Shut up! This from a younger man also dressed in a police uniform. He had his knee on the back of a woman who was on the ground. She had dreadlocks and pale skin, same as the man, and the officer was fumbling for the handcuffs on his belt. The heckler must have been needling him for some time and he was clearly at wits’ end.
Thith your firtht day on the job there, offither? the heckler continued unabated.
I said shut the fuck up!
Mutht be. Otherwithe you’d know there ain’t nothing you can do exthept thoot ’em.
The cop was looking like maybe he’d have rather shot the heckler, but that was the least of his concerns just then. The woman’s body heaved in a sudden and violent convulsion beneath his knee. It looked like she’d been jolted with twenty thousand volts and Gerald knew it was a sure sign that she’d hit stage two in her withdrawal. That usually only lasted a few seconds and was followed almost immediately by a maniacal rage of almost unfathomable proportions. Stage three might last for only a few minutes and never more than an hour before the addict went into cardiac arrest and it was in this interval that they became truly dangerous. Already she was foaming at the mouth and her eyes had rolled back into their sockets. She looked like one of those Japanese fuck-bots set to rodeo bronc and the cop drove his knee deeper into her back, all thoughts of getting the handcuffs on her lost to the spasmodic thrashing of her arms and legs.
Her boyfriend was shaking uncontrollably too. His arms were shimmying at his sides and the exacto knife was dashing into his leg, slicing at the flesh, ribbons of blood spattering out of his wounds.
He’s crazy, Trent said to no one in particular. He was shaking his head and pointing his finger, wagging it accusingly at the man. You’re crazy!
Fingernails raked over Gerald’s arm as Trent’s hand sprung loose. Darlene was dragging him on a hard left, through a gap between the tents, sidestepping a bag of garbage and Trent stumbling over the same, looking back at Gerald as if he might be in danger of getting lost. Gerald started after them and was turned back by a hateful shriek. It was the woman. She was lunging at the younger cop, who was somehow now on his back, struggling to wrest his sidearm from its holster. But the woman was already on top of him, wailing her fury as she flailed towards him, straddling him, her head pitching forward, her teeth chomping down, latching onto his cheek. The cop was screaming now, his own hands flailing, clawing at her hair, trying to wrench her free.
Bang! Bang!
The older cop fired twice.
Both shots struck the dreadlocked man in the chest, knocking him onto his back. He hadn’t even hit the ground when the cop was swivelling towards his partner, taking aim at the girl and pulling the trigger. Another Bang!, this one swallowed into a clap of thunder, an incongruous shock of lightning flaring after, electrifying the sky and rendering a single, solitary instant as clear as in any photograph: the woman slumped over the younger cop, her chin nuzzled into his neck as a lover’s might be — the older cop with his gun still poised in his outstretched hand, his head slightly downcast, his eyes averted, as if he couldn’t face what he’d just done — faces in the crowd captured with expressions of shock and awe, dismay and fright — a young woman with a light-dazzled chimera of orange hair dishevelled by the wind, its strands cast upwards in a mad fray and her hand clamped to her mouth, her legs turning tail and frozen in mid-flight until, in the next instant, the lightning itself had fled and she was again swallowed into the dark.
The younger cop was pushing the woman off and sitting up. A chunk had been torn clean out of his cheek and lent him a ghastly air as the older cop strode towards him, holstering his weapon and proffering the other his hand, pulling him to his feet. He was saying something but his words were lost to the wind and so it was the heckler who’d have the final say.
I toldya you thould have jutht thot ’em! he yelled.
The younger cop, his hand clamped to his cheek and his eyes pits of unfettered hate, took a step in his direction. His free hand was on the butt of his gun and the older cop was grabbing him by the arm, saying something else Gerald couldn’t hear, most likely, He’s not worth it, or some derivation of the same. The younger cop seemed to get the message and his hand shortly eased off his weapon.
