his pockets, smiling at her like a little
boy. They both looked very fine, but I was not thinking about them now.
I was thinking about the body squad and Captain Havens. I remembered
the strange, disordered men with whom I had spent that time and saw
them before me, in our shed. I remembered my first body, and Ratman's
story about Bobby Swett, who had disappeared into a red mist. Mostly, I
could see Ratman as he was telling the story, his eyes angry and
sparkling, his finger jabbing, his whole being coming to life as he
talked about the noise the earth made by itself. Ratman seemed
astonishingly young now—skinny, with a boy's unfinished skinniness.
    Then, without wanting to, I remembered some of what happened later,
as I occasionally do when a nightmare wakes me up. I had to get up off
the bench, and I shoved my notebook in my pocket and started walking
aimlessly through the park. I knew from experience that it would be
hours before I could work or even speak normally to anyone. I felt as
though I were walking over graves—as though a lot of people like Ratman
and di Maestro, both of whom had only been boys too young to vote or
drink, lay a few feet beneath the grass. I tensed up when I heard
someone coming up behind me. It was time to go home. I turned around
and went toward what I hoped was Fifth Avenue. A pigeon beat its wings
and jumped into the air, and a circle of grass beneath it flattened out
in the pattern made by an ascending helicopter.
    It is as though some old part of yourself wakes up in you,
terrified, useless in the life you have, its skills and habits
destructive but intact, and what is left of the present you, the person
you have become, wilts and shrivels in sadness or despair: the person
you have become is only a thin shell over this other, more electric and
endangered self. The strongest, the least digested parts of your
experience can rise up and put you back where you were when they
occurred; all the rest of you stands back and weeps.
    I saw the face of the man I had killed on a Chinese man carrying his
daughter on his shoulders. He jumped up on