Everson dabs it onto a cotton ball, then hands it to me. I press the cold fuzz to my face. It stings.
“That Huber kid has always been a punk,” he says. “Just like his daddy.”
“I don’t know his dad, but I believe it,” I say.
“You’d think with a big-wig job like the one his dad got, he would’ve turned out better.”
I nod, vaguely registering an image of Freddy Huber’s father at his big-wig job. I see him behind a desk, suit and tie, steaming cup of coffee in front of him. He yells for his secretary to pick up his dry cleaning. It’s funny because I would’ve pictured his dad to be gone like everyone else’s around here seems to be — mine included. And seeing how Freddy wound up at the steel mill, I’m even more surprised his dad has a so-called big-wig job.
“Where’s his dad work?” I ask.
“Up at the Leering Research Facility.”
I nod. Yep, like I said before, here in Woodhaven, you really only have two choices: work at the mill or some other dead-end minimum wage job, or go to college and get a job at the Leering Research Facility. There is a third option, too. It’s kill yourself, but something tells me you’ll just end up right back in Woodhaven. Like I have.
“Too bad the shotgun wasn’t loaded,” Everson says, grumbling. “Back when I was his age, you do something like that and you’re spending the night in the can. But the sheriff’ll let him off the hook. He’s too soft.”
“No big deal,” I say, getting up. “Thanks for the peroxide.”
“Where ya going, son? I don’t think you’re fit to drive yet.”
“I can’t stay,” I say. “I got a funeral to coordinate. My fiancé is gonna be wondering where I’m at. You know how women are.”
Everson snorts, his wrinkled cheeks wrinkling up even more to smile. “Don’t I,” he says.
The door to the break room opens and in walks Sheriff Doaks. He’s been sheriff since long before I was born, but he doesn’t look as ancient and decrepit as Mr. Everson. Somehow, he looks only a few years older than me, but he has to be pushing fifty or sixty. He’s a big man, too, the type of guy you’d expect to be wheeling around town in an SUV that says WOODHAVEN POLICE DEPT stenciled on the side. I hear the floor creak beneath his weight. A glint of dark metal catches my eye. Doaks carries around a big-ass gun on his hip, like an Old West Marshall. I don’t know if it’s a standard weapon or if he’s added a few cosmetic modifications to it. He doesn’t need the weapon, either. The worst that happens in this town is someone gets too drunk and pisses in the middle of Main Street. A bar fight here or there. Petty theft. Someone gets punched in the face. Nothing crazy. Nothing like the Old West.
The next thing that catches my eye is the blood on the outside of his jacket. There’s a few drops, not a lot but enough to make me think, What the hell?
Everson notices it, too. I can tell by the way he scrunches up his face. “Doaks, what’s with the blood? Halloween ain’t for another three months.”
Doaks looks down and scoffs. “Damn it,” he says. His voice is high and somewhat feminine. Another reason why I think he likes to carry around that big gun — compensation. He grabs a roll of paper towels, tears off a wad, and starts wiping at the blood. It doesn’t do much good, only fades the stains slightly.
“You been killin bad guys again?” Everson says, chuckling.
“No, it was Dan out on 760. One of his cows.”
“One of his cows?” Everson repeats.
I’m sitting in the old chair with plastic covering on its back, trying to think of a way out of here where both men won’t notice me leaving.
“Yeah, that’s what I said, one of his cows. Something got into his pasture. Tore it right up into pieces. And you know Dan, he’s almost as old as you, ya geezer. I had to help him move the damn thing out of the field before the other cows got curious.” He shakes his head, “Shit, they don’t pay me enough for this.”
“It’s that damn research center out there,” Everson says. “Ever since that fire, things just ain’t been the same.” I don’t keep up with Woodhaven current events, that much is true, but a fire? At Leering? Surely, I would’ve heard about a fire. Unless…unless they didn’t want anyone to hear about it. This oddly seems like one of my own books — shady government research facility, cows being eaten by some mysterious monster. A light goes off in my head. Werewolf, that’s what it is. It’s got to be. I smile and roll my eyes, hoping neither Doaks or Everson see me. This is the way I get when I’m deep into a new story. I link every small thing to whatever I’m working on, try to prove to myself that I’m going crazy. You should’ve seen me with the Ebola outbreak a couple years ago. I was working on the zombie novel then. Darlene almost kicked me out of the apartment.
