Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04]

by Charles L. Grant

  Since then, however...

  He spots the whale family up ahead, and after one last disgusted look at the surf, angles across the sand toward them. He doesn’t so much feel the need for communion as for a windbreak, and that somehow makes him feel guilty in a foolish sort of way. When he reaches Daddy, however, he’s tempted to climb it, sit on top and play King of the Hill with the gulls and the crows who were scolding him from the trees.

  Go south, he orders them silently; get a bird life and go south, you jerks.

  He wanders among the boulders, brushing the cold stone with his fingertips, poking a finger into a depression or a crack, brushing away dry sand flung there wet by the wind or someone’s racing foot. He blows his nose; he wipes a wind-tear from one eye. He looks up, once and sharply, when he hears the dull smack of a distant explosion. Or what sounds like an explosion but is probably a wave striking a deep recess in one of the jetties. When he hears nothing else, he moves to the front of Daddy’s great head and leans back against it.

  Stares at the ground.

  At his feet, wearing those dumb walking shoes that he knows are nothing more than fat fancy sneakers.

  Remembering, suddenly, what it used to be like, what he used to wear, and how comfortable it had all been.

  Back when.

  In the other life.

  In the other life, when he had dared—as some had put it—to speak to the Lord not in archaic, Shakespeare-like language, but in ordinary conversation. How he used to walk into his church first thing each day and say, “Good morning, Lord,” and see if there was anything special he had to do.

  Blasphemy is how the more ritual-oriented of his parishioners had put it; you don’t speak to God as if He were your equal.

  They didn’t understand that Casey had no such idea in mind. It was just his way. He often thought it had something to do with the fundamental differences between North and South; just as likely, it had something to do with the comfort he felt in the Presence.

  God certainly hadn’t struck him down for his cheek.

  He figured that was a plus.

  Idly he digs at the sand with the toe of a shoe, smooths the hole over, and starts another. Looks up once when he thinks he hears a siren, dismisses it as the wind.

  You’re stalling, he tells himself.

  He nods; he knows.

  He’s gotten real good at that over the years. Pretty much one of the world’s experts, he reckons.

  And today, like each Christmas since the day he left Maple Landing, would have been pretty much like every other day, if it hadn’t been for those damn kids and that damn Bannock and his lady with the stunning auburn hair. All right, maybe not so terribly ordinary, but damnit, certainly not filled with so much pain.

  It isn’t fair.

  It isn’t right.

  He’s out of it.

  He had lost.

  you’re stalling, Chisholm

  He digs another hole, and smooths it over; he wriggles his back against Daddy’s head to find more comfort; he watches his foot, studies the sand, listens to the gulls and the crows, until he can find no more excuses to keep his head down.

  When he looks up, at the sea, at the cloudless sky, at the mist that rises above the jetties each time a wave thunders against them, at the beach that stretches southward as far as he can see, at the birds that ride the wind ...

  When he looks up, he inhales, holds it, lets it out, and finally shakes his head slowly. Says, “Good afternoon, Lord, happy birthday,” and it sounds so ridiculous, so phoney, so trite, so unconscionably false, that he wonders if finally he’s stepped over the line.

  Whether he has or not, though, it doesn’t stop him from weeping.

  * * * *

  5

  He stands in the middle of Midway Road, hands on his hips, staring hard at the house across from his. He has been standing there, virtually unmoving, for almost an hour; whenever the urge to give up makes him shift, he tells himself—patience, boy, patience.

  He’s aware of movement off to his right and behind him—Bannock and the woman leaving their place and standing in the yard. Neither greets him or calls to him, but he can feel them watching.

  Patience, boy. Patience.

  When it happens, it happens fast:

  Cora slams the porch door open and stomps down the stairs, her head shaking, one hand slashing at the air as if wielding a sword.

  “What do you want?” she yells. She wears no coat, only a shirt and jeans and tired sneakers on her feet. “What the hell do you want from me?”

  Reed is far behind her, tentative, carrying a sweater in his good hand. Casey sees smudges under his eyes, and his cheeks, once full, are sunken now and pale.

  “What do you want?” she shouts, her stride shorter, growing uncertain.

  He doesn’t move.

  He stands there and watches her sternly, the way he used to watch the teenager who had all the ideas that got all her friends in trouble, the one who was sullen and bitter and had only three real friends, Reed the only survivor.

  Her head doesn’t make it anywhere near his chin, but she plants herself in front of him and takes a swipe at his chest. “What do you want?” she demands, breathing heavily, eyes narrow, lower lip on the verge of trembling.

  He glances over her head at Reed, and he winks.

  Startled, Reed can’t stop himself from grinning.

