Joyland

"Maybe yes, maybe no, but if you hadn't been there, he'd have been in the woods permanently. First the little girl, now the dirty old man. I may start calling you Jesus instead of J onesy, because you sure are the savior."

"You do that, and I'm DS." That was Talk for down south, which in turn meant turning in your time-card for good.

"Okay, but you did all right, Jonesy. In fact, I gotta say you rocked the house."

"The taste of him," I said. "God!"

"Yeah, I bet, but look on the bright side. With him gone, you're free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, you're free at last.

I think you'll like it better that way, don't you?"

I certainly did.

From his back pocket, Lane drew out a pair of rawhide gloves.

Eddie's gloves. "Found these laying on the ground. Why'd you take em off him?"

"Uh… I wanted to let his hands breathe." That sounded prima stupid, but the truth would have sounded even stupider.

I couldn't believe I'd entertained the notion of Eddie Parks being Linda Gray's killer for even a moment. "When I took my life-saving course, they told us that heart attack victims need all the free skin they can get. It helps, somehow." I shrugged. "It's supposed to, at least."

"Huh. You learn a new thing every day." He flapped the gloves.

"I don't think Eddie's gonna be back for a long time-if at all. So you might as well stick these in his doghouse, yeah?"

"Okay," I said, and that's what I did. But later that day I went and got them again. Something else, too.

* * *

I didn't like him, we're straight on that, right? He'd given me no reason to like him. He had, so far as I knew, given not one single Joyland employee a reason to like him. Even old-timers like Rozzie Gold and Pop Allen gave him a wide berth. Nevertheless, I found myself entering the Heaven's Bay Community Hospital that afternoon at four o'clock, and asking if Edward Parks could have a visitor. I had his gloves in one hand, along with the something else.

The blue-haired volunteer receptionist went through her paperwork twice, shaking her head, and I was starting to think Eddie had died after all when she said, "Ah! It's Edwin, not Edward. He's in Room 315. That's ICU, so you'll have to check at the nurse's station first."

I thanked her and went to the elevator-one of those huge ones big enough to admit a gurney. It was slower than old cold death, which gave me plenty of time to wonder what I was doing here. If Eddie needed a visit from a park employee, it should have been Fred Dean, not me, because Fred was the guy in charge that fall. Yet here I was. They probably wouldn't let me see him, anyway.

But after checking his chart, the head nurse gave me the okay.

"He may be sleeping, though."

"Any idea about his-?" I tapped my head.

"Mental function? Well… he was able to give us his name."

That sounded hopeful.

He was indeed asleep. With his eyes shut and that day's late-arriving sun shining on his face, the idea that he might have been Linda Gray's date a mere four years ago was even more ludicrous. He looked at least a hundred, maybe a hundred and twenty. I saw I needn't have brought his gloves, either.

Someone had bandaged his hands, probably after treating the psoriasis with something a little more powerful than whatever OTC cream he'd been using on them. Looking at those bulky white mittens made me feel a queer, reluctant pity.

I crossed the room as quietly as I could, and put the gloves in the closet with the clothes he'd been wearing when he was brought in. That left me with the other thing-a photograph that had been pinned to the wall of his cluttered, tobacco smelling little shack next to a yellowing calendar that was two years out of date. The photo showed Eddie and a plain-faced woman standing in the weedy front yard of an anonymous tract house. Eddie looked about twenty-five. He had his arm around the woman. She was smiling at him. And-wonder of wonder-she was smiling back.

There was a rolling table beside his bed with a plastic pitcher and a glass on it. This I thought rather stupid; with his hands bandaged the way they were, he wasn't going to be pouring anything for a while. Still, the pitcher could serve one useful purpose. I propped the photo against it so he'd see it when he woke up. With that done, I started for the door.

I was almost there when he spoke in a whispery voice that was a long way from his usual ill-tempered rasp. "Kiddo."

I returned-not eagerly-to his bedside. There was a chair in the corner, but I had no intention of pulling it over and sitting down. "How you feeling, Eddie?"

"Can't really say. Hard to breathe. They got me all taped up."

"I brought you your gloves, but I see they already… " I nodded at his bandaged hands.

"Yeah." He sucked in air. "If anything good comes out of this, maybe they'll fix em up. Fuckin itch all the time, they do." He looked at the picture. "Why'd you bring that? And what were you doin in my doghouse?"