The Listener

by Robert R. McCammon

  Curtis heard a sliding sound and a chorus of rattlings. He felt his underwear being pulled off him, then his socks, and he thought he must be lying completely naked in the gravel.

  “Throw all his damn clothes in the back of the truck. Shoes too,” Whipper directed. “Gimme the bag, Monty. Pick him up and drag him yonder. That boxcar over there’ll do.”

  Curtis felt their hands under his arms, and he was being dragged where they wanted him to be. He made out the shine of the flashlight’s beam on a railroad track, but the track had so many weeds around it that it was surely not near a station.

  “Right here,” Whipper said.

  Curtis heard the sound of a boxcar’s door being pushed open, the sliders shrieking from disuse.

  “Get him up in there.”

  He was lifted again, pushed forward and onto the splintery floor.

  “Drag him over there, against that wall,” Whipper directed.

  On the way, one of them punched Curtis in the ribs and drove a knuckle in for good measure. Then he was thrown down with his back against the boxcar’s wall. The light shone on him as the three stood admiring their work.

  “Okay,” said Whipper. “Gimme the bag and you two get on out.”

  “What’re you gonna do to him?”

  “Well, we ain’t gonna swing him…but we’ll let the snakes do the job for us. Get out, I’m gonna dump the bag on the floor.”

  “Shit, Whipper!” Fido said. “You gonna dump all twelve of ’em? What about the rodeo? You got some prize-winners in there!”

  “This right here’s the prize. We’ll come back and snatch ’em up again…say give it twenty-four hours. Anyway, I can always find more of ’em. Back up, now.”

  One of them gave a harsh laugh. “Hot damn!” said Monty. “In twenty- four hours this nigger’ll be a dead dog!”

  “Yep,” Whipper agreed. “That’s the idea.”

  Curtis listened then to the ominous silence. It was broken by the noise of what he took to be rattlesnakes being shaken out of the burlap bag between himself and the boxcar’s door. The sound of angry rattlings made the flesh crawl at the back of Curtis’s neck.

  “Nighty-night, nigger,” Whipper said.

  “Yeah, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” said Fido, and then he gave that cackle again.

  Curtis heard the boxcar’s door slide shut. He heard the three laugh as they were striding away. The rattlings subsided. In another moment he heard the pickup truck’s engine start up. The truck boomed exhaust again, and then there was the sound of the vehicle moving away…and finally, quiet.

  But not absolute quiet, because over the beating of his heart Curtis could hear the slitherings of the rattlesnakes across each other and over the boxcar’s floor. They were searching for a place to crawl into, and he knew it was just a matter of time before they found him.

  Twelve of them, Fido had said. At least one or two were going to crawl up against his body in the next few minutes. He was going to die from the venom of a rattlesnake’s fangs, and that was that.

  Nilla, he thought, though he was unable to send out any kind of message; his mind was so jangled with pain that it was impossible to concentrate. Ludenmere might already be dead…but what about Nilla and Little Jack?

  A fine knight in shining armor he had turned out to be, he thought. If it weren’t so terrible and his face weren’t so wrecked, he might have given a grim smile to the darkness, and then he might have started sobbing.

  But instead, all he could do was lie there with his back against the wall and wait for the first snake to slither up against him…and then would come the warning rattling, and the sting of the bite on his unprotected flesh.

  Twenty-Three.

  “They’re swingin’ south,” Pearly said. “Tryin’ to find a road.”

  “We’re gonna have to swing wider and herd ’em back in,” Ginger replied. She was carrying the flashlight in her left hand and in her right was the .45 revolver. “I figured they’d give out by now. Didn’t have any food all day and I doubt they got much sleep. Won’t be long, though.”

  Pearly nodded. He kept the beam of his bull’s-eye lantern low because he was more concerned about where he was stepping. Only a few minutes ago his right foot had gone into muck that had seized him up so hard it had been an effort to pull out and he’d almost left his shoe in it. The earth was softer than it had been, and pools of water rose up to fill their footprints. Nearly hidden in the knee-high weeds and brambles were patches of darker mud that he feared were as thick as glue and just as viscous.