  Cora slaps his chest again, once with each hand, and after the second one he grabs her wrist.

  “Let go of me.”

  But she doesn’t struggle.

  Softer: “Please, damnit, let go of me.”

  “Don’t swear,” he scolds softly.

  “Ain’t swearing,” she says, repeating one of his lessons. “It’s cursing. You want swearing, I’ll swear you into the goddamn ground.”

  As soon as she realizes what she’s done, she looks up at him, and the lip finally trembles.

  “Reverend Chisholm?”

  For a long time, he doesn’t answer. She expects the truth, because he’s never before given her anything else. The problem now is, he’s not sure what the truth is.

  So he says, with a small smile, “Maybe.”

  It’s honest, and it’s enough.

  She collapses against him, hugs him as tightly as she can, and he can’t see if she’s crying, but he wouldn’t bet on it. Cora Bowes seldom cried, at least not in front of him. That’s a weakness, and she’s spent a lifetime trying to purge herself of them all.

  “Maybe,” he whispers as he puts his arms around her, rests his chin in her hair. “Maybe.”

  * * * *

  2

  1

  T

  hey spent most of Sunday at Casey’s house, sprawled in the living room, a bath towel draped over the TV screen so no one would be tempted. He sat on the couch and listened to their stories, which they seemed determined to make either as harrowing or as comic as they could. They talked over each other, bickered, filled in gaps, contradicted, and once begun, didn’t bother to try to hide the pain.

  Midway toward sunset, he and John drove down to Betsy’s, discovered it closed and moved on to the Tide, a coral-colored stucco building on the left side of the road, a mural of a huge cresting wave stretching from one side of the entrance to the other. The menu was far larger than anything Hector and Gloria delivered, but Casey cautioned him that the food, while decent to not too bad, didn’t hold a candle to the Nazarios’ Cuban touch. They ordered enough to feed an army, ordered a little more, and dumped it all in the backseat.

  When Casey paid and John protested, Casey said, “I’ve had nothing else to spend it on in a long time. Let it be.”

  * * * *

  Let me tell you something, honey, Lisse had said to him during one of John’s pauses, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen those crows with those awful blue eyes. Killed one man we know about, the one who got him started writing, can’t begin to guess how many others there were. Couldn’t really hear their wings, either.
There were a whole bunch, a couple dozen or more, but you couldn’t hear them flying.

  And the horses.

  Don’t get me started about the horses.

  She frowned when Cora said something to her, then shrugged helplessly. I don’t know, dear, she said. I don’t know what was the worst part. Maybe because it all was, you know what I mean?

  Yes, I guess you do.

  She shifted in the uncomfortable silence, and raised an eyebrow. No, I take that back. It’s his snoring, that’s the worst part. The man can wake the long dead and make them wish they were dead again. The trouble is, when he falls asleep he’s deaf as a post.

  Reed, giggling, wanted to know if they were married.

  Not yet.

  She nudged John hard, and he blushed.

  See? she said, her eyes bright. Softy, the man’s a softy. Except when he’s asleep and deaf. Then you can poke him all night, it’s like kicking a log.

  Married? I don’t know. Maybe next year.

  And Reed had muttered, if there is a next year.

  * * * *

  Casey didn’t tell her he had already seen the birds.

  * * * *

  They hadn’t quite reached the church, when John glanced in the rearview mirror and said, “Uh-oh.”

  Casey checked over his shoulder and groaned.

  It was a sheriffs department cruiser, lights twirling; headlamps flashing. John pulled over and rolled his window down.

  “What’s the procedure here?”

  “I don’t know. All I own is a bike. I walk the rest of the time.” Then he said, “Oh, crap,” when he saw Deputy Freck climb out of the car, hitching at his gunbelt, straightening his sunglasses.

  John already had his license out, wiggled a finger to get Casey to pull the registration and insurance from the glove box, along with the rental contract.

  “Afternoon, gentlemen,” Freck said, leaning over, his face filling the window. “Sorry to bother you. Just need to ask a couple of questions.”

  “Anything you say, Officer,” John said politely.

  “No kidding.” He smiled without parting his lips. “Where were you yesterday afternoon, con?”

  Casey didn’t answer.

  “Hey, con, I’m talking to you. Where were you yesterday afternoon?”

  “Ex-con,” Casey said, refusing to face him. “And I was at the beach most of the time. Why?”

  “You got witnesses?”

  “Why?”

  Freck leaned an elbow on the door, shook his head as if he were weary of dealing with recalcitrant fools. “You gonna tell me you haven’t heard?”

  “Don’t have a phone and there’s no paper, Deputy,” he said. “And I’m no psychic, either.”

