From a Buick 8

Until the fireworks were over, the visual record would be Curds Wilcox's baby.

The tape (one of many squirreled away in the storage closet) preserves what there was to see and hear. The Buick's hum is very audible, sounding like a loose wire in a stereo speaker, and it gets appreciably louder as time passes. Curt got footage of the big thermometer with its red needle standing at just a hair past 54. There's dirt's voice, asking permission to go in and check on Jimmy and Roslyn, and Sergeant Schoondist's voice coming back with 'Permission denied' almost at once, brisk and sure, brooking no argument.

At 3:08:41P, according to the time-code on the bottom of the screen, a blush like a violet sunrise begins to rise on the Buick's windshield. At first a viewer might pass this phenomenon off as a technical glitch or an optical illusion or perhaps some sort of reflection.

Andy Colucci: 'What's that?'

Unknown speaker: 'A power surge or a - '

Curtis Wilcox: 'Those of you with goggles better put them on. Those of you without them, this is risky, I'd back the hell off. We have - '

Jackie O'Hara (probably): 'Who took - '

Phil Candleton (probably): 'My God!'

Huddie Royer: 'I don't think we should - '

Sergeant Commanding Schoondist, sounding as calm as an Audubon guide on a nature hike: 'Get those goggles down, fellas, I would. Chop-chop.'

At 3:09:24, that violet light took an auroral leap in all the Buick's windows, turning them into brilliant purple mirrors. If one slows the tape down and then advances it frame by frame, one can see actual reflections appearing in the formerly clear window-glass: the tools hung on their pegs, the orange plow-blade stored against one wall, the men outside, peering in. Most are wearing goggles and look like aliens in a cheap science fiction movie. One can isolate Curt because of the video camera blocking the left side of his face. The hum gets louder and louder. Then, about five seconds before the Buick starts shooting off those flashes, the sound stops. A viewer of this tape can hear an excited babble of voices, none identifiable, all seeming to ask questions.

Then the image disappears for the first time. The Buick and the shed are both gone, lost in the white.

'Jesus Christ, did you guys see that?' Huddie Royer screams.

There are cries of Get back, Holy fuck, and everyone's favorite in times of trouble, Oh shit.

Someone says Don't look at it and someone else says It's pissing lightning in that weirdly matter-of-fact tone one can sometimes hear on cockpit flight recorders, a pilot who's talking without realizing it, who only knows that he's down to the last ten or twelve seconds of his life.

Then the Buick returns from the land of overexposure, looking first like a meaningless clot, then taking back its actual form. Three seconds later it flashes out again. The glare shoots thick rays from every window and then whites out the image once more. During this one Curt says We need a better filter and Tony replies Maybe next time.

The phenomenon continues for the next forty-six minutes, every bit of it captured on tape. At first the Buick whites out and disappears with every flash. Then, as the phenomenon starts to weaken, the viewer can see a vague car-shape sunk deep in soundless lightbursts that are more purple than white. Sometimes the image joggles and there's a fast, blurry pan of human faces as Curtis hurries to a different observation point, hoping for a revelation (or perhaps just a better view).

At 3:28:17, one can observe a jagged line of fire burst up from (or maybe it's through) the Buick's closed trunk. It shoots all the way to the ceiling, where it seems to splash outward like water from a fountain.

Unidentified voice: 'Holy shit, high voltage, high voltage!'

Tony: 'The hell it is.' Then, presumably to Curt: 'Keep taping.'

Curt: 'Oh yeah. You better believe it.'

There are several more of the lightning bolts, some shooting out of the Buick's windows, some rising from the roof or the trunk. One leaps out from beneath the car and fires itself directly at the rear roll-up door. There are surprised yells as the men back away from that one, but the camera stays steady. Curt was basically too excited to be afraid.

At 3:55:03 there's a final weak blip - it comes from the back seat, behind the driver's position - and then there's no more. You can hear Tony Schoondist say, 'Why don't you save the battery, Curt? The show seems to be over.' At that point the tape goes momentarily black.

When the picture resumes at 4:08:16, Curt is onscreen. There's something yellow wrapped around his midsection. He waves jauntily and says, 'I'll be right back.'

Tony Schoondist - he's the one running the camera at that point - replies, 'You better be.'

And he doesn't sound jaunty in the least.

Curt wanted to go in and check on the gerbils - to see how they were, assuming they were still there at all. Tony refused permission adamantly and at once. No one was going in Shed B for quite awhile, he said, not until they were sure it was safe to do so. He hesitated, maybe replaying that remark in his head and realizing the absurdity of it - as long as the Buick Roadmaster was in Shed B it was never going to be safe - and changed it to: 'Everyone stays out until the temperature's back over sixty-five.'

'Someone's gotta go,' Brian Cole said. He spoke patiently, as if discussing a simple addition problem with a person of limited intelligence.

