FURNACE

by Muriel Gray

  “Time we stopped drinkin’ like old ladies.”

  18

  “At least he made sure the kids didn’t see nothin’.”

  Pace looked up from the mess of brain, blood and skull and stared at his deputy. Archie Cameron swallowed and gesticulated vaguely towards the expensively draped window.

  “He dumped them off at the neighbours.”

  Pace looked back at the corpse of Bobby Hendry. The thirty-eight calibre was half concealed under his body, where the kick-back force of the shot to his own head had whipped his arm back and pinned it bizarrely behind him as though a bouncer had ejected him from a club. Pace pinched his nose thoughtfully and spoke softly as if to himself.

  “Alice Nevin’s sure havin’ a good week.”

  Cameron looked at him as though he was missing the point.

  “Was never exactly goin’ to be parade day, was it?”

  Pace’s face darkened, and he looked back at the younger man with narrowed eyes. “Think she expected this?”

  “I don’t rightly know what she expected. We ain’t never been chosen.”

  John Pace examined his deputy’s face. His expression was pious, with a trace of resentment. It was a stupid look and it made Pace want to hit the man, but he watched with some satisfaction as that stupidity turned to naked fear when Cameron read the anger in his senior’s features. Then Pace turned to leave the room, addressing his parting shot to the wall.

  “May you thank your God for that as long as you live.”

  “What my friend is trying to say is that he thinks outta all the states he’s driven, he thinks Iowa is definitely the most interesting.”

  Josh nodded and swayed slightly to regain his balance after the effort.

  The woman took a long sip from a glass that contained numerous cocktail umbrellas and cherries, leaving little room for liquid.

  “Yeah?”

  “Straight up. Where exactly in Iowa you girls from?”

  The plumper of the three women, sitting in a row, all of whom had ceased being girls more than a decade ago, answered politely, as though questioned by a new schoolteacher.

  “I’m from Algona, and Linda and Kerry are originally from Titonka, though they don’t live there no more.”

  Eddie raised his eyebrows in mock interest. “Tit… onka. Huh?”

  The gap between the first syllable and the remaining two was so long. Josh closed his eyes in embarrassment. He opened them again sharply as his head started to spin.

  “You been to Tit… onka?”

  The question was aimed at Josh, who struggled to focus on Eddie’s face. “Can’t recall. Maybe I have.”

  The woman with the cocktail sighed. “You want to leave now?”

  “Aw, come on… Kerry?”

  The plump woman answered again, using a fat finger to indicate each of her friends. “Naw, she’s Linda. This is Kerry. And I’m Olive.”

  “Well, Olive. I’m real glad to make your acquaintance. I’m Igo Chasbeaver, and this here is my friend Jesus.”

  Olive looked slightly shocked.

  “His mama’s Mexican,” added Eddie.

  All the women looked at Josh, and just as quickly looked away again. Eddie used the moment. “May we buy you girls a drink?”

  Olive spoke for them all again. “No, thank you kindly, Igo. We were just about to call it a night.”

  “You passin’ through Chattanooga?”

  “No. We’re attending ourselves a conference here.”

  Eddie sat down, unasked, leaving Josh to sway behind him, holding onto the back of his chair.

  “That so? Well, that’s real interestin’. What might the subject be?”

  The woman with the cocktail spoke again, this time addressing her comments to her companion in the middle, who so far had said nothing. “Well, if it were about fuckwits, I guess these guys could hold a mornin’ session.”

  Olive raised a disapproving eyebrow, while her two companions brayed with laughter, and after a beat Eddie joined them.

  Josh had to sit down. He pulled up a chair beside Eddie and fell into it.

  “Now, that ain’t very polite. A man’s just tryin’ to make conversation here.”

  Kerry and Linda looked bored, their eyes wandering constantly to the far-off bar, an island of curved plastic on a horizon of patterned carpet. Olive was more in the mood for conversation. Eddie could see why. Her two companions were dressed in casual clothes without style, but they had neat, well-kept bodies for women in their early forties.

