Turn Down the Lights Read online

  “The battery’s dead,” he told Timlin. Then: “My wife made me promise to sell the bike when I was fifty. She said after fifty, a man’s reflexes are too slow to be safe.”

  “And you’re fifty when?”

  “Next year,” Robinson said. And laughed at the absurdity of it.

  “I lost a tooth this morning,” Timlin said. “Might mean nothing at my age, but...”

  “Seeing any blood in the toilet bowl?”

  Timlin—a professor emeritus who had, until last year, still taught an American history seminar at Princeton—had told him that was one of the first signs of advanced radiation poisoning, and he knew a lot more about it than Robinson did. What Robinson knew was that his wife and daughter had been in Boston when the frantic Geneva peace talks had gone up in a nuclear flash on the fifth of June, and they were still in Boston the next day, when the world killed itself. The eastern seaboard, from Hartford to Miami, was now mostly slag.

  “I’m going to take the Fifth on that,” Timlin said. “Here comes your dog. Better check his paws—he’s limping a bit. Looks like the rear left.”

  But they could find no thorn in any of Gandalf’s paws, and this time when Timlin pulled gently at his fur, a patch on his hindquarters came out. Gandalf seemed not to feel it.

  “Not good,” Timlin said.

  “Could be the mange,” Robinson said. “Or stress. Dogs do lose fur when they’re stressed, you know.”

  “Maybe.” Timlin was looking west, across the lake. “It’s going to be a beautiful sunset. Of course, they’re all beautiful now. Like when Krakatoa blew its stack in 1883. Only this was ten thousand Krakatoas.” He bent and stroked Gandalf’s head.

  “India and Pakistan,” Robinson said.

  Timlin straightened up again. “Well, yes. But then everyone else just had to get into the act, didn’t they? Even the Chechens had a few, which they delivered to Moscow in pickup trucks. It’s as though the world willfully forgot how many countries—and groups, fucking groups!—had those things.”

  “Or what those things were capable of,” Robinson said.

  Timlin nodded. “That, too. We were too worried about the debt ceiling, and our friends across the pond were concentrating on stopping child beauty pageants and propping up the euro.”

  “You’re sure Canada’s just as dirty as the lower forty-eight?”

  “It’s a matter of degree, I suppose. Vermont’s not as dirty as upstate New York, and Canada’s probably not as dirty as Vermont. But it will be. Plus, most of the people headed up there are already sick. Sick unto death, if I may misquote Kierkegaard. Want another beer?”

  “I’d better get back.” Robinson stood. “Come on, Gandalf. Time to burn some calories.”

  “Will I see you tomorrow?”

  “Maybe in the late afternoon. I’ve got an errand to run in the morning.”

  “May I ask where?”

  “Bennington, while there’s still enough gas in my truck to get there and back.”

  Timlin raised his eyebrows.

  “Want to see if I can find a motorcycle battery.”

  Gandalf made it as far as Dead Man’s Curve under his own power, although his limp grew steadily worse. When they got there, he simply sat down, as if to watch the boiling sunset reflected in the lake. It was a fuming orange shot through with arteries of deepest red. The dog whined and licked at his back left leg. Robinson sat beside him for a little while, but when the first mosquito scouts called for reinforcements, he picked Gandalf up and started walking again. By the time they got back to the house, Robinson’s arms were trembling and his shoulders were aching. If Gandalf had weighed another ten pounds, maybe even another five, he doubted if he could have made it. His head also ached, perhaps from the heat, or the second beer, or both.

  The tree-lined driveway sloping down to the house was a pool of shadows, and the house itself was dark. The gennie had given up the ghost weeks ago. Sunset had subsided to a dull purple bruise. He plodded onto the porch and put Gandalf down to open the door. “Go on, boy,” he said. Gandalf struggled to rise, then subsided.

  Just as Robinson was bending to pick him up again, Gandalf made another effort. This time he got over the doorsill and into the entryway, where he collapsed on his side, panting. On the wall above him were at least two dozen photographs featuring the people Robinson loved, all of them now presumably deceased. He could no longer even dial Diana and Ellen’s phones and listen to their recorded voices. His own phone had died shortly after the generator, but even before that, all cell service had ceased.