Gerald scanned backwards, looking for Darlene and Trent and finding no sign of them between the tents. Searching then in a widening arc past the crowd. It was dispersing as the sky unleashed a torrent of rain, the all of them bent over and scurrying for cover, jostling past, and Gerald hearing someone calling out,
Gerald Nicholth!
There was a skinny little runt hustling towards him. Lightning flashed, a sheet of sheer brilliance that lent the man’s face the appearance of a grisly mask. It looked to have been shorn clean off and if that wasn’t enough to tell Gerald who it was, the door knocker bobbing up and down where his nose should have been most surely was.
It’th me, he said when he’d reached him, adding then, Zip, though he needn’t have.
Gerald opened his mouth, but he had no words to express the apprehension he felt, witnessing what he just had and seeing this man now smiling like the night couldn’t have ended any better.
Jutht like back on the range, huh? he said. They’ll never fuckin’ learn.
His eyes were widening as if he expected Gerald to say something but he was spared the need to do this by the approach of the two police officers. The younger had a folded handkerchief pressed to his cheek and was glaring at Zip as the older, still clutching him by the arm, dragged him on as wide a perimeter as the narrow causeway allowed. Five steps down the path leading towards the hospital, the older cop shot a short sharp glance back at Gerald and it left little doubt in Gerald’s mind that he was serving him notice that he’d be coming for him next.
Zip was staring after them, shaking his head and clucking his tongue against his gums. Gerald scanned away, searching down the rows of RVs and seeing Darlene leaning out the front door of a thirty-foot Airstream, the last trailer before the tracks.
I geth the thow’th over, Zip said. You feel like a beer?
When Gerald turned back Zip was looking at him with a keen sort of malevolence starkly out of place for a man who’d just offered him a refreshment.
We got a trailer up by the woodth. Got it real cheap, you know what I mean. Fully thtocked too. I know Popth’d love to thee ya.
The mention of Pops sent a shudder down Gerald’s spine. If he was here along with Zip it meant there’d be other Sons about too. Could have been they were the ones the soldiers were tasked with guarding the fuel against or maybe they had their eyes set on the reserves of food or maybe they really were just evil motherfuckers like Jules had said and had something far more diabolical in mind. The latter idea was added thrust by the memory of the hell they’d unleashed on the good people of Penetanguishene, a thought barely found purchase before Darlene was calling out Gerald’s name. When he turned towards her, she was standing at the edge of the Airstream’s awning, unwilling it seemed to breach the curtain of water spewing from its metal overhang.
Zip was then chucking him on the shoulder again.
Gotcha, he said, winking as he did, the earlier malevolence replaced by a lopsided grin. Another time then.
He started off at a leisurely pace as if the wind whipping needle points of rain at his back was nothing but a light summer’s breeze. A sheet of lightning illuminated the fluttering backhanded wave he offered in his passing and the jaunty country lilt of his voice trailing out of the ensuing darkness took on an ominous tone in the rumble of thunder shortly thereafter.
I’ll be theeing you around, Gerald, he said. You take care now, you hear.
29
In the few short moments it took to reach Darlene’s trailer, each passing step seemed to amplify the threat Gerald had inferred in Zip’s parting words. By the time he was ducking his head under the veil of water flowing in pearled rivulets from
the Airstream’s awning it had amounted to a biological imperative urging him again towards flight.
Darlene was standing at the foot of the retractable steps. The rain had soaked the frizz of her hair and it clung in sodden tendrils down her cheeks and over her eyes. She’d since changed into a pair of grey track pants and a grey T-shirt bearing a faded green leprechaun clutching a pint of beer below a sign reading Murphy’s Pub. She was holding out a pink towel, sun-bleached and frayed at the edges. As Gerald took it, saying thanks, he couldn’t help but detect an entreaty in the way her eyes, disconsolate, seemed to be pleading with him. It was wholly out of sync with the welcoming embrace of her smile and the disparity between the two recalled to Gerald what Zip had once said about half the world going crazy and everyone else trying to pretend it was business as usual. She seemed to have a foot in both camps but was sliding towards the former.