  Olive was bespectacled and round, and the long-sleeved T-shirt she was wearing boasted a gruesome sequinned motif of a peacock, horribly misshapen due to being stretched over large, sagging breasts. But they were the only women sitting alone in the whole bar and that was good enough for Eddie. She pushed her spectacles back up her nose.

  “Oh, she don’t mean nothin’ by it. Actually, it ain’t exactly us attending the conference. Well, not even me.”

  She giggled. Eddie laughed with her.

  “I just got asked along ‘cos I never been to Tennessee and I’m real friendly with Kerry’s sister June, and she couldn’t go on account of her leg and everythin’. An’ anyway, what the Jiminy-do-dah do I know about keepin’ America white?”

  She had used her fat fingers to parenthesize the last three words, and Eddie blinked at her. Even Josh, reeling as he was from the Wild Turkey that had all but replaced his blood, looked up at the woman quizzically.

  Eddie cleared his throat.

  “You’re goin’ to a conference called Keep America White?”

  Olive pushed her spectacles up again and lifted her glass of Coke.

  “Is it called that, Linda? Or is that just what it’s about?”

  Linda was smiling, and nodded towards the bar. “I don’t rightly know, sweetheart. You can ask Douane and Bill. They’re the ones who’s goin’. We’re just here to spend their money.”

  The women laughed again.

  Eddie licked his bps. He didn’t need to turn around. He’d seen them at the bar all night. Two guys with necks so thick their shirt collars pinched the skin like string around pork. Eddie had thought at first they were drivers. This motel was, after all, on the trucker’s discount list. But they looked like mean fuckers, and not only were they too clean to be on the road, they had military haircuts and creases down the front of their jeans.

  He stood up and took Josh’s arm as he did so. “Well, I hope you girls enjoy yourselves here in the south. Have to bid you good night now.”

  Eddie guided Josh towards the exit, and as he left he heard Olive shouting over the band, who had resumed murdering some old favourites. “Maybe catch you at the buffet breakfast, Igo!”

  “Shit. I musta left that fuckin’ plastic card thing on the table.”

  Eddie let go of Josh’s arm temporarily while he used both hands to check all his pockets. Josh slumped against the wall next to Eddie’s door and slid down it.

  Eddie leaned over and spoke into his face. “I’m just goin’ down to get the key, Spiller. You stay right here and don’t throw up till I get back.”

  Josh nodded.

  Eddie ran along the acres of corridor back to the elevator and pressed the button. Josh thought how tiny he looked so far away like that, and watched in fascination as the ting of an equally faraway bell ushered his friend out of sight.

  He hadn’t meant to get as wrecked as this. But once he started drinking the enormous whiskeys that Eddie had kept on coming, he couldn’t stop. It felt too good to be completely numb. And it had been fun. Eddie had made him laugh like a kid, doing all the old dumb stuff, making the front desk continually page Josh Spiller, representative from Friends of the Beaver, every time he left to go to the bathroom.

  And best of all, now he felt nothing. No eyes watching him. No fear. No crazy stuff at all. Except he was smashed and might even upchuck like a teenage drunk if he didn’t concentrate.

  Josh narrowed his eyes and tried to focus on the massive runway o
f carpet he was sitting on. He looked to his right, to where the corridor ended in a square black window, its uneven glass distorting the reflection of the wall-mounted lights. To his left was the majority of the corridor. Dozens of doors lined up like sentries guarding their few square feet of soft sidewalk, stretching away into the distance without a break. It was disconcerting and depressing looking at it, so Josh let his head slump back onto his chest and looked instead at his hands.

  The elevator went ting.

  Josh raised his head slowly and prepared to greet Eddie. But it wasn’t Eddie. Two bulky men, one clothed in a tartan shirt, the other wearing one of plain green linen, were walking purposefully towards him. Neither looked as though they were searching for their room number. Josh twitched and scrambled to his feet. The men increased their pace.

  He swayed unsteadily and started feeling in his own pockets for his room key.