'I fail to see why, Trooper,' Tony said.

Brian reached into his pocket and pulled out Jimmy and Roslyn's water-reservoir. 'They got plenty of those pellets they eat, but without this, they'll die of thirst.'

'No, they won't. Not right away.'

'It might be a couple of days before the temperature in there goes up to sixty-five, Sarge.

Would you want to go forty-eight hours without a drink?'

'I know I wouldn't,' Curt said. Trying not to smile (and smiling a little anyway), he took the calibrated plastic tube from Brian. Then Tony took it from him before it could start to feel at home in Curt's hand. The SC did not look at his fellow scholar as he did this; he kept his eyes fixed on Trooper Brian Cole.

'I'm supposed to allow one of the men under my command to risk his life in order to bring water to a pair of pedigreed mice. Is that what you're telling me, Trooper? I just want to be clear on this.'

If he expected Brian to blush or scuffle, he was disappointed. Brian just kept looking at him in that patient way, as if to say Yes, yes, get it out of your system, boss - the sooner you get it out of your system, the sooner you'll be able to relax and do the right thing.

'I can't believe it,' Tony said. 'One of us has lost his mind. Probably it's me.'

'They're just little guys,' Brian said. His voice was as patient as his face. 'And we're the ones who put them in there, Sarge, they didn't exactly volunteer. We're responsible. Now I'll do it if you want, I'm the one who forgot - '

Tony raised his hands to the sky, as if to ask for divine intervention, then dropped them back to his sides. Red was creeping out of his collar, up his neck, and over his jaw. It met the red patches on his cheeks: howdy-do, neighbor. 'Hair pie!' he muttered.

The men had heard him say this before, and knew better than to crack a smile. It is at this point that many people -perhaps even a majority - would be apt to yell, 'Oh, screw it! Do what you want!' and stamp away. But when you're in the big chair, getting the big bucks for making the big decisions, you can't do that. The D Troopers gathered in front of the shed knew this, and so, of course, did Tony. He stood there, looking down at his shoes. From out front of the barracks came the steady blat of Arky's old red Briggs & Stratton mower.

'Sarge - ' Curtis began.

'Kid, do us all a favor and shut up.'

Curt shut up.

After a moment, Tony raised his head. 'The rope I asked you to pick up - did you get it?'

'Yes, sir. It's the good stuff. You could take it mountain-climbing. At least that's what the guy at Calling All Sports said.'

'Is it in there?' Tony nodded at the shed.

'No, in the trunk of my car.'

'Well thank God for small favors. Bring it over here. And I hope we never have to find out how good it is.' He looked at Brian Cole. 'Maybe you'd like to to go down to the Agway or the Giant Eagle, Trooper Cole. Get them a few bottles of Evian or Poland Spring Water. Hell, Perrier! How about some Perrier?'

Brian said nothing, just gave the Sergeant a little more of that patient look. Tony couldn't stand it and looked away. 'Mice with pedigrees! Hair pie!'

Curt brought the rope, a length of triple-braided yellow nylon at least a hundred feet long. He made a sliding loop, cinched it around his waist, then gave the coil to Huddie Royer, who weighed two-fifty and always anchored when D Troop played tug-of-war agaist the other PSP octets during the Fourth of July picnic.

'If I give you the word,' Tony told Huddie, 'you yank him back like he just caught fire. And don't worry about breaking his collarbone or his thick skull pulling him through the door. Do you understand that?'

'Yes, Sarge.'

'If you see him fall down, or just start swaying on his feet like he's lightheaded, don't wait for the word. Just yank. Got it?'

'Yes, Sarge.'

'Good. I'm very glad that someone understands what's going on here. Fucking hair-pie summer camp snipe-hunt is what it is.' He ran his hand through the short bristles of his hair, then turned to Curt again. 'Do I need to tell you to turn around and come out of there if you sense anything - any slightest thing - wrong?'

'No.'

'And if the trunk of that car comes open, Curtis, you fly. Got it? Fly out of there like a bigass bird.'

'I will.'

'Give me the video camera.'

Curtis held it out arid Tony took it. Sandy wasn't there - missed the whole thing - but when Huddie later told him it was the only time he had ever seen the Sarge looking scared, Sandy was just as glad he spent that afternoon out on patrol. There were some things you just didn't want to see.

'You have one minute in the shed, Trooper Wilcox. After that I drag you out whether you're fainting, farting, or singing "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean".'

'Ninety seconds.'

'No. And if you try one more time to bargain with me, your time goes down to thirty seconds.'

Curtis Wilcox is standing in the sun outside the walk-in door on the north side of Shed B. The rope is tied around his waist. He looks young on the tape, younger with each passing year. He looked at that tape himself from time to time and probably felt the same, although he never said.

And he doesn't look scared. Not a bit. Only excited. He waves to the camera and says, 'I'll be right back.'

