Stars Screaming Read Free Page B

outside.”
    Burk heard Sandra sigh as he slid out of bed. Just below the window, in the moonlit yard next door, water spurted from the nozzle of a long yellow hose lying unwound in a flower bed. Several yardsaway, in the center of the backyard, an empty swing squeaked as it moved back and forth on the rusty chains.
    Louie said, “It was the man next door. That’s who I heard. That’s who woke me up. Right, Daddy?”
    Burk squeezed Louie’s hand. “Right,” he said. “He was watering his lawn.”
    Louie glanced over his shoulder. “Mommy?”
    “What?”
    “It was the man next door.”
    “I heard.”
    “I’m not scared anymore.”
    “Good.”
    “I’m going back to sleep.”
    After Louie shuffled out of the bedroom, Burk remained by the window looking into the night, listening to the water running from the hose and the squeak of the swing set and the sound of the bedsprings, as his wife’s breathing grew faster and faster, and the distance between them grew wider and wider.

Two
    Burk and Bonnie: Dream Lovers
    December 5, 1969
    Six months later Burk was drinking at Ernie’s Stardust Lounge toward the end of the day when he learned that his wife had miscarried after the running of the fifth race at Hollywood Park. During this same telephone conversation he also discovered that he had been fired from his job.
    “Sandra’s at Brotman Hospital,” his secretary, Lorraine, told him.
    “Is she all right?”
    “Physically, she’s fine. You can pick her up after six.” Another phone rang in the background and Lorraine put him on hold. When she came back on the line, she said, “Charly feels you should take a few days off.”
    Burk felt his chest suddenly tighten with anxiety. “What else did he say?”
    “He asked me where you’ve been lately.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    “I told him I didn’t know.”
    Burk was silent a moment. “Lorraine?”
    “Yes, Mr. Burk.”
    “Am I going to be fired?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “But maybe I am?”
    “Mr. Burk—”
    “C’mon, be straight with me.”
    “Mr. Burk,” Lorraine said, keeping her voice steady, “I think you should be worrying about your wife right now.”
    “I am worried about my wife. I’m always worried about her. But I’m worried about my job, too.”
    There was silence on the other end of the line. Burk knew he was gone. There was nothing more to say, so he hung up the phone and walked back to the bar.
    “My wife just lost our kid,” Burk told Miles, the bartender.
    “He’ll turn up. How old is he?”
    “Twenty-two weeks.”
    “Twenty-two weeks? You mean—”
    “He’s dead. She had a miscarriage at the track.”
    “Jesus, you better get your ass out there.”
    “Yeah, I know. As soon as I finish this beer,” Burk said, and as Miles gave him a quizzical look. “If that’s okay with you.”
    Miles shrugged. If thirty years behind the bar had taught him anything, it was when to back off if he sensed that a conversation with a customer was beginning to sound peculiar. Burk usually acted like a normal guy, but then so did James Earl Ray, a regular for a while at the Stardust Lounge. Except to order a drink ("Another tall screw, bub"), Ray never uttered a word to anyone, and the only time he left his stool was to play “Tennessee Waltz” on the jukebox. But one day he didn’t show up, and the next time Miles saw him, James Earl Ray’s ice-cold eyes were staring down from the television screen above the bar. “Can you believe it?” someone said at the time. “All those hours he was sittin’ here, that crazy cracker was workin’ out how he was gonna bag that jig.”
    Burk punched P-5 on the jukebox and checked his watch. It was nearly five o’clock. He knew he better get moving if he was going to have enough time to pick up his son, Louie, at nursery school and drop him off at his dad’s house for the night before driving out to the hospital.
    . . . Dream lover where are you
    With a love that’s oh so true
    With a