Blown Away (Nowhere, USA Book 6)

by Ninie Hammon

  “I named the kitties, too!” She started off down that list of names as they came to the door with Property Valuation Administrator in black letters on the opaque glass window. Charlie supposed she should knock. She did, and called out his name.

  “Fish! You home?”

  Okay, not “home.”

  “Are you here?”

  There was no reply so she knocked and called again, then tried the knob — of course the door was unlocked — and poked her head inside the room. It was bare, all the office furniture long gone, and she could see a pile of what looked like blankets in a far corner by the heat register, a thermos … and a lone shoe, no mate in sight. A lidless cough syrup bottle lay on its side by the shoe. But no Fish.

  She decided to go downstairs to the sheriff’s office and ask the dispatcher, Betty Greenleaf, if she’d seen Fish.

  Betty wasn’t there.

  Obediah Tackett was. He was seated in the big chair in the sheriff’s office, leaned back with his feet on the desk, smoking a cigar.

  Obie was a big man, not as tall as Malachi but at least six feet, and not as overweight as Neb, but at least thirty or forty pounds over optimum. He carried it well, better than Neb. His shoulders were enormous, and he had a barrel chest and a beer gut that hung out over his belt.

  She had never spent much time around any of the Tacketts except Malachi, and whenever she saw one of them, she was struck by the family resemblance, and surprised at how much difference subtle variations among them made.

  Their facial features were similar, but Malachi’s face was defined by a wide forehead, high cheekbones and an aristocratic nose. The other boys’ features were blunt, like clay approximations of the original.

  They all had a shock of black hair — except for Neb, who’d gone prematurely bald. All were big, imposing men.

  But only Malachi had light eyes — bright blue, sharp and intelligent. His brothers’ eyes were dark, muddy brown, almost seemed to mirror their foggy minds. There was no spark in them. Malachi’s body was chiseled by years in the military. The others’ shapes mirrored their lifestyles — flabby and lazy. Whenever she saw one of his brothers, it was like the man was some shadowy troll, a crude distortion of the Malachi who presented such a presence to the world.

  Obie didn’t take his feet off the desk and didn’t smile when he saw her, was sharp enough to pick up his mother’s dislike for Charlie. He scowled, furrowed his brow and barked, “What do you want?”

  Charlie didn’t think it was a good idea to tell him what she’d really come for, but she refused to be cowed by his rudeness.

  “I’m looking for Betty Greenleaf.”

  “She ain’t here, didn’t come in. I went out to find her and wasn’t nothing left of her house but a falling-down shack, looked like it was—”

  “A hundred years old,” she finished for him. “Yeah, I know. There’s a lot of that going around these days.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  “Ain’t no bother.” He picked up the piece of paper that’d been in his hand when she entered. “Ain’t doin’ nothing.” He folded it over once, and sent it sailing across the room. At least that was the intent, but the man couldn’t even make a proper paper airplane and it nosedived into the floor in front of Merrie — who, of course, squealed with delight.

  “You made da paper fly!” she cried. She picked up the airplane. “I do it!” She threw it but had no more success than Obie’d had.

  “You can’t just throw it,” Obie said, in a much kinder, gentler voice than he’d used for Charlie and she remembered his sister was a forever-little-girl. “You got to hold it right.” He set the chair back down on four legs like he might be about to show her what he meant. Charlie took Merrie’s hand firmly in hers. She did not have time for a paper-airplane lesson.

  “We have to go now. Tell the,” Charlie swallowed, “nice man goodbye.” Then she dragged the protesting child from the room.

  She had better luck at the Methodist church. She could see from the street that the basement door, down a short flight of concrete steps on the side of the building, was standing open. Hopefully, that meant Fish was in residence. As she and Merrie walked across the overgrown, weedy lawn toward the steps she could hear sounds from inside, though she couldn’t make out what they were.

  Goody, she thought as she drew near — Fish is here and he’s drunk.

  But Fish wasn’t drunk. He was something approaching cold sober. And the sound he was making had nothing to do with music.