So that’s all this is — coincidence and me going crazy.
“Oh, please, Bill, they got it under control up there,” Doaks says, waving a hand. He looks at me, a wry smile on his face. “ Besides, right now we have more pressing matters to attend to, right, Jupiter? I hear you’re already getting into trouble. You only been here a day…should I be worried? Am I gonna have to cuff you like I did when you was in middle school?”
Everson bursts out laughing. “I ‘member that one.”
Heat rises to my cheeks. I really shouldn’t have come back to this town. Or I at least should’ve driven the extra few miles and picked up some flowers in Breckridge, hell, even Northington. “Yeah, yeah, real funny,” I say.
“What’d ya steal? I can’t remember,” Doaks says. “Wasn’t it toothpaste or something?”
“Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups,” I say. “The toothpaste I got away with.”
“Still don’t understand it, kid. You was smarter than that. Look at you now, making a living by typing all fancy like. Oh, shoot, that’s a good story to tell to my drinking buddies: ‘You know that famous writer, the one who writes about ghosts and goblins and ghouls? Jack Jupiter is his name, well I done arrested him in eighth grade. Caught him stealing candy and toothpastes down at Everson’s. Little guy damn near pissed his pants when I cuffed him!’” Doaks slaps the counter, laughing.
Everson laughs with him, but his laughs are more like croaks. I wouldn’t be surprised if dust starts pouring out of the old man’s mouth.
“Real funny,” I say again.
“Why’d you do it, son?” Everson says. “I mean I forgive ya, but why? Your mama wasn’t poor.”
“Just wanted to fit in, I guess,” I say.
It’s not as hard to talk about it now than it was then, and my explanation is partially true. I did want to fit in. When all the kids in my grade were out shooting deer with their granddads, stealing candy bars from Everson’s, and sticking firecrackers up bullfrogs’s asses, I was back at home reading stories about evil wizards and Hobbits, and watching movies about spaceships. But another reason I did it was because I wanted to see if I could get away with it.
I didn’t, obviously.
“Let me see that shiner,” Doaks says.
I pull away the cotton pad. It sticks as I do it, and the pain is almost unbearable, but I can’t show it in front of these two.
Doaks’s eyes go big. “Damn, son, Huber really do that to you?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Damn right he did. That man ain’t nothing but a menace,” Everson says. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen the bastard pick a fight. Remember last year’s July 4th parade when he got in the scuffle with Franky Williams?”
Doaks nods. “Unfortunately I do. Sometimes I’ll walk down Main and still think I see some of Franky’s teeth on the sidewalk.”
“It’s no big deal, really,” I say, interrupting their trip down memory lane. “Freddy’s a bully, always has been. He looked like he was coming down with a nasty cold, too. Maybe that’ll be punishment enough.”
“Flu season gets longer and longer every year,” Doaks says. “Been going around something vicious this spring, all over town. Dan was coughing his damned head off. First these
coyotes or bears or whatever eating all the wildlife and farm animals, and now the summer flu. What’s next, we have to cancel the Fourth of July festival?”
Everson gasps, real concern written on his face. The Fourth of July is a big deal around here.
Doaks laughs. “Not a chance,” he says, then turns back to me and shrugs.
“I’m telling ya,” Everson says, “ever since that fire, things ain’t been the same. I drive by it sometimes and it looks about as haunted as that house up on Fox Hill.”
Ah, the Fox Hill haunted house, the basis of the first novel I sold. One time Norman made me go up to the front door when I was nine despite my constant protests. I couldn’t say no to my older brother. I had to prove I was as brave as he was. When we got to the front porch, he bolted. I remember hearing noises in there, screams and the sounds of axes coming down on people’s heads. All just my imagination, no doubt, but I almost couldn’t run away. Later that night, I lost about twenty pounds of sweat and didn’t sleep right for a month.