  He got a bottle of Poland Spring water from the pantry, filled Gandalf’s bowl, then put down a scoop of kibble. Gandalf drank some water but wouldn’t eat. When Robinson squatted to scratch the dog’s belly, fur came out in bundles.

  It’s happening so fast, he thought. This morning he was fine.

  He took a flashlight and went out to the lean-to behind the house. On the lake, a loon cried—just one. The motorcycle was under a tarp. He pulled the canvas off and shone the beam along the bike’s gleaming body. It was a 2014 Fat Bob, several years old now, but low mileage; his days of riding four and five thousand miles between May and October were behind him. Yet the Bob was still his dream ride, even though his dreams were mostly where he’d ridden it over the last couple of years. Air-cooled. Twin cam. Six-speed. Almost seventeen hundred ccs. And the sound it made! Only Harleys had that sound, like summer thunder. When you came up next to a Chevy at a stoplight, the cager inside was apt to lock his doors.

  Robinson skidded a palm along the handlebars, then hoisted his leg over and sat in the saddle with his feet on the pegs. Diana had become increasingly insistent that he sell it, and when he did ride, she reminded him again and again that Vermont had a helmet law for a reason...unlike the idiots in New Hampshire and Maine. Now he could ride it without a helmet if he wanted to. There was no Diana to nag him, and no County Mounties to pull him over. He could ride it buckass naked, if he wanted to.

  “Although I’d have to mind the tailpipes when I got off,” he said, and laughed. He went inside without putting the tarp back on the Harley. Gandalf was lying on the bed of blankets Robinson had made for him, nose on one of his front paws. His kibble was untouched.

  “Better eat up,” Robinson said. “You’ll feel better.”

  The next morning there was a red stain on the blankets around Gandalf’s hindquarters, and although he tried, he couldn’t quite make it to his feet. After he gave up the second time, Robinson carried him outside, where Gandalf first lay on the grass, then managed to get up enough to squat. What came out of him was a gush of bloody stool. Gandalf crawled away from it as if ashamed, then lay down, looking at Robinson mournfully.

  This time when Robinson picked him up, Gandalf cried out in pain and bared his teeth but did not bite. Robinson carried him into the house and put him down on his blanket bed. He looked at his hands when he straightened up and saw they were coated with fur. When he dusted his palms together, it floated down like milkweed.

  “You’ll be okay,” he told Gandalf. “Just a little upset stomach. Must have gotten one of those goddam chipmunks when I wasn’t looking. Stay there and rest up. I’m sure you’ll be feeling more yourself by the time I get back.”

  There was still half a tank of gas in the Silverado, more than enough for the sixty-mile round trip to Bennington. Robinson decided to go down to Woodland Acres first and see if Timlin wanted anything.

  His last neighbor was sitting on the porch of Veronica in his rocker. He was pale, and there were purple pouches under his eyes. When Robinson told him about Gandalf, Timlin nodded. “I was up most of the night, running to the toilet. We must have caught the same bug.” He smiled to show it was a joke...although not a very funny one.

  No, he said, there was nothing he wanted in Bennington, but perhaps Robinson would stop by on his way back. “I’ve got something you might want,” he said.

  The drive to Bennington was slower than Robinson expected, bec
ause the highway was littered with abandoned cars. It was close to noon by the time he pulled into the front lot of Kingdom Harley-Davidson. The show windows had been broken and all the display models were gone, but there were plenty of bikes out back. These had been rendered theft-proof with steel cables and sturdy bike-locks.

  That was fine with Robinson; he only wanted a battery. The Fat Bob he settled on was a year or two newer than his, but the battery looked the same. He fetched his toolbox from the bed of his pickup and checked the battery with his Impact (the tester had been a gift from his daughter two birthdays back), and got a green light. He removed the battery, went into the showroom, and found a selection of maps. Using the most detailed one to suss out the secondary roads, he made it back to the lake by three o’clock.

  He saw a great many dead animals, including an extremely large moose lying beside the cement block steps of someone’s trailer home. On the trailer’s crabgrassy lawn, a hand-painted sign had been posted, only two words: HEAVEN SOON.

