by Hamill, Ike
“Mom wants to leave him,” George said.
“Who?”
George gestured down towards the dog.
“Alone?”
George sighed and nodded. “I mean, it makes sense. He has a dog door and we can put out some food. Then, when Ricky comes back to interview Romeo again and reports his suspicion that something has happened to the old man, Albert will be discovered. Otherwise, it’s tough to explain why he’s not here.”
“There are a lot of things tough to explain,” Amber said. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Thanks,” George said. “What do you think about all this?”
Amber looked over at him to see if he was going to clarify the question. He was leaving it up to her to decipher what he meant. She decided not to participate.
“Don’t you have class?”
“I do,” George said. “I’m going to have to claim an illness in the family or something and see if I can make up the work. It’s okay. My parents will give me an alibi.”
“Must be nice.”
“It is.”
The others, Mary, Ricky, and Alan were standing in a tight knot over by the garage door. They were huddled around a pad of paper that Ricky was holding.
“How much longer?” Amber asked.
George shrugged.
“I think I’m going to head back. You want a ride?” Amber asked.
“Yeah. Can I bring Albert?”
The dog turned his head at the sound of his name.
“Don’t you think he would prefer to stay with Tucker?”
“He likes Tucker just fine, but I don’t think they’re really bonding. Neither one of them thinks of themselves as a dog, so they don’t feel like they have all that much in common.”
Amber smiled.
“The rental car is trashed anyway. Be my guest.”
Forty-Five: Ricky
Ricky rode in back with his dog. Every time he drifted off to sleep, he jolted back awake, feeling like he was forgetting something. When his phone started working again, he sent a message to his brother. George and Amber were still okay. They were headed back to her house. Ricky wouldn’t be going there. He had to grab a nap, get cleaned up, and then get to work. Everything was so compartmentalized in his life that he couldn’t even remember what it was like to go to work. He knew that after fifteen minutes in uniform, he would forget what it was like to stay up all night hunting vampires.
Tucker put his head on Ricky’s lap and with the dog’s warm comfort, Ricky was able to sleep.
# # #
His house felt empty. Even when Tucker went to his bed to get back to work on his favorite toy, something felt off. Looking at the clock, Ricky planned out the rest of the day. His phone lit up with a message.
It was from Amber.
“Stop by after work?”
It disappointed Ricky how much his mind was set at ease by those four words. She had reached out to him even though they didn’t have some shared goal to work on anymore. Their struggle was over—as far as they knew—and she had still sent him an invitation. There was hope. His disappointment came from the realization that he was no longer in control of his own contentment. Amber had full control over his peace of mind.
Still, he had a secret smile for the rest of the day.
Pulling into her driveway after work, he loved the way her house looked. It was lit up and alive.
Ricky barely thought about the night around him as he went up to the front door.
Even though it was cold outside, the door was open, just a crack.
“Hello?” he called as he pushed the door inwards.
The lights were on and he heard a radio playing from the living room, but her house—her uncle’s house, really—appeared empty. Ricky’s eyes went to the sign above the bar.
It read, “Work is the curse of the drinking class.”
“Hello?”
He pushed the door shut behind himself and felt like he was trespassing. She hadn’t asked him to come in. It wasn’t polite to just wander into someone’s house. He wondered if she would be angry—if he should maybe step back out to the porch and…
Amber came around the corner.
“Hey,” she said. “How was work?”
Ricky’s concern was swept away.
“Fine. It was… It was work,” he said with a smile.
“Sorry about the smoke. I’ve been airing the place out, but it just won’t go away.”
“Smoke?”
“I burned a frozen dinner. I didn’t read the package right and I thought… It’s not important,” she said.
Amber seemed either formal or guarded. Ricky couldn’t put his finger on it. Her fidgeting discomfort began to infect him too.
“Are you okay, Amber?”
“I guess we’re just mourning. You know, now that there’s a moment to kinda take a breath, it feels like everything is catching up.”
“We?”
She gestured towards the kitchen and then headed that way. Ricky followed her.
They paused in the doorway. Albert was sitting on a dog bed near the door. Ricky recognized the bed—it was one of Tucker’s spare beds that normally stayed in the back of his mom’s car.
He crossed the floor and Albert put his ears back a bit and gave his tail a little wag as Ricky crouched to pet him.
“I just figured he was with Mom,” Ricky said.
“She thought I needed company. I think she’s right, but I feel terrible for him. He misses his home and he misses Romeo.”
Ricky nodded. “He’ll bounce back. Are you taking him back down south you think?”
She nodded and then shrugged. “Yeah. I think so? Good news there though—I got an offer on my cousin’s place. More than the listing price. The house must have shown better than I thought it would. I have a good agent.”
“Oh,” Ricky said, standing back up. “So, what’s taking you back down there?”