Doaks rolls his eyes. “Why don’t you ask Freddy’s pop?”
“Haven’t seen him. Good riddance,” Everson says. His face looks as if he’d just swallowed something bitter.
I smile, but that’s as far as I can contribute to this conversation. It’s been too long. I’m no longer in “the loop” — if you can call the ever-turning wheels of the gossip train “the loop.”
“Well, if you don’t want to file nothing against Freddy,” Doaks says, “it’ll save me a helluva lot of paperwork.”
“No, don’t worry about it. I’ll heal.”
“Sounds good, kid,” Doaks says, sticking a hand out at me.
“Then we’re good here? I can leave?” I ask, accepting his handshake.
Everson looks to the sheriff.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Doaks says.
I get up. The chair scrapes the molded linoleum beneath me, and I head for the door.
“Wait, Jupiter. One more thing,” the sheriff says.
I’m halfway into the dark hallway. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The light of the grocery store which leads to the parking lot and my freedom.
“I had to call your brother,” Doaks says. “He’s coming back for the funeral.”
It’s so quiet after Doaks tells me this, I think they might be able to hear my knuckles grinding together as I squeeze my hands into fists.
“I had to, Jack. She loved him as much as she loved anything, and she’s his mother, too.”
“Thanks, Sheriff,” I say as I walk out into the darkness. I try not to sound like an asshole. The door latches behind me. All that’s going through my head is that I really shouldn’t have come back home.
Four
Woodhaven Motel is a seedy place on the corner of 760 and Cranberry Avenue. Cranberry is that street my mother told me to stay away from whenever I rode my bike around town with my brother, a long stretch of blacktop that leads in and out of town. There’s a place that was once a church across the way. Empty black squares have long since replaced the glass. The door — a towering oak — has been battered and rammed and is now almost always open. It’s a harbor for the homeless and the drug addicts.
Lots of semis roll through. Some of these drivers peddle meth and heroine. Not much the small police force can really do about it, either. Plus, I think Sheriff Doaks takes a cut. No way he could afford a watch like the one he had on back at Everson’s.
I park my car in the empty lot. I’m sitting between two faded lines on the blacktop that might’ve once been yellow. We are in room 111, the farthest from the office. It may be ten years since I’ve been back in Woodhaven, but I remember the stories about the motel. Once upon a time, there was talk of expansion, even a second floor, hence the room 111. That never happened because the funding fell through. Poor, creepy Clark Hutchins — the guy who owns it. He’s owned it as long as I can remember. Rumors say he likes to blast porn in the dead of night. Some others say they’ve caught him looking in at them through a hole in the wall. Others talk of cameras he’s placed in hiding spots in every room.
Really, I doubt it. This place doesn’t make enough money for him to afford spy gadgets. But when I open up the door, I can’t help but notice all the sheets I draped over various places in the room: microwave, old TV, the mirrors.
Darlene is sitting in a plush chair with puke-green upholstery. She’s reading a book, something even I wouldn’t read and damn sure would never write about — and I’ve written a zombie novel for God’s sake; it almost doesn’t get any lower than that. Darlene’s book is a love story with a bare-chested man on the cover. You know, the kind that has every woman’s wet dream within the confines of its three hundred poorly written pages. Happily ever after and all that. Lovey dovey…vomit.
Her eyes barely flicker over the top of the paperback as I walk in.
“When you gonna read one of mine?” I ask.
“When you stop killing characters and start making them fall in love,” she says.
Darlene is the most beautiful thing in this room by a mile — hell, she might even be the most beautiful thing in this town.
She puts the book down on her lap, still open. When she looks at my face, really looks at my face, the book comes tumbling down onto the shag carpet.
“Oh, Jack, what happened?”
Before I know it, her hand is cupping my chin, pulling me closer. I wince. Freddy’s haymaker did more than just split open my cheek and bottom lip; it made my whole damn face tender.