  “I’ll be damned. Well, Chisholm, seems like somebody blew up the Lucky Deuce yesterday. And you wouldn’t know anything about it, would you.”

  Casey did look then. “Rick’s boat? Somebody blew up Rick’s boat? What the hell for?”

  “My, my, don’t the man catch on fast. So you were on the beach, that right? No witnesses, that right?”

  “A couple of crows.”

  “All day?”

  “No. The rest of the time I was with my friends.”

  The deputy nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe—”

  “Look, Freck,” Casey said, his patience gone, “if you want me to make a statement of my whereabouts, say so and we’ll go to the office. Otherwise” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder—”we’ve got our dinner back there, and I don’t want it to get cold.”

  Freck inhaled slowly, deliberately, as he looked up and down the street. Then he said to John, “Mister, you look to me like a reasonable man. Hell”—he took off his sunglasses—”you look like somebody I know. But if this little routine stop here has annoyed you, maybe you’d best think twice about hanging around with ex-cons.”

  With his sunglasses back on, he touched a finger to the edge of his hat brim in a mock salute, and ambled back to his patrol car. When he left, it was with a squealing U-turn.

  John watched him go, in the side mirror. “Something going on here I should know about, Casey?”

  “When we get back,” he answered. “When we get back.”

  * * * *

  It wasn’t much fun a lot of the time, Reed had said, plucking absently at the sling that bound his arm to his chest. I mean, we saw a lot of things we wouldn’t have seen otherwise, I guess, but it wasn’t like we were on vacation. Well, sometimes it was. Sometimes we knew Reverend Chisholm wasn’t anywhere around, so we used the time to build up our money. It was hard, though. I mean, Cora kept getting fired all the time.

  Hey, she said.

  Well, you were. She never took anything from anybody, you know? I don’t think they want that kind of attitude in a waitress. No offense, Lisse.

  None taken, Yank.

  He grinned then and started to laugh, sputtered to a halt, apologized, and laughed again.

  No, Cora warned.

  One time, he said, we were camping out in I forget where it was, in some trees anyway someplace, and the next morning Cora gets up to go ... you know ... you know? ... and I’m getting stuff ready to cook breakfast when she comes screaming back like she’s being chased by monsters, pants down around her ankles, and I... oh, God ...I...

  Turkeys, she said grumpily. It was turkeys, okay? You happy?

  But she soon enough began to smile in spite of herself, had to cough away a laugh.

  I wasn’t looking where I was going, got myself all settled, and there was a whole flock of wild turkeys who I guess kind of took exception to what I was doing.

  You know, those damn things are big, Reed said. Then he grinned even wider. I bopped one with a flying pan. I learned to cook turkey that night.

  My hero, Cora said sarcastically.

  Damn right, he said. You’re God damn right.

  * * * *

  All the food was stored in the kitchen except for what they took back to the living room to eat right away. As they did, Casey told them how he’d been attacked, drugged to keep him in bed, and how he really didn’t know exactly why it had all happened.

  “All I can figure from some of the old newspapers, and from what I heard while I was in bed—what I remember, that is—is that there’s some kind of big land deal thing going on. Everything on this end of the island has been bought up, except for a place owned by a guy named Raybourn. There’s a few blind corporations involved, and the speculation is, they’re run by the mayor and ... well, my boss.”

  “I don’t get it,” John said. “Where do you fit in?”

  “I don’t, I don’t think. I mean, I’m just the handyman. I don’t have any interest in any property, the mayor can’t be mad at me because I’ve never met him ... hell, I just don’t know. But people in the way are getting hurt. The story is, an old woman was, essentially, murdered for her house, there’s been vandalism against those who talk too loudly about it—”

  “But somebody wanted you out of the way, too,” Reed said. “Not as in dead, I mean. I mean, like, with all the drugs and stuff.”

  “Again,” Casey began, and stopped. Frowned. “Well, there was one thing.”

  He told them about the newspaper and the Teagues, but even that didn’t make much sense in the long run.

  “So I ticked them off and they beat the crap out of me. That doesn’t justify getting a doctor involved in keeping me flat on my back. That’s serious business. That’s, at the least, some form of criminal malpractice.”

  He spread his arms. “I don’t know, guys. I do not know.”

  * * * *

  He watched Reed struggle with a plate and his sandwich, and couldn’t take it any longer.

  “Reed,” he said, standing, “when did you get hurt, Thanksgiving, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get up.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come on, get up, boy. On your feet. Someone go into the kitchen and get me a pair of scissors or a good sharp knife.”


  Reed looked bewildered, and uneasy, as Cora hurried out of the room, and he flinched a bit when Casey clamped his hands on his shoulders.