  Chapter Seven

  Neb left the courthouse and walked down the street toward the Nower House — the Tackett House. No, it was still the Nower House whether his mama liked it or not. Folks had been calling it that for more than a hundred years and her kicking Sebastian Nower out and stealing it from him might have made it the house where the Tackett family lived but it didn’t change what it was, the name of what it was. Whoever had built it got to name it, and that was its name from then on. Folks who come along later didn’t get to change that.

  Of course, he wouldn’t say nothing like that to Mama! She’d have a conniption fit if him or his brothers was to say such a thing.

  But it was still true. Just ‘cause you couldn’t say the truth of a thing didn’t make it not so.

  Neb crossed the street to the other side ‘cause they was more trees over there and he wanted to walk in the shade. He’d heard Zach say he thought they was something funny about the weather, had been since J-Day. Neb’d called him stupid for saying a dumb thing like that but maybe he had been right after all. It wasn’t hot in the middle of the day like it was supposed to be, didn’t just keep getting hotter all afternoon like it done every other summer in Neb’s memory. Midafternoon was s’posed to be “the heat of the day.” Neb knew that ‘cause his whole life he had avoided doing any more’n he absolutely had to during the heat of the day. Now the whole day passed and there wasn’t no such thing.

  Neb didn’t like to get hot because he sweat when he was hot and his clothes stuck to him and that made him uncomfortable. So that Jabberwock thing was a good one. But the things Neb most didn’t like in life the Jabberwock hadn’t fixed. He didn’t like his mama telling him what to do, bossing him around all the time like he was a little kid. He didn’t like Malachi … just flat out didn’t like him. Period. Malachi didn’t do what Mama said and she didn’t do nothing about it and it wasn’t fair for Neb to get bossed around and Malachi not.

  Neb trudged along down the street, getting more out of sorts the farther he went. He didn’t like to walk because the insides of his thighs rubbed together and they’d get raw if he kept at it. He didn’t like to do nothing physical because he was big — he wasn’t fat or nothing like that! He was just big, that’s all, and men was s’posed to be big. But being big made it hard for him to do heavy work and he done whatever he could to get out of it, made his younger brothers do it ‘cause they wasn’t big like he was.

  Even though it wasn’t hot, Neb started to sweat, walking along the street toward the Nower House. He liked calling it that in his head because Mama wouldn’t like that, and he was madder than usual at Mama today ‘cause she’d said he couldn’t take Howie Witherspoon’s car. Wasn’t nothing right or fair about that. Zach took the car he wanted. Obie got that black pickup truck from somewhere. Neb’d ought to be ‘lowed pick out a car for himself to drive around.

  But Mama said he couldn’t have it.

  Said Howie’d need it when he come back, which Neb was sure he never would.

  One of these days Neb was going to show Mama! He was gonna tell her to leave him alone, that he was a man growed and he didn’t need his mama to tell him what to do. He thought about that day a lot, how he’d stand her down and his brothers would be surprised, and proper respectful of him, and all the girls around would get in line to spread their legs for him as the rightful Man of the Tackett Family.

  As he walked the final half block up the sidewalk
to the Nower House, set back from the street all impressive like it was, he thought about the shiny Colt .45 pistols he hid away in his room. Soon’s he sent Obie off to the courthouse, he’d get them guns out, turn them holsters around on the belt so’s he could draw cross-handed and practice some more. Wouldn’t be long ‘fore he was the fastest draw in town.

  Then, he’d stand up to Mama. Yes, sir. He’d put her in her place then.

  And he’d make folks call him Tack instead of Neb. He hated the name Neb. Hated the whole of it worse, wouldn’t never even say the whole thing out loud, wouldn’t think it even, remembered in embarrassed shame how the kids teased him when he couldn’t spell it. Well, he could spell Tack. T.A.C.K. Might even change his last name, too. Yeah, then it’d be all his. It’d be … Stallion. He could spell that: S.T.A.L.I.A.N. Or O.N. One or the other. He’d ask Zach and memorize the spelling before he told people that’s what they’s supposed to call him from now on. Tack Stallion.