  “Got to get ’em before daylight,” Ginger said, walking ahead of Pearly a few paces, but she was being careful with her footing too. “Scoop ’em up, take ’em back and hit it to Mexico.”

  “You sure we need ’em?” he had to ask. “Odds are they’re gonna get lost out here.” It had occurred to him that he and Ginger might also get themselves lost, but he didn’t want to dwell on that. As long as they stayed near the lakeshore, they could find their way back. Above them the clouds were beginning to break open and a few stars were showing through the wisps but there was no sight of a moon. “You sure we need ’em?” he asked again.

  “We need ’em. If Ludenmere and that driver aren’t done for, we’ve still got trouble, but as long as we have those brats, the cops are gonna back off. Nothin’ they can do to us with those kids in the car.”

  “Yeah,” Pearly said, but he was still thinking that this whole thing had been more about Ginger’s revenge on a rich man instead of the kidnapping itself. That is, if Donnie had been telling the truth about her past. He saw that Ginger had begun to change their direction, heading a few degrees more to the south to herd the kids back toward the lake. He decided to probe Donnie’s story, as much as he dared. “So,” he said, “you had a kid once?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Donnie told me,” he continued. “He said you—”

  “He was a liar,” she interrupted. “Liked lyin’ to people to stir things up.”

  “So you never did have a kid?”

  Again, it was a time before she answered. “When did you and Donnie ever have a talk about shit like that?”

  “We just did. You were asleep.”

  “Now I know that’s a lie.”

  Pearly didn’t want to explain any further about the episode with her muttering in the chair and lost in some kind of delirium. But he couldn’t let this go, it seemed important to clear up. “Donnie said…after your kid got killed…you wound up in a—”

  She spun on him and put the light in his face.

  “Hear me good,” she said, and her voice was like a razor at his throat. “Donnie was a goddamned liar. He deserved what he got back there because he was stupid too, and he couldn’t take orders. Because of him, look where we are. Okay, you were right…I shouldn’t have pulled him in but I needed a third and it needed to be a man. He was a sorry-ass liar and what happened to him had been comin’ a long time. Got it?”

  “Sure,” Pearly said. His voice was easy but he was as tight inside as a wound-up steel spring ready to burst. “That light in my eyes is not gonna help me move any faster, darlin’.”

  She lowered it. “Okay,” she said. “Now quit jawin’. I figure we’re only a couple of hundred yards behind ’em. They’re gonna be havin’ as tough a time as we are walkin’ through this…likely tougher. And yes, we need ’em if we want to keep our skins before we get across the border. That do you for answers?”

  “It’ll do,” he said. For now, he thought. He followed her when she turned away from him and started off again. It came to his mind that he could slide the .38 out of its shoulder holster, drill her in the back of the head and be on his way to Mexico with all that money for himself, but she was right about needing the kids. He might admire Bonnie and Clyde but he didn’t want to end up on a slab, riddled with holes like their corpses
were. No…drastic action in that regard could wait until later. If she got down to Mexico with him, how could he trust her not to plunge a knife into his heart as he slept, her being a nuthouse case? Two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars, with only one owner…damn, that sounded nice.

  If he had to put her down, it would be self-defense, wouldn’t it? Taking care of himself for the future?

  “Whatever’s on your mind,” she said without looking at him, “get it off. I can feel you thinkin’, Pearly. Don’t you know that by now?”

  “I’m thinkin’ we need to watch where we step,” he answered, a little shaken by her comment.

  “Yeah,” she answered, “we do need to watch that, don’t we?”

  He erased from his mind a quick image of the bullet plowing through her skull and coming out in a dizzy line, like in the Dick Tracy comic strip. Then he stopped thinking about anything but putting his mitts on those two brats and dragging them back, maybe roughing them up some to put the fear in them. That seemed to him to be the right thing to do.

