Koontz Dean-2004-Life Expectancy Read online

  judgments of his in-laws. "Self-satisfied," he called them, and

  "devious."

  The clown's perpetual glower, rough voice, and bitterness made Rudy

  uncomfortable.

  Angry words plumed from him in exhalations of sour smoke: duplicitous"

  and "scheming" and, poetically for a clown, "blithe spirits of the air,

  but treacherous when the ground is under them."

  Beezo was not in full costume. Furthermore, his stage clothes were in

  the Emmett Kelly sad-faced tradition rather than the bright polka-dot

  plumage of the average Ringling Brothers clown. He cut a strange

  figure nonetheless.

  A bright plaid patch blazed across the seat of his baggy brown suit.

  The sleeves of his jacket were comically short. In one lapel bloomed a

  fake flower the diameter of a bread plate.

  Before racing to the hospital with his wife, he had traded clown shoes

  for sneakers and had taken off his big round red rubber nose. White

  greasepaint still encircled his eyes, however, and his cheeks remained

  heavily rouged, and he wore a rumpled porkpie hat.

  Beezo's bloodshot eyes shone as scarlet as his painted cheeks, perhaps

  because of the acrid smoke wreathing his head, although Rudy suspected

  that strong drink might be involved as well.

  In those days, smoking was permitted everywhere, even in many hospital

  waiting rooms. Expectant fathers traditionally gave out cigars by way

  of celebration.

  When not at his dying father's bedside, poor Rudy should have been able

  to take refuge in that lounge. His grief should have been mitigated by

  the joy of his pending parenthood.

  Instead, both Maddy and Natalie were long in labor. Each time that

  Rudy returned from the I.C.U, waiting for him was the glowering,

  muttering, bloody-eyed clown, burning through pack after pack of

  unfiltered Lucky Strikes.

  As drum rolls of thunder shook the heavens, as reflections of lightning

  shuddered through the windows, Beezo made a stage of the maternity ward

  lounge. Restlessly circling the blue vinyl floor, from pink wall to

  pink wall, he smoked and fumed.

  "Do you believe that snakes can fly, Rudy Tock? Of course you don't.

  But snakes can fly. I've seen them high above the center ring. They're

  well paid and applauded, these cobras, these diamondbacks, these

  copperheads, these hateful vipers."

  Poor Rudy responded to this vituperative rant with murmured

  consolation, clucks of the tongue, and sympathetic nods. He didn't

  want to encourage Beezo, but he sensed that a failure to commiserate

  would make him a target for the clown's anger.

  Pausing at a storm-washed window, his painted face further patina ted

  by the lightning-cast patterns of the streaming raindrops on the glass,

  Beezo said, "Which are you having, Rudy Tock-a son or daughter?"

  Beezo consistently addressed Rudy by his first and last names, as if

  the two were one: Rudytock.

  "They have a new ultrasound scanner here," Rudy replied, "so they could

  tell us whether it's a boy or girl, but we don't want to know. We just

  care is the baby healthy, and it is."

  Beezo's posture straightened, and he raised his head, thrusting his

  face toward the window as if to bask in the pulsing storm light. "I

  don't need ultrasound to tell me what I know. Natalie is giving me a

  son. Now the Beezo name won't die when I do. I'll call him

  Punchinello, after one of the first and greatest of clowns."

  Punchinello Beezo, Rudy thought. Oh, the poor child.

  "He will be the very greatest of our kind," said Beezo, "the ultimate

  jester, harlequin, jack pudding He will be acclaimed from coast to

  coast, on every continent."

  Although Rudy had just returned to the maternity ward from the I.C.U,

  he felt imprisoned by this clown whose dark energy seemed to swell each

  time the storm flashed in his feverish eyes.

  "He will be not merely acclaimed but immortal."

  Rudy was hungry for news of Maddy's condition and the progress of her

  labor. In those days, fathers were seldom admitted to delivery rooms

  to witness the birth of their children.

  "He will be the circus star of his time, Rudy Tock, and everyone who

  sees him perform will know Konrad Beezo is his father, patriarch of

  clowns."

  The ward nurses who should have regularly visited the lounge to speak

  with the waiting husbands were making themselves less visible than

  usual. No doubt they were uncomfortable in the presence of this angry

  bozo.

  "On my father's grave, I swear my Punchinello will never be an

  aerialist Beezo declared.

  The blast of thunder punctuating his vow was the first of two so

  powerful that the windowpanes vibrated like drum heads and the

  lights-almost extinguished-throbbed dimly.

  "What do acrobatics have to do with the truth of the human condition?"

  Beezo demanded.

  "Nothing," Rudy said at once, for he was not an aggressive man. Indeed,

  he was gentle and humble, not yet a pastry chef like his father, merely

  a baker who, on the verge of fatherhood, wished to avoid being severely

  beaten by a large clown.