  He smiled at the thought, actually picked up his pace, hurrying up the sidewalk to the house so’s he could send Obie to the courthouse and he could practice quick-draw with his new guns.

  Chapter Eight

  Fish was screaming. Wailing. Shrieking at the top of his lungs, so loud he was clearly in danger of shredding his vocal chords and blowing the top off his head. Except he wasn’t making a sound, not a sound anybody could hear. But Fish could hear it. He could hear it and the sound was eviscerating, was ripping his soul to tatters, and then the stripped pieces of it would blow in the hot wind streaming through the hollow part of his chest.

  Except his chest wasn’t really hollow, not physiologically hollow. Metaphorically hollow, though. Absolutely. Categorically hollow — empty, vacant, a desolate shell that once had housed who he was and now housed the absence of who he was. Because Fish was gone. He had left the building. Holmes Malloy Fischer III was no longer in residence. Stamp all mail return to sender. No forwarding address.

  He realized he was banging his head against the concrete block he was leaning back against and was grateful that it hurt. He wasn’t numb anymore, at least. Not physically numb. But his emotional numbness was wearing off as well and that was not a good thing, absolutely not a good thing.

  He opened one eye, looked around, closed it.

  Position established. He was sitting on the floor in the corner of the Methodist Church basement, where he had retreated on Sunday night after … after …

  He’d been here ever since, had ridden the DTs bucking bronco, not the same wild horse as the Jabberwock, but close. Horrifyingly close. But it was form over substance. The DTs bronco was imaginary, illusory, ephemeral. The Jabberwock horse was real.

  What exactly had transpired on Sunday afternoon was a blur, would likely remain so forever, but the vague outlines of it were good enough.

  He had watched that poor druggie teenager get railroaded. Watched Viola Tackett sit up there in that judge’s seat proclaiming herself the visage of law and order, had hauled that kid in to stand before her and had passed judgement on him.

  For killing his grandmother, Martha Whittiker.

  Problem: Dylan Shaw didn’t kill Martha Whittiker. Fish did. Hadn’t meant to. It was an accident. It was, wasn’t it? He had been stealing her booze because he had run out, was in her house, in her kitchen and when she came home and grabbed the bottle …

  Blank.

  Vacant.

  Empty spot.

  He thought they struggled and she fell to the floor and hit her head. But maybe he’d hit her accidentally with the bottle. One or the other had happened. Must have happened because he wouldn’t hurt … would never have … would never …

  But she was lying there on her kitchen floor dead, with blood spreading all around when he came back to himself, so it didn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out what’d happened.

  He had run. But then, he’d felt guilty. He had returned to make sure she was alright, surely she was alright and he was going to give her the booze he’d stolen and throw himself on her mercy and plead with her to forgive him for being a thief.

  But, of course, she wasn’t alright. She was dead. So he had done the only thing he could think to do. He had dumped her body in her druggie grandson’s garage apartment — only because he thought the kid would get off! Never did he … never would he … Fish had never intended the kid to get in trouble. He was a druggie, a teenager. Nobody in their right mind would hold him responsible for the death of his elderly grandmother. That’s what Fish had figured — wrongly, as it turned out. As everything had turned out for Fish — wrong. Fish thought that by the time the Jabberwock dissipated, or left or blew away or whatever it did and the county was back in the real world of real things — then the police would be called but there’d be no evidence by then and they couldn’t convict the kid with no evidence and even if they did convict him, they wouldn’t do anything with him but sock him away in St. Somebody’s Home for the Bewildered Drug Rehab facility until he turned eighteen and that would be a good thing. The kid needed to get clean and that would force him to. So really, if you looked at it that way, Fish had done him a favor.

  Only he hadn’t gotten away with it — the kid hadn’t. Fish got away with it but then Viola Tackett set herself up as the grand poobah of law, order, authority, apple pie and the American way and the next thing Fish knew she’s scheduled a kangaroo trial for the kid.