I’ll get you some dry clothes, she offered while he wiped the wet from his beard and from his hair.
Don’t trouble yourself on my account.
It’s no trouble at all.
She forced a strained smile that suggested it would be more trouble to refuse and the matter was settled for good by the intrusion of a high-pitched whiny voice sounding in shrill alarm.
Trent, it said, put some pants on!
Trent had just stepped into view in the doorway behind Darlene. He was wrestling to get a blue fleece sweater over his head and was naked from the chest down. His penis hung limp as a length of rope between his legs, about four inches long, and his balls were dangling in their veined and hairy sack an inch or two below.
God, Trent, Darlene scolded turning around, nobody wants to see that.
I’m stuck.
It was all Trent could manage to say and Darlene grabbed him by the arm, spinning him around.
Put on some pants before you give Linda a heart attack. Go on, git!
Trent yelped as if he’d been pinched and that seemed as good a sign as any that it was safe for Gerald to look up again.
I told him to stop doing that, the high-pitched whine was saying as Darlene stuck her head back out the door.
The desperate entreaty had returned and it struck Gerald that maybe it wasn’t watching the two Euphies gunned down that had conflicted her so, it was simply the natural by-product of her current circumstances. Could have been it was the new normal for the entire world.
Come on in, she was saying, don’t be shy now.
Stepping up and in he saw the Airstream wasn’t really a trailer but a motorhome, the interior of which looked like someone’s idea of the future, forty years ago. The once-shiny chrome of its appliances and cupboard doors was misted over with a thin film and the white of its linoleum floor was scoured with the imprint of a thousand dirty footprints, its edges peeling against the walls and several cracks in its veneer plastered over with packing tape. There was a small kitchenette on the right — a stove, a microwave oven, a fridge and sink — and across from that a table wedged between two orange cushioned benches, both with expansive cracks like fault lines parting their vinyl. On the left was a small living room with a matching orange sofa that looked like it folded out into a bed. Cupboards and storage cabinets lined every vertical surface except for a few feet above the table and the sofa where there were windows, both with their blinds drawn.
It was the woman sitting on the sofa who must have raised the whiny voice.
She had the face of a pouty child but Gerald guessed she was in her mid-to late fifties, a true reckoning of her age enshrouded by the Downsy droop to her face. In her lap there rested a child’s colouring book. Gerald couldn’t tell much about it except that it was an inch thick and on the open page someone — likely the woman herself — had worn out a purple crayon on the picture of a Christmas tree surrounded by presents.
When she caught sight of Gerald looking at her, she harrumphed and raised the book to hide her face. The cover had the words The Night Before Christmas above a picture of Santa Claus about to drop down the chimney of a snow-frosted house and while Darlene retrieved a kettle from the stove, the woman snuck spurious glances out from behind its screen.
Don’t be rude now, Linda, Darlene chided as she filled the kettle at the sink, say hello to our guest. His name is Gerald.
Linda slapped the colouring book down on her lap and glared at Gerald like she’d rather do anything but. When she spoke it was with the exaggerated petulance of a child forced out of her play so a parent could introduce her to some aging relation she’d likely never see again.
Hello, Gerald, she said. My name is Linda. How are you today?
I’m doing fine, Gerald answered. How are you?
To that she responded with another harrumph, raising the book over her face and holding it there this time with the unwavering determination of an ostrich burying its head in the sand.
You can change in the bathroom, Darlene said with a backwards jerk of her head. It’s the first door on your right.
At a glance, the bathroom didn’t look like much more than a shower stall encased in calcified stainless steel, and a tiny one at that. When he came in, the light activated by itself and there he was staring at himself in a mirror. He looked lost and forlorn, the same way he’d looked in Evers’s birthday picture, year one, except his age was showing in the gauntness to his cheeks and the cracks around his eyes and the erosion of his hairline washing deep coves on either side of a thinning peninsula.