  The porch of Veronica was deserted, but when Robinson knocked on the door, Timlin called for him to come in. He was sitting in the ostentatiously rustic living room, paler than ever. In one hand he held an oversized linen napkin. It was spotted with blood. On the coffee table in front of him were three items: an oversized book titled The Beauty of Vermont, a hypodermic needle filled with yellow fluid, and a revolver.

  “I’m glad you came,” Timlin said. “I didn’t want to leave without telling you goodbye.”

  Robinson recognized the absurdity of the first response that came to mind—Let’s not be hasty—and managed to stay silent.

  “I’ve lost half a dozen teeth,” Timlin said, “but that’s not the major development. In the last twelve hours or so, I seem to have expelled most of my intestines. The eerie thing is how little it hurts. The hemorrhoids I was afflicted with in my fifties were worse. The pain will come—I’ve read enough to know that—but I don’t intend to stick around long enough to experience it in full flower. Did you get the battery you wanted?”

  “Yes,” Robinson said, and sat down heavily. “Jesus, Howard, I’m sorry.”

  “And you? How do you feel?”

  “Fine.” Although this was no longer completely true. Several red patches that didn’t look like sunburn were blooming on his forearms, and there was another on his chest, above the right nipple. They itched. Also...his breakfast was staying down, but his stomach seemed far from happy with it.

  Timlin leaned forward and tapped the hypo. “Demerol. I was going to inject myself, then look at pictures of Vermont until...until. But I’ve changed my mind. The gun will be fine, I think. You take the hypo.”

  “I’m not quite ready,” Robinson said.

  “It’s not for you. Gandalf doesn’t deserve to suffer.”

  “I think maybe he just ate a chipmunk,” Robinson said feebly.

  “We both know that’s not it. Even if it was, the dead animals are so full of radiation it might as well have been a cobalt capsule. It’s a wonder he’s survived as long as he has. Be grateful for the time you’ve had with him. A little bit of grace. That’s what a good dog is, you know. A little bit of grace.”

  Timlin studied him closely.

  “Don’t you cry on me. If you do, I will too, so man the fuck up.”

  Robinson managed not to cry, although he did not in truth feel very manly.

  “There’s one more sixpack of Bud in the fridge,” Timlin said. “I don’t know why I bothered to put it in there, but old habits die hard. Why don’t you bring us each one? Warm beer is better than no beer; I believe Woodrow Wilson said that. We’ll toast Gandalf. Also your new motorcycle battery. Meanwhile, I need to spend a penny. Or, who knows, this one might cost a little more.”

  Robinson got the beer. When he came back Timlin was gone, and remained gone for almost five minutes. He came back slowly, holding onto things. He had removed his pants and cinched a bath sheet around his midsection. He sat down with a little cry of pain, but took the can of beer Robinson held out to him. They toasted Gandalf and drank. The Bud was warm, all right, but not that bad. It was, after all, the King of Beers.

  Timlin picked up the gun. “Mine will be the classic Victorian suicide,” he said, sounding pleased at the prospect. “Gun to temple. Free hand over the eyes. Goodbye, cruel world.”

  “I’m off to join the circus,” Robinson said without thinking.

  Timlin laughed heartily, lips peeling back to reveal his few remaining teeth. “It would be nice, but I doubt it. Did I ever tell you that I was hit by a truck when I was a boy? The kind our British cousins call a milk float?”

  Robinson shook his head.

  “1957, this was. I was fifteen, walking down a country road in Michigan, headed for Highway 22, where I hoped to hook a ride into Traverse City and attend a double-feature movieshow. I was daydreaming about a girl in my homeroom—such long, lovely legs and such high breasts—and wandered away from the relative safety of the shoulder. The milk float came over the top of a hill—the driver was going much too fast—and hit me square on. If it had been fully loaded, I surely would have been killed, but because it was empty it was much lighter, allowing me to live to the age of seventy-five, and experience what it’s like to shit one’s bowels into a toilet that will no longer flush.”

  There seemed to be no adequate response to this, so Robinson kept quiet.