  The men started to jog. Josh turned and stumbled towards the black window. Maybe the fire exit would be down there. He ran a few paces and then fell. As he sat up, pushing himself into a sitting position with straight arms, the men stopped a few yards away. Josh raised his head to look at them. They relaxed, and the larger of the two crossed his arms over the well-pressed plaid of his shirt as he spoke, while his companion splayed his legs apart and let his arms hang by their sides.

  “God’s gift to women and the ugly fuck can’t even stand.”

  Josh took a deep breath and with all his concentration pushed himself up and stood to face them. He tried and failed to focus, but gave it a beat and their faces swam into some kind of definition.

  The man spoke again, this time with less comic contempt and considerably more menace in his thick voice.

  “Well, that’s real impressive, boy. An’ just how was it you were plannin’ to stick your faggot dick in our wives when seems to me you ain’t even up to findin’ your fuckin’ zipper?”

  Josh felt vomit rising in his gorge. The air around his head was becoming hot, pouring into his mouth and nostrils, smothering him like a pillow. He fought back nausea, panting for sweeter air.

  The other man spoke for the first time, taking a step forward. “Maybe you scant to answer my friend here? He’s a-talkin’ to you.”

  Josh took a stumbling step back towards the dead end of the window. The man in the green shirt matched the gesture, closing the distance. As he did so. Josh felt another wave of hot air move around his face. He raised his heavy head and tried to speak, slurring his words, as he put his hands out in a gesture of conciliation.

  “Aw, come on, guys. This is crazy.”

  Josh squinted at them, trying to make two of them instead of the four that were constantly moving, crossing over each other’s image like Venn diagrams. They were only marginally bigger than him, but right now, they were in considerably better shape. Maybe sober, Josh would have given it a square go and come out grinning, but as it was he didn’t stand a chance. In a few moments he was going to be mincemeat.

  Green Shirt turned his head back to Tartan and put his hands out in an imitation of Josh, and he started to repeat the words Josh had spoken, using a theatrical, girl’s voice, but he stopped mid-performance as he saw his friend’s face.

  The man in the tartan shirt was staring ahead as though he’d been knifed in the shoulder blades. His mouth was hanging open, his jaw working slightly at some silent purpose, and both deep-set eyes were showing as much white as their eyelids would ever allow. He had uncrossed his arms, and now held his clenched hands up in front of his chest like a baby on its back.

  “What the fuck, Douane?”

  The man in the green shirt stared at Douane’s stricken face for a second, then swung around, following the direction of those fear-mad eyes with his own. Josh tried to steady himself. All his concentration was being spent on trying to see straight, but no matter how many times he narrowed his eyes, blinked and refocused, there were still only shifting blurs where he knew his attackers stood. The most important thing in his mind right now was not survival or flight. It was trying to breathe in the oppressively hot air, so solid and tangible he could feel it searing his skin. He clenched his fists and gulped in a lungful of what was available, gasping as it did nothing to relieve the pressure in his bursting chest. The two men were now staring ahead, not at Josh, but at the space behind and above him. They were looking towards the window.

  Josh fell to his knees again, his hot head bent low, nearly touching the carpet. He coughed once and raised his head sufficiently to see the men’s legs from the knees down. They were backing away slowly from him, and one of the owners of those legs was muttering in a high, childlike voice: “It ain’t so. It ain’t so. Sweet Jesus, it ain’t.”

  The legs stumbled back a few more paces, then turned and ran. Josh put a hand to his face, wiped his eyes and tried to follow the frantic progress of those retreating legs.

  He could make out the distant running figures of the men as they skidded to a halt at the fire door beyond the elevators, tore it open and disappeared from his indistinct view.

  Josh shut his eyes and let his head fall again. There was a double relief in the men’s inexplicable exit: The air seemed to be growing cooler and he could feel the painful constriction of his chest beginning to loosen.

  With an effort of will more than body, he pushed himself upright and made his way unsteadily to his feet. The corridor was empty. Josh leaned against the wall for a moment, enjoying the taste of breathable air in his open mouth, then turned his head and looked towards the corridor’s only window.