Amber looked away. “My stuff is in storage. I have to deal with that. My car is down there, too. Aside from a brief time up here, I’ve always lived down there. I guess I don’t know where I want to go. I just have a list of places I don’t want to be.”
“Oh,” Ricky said. He looked back down at Albert. The dog had settled his head back down on his paws.
“Well, you have this place still.”
“Maybe. I mean, supposedly the market will pick up around here in a month or so, right?”
“Right. Well, you know you’re always welcome with my parents. They love you.”
Amber smiled.
For a moment, they didn’t say anything.
“I would offer you something to eat, but I just burned up my frozen dinner. Your parents left some stuff in the fridge, I think?”
She started to head that direction and Ricky waved her off, shaking his head.
“I need to get home. I need a real night’s sleep, you know?”
“Of course. Be careful, okay?”
He smiled and she walked him to the front door.
“You too.”
He paused on the porch, listening to her push the front door closed until the latch clicked. A second later, he heard the lock.
# # #
Ricky saw Amber two more times before she left.
She and Albert came over for dinner. As a surprise, she brought George with her and they had a big family dinner at the picnic table in his parents’ yard. After the sun went down, they got blankets to wrap around themselves when the air turned cold. The dogs played tug-of-war with a stick and the people played cards.
The second time he saw her, she brought him the sign from over the bar.
“I saw you looking at it. I thought you might want to have a memento from your brief stay at my uncle’s house,” she said.
“Work is the curse of the drinking class,” he read aloud. “So classy.”
Amber laughed.
“Thank you,” he said. “So you’re leaving?”
“Yes,” she said. “After last
time, I promised myself that I would never drive from Maine to North Carolina again, but here I am, six-months later…”
“You have company this time,” Ricky said, pointing to Albert. The dog wagged his tail.
“He hates this car,” Amber said. “I spent a small fortune on that last rental car, so I downgraded for this trip.”
“Have you decided anything?”
She shook her head. “I’m just going to, I don’t know, play it by ear? I’d like to find work, but I don’t want another temporary job. I’m tired of spending money that I don’t feel like I earned.”
“Yeah. Must be tough,” he said.
“Shut up.”
She turned to head back towards her new rental car and Albert bounded ahead. Amber stopped in her tracks, turned and came back. “Thanks, Ricky.”
“For what?”
“Just thanks.”
“Thank you, too.”
She smiled.
Forty-Six: Alan
One month later…
“Joe!” Alan called.
His son’s feet thundered down the stairs.
“Send a message when you get there,” Alan said.
“Okay,” Joe said as he stuffed his feet into his shoes. He opened the door without bothering to tie them.
“I mean it. You don’t message and we’re going to show up.”
“Dad. Seriously.”
“I am being serious.”
“Have fun,” Liz said.
“Thanks, Mom.”
Joe waved and slammed the door shut behind him.
Liz turned to the window and watched Joe get in the car. She waved and then sighed as she turned back around and leaned against the sink.
“He’ll be fine,” she said.
“Who are you trying to convince?” Alan asked.
Liz folded her arms.
“We have, what, an hour to kill?” she asked.
“Sounds right,” Alan said.
# # #
“You like it?” Alan asked, gesturing to the truck as she got in.
“It has a certain charm,” Liz said. “It definitely seems like it’s ready to go anywhere.”
“I thought maybe this could be our new thing,” Alan said. “We can be those kind of people who take a truck into the middle of nowhere and stay for the weekend, you know? Maybe explore some of the logging roads up north? I hear there’s a place where they parked a bunch of old trains. The trees have all grown up through them and stuff. Supposed to be a good place to take pictures.”
Alan turned left at the end of the driveway.
“You check it out and bring me pictures,” Liz said. “Joe and I will stay home and rent a nice movie.”
Alan shook his head. “My family has no sense of adventure.”
“Oh, really?” she asked, laughing. “Our son is spending the night camping on an island and you and I are going out vampire hunting. How much adventure do you need?”
Alan laughed and took a right on the Mill Road. They crossed the stream on the little bridge that kids liked to jump from on hot days.
“You can’t call it vampire hunting,” Alan said. “That would be like going out stegosaurus hunting. As far as we know, they’re extinct.”
“You can hunt things that are extinct. You’re just likely to have a very low success rate,” Liz said.
“Fair enough.”
When they pulled up to the spot, Ricky was already there. The sun was setting and Ricky was getting stuff out of his trunk. Alan pulled up behind him.
“Nice truck,” Ricky said. “Did the base price include all that rust, or was that extra?”
Alan responded with a dry laugh. He rolled up his window and got out.
“How’s everything?” Liz asked.
“Quiet,” Ricky said. “All the stuff with Romeo and Jan is officially closed. It went a lot longer than I thought, all things considered, but there were no red flags. Lots of theories circulated on his motive for killing his cousin. In the end, the evidence overruled the lack of motive, you know?”
“All too well,” Liz said. “How’s George?”