  “There was a flash of sun on the float’s windshield as it came over the top of the hill, and then...nothing. I believe I will experience roughly the same thing when the bullet goes into my brain and lays waste to all I’ve ever thought or experienced.” He raised a teacherly finger. “Only this time, nothing will not give way to something. Just a flash, like sun on the windshield of a milk float, followed by nothing. I find the idea simultaneously awesome and terribly depressing.”

  “Maybe you ought to hold off for awhile,” Robinson said. “You might...”

  Timlin waited politely, eyebrows raised, his gun in one hand and his can of beer in the other.

  “Fuck, I don’t know,” Robinson said. And then, surprising himself, he shouted, “What did they do? What did those motherfuckers do?”

  “You’re perfectly clear on what they did,” Timlin said, “and now we live with the consequences. I know you love that dog, Peter. It’s displaced love—substitute love—but we take what we can get, and if we’ve got half a brain, were grateful. So don’t hesitate. Stick him in the neck, and stick him hard. Grab his collar in case he flinches.”

  Robinson put his beer down. He didn’t want it anymore. “He was in pretty bad shape when I left. Maybe he’s dead already.”

  But he wasn’t.

  He looked up when Robinson came into the bedroom and thumped his tail twice on his sodden pad of blankets. Robinson sat down next to him. He stroked Gandalf’s head and thought about the dooms of love, which were really so simple when you peered directly into them. Gandalf put his head on Robinson’s knee and looked up at him. Robinson took the hypo out of his shirt pocket and removed the protective cap from the needle.

  “You’re a good guy,” he said, and took hold of Gandalf s collar, as Timlin had instructed. While he was nerving himself to go on, he heard a gunshot. The sound was faint at this distance, but with the lake so still, there was no mistaking it for anything else. It rolled across the quiet, diminished, tried to echo, failed. Gandalf cocked his ears, and an idea came to Robinson, as comforting as it was absurd. Maybe Timlin was wrong about the nothing. It was possible. In a world where you could look up and see stars, he reckoned anything was. Maybe they could find each other and go to the next thing together, just an old history teacher and his dog.

  Gandalf was still looking at him as he slid the needle home. For a moment the dog’s eyes remained bright and aware, and in the endless moment before the brightness left, Robinson would have taken it back if he could.

  He sat there on the floor for a long time, hoping that last loon might sound off one more time, but it didn�
�t. After awhile, he went out to the lean-to, found a spade, and dug a hole in his wife’s flower garden. There was no need to go deep; no animal was going to come along and dig Gandalf up.

  The next morning, Robinson’s mouth tasted coppery. When he lifted his head, his cheek peeled away from the pillowcase. Both his nose and his gums had bled in the night.

  It was another beautiful day, and although it was still summer, the first color had begun to steal into the trees. Robinson wheeled the Fat Bob out of the lean-to and replaced the dead battery, working slowly and carefully in the deep silence.

  When he finished, he turned the switch. The green neutral light came on, but stuttered a little. He shut the switch off, tightened the connections, then tried again. This time the light stayed steady. He hit the ignition and the sound of summer thunder shattered the quiet. It seemed sacrilegious, but—this was strange—in a good way. Robinson wasn’t surprised to find himself thinking of his first and only trip to attend the motorcycle rally that had been held in Sturgis every August. 1998 that had been, the year before he met Diana. He remembered rolling slowly down Junction Avenue on his Honda GB 500, one more sled in a parade of two thousand, the combined roar of all those bikes so loud it seemed a physical thing. Later that night there had been a bonfire, and an endless stream of Allman Brothers and AC/DC and Metallica roaring from Stonehenge stacks of Marshall amps. Tattooed girls danced topless in the firelight; bearded men drank beer from bizarre helmets; children decorated with decal tattoos of their own ran everywhere, waving sparklers. It had been terrifying and amazing and disgusting and wonderful, everything that was right and wrong with the world in the same place and in perfect focus. Overhead, a trillion stars.

  Robinson gunned the Fat Boy, then let off the throttle. Gunned and let off. Gunned and let off. The rich smell of freshly burned gasoline filled the driveway. The world was a dying hulk but the silence had been banished, at least for the time being, and that was good. That was fine. Fuck you, silence, he thought. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. This is my horse, it’s made of steel, and how do you like it?