  "Comedy and tragedy, the very tools of the clown's art-that is the

  essence of life," Beezo declared.

  "Comedy, tragedy, and the need for good bread," Rudy said, making a

  little joke, including his own trade in the essence-of-life

  professions.

  This small frivolity earned him a fierce glare, a look that seemed

  capable not merely of stopping clocks but of freezing time.

  '"Comedy, tragedy, and the need for good bread,"" Beezo repeated,

  perhaps expecting Dad to admit his quip had been inane.

  "Hey," Dad said, "that sounds just like me," for the clown had spoken

  in a voice that might have passed for my father's.

  ""Hey, that sounds just like me,"" Beezo mocked in Dad's voice. Then

  he continued in his own rough growl: "I told you I'm talented, Rudy

  Tock. In more ways than you can imagine."

  Rudy thought he could feel his chilled heart beating slower, winding

  dlown under the influence of that wintry gaze.

  "My boy will never be an aerialist. The hateful snakes will hiss. Oh,

  how they'll hiss and thrash, but Punchinello will never be an

  aerialist!"

  Another tsunami of thunder broke against the walls of the hospital, and

  again the lights were more than half drowned.

  In that gloom, Rudy swore that the tip of Beezo's cigarette in his

  right hand glowed brighter, brighter, although he held it at his side,

  as if some phantom presence were drawing on it with eager lips.

  Rudy thought, but could not swear, that Beezo's eyes briefly glowed as

  bright and red as the cigarette. This could not have been an inner

  light, of course, but a reflection of... something.

  When the echoes of the thunder rolled away, the brownout passed. As

  the lights rose, so did Rudy rise from his chair.

  He had only recently returned here, and although he had received no

  news about his wife, he was ready to flee back to the grim scene in the

  intensive care unit rather than experience a third doomsday peal and

/>   another dimming of lights in the company of Konrad Beezo.

  When he arrived at the I.C.U and found two nurses at his father's

  bedside, Rudy feared the worst. He knew that Josef was dying, yet his

  throat tightened and tears welled when he thought the end loomed.

  To his surprise, he discovered Josef half sitting up in bed, hands

  clutching the side rails, excitedly repeating the predictions that he

  had already made to one of the nurses. "Twenty inches ... eight pounds

  ten ounces ... ten-forty-six tonight... syndactyly..."

  When he saw his son, Josef pulled himself all the way into a sitting

  position, and one of the nurses raised the upper half of the bed to

  support him better.

  He had not only regained his speech but also appeared to have overcome

  the partial paralysis that had followed his stroke. When he seized

  Rudy's right hand, his grip proved firm, even painful.

  Astonished by this development, Rudy at first assumed that his father

  had experienced a miraculous recovery. Then, however, he recognized

  the desperation of a dying man with an important message to impart.

  Josef's face was drawn, seemed almost shrunken, as if Death, in a

  sneak-thief mood, had begun days ago to steal the substance of him,

  ounce by ounce. By contrast his eyes appeared to be enormous. Fear

  sharpened his gaze when his eyes fixed on his son.

  "Five days," said Josef, his hoarse voice raw with suffering, parched

  because he had been taking fluids only intravenously. "Five terrible

  days."

  "Easy, Dad. Don't excite yourself," Rudy cautioned, but he saw that on

  the cardiac monitor, the illuminated graph of his father's heart

  activity revealed a fast yet regular pattern.

  One of the nurses left to summon a doctor. The other stepped back from

  the bed, waiting to assist if the patient experienced a seizure.

  First licking his cracked lips to wet the way for his whisper, he made

  his fifth prediction: "James. His name will be James, but no one will

  call him James ... or Jim. Everyone will call him Jimmy."

  This startled Rudy. He and Maddy had chosen James if the baby was a

  boy, Jennifer if it was a girl, but they had not discussed their

  choices with anyone.

  Josef could not have known. Yet he knew.

  With increasing urgency, Josef declared, "Five days. You've got to

  warn him. Five terrible days."

  "Easy, Dad," Rudy repeated. "You'll be okay."

  His father, as pale as the cut face of a loaf of bread, grew paler,

  whiter than flour in a measuring cup. "Not okay. I'm dying."

  "You aren't dying. Look at you. You're speaking. There's no

  paralysis. You're-"

  "Dying," Josef insisted, his rough voice rising in volume. His pulse

  throbbed at his temples, and on the monitor it grew more rapid as he

  strained to break through his son's reassurances and to seize his

  attention. "Five dates. Write them down. Write them now. NOW!"

  Confused, afraid that Josef's adamancy might trigger another stroke,

  Rudy mollified his father.

  He borrowed a pen from the nurse. She didn't have any paper, and she

  wouldn't let him use the patient's chart that hung on the foot of the

  bed.