  And she’d found him guilty.

  And she had sentenced him to death. Death by hanging. Right then and there!

  Fish couldn’t hold still for that, of course. He had let it go on far too long and he couldn’t allow the kid to get in trouble for a crime he didn’t commit. So Fish had grabbed Viola Tackett, had confessed to her, for crying out loud. Had stood right there and told her the truth about what happened, about how he had lied to protect himself, moved the body. About how he, Fish, had killed Martha Whittiker, not her druggie grandson, Dylan Shaw.

  And Viola Tackett had strung the boy up anyway.

  In a staggering conclusion to the nightmare kangaroo court trial, Viola had taken Dylan Shaw out and hung him.

  Hung the poor kid from the light pole in front of the courthouse.

  After Fish had told her the truth, she had hung Dylan Shaw anyway.

  Fish hadn’t had a drink since that day, since he’d swayed there in a drunken stupor and watched a sixteen-year-old boy be murdered, be executed for a crime Fish had committed.

  Fish hadn’t had a drink since.

  Not one.

  Twelve hours after his final drink, Fish had begun to shake. He was here in the Methodist church basement, where he had run … run as fast and as hard as he could, staggered more likely, all the way from the courthouse. He had not even had to summon willpower to do what he did after he got here. He had been too numb to have responded in any other way.

  He had opened every container of alcohol and poured them down the sink in the bathroom. Everything — a half a bottle of Smirnoff vodka, a flask of everclear, three bottles of wine, two six-packs of beer and half a bottle of gin. Even the last of the precious Maker’s Mark whiskey, the bottle of booze that had been responsible for the death of Martha Whittiker because Holmes had been unwilling to give it back to her … which had resulted in … whatever happened.

  He’d found himself sobbing in the corner of the room at some point on Sunday but didn’t know how he’d gotten there. And the DTs had arrived right on schedule about six o’clock Monday morning.

  Nothing as charming as a line of pink elephants like soap bubbles, sparkling and bursting.

  He’d vomited until all that was left was his stomach lining. Then kept puking. He’d had the shakes so violently he bit into a wooden pencil to keep his teeth from clacking together. He had started sweating, alcohol sweat that almost smelled the same as pee, he had paced, had cowered in anxiety, had …

  He had done it all.

  And even then, even after the best, or the worst, that the DTs could throw at him, he had
somehow managed to keep the real monsters locked in their cages in the basement of his being.

  Until now. Now, when it was worse because they weren’t little pink elephant figments of his imagination. Now, when he was sober. Now, Tuesday morning, forty-eight hours after his last drink, after he’d cleaned up the messes he had made in the basement, had even washed the lone “change of clothes” he kept there. They hadn’t been a whole lot cleaner than what he was wearing, but after they were washed and dried, they did smell better. He’d taken a shower in the tiny shower in the basement bathroom because he knew he’d feel better if he did that.

  And then he planned to go outside, get some fresh air, some sunshine.

  He’d gotten a fair distance down the track of that plan when he got run over by a truck. No, he was blessedly free of hallucinations. This wasn’t that. Now, he wasn’t hallucinating. Now, he was remembering.

  The real monsters had escaped. They hadn’t broken out. They had walked out of unlocked cages. They were real, you see, and you could only keep them locked up if you were too drunk to recognize their authenticity. You could drown them in booze, could erase them with alcohol.

  The booze was gone now, and Holmes Fischer was forced to face the monsters that had started it all.

  And so he sat in clothing that was now sweat-stinky again with his back against the concrete wall of the basement of the Methodist church and screamed. Wailed. Shrieked. Cried … and did it all silently. In his head.

  A sound penetrated his silent screaming.

  A voice.

  “Fish … Fish, are you down there?”

  He froze.

  “Fish, I know you’re there. It’s me, Charlie McClintock. I need to talk to you.”

  Still he said nothing.

  “I want to ask you about … the Jabberwock.”