As he undressed he kept his back to the mirror so he didn’t have to face the scar tissue carving a groove into his shoulder, fighting against his dread by telling himself maybe he’d look back on this as one of his happiest days, too. Reoccurring thoughts of Zip bidding him to take care now, you hear, gave him every reason to suspect otherwise and he was spared further thoughts of that by a gentle rap on the door.
I got your clothes, Darlene said.
He opened the door, keeping his scarred left side hidden and smiling obligingly as she passed him a neatly folded pair of blue swim trunks and a black T-shirt.
You find the toilet all right? she asked.
Toilet?
He glanced backwards trying to figure out how he might have missed it.
It’s a fold-out. You just press on that section there. She pointed to the far wall before setting her hand on his arm. We’ve been using the port-a-johns. No use filling up the tank if we don’t have to. But a night like this isn’t fit for a dog to piss in the yard.
I’m okay for now.
She nodded, smiling at him again.
I’ll take your wet clothes.
Oh.
He bent to get them off the floor and when he straightened up she was staring at the photograph of Evers still strung around his neck. Water had leaked in from where he’d cut through the laminate. There was a stain the colour of coffee bubbling its bottom edge but the image was clear enough and seemed to have a malignant effect on Darlene. Her smile sagged and a pallor came into her cheeks. She looked like she’d seen in it someone she knew, perhaps her own son whom she hadn’t seen for years, and the surprise of suddenly being reminded of him was too much for her to bear.
I’ll put them in the wash, she said, averting her eyes and reaching out blindly for his clothes.
When he came out of the bathroom a few moments later, she was pouring hot water into four mugs on the counter.
I put the stuff in your pockets on the table.
Trent was sitting on one of the benches, holding the stick-knife Gerald had made.
What’s this?
It’s a knife, Trent, I already told you that.
Trent’s face scrunched as if she’d done no such thing.
A knife? he asked, incredulous. No it’s not. It’s a stick!
Darlene was setting a mug embossed with frolicking dolphins in front of him. She took the knife and placed it on the far side of the
table next to the two lighters and the Car Buddy, all that Gerald could call his own. When she looked back at Trent he was raising the mug to his lips, looking as if he was going to gulp it all down in one go.
Stop! she yelled. It’s still hot. Let it cool down.
Trent set it back down again, saying, Blow on it.
That’s right. Blow on it. Then turning to Gerald: We don’t have any milk. She proffered him a look of strained deprecation, like it was her own failing and not mere circumstance. But I’ve got plenty of sugar. They opened a carload of it a few days ago.
That’ll be fine.
He drank his tea sitting on the table’s padded bench across from Trent. The rain’s patter on the roof sounded more like hail, and gusts of wind rattled the window beside him, battering an imperfect staccato of errant beats in perfect synchronicity with the addled fret of his increasingly restless mind. The window’s inside screen was pocked with holes sealed with bits of peeling Scotch tape and he couldn’t see much through it but still cast furtive glances in its direction between sips of the raspberry-flavoured beverage, wondering what The Sons might be brewing up out there in the dark.
Darlene was cooking four steaks on a countertop grill and into the oven she’d put a foil-wrapped loaf that Gerald suspected must have been Texas toast. The allure of simmering meat and garlic butter was quickly overpowered by a fog of smoke, Darlene lighting one cigarette from the cherry of the last and puffing on them like she was trying to make a living at it. They were the same brand as the ones Devon had been smoking so they must have opened a carload of them too.
So you just arrived today? she asked, taking a break from prodding at the meat with a fork.
I did.
From where?
Uh, Midland?
How they making out down there?
Food’s pretty scarce.
Well that’s at least one thing we don’t have to worry about. They say there’s enough food on the train to last us all winter.
Savage Gerry Page 16