  ****

  Curtis listened.

  He couldn’t tell if the snakes were still moving or not, but none of them were rattling. He had pulled his knees up close to his chest and pressed his arms against his sides. When and if the first touch of snake happened, he imagined himself going as cold and still as a stone…but he knew himself, and he knew he was going to shiver when that slithering thing touched him, and then he might panic when the rattling started, and he might get up and try for the door and if he did reach the door he would fall out of here bitten by poisonous fangs on his legs and feet and he would die before anybody else even knew he was here.

  He figured this boxcar had been sitting on these weeded-up rails for a long time. How long would it be before anyone found his body?

  His head and face together were one hot ache. He was having to breathe through his wrecked mouth because his nose was even more wrecked.

  Nilla…Little Jack…Mr. Ludenmere…he had failed them all.

  The haze came and went. If he closed his eyes he might fall into a stupor that would be his finish. A strange question came to his fevered brain: what would the knights of his favorite book do, in this situation? What would Sir Lancelot do, and Sir Gawain? Sir Galahad…Sir Percival… Sir Gareth…Sir Lavayne…Sir Tristram and all the others…what would they do?

  One thing he knew for sure: they would not accept defeat.

  Sure, but it was a fantasy…a make-believe world they lived in…maybe there had been something called chivalry at one time, but the tales of those knights were not of the real world.

  Yet…if they ever did exist…they would not be crouched here waiting to be snake-bit, when two innocents were counting on them for help. No. They would gather their wits and fight their way out. Or…maybe…think their way out.

  But he could hardly focus his mind on anything. For sure he couldn’t focus enough to reach Nilla. She couldn’t help him, anyway, when she was the one who needed help the most. So…what to do? And he realized he’d better get to doing whatever it was, before the first rattlesnake found him.

  Curtis had another question. What else was in this boxcar with him? Was it completely empty? He hadn’t been able to see when they’d thrown him in here. The three toughs wouldn’t have cared…but was there anything in here that could be used?

  There was only one way to find out, and he had to be mighty careful. When he tried to stand, his head pounded and his stomach turned over; he had to stay where he was to battle against throwing up. The sickness passed, and he slowly got to his feet. His knees were still weak. He decided to move—carefully, very carefully—to his left and go all the way to the corner.

  The second step he took was met with a rattling to his right and dangerously close. Then another snake joined in the ominous warning. Curtis backed up to his original position. The rattlings stopped. He felt enveloped in the heat of his own sweat. Surely the snakes could smell that; would they crawl toward him, or away?

  Curtis had no choice but to keep exploring. He moved toward the corner on his right, feeling his way along the wall. Step after step, he expected to hear the rattlings start but none of the reptiles had gotten over there yet.

  His shin bumped into something that would’ve scared the yell out of him if he’d been able. He reached down to find out what. His fingers made out a short stack of what felt like grainsacks, maybe three or four piled up. He groped beyond the sacks into the darkness. His right hand found a sloped wooden surface. But not the boxcar’s wall…the gropings of both hands told him he’d discovered a large barrel that he estimated stood about two-and-a-half feet tall. There were two others alongside it. He tried to tip one and it moved; it was empty. A second one was also empty, but the third resisted him and whatever was in it—nails, maybe—was a heavy load.

  Heavy enough, Curtis realized, to crush whatever it rolled over.

  He attempted to lift one of the grainsacks to throw it toward the middle of the boxcar but its weight defeated him and he decided to save his strength for the heavy barrel. He was going to have to tip it over, roll it around in front of himself and then roll it toward the door, with him walking behind it. His feet and legs were still going to be at risk from the left and right, but he hoped the barrel’s weight would crush any snake in the path he took. In this darkness he couldn’t tell exactly where the door was, so that was another risk. There had to be a few snakes over near that door…had to be, and he didn’t like it but to get out of here there was only one way.