'You better be,' Tony replies.

Curt turns and goes into the shed. For a moment he looks ghostly, hardly there, then Tony moves the camera forward to get it out of the bright sun and you can see Curt clearly again. He crosses directly to the car and starts around to the back.

'No!' Tony shouts. 'No, you dummy, you want to foul the rope? Check the gerbils, give em their goddam water, and get the hell out of there!'

Curt raises one hand without turning, giving him a thumbs-up. The picture jiggles as Tony uses the zoom to get in tighter on him.

Curtis looks in the driver's-side window, then stiffens and calls: 'Holy shit!'

'Sarge, should I pull - ' Huddie begins, and then Curt looks back over his shoulder. Tony's juggling the picture again - he doesn't have Curt's light touch with the camera and the image is going everywhere - but it's still easy enough to read the wide-eyed expression of shock on Curtis's face.

'Don't you pull me back!' Curt shouts. 'Don't do it! I'm five-by-five!' And with that, he opens the door of the Roadmaster.

'Stay out of there!' Tony calls from behind the madly jiggling camera.

Curt ignores him and pulls the plastic gerbil condo out of the car, waggling it gently back and forth to get it past the big steering wheel. He uses his knee to shut the Buick's door and then comes back to the shed door with the habitat cradled in his arms. With a square room at either end, the thing looks like some strange sort of plastic dumbbell.

'Get it on tape!' Curt is shouting, all but frying with excitement. 'Get it on tape!'

Tony did. The picture zooms in on the left end of the environment just as soon as Curt steps out of the shed and back into the sun. And here is Roslyn, no longer eating but scurrying about cheerfully enough. She becomes aware of the men gathered around her and turns directly toward the camera, sniffing at the yellow plastic, whiskers quivering, eyes bright and interested. It was cute, but the Troopers from Statler Barracks D weren't interested in cute just then.

The camera makes a herky-jerky pan away from her, traveling along the empty corridor to the empty gerbil gym at the far end. Both of the environment's hatches are latched tight, and nothing bigger than a gnat could get through the hole for the water-tube, but Jimmy the gerbil is gone, just the same -just as gone as Ennis Rafferty or the man with the Boris Badinoff accent, who had driven the Buick Roadmaster into their lives to begin with.

NOW:

Sandy

I came to a stop and swallowed a glass of Shirley's iced tea in four long gulps. That planted an icepick in the center of my forehead, and I had to wait for it to melt.

At some point Eddie Jacubois had joined us. He was dressed in his civvies and sitting at the end of the bench, looking both sorry to be there and reluctant to leave. I had no such divided feelings; I was delighted to see him. He could tell his part. Huddie would help him along, if he needed helping; Shirley, too. By 1988 she'd been with us two years, Matt Babicki nothing but a memory refreshed by an occasional postcard showing palm trees in sunny Sarasota, where Matt and his wife own a learn-to-drive school. A very successful one, at least according to Matt.

'Sandy?' Ned asked. 'Are you all right?'

'I'm fine. I was just thinking about how clumsy Tony was with that video camera,' I said.

'Your dad was great, Ned, a regular Steven Spielberg, but - '

'Could I watch those tapes if I wanted to?' Ned asked.

I looked at Huddie . . . Arky . . . Phil . . . Eddie. In each set of eyes I saw the same thing: It's your call. As of course it was. When you sit in the big chair, you make all the big calls. And mostly I like that. Might as well tell the truth.

'Don't see why not,' I said. 'As long as it's here. I wouldn't be comfortable with you taking them out of the barracks - you'd have to call them Troop D property - but here? Sure. You can run em on the VCR in the upstairs lounge. You ought to take a Dramamine before you look at the stuff Tony shot, though. Right, Eddie?'

For a moment Eddie looked across the parking lot, but not toward where the Roadmaster was stored. His gaze seemed to rest on the place where Shed A had been until 1982 or thereabouts. 'I dunno much about that,' he said. 'Don't remember much. Most of the big stuff was over by the time I got here, you know.'

Even Ned must have known the man was lying; Eddie was spectacularly bad at it.

'I just came out to tell you I put in those three hours I owed from last May, Sarge - you know, when I took off to help my brother-in-law build his new studio?'

'Ah,' I said.

Eddie bobbed his head up and down rapidly. 'Uh-huh. I'm all clocked out, and I put the report on those marijuana plants we found in Robbie Rennerts's back field on your desk. So I'll just be heading on home, if it's all the same to you.'

Heading down to The Tap was what he meant. His home away from home. Once he was out of uniform, Eddie J.'s life was a George Jones song. He started to get up and I put a hand on his wrist. 'Actually, Eddie, it's not.'

'Huh?'

'It's not all the same to me. I want you to stick around awhile.'

'Boss, I really ought to - '

'Stick around,' I repeated. 'You might owe this kid a little something.'

'I don't know what - '