“He’s on track to graduate,” Ricky said with a big smile. “It was touch and go, but he pulled it out.”
“Awesome,” Alan said.
He left Liz and Ricky and started walking towards the train tracks. They were talking about Ricky’s parents—catching up. After everything that happened up at Romeo’s house, Alan had entertained the idea that Mary was warming up to him. So far, invitations for dinner had been politely declined.
“Maybe the Dunns just aren’t social,” Liz had suggested. Alan thought that maybe the Dunns just weren’t social with them.
He climbed the small hill and looked both directions down the train tracks. According to the schedule, the train would be coming from the north. It was supposed to be bringing a load of logs down from up beyond Romeo’s house. Alan, Ricky, and Liz were there to make sure it didn’t bring anything else.
The first planets began to appear. Alan wondered if Joe was pointing at telescope at any of them.
His smile disappeared when he saw something else twinkling on the horizon.
“It’s coming,” he called to Liz and Ricky.
They got ready.
With flashlights and wooden stakes, they climbed up and sat on the hood of Alan’s truck. Liz clicked her flashlight on to test it. The light was bright and strange. Alan had fitted them with white and UV light.
“Turn it off, just in case,” Alan said. “If they’re on the train, I don’t want to tip them off.”
She nodded and turned it back off for the moment.
The red signal lights began to flash. In the distance, on the other side of the tracks, they saw a pair of wide-spaced headlights as a vehicle pulled up and stopped. There was still time to cross the tracks—the gates weren’t even down yet—but the person exercised caution and stopped anyway.
About the time they heard the rumble of the train’s engine, the gates descended.
Alan saw Ricky tighten his grip on his spear.
If they were on the train, it would slow down or maybe even stop. That was Alan’s suspicion, at least. Several people who lived near the crossing said that the train would sometimes slow and come to a stop inexplicably, but only at night.
Alan sat up straight as the train came into view.
“They were right,” he said as it started to slow.
Ricky slid down off the hood and walked out to the middle of the road.
The train took forever to slow to a stop. When it did, it was still blocking the road.
Alan handed his remote control to Liz.
“This button does the lights,” he said.
She hovered her thumb over the button and nodded.
“Be right back,” Alan said.
Ricky was at his side. They walked up to the gate and then turned, walking along the gravel bed of the train tracks towards the front of the train. As they moved out of the glow of the truck’s headlights, they turned on their flashlights and lit up the ground in front of themselves. They held their spears at their sides so they wouldn’t seem menacing.
A man leaned out from the compartment of the train’s engine.
“You’re not supposed to be on the tracks,” he said. He had to yell to be heard over the sound of the engine.
“Is there a problem?” Alan asked.
“No. No problem.”
“Why are you stopped?” Ricky asked.
“I’ll be out of the way in a second. Meanwhile, if you need to cross, you can head up to Guptill Road. I’m not blocking the…”
“We’re in no hurry,” Alan said. “We just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Me? I’m fine. I pause here to make sure everything is switched over at the lumber yard. I’m just waiting on confirmation. Should only be a second.”
Alan looked at Ricky. He leaned in close to be heard.
“It’s a reasonable explanation,” Alan said.
Ricky nodded. “People just turned it into a conspiracy theory without trying to figure out the real reason why the train was stopping here?”
Alan shrugged.
“Thank you,” Ricky called.
They turned around and started walking back towards the road. Alan scanned the train with his light, just in case. Even if they were on the train, he didn’t know what he would see. Hopefully the UV light would drive them off, but he didn’t know if he would see any sign of their escape.
They were almost back at the road when Ricky said, “Hold on.”
Ricky crouched down and shone his light under the rail. The train’s brakes made a hissing sound and it began to roll forward, gathering speed slowly. Ricky reached out and pulled his hand back with something shiny.
“What is it?” Alan asked.
“When we were kids, we rode bikes down here to put coins on the tracks,” Ricky said. “I never found any smushed coins until now.”
The flat piece of metal still had the faint markings of a president’s head, all stretched out.
“That’s illegal, Ricky,” Alan said.
Ricky laughed.
When they got to the road, they took a couple of steps back and scanned the cars with their flashlights, looking for any signs of them. The lights still flashed and the gates stayed down even after the last of the train passed by. Behind them, Liz hit the button and bright purple and white light blasted out from the rusty truck. Alan turned away from the light.
“Don’t look at it,” he told Ricky. “I’m pretty sure that those lights I mounted are bright enough to burn through your eyeballs.”
“Now that’s illegal,” Ricky said.
Alan laughed.
Liz turned the lights off again.
“See anything?” she called.
“Nope,” Alan yelled back. “Nothing here.”
“Good. I think your lights gave me a sunburn,” she said.
Across the tracks, the other vehicle rolled forward slowly. The headlights tipped up when it crested the tracks and then it came down their side and slowed to a stop beside Ricky. The window went down.