  It seemed his eyes were still not obeying his brain. In the uneven undulations of the glass something was moving: huge, and darker than the black night that pressed up against the window.

  He gritted his teeth, put his fingers to his temples, shut his eyes and opened them again to squint hard at the square of inky glass. It steadied in his vision long enough to report back its contents: an infinity of lights, a smashed trucker leaning against a wall, a highway of carpet and nothing else. He slid down the wall and sat there, breathing heavily and shaking his head in a drunk’s despair.

  And when only a few minutes later Eddie returned triumphant from the bar with his square of computerized plastic, there was no one conscious to greet him. Josh Spiller was fast asleep on the carpet.

  19

  The copper rod touched the globes of quicksilver gently, and she watched, eternally fascinated, as the globes divided and re-formed in their own perfect but multiplied image. The double trace of blood that circled the metals had been completed by her two middle fingers, and its route resembled some macabre race trail left by gory snails.

  Already, the air around her was busy with servants from the other side, eager to be called, desperate to be unleashed. She inhaled the sulphur and closed her eyes, pulling a sharp thumbnail down between her breasts, where it left an angry red welt.

  In the corner, the eerie green light from the computer screen flickered over the top of several stacked crates, the dancing shapes picking out a dull reflection from the lumps of grey metal within like some corrupt open fire. And as she opened her mouth to speak, the machine’s low buzzing heightened the silence in the small room.

  She started normally, each word spoken in a voice without intonation, at a speed that would still count as language. And then the velocity increased. It increased until the beating, thrumming sound that emanated from her tongue was little more than a hideous single note.

  Behind her, the computer screen changed, silently updating its information to tell the back of this woman’s quivering head that the franc had fallen two points.

  “Man. Look at this guy.”

  Eddie let out a guffaw and slapped the back of Josh’s head twice, receiving a groan in response. At the foot of the bed, a television was showing a man in a waterproof jacket printed with “Team Dreyfus” talking his way through his chainsaw improvements to an announcer with a hand mike.

  “Fuck me. Would you listen to that dipshit?”
/>   Josh groaned again and curled farther into the foetal position he had adopted to avoid any more unwelcome physical contact with his friend.

  Eddie looked down at Josh and realized his recommendation to view was being ignored. He slapped him again, this time on the back.

  “Come on, Spiller. Sit up and drink the goddamn coffee.”

  There was no response. Eddie leant over and hooked his arms under Josh, hauling him into a sitting position against the padded headboard.

  “Gimme a break.”

  “One hour per unit of alcohol. That’s how long it takes even a crocked-out ol’ body like yours to get rid of the stuff. Science says you should be sober now. So I say you’re just bein’ a lazy fucker.”

  Josh groaned again, less convincingly this time, and opened his eyes. Eddie handed him a cup of instant coffee and pointed at the screen again. “See what you’ve been missin’? National hot-saw championships. This saddo just cut up a log in thirty-four seconds and instead of telling him to go get a life, they’re congratulating him.”

  “What’s the time?”

  Josh took a mouthful of coffee. It tasted good.

  “Twenty after ten.”

  “Aw, shit, Eddie. Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “I just did. Drink up and shut up.”

  Josh took another gulp of coffee and swung his legs over the edge of the huge bed. Sleeping in the clothes he’d had on last night had left him dishevelled like a beggar. His head hurt and his mouth was dry, and as he rubbed his face his eyeballs ached at the back of their sockets. Eddie punched him unhelpfully in the back.

  “Go take a shower. You stink.”

  Josh lashed out belatedly with an arm to ward off the blow. “Quit that, would you?”

  Eddie punched him again and laughed, making Josh curse as he got up off the bed and shuffled through to the bathroom. He took a long leak, then leant on the sink and grimaced at himself in the mirror. Two and a half days of stubble was turning into a beard and his eyes were bloodshot and bagged. He pulled the thin plastic curtain across the bath, turned on the shower, then fished in Eddie’s shaving kit for his razor and foam and started to shave. Almost as if touching his possessions triggered an automatic response, Eddie hollered from the bedroom.