  He recalled hearing or reading something that rattlesnakes could still sink their fangs even if their heads were cut off. He was aware that the barrel might roll over a body, crush the midsection or the tail and leave the head snapping at whatever it could find.

  It was either find the way out or stay here, curl up and die.

  He went to work trying to tip the barrel. The muscles cracked in his shoulders. If he had ever moved any heavy baggage in his life, he was going to have to get this thing over. Sweat burned both eyes, the one half-swollen up and the other nearly slitted. He had a moment of despair in which he feared the monster might be cemented to the floor. He got a shoulder against it and put a foot against the wall and pushed for every fiber of muscle and willpower Ironhead Joe had given him in the blood.

  The barrel tilted over, crashed down with a tremendous wallop that Curtis thought might have nearly smashed it through the boards, and the twelve snakes in the boxcar started rattling a deadly symphony. There was one that sounded too close to his left leg. He drew his leg abruptly back, imagining that he might’ve just missed getting struck. He got behind the barrel and turned it—again with a mighty effort that his mama would have never believed was in him—toward the door, or his best guess of where it ought to be. He didn’t think there would be a grip on the inside of the door, but it ought to slide open without a lot of effort…he hoped, because he didn’t want to spend but a couple of seconds trying to do it.

  A problem: even though the barrel was thick around the girth, he was going to have to bend low to roll it forward with both hands. He couldn’t move that thing with one foot, which he would rather have done. But…there was no other way to do it. When he bent over, his head swam and he had to straighten up again because he thought he might pass out. The rattlings had stopped; he had the sensation that the snakes were waiting for him to make his move.

  He leaned over once more, took a breath into his mouth through the holes where his teeth had been, and then he put his palms against the barrel and started pushing.

  Instantly there came two rattlings from his right. They were beyond the path of the barrel, so he had to ignore them and keep rolling it toward the door. In front of him, a snake started its sharp and wicked buzzing sound. There was a crunching noise as Curtis pushed the barrel onward.

  The underside of the barrel rolled up damp, and suddenly his bare feet were sli
ding in what he could only guess was snake guts; something twisted against his right foot, which must’ve been part of the body in its death throes.

  Another one began rattling off on the left and the barrel crunched over that snake too. Curtis stepped on wildly thrashing coils that slapped against his heel. The boxcar suddenly seemed alive with the noise of the snakes. A third was crushed beneath the barrel, and then a fourth was caught under it. Curtis’s hands were wet with rattlesnake blood. Another snake squirmed away under his left foot. He felt a scream drawing his injured throat as tight as the lynching noose he had escaped this night. There was no going back; he was only a few feet away from the door now, but there had to be more snakes around it. Their rattlings had grown to a crescendo of fury. He didn’t know if he’d caught anything else under the barrel because no longer could he hear the sound of the bodies being crushed.

  The blood-slick barrel hit wood. He reached out…but where was the door? His fingers searched desperately for some kind of protrusion to grip hold of. Coils flailed against his left foot but whether it was a snake writhing in agony or trying for a strike he didn’t know.

  The index finger of his left hand found a vertical metal lip. He curled his other fingers under it, got his right hand under it too, pushed hard—harder still—and the sliders shrieked as the door came open. Then he stepped up on the barrel and jumped through the opening into the night.

  ****

  They had tried to leave the lake behind, by heading south, but Nilla had seen by the two lights that the kidnappers were trying to cut them off, and worse…the lake was following them too.

  Nilla’s lantern showed that the woods had fallen away, and ahead of them looked to be a plain of grass interrupted here and there by high-standing clumps of rushes. Her light gleamed off water.

  “Might as well give it up!” the woman called from maybe a hundred yards away. “Go easier on you if you do!”

  “Don’t listen to that,” Nilla said, but she stood at the edge of what appeared to be a grassy swamp of unknown depth and she did not move.