  From his wallet, Rudy withdrew the first thing he found that offered a

  clean writing surface: a free pass to the very circus in which Beezo

  performed.

  Rudy had received the pass a week ago from Huey Foster, a Snow Village

  police officer. They had been friends since childhood.

  Huey, like Rudy, had wanted to be a pastry chef. He didn't have the

  talent for a career in baking. His muffins broke teeth. His lemon

  tarts offended the tongue.

  When, by virtue of his law-enforcement job, Huey received freebies-

  passes to the circus, booklets of tickets for carnival rides at the

  county fair, sample boxes of bullets from various ammo manufacturers-he

  shared them with Rudy. In return, Rudy gave Huey'cookies that didn't

  sour the appetite, cakes that didn't displease the nose, pies and

  strudels that didn't induce regurgitation.

  Red and black lettering, illustrated with elephants and lions, crowded

  the face of the circus pass. The reverse was blank. Unfolded, it

  measured three by five inches, the size of an index card.

  As hard rain beat on a nearby window, drumming up a sound like many

  running feet, Josef clutched again at the railings, anchoring himself,

  as if he feared that he might float up and away. "Nineteen

  ninety-four. September fifteenth. A Thursday. Write it down."

  Standing beside the bed, Rudy took dictation, using the precise

  printing with which he composed recipe cards: sept 15,1994, thurs.

  Eyes wide and wild, like those of a rabbit in the thrall of a stalking

  coyote, Josef stared toward a point high on the wall opposite his bed.

  He seemed to see more than the wall, something beyond it. Perhaps the

  future.

  "Warn him," the dying man said. "For God's sake, warn him."

  Bewildered, Rudy said, "Warn who?"

  "Jimmy. Your son, Jimmy, my grandson."

  "He's not born yet."

  "Almost. Two minutes. Warn him. Nineteen ninety-eight. January

  nineteenth. A Monday."

  Transfixed by the ghastly expression on his father's face, Rudy stood

  with pen poised over paper.

  "WRITE IT DOWN!" Josef roared. His mouth contorted so severely in the

  shout that his dry and peeling lower lip split. A crimson thread

  slowly unraveled down his chin.

  "Nineteen ninety-eight," Rudy muttered as he wrote.

  "January nineteenth," Josef repeated in a croak, his parched throat

  having been racked by the shout. "A Monday. Terrible day."

  "Why?"

  "Terrible, terrible."

  "Why will it be terrible?" Rudy persisted.

  "Two thousand two. December twenty-third. Another Monday."

  Jotting down this third date, Rudy said, "Dad, this is weird. I don't

  understand."

  Josef still held tight to both steel bedrails. Suddenly he shook them

  violently, with such uncanny strength that the railings seemed to be

  coming apart at their joints, raising a clatter that would have been

  loud in an ordinary hospital room but that was explosive in the usually

  hushed intensive care unit.

  At first the observing nurse rushed forward, perhaps intending to calm

  the patient, but the electrifying combination of fury and terror that

  wrenched his pallid face caused her to hesitate. When waves of thunder

  broke against the hospital hard enough to shake dust off the acoustic

  ceiling tiles, the nurse retreated, almost as if she thought Josef

  himself had summoned that detonation.

  "WRITE IT DOWN!" he demanded.

  "I wrote, I wrote," Rudy assured him. "December 23, 2002, another

  Monday."

  "Two thousand three," Josef said urgently. "The twenty-sixth of

  November. A Wednesday. The day before Thanksgiving."

  After recording this fourth date on the back of the circus pass, just

  as his father stopped shaking the bedrails, Rudy looked up and saw a

  fresh emotion in Josef's face, in his eyes. The fury was gone, and the

  terror.

  As tears welled,
Josef said, "Poor Jimmy, poor Rudy."

  "Dad?"

  "Poor, poor Rudy. Poor Jimmy. Where is Rudy?"

  "I'm Rudy, Dad. I'm right here."

  Josef blinked, blinked, and flicked away the tears as yet another

  emotion gripped him, this one not easy to define. Some would have

  called it astonishment. Others would have said it was wonder of the

  pure variety that a baby might express at the first sight of any bright

  marvel.

  After a moment, Rudy recognized it as a state rrtore profound than

  wonder. This was awe, the complete yielding of the mind to something

  grand and formidable.

  His father's eyes shone with amazement. Across his face, expressions

  of delight and apprehension contested with each other.

  Josef's increasingly raspy voice fell to a whisper: "Two thousand

  five."

  His gaze remained fixed on another reality that apparently he found

  more convincing than he did this world in which he had lived for

  fifty-seven years.

  Hand trembling now, but still printing legibly, Rudy recorded this

  fifth date-and waited.

  "Ah," said Joseph, as if a startling secret had been revealed.