“Just ran into an old friend,” I say.
“Jack,” she says in that way that really means cut the bullshit.
“An old high school bully,” I say, smiling.
“Did you call the cops?”
“Sheriff came, nothing happened.”
“My God,” she says. “He should be in jail.”
I grab her around the waist, pull her closer. “No, he’s just some bitter wash-up. I may have mentioned how much I was on track to make this year with the book sales. So I’m no angel, either.”
Besides, it’s not like I’m making millions. Any old schmuck can write about ghosts and zombies. Instead of gloating, I should’ve given him words of encouragement. Hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it?
Darlene and I kiss, and for a moment, the pain in my face subsides.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” she says when we part.
I sit on the side of the bed and start taking off my shoes. The mattress damn near sinks to the floor with my weight, and I don’t weigh much. “That’s not even the worst of it,” I say. “I’d rather get punched in the face again by that asshole than find out what the sheriff told me.”
“What? What did he tell you?” Darlene asks. She crawls up next to me, drapes her arms around my shoulder. I can feel her hot breath on my earlobe. It gets the blood pumping in all the right places, but I choose to ignore it.
“He told me my brother is coming to the funeral. Can you believe that?”
“You said he wouldn’t show. You said there was a ninety-five percent chance he wouldn’t show.”
“Well ninety-five ain’t a hundred,” I say.
“So what’s the plan?” she asks as she slowly kisses me on the neck.
“We bury my mom, then we get the hell out of here before Norm can start harassing me about the ‘good ol’ days.'”
“Maybe that’s not a bad thing, Jack. You don’t have anyone left.”
“I got you,” I say.
She smiles. “Not what I meant. Maybe we should stay… You can’t go living your life like a hermit. This is your hometown. Your mom just passed and now your brother is coming back. Maybe you should reconcile. I mean, what if he dies tomorrow?”
Good riddance, I almost say, sounding like Mr. Everson in my head.
“You don’t want to live with that, do you?”
I don’t answer, and she knows I don’t because she’s right. God, I hate it when she’s right.
She nibbles my ear,
whispering, “Come on, Jack, it’ll be good for you to have some time off. Me, too. I have three weeks of paid vacay saved up. We can stay five more days, and you can show me around a little more. I’d love to see where my future husband grew up.” I feel her lips curl up into a smile, pressing against my neck. A hand slips around my waist, rubs up my inner thigh. When she gets like this, she’s The Godfather — not the sexiest comparison, I know — but her offers, I can’t refuse.
“Okay,” I say, “Five more days. That’s all. You’ll get the Jack Jupiter Grand Tour. Prepare yourself.”
She squeezes me and lets out a satisfied moan.
How the hell can I say no to her? To this?
Five
After we make love, Darlene’s head lays on my chest. I hear her breathing deepen. She’s falling asleep and I’m soon to follow if I don’t get out from under these sheets. They’re damp with sweat, faintly smelling like sex and mothballs — an odd combination that’s surprisingly pleasant to the senses. But my laptop sits in a case on the desk across the room, mocking me. I need to get work done. The words won’t write themselves as much as I wish that were the case sometimes.
Darlene rolls over off of me to lie on her side. “Good night,” she says, turning to face me, a faint smile on her lips. “That was good, but we’re supposed to save it until our wedding night.”
“You said the same thing yesterday morning,” I say. It’s how this whole engagement has gone. I give her a wink, and kiss her on the cheek. “Good night.”
“Better get to bed pretty soon. You’ll have to be up early for the…” She trails off.
“Don’t remind me.”
Darlene pulls the sheets up around her shoulders, covering her milky, white skin. Bedtime for her usually means work time for me. She’s the type of person who’ll be in bed by nine, and I’ll be up until four in the morning, sometimes later. And sometimes I’m still up when she rolls out of bed for work at 7:00 a.m. If we were back at our apartment in Chicago, I’d make her coffee and some pancakes, but the best I can do here is vending machine snack foods and Coca-Cola.
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