Night Wind

by Mertz, Stephen

  Trading a pleasant goodbye with Mr. Tutwiler, she happened to pass Connie Silva's homeroom on her way out of the building. She glanced in. Connie was working late at her desk.

  When Connie looked up with a friendly smile, her eyes sparkled, good-natured and conspiratorial. "Well, did you pass Mr. T's inspection?"

  "I think so," Robin said from the doorway. "At least he didn't fire me."

  "You'll do fine."

  "I hope so. Have you lived in Devil Creek for long?"

  "All my life. I'll show you around one of these days, if you'd like."

  "That would be nice. Thanks."

  Connie leaned back. She emitted a sigh and tossed her pencil onto the stack of papers she'd been poring over, the first indication that she might be as exhausted as Robin felt. "The trick will be finding the time. I have two three-year-olds and between them and my job, that doesn't leave much time for socializing."

  "Why not bring your kids along?"

  "You wouldn't mind?"

  "I wouldn't mind. I love kids."

  "Same here. Guess that helps when you're teaching fourth graders."

  "I, uh, don't imagine every day is as hectic as the first." Connie laughed; happy, pleasant. "Hardly. Don't sweat it, teach. You'll do fine."

  "Thanks, Connie. I guess I needed that. See you tomorrow."

  "See you."

  The school parking lot was located behind the gymnasium and adjacent to the playing field. After a day spent indoors, the warmth of the late afternoon sunshine felt good, rejuvenating Robin.

  There was no sign of Paul. Paul had already made a new friend, a boy his own age—chubby, red-haired, with glasses—who he'd introduced as Jared. Before the meeting, she'd left the two boys chattering away enthusiastically about the state of the art of special effects in the movies, with Paul promising to meet her by the car in the parking lot an hour later. Which was right now.

  "Come on, Paul," she said with mild exasperation to the nearly empty parking lot.

  Crossing to the Subaru, she reached into her purse for her keys. She wasn't about to take off in search of her son. He'd show up soon enough. Paul was a good kid but that hardly meant he was an angel by any stretch of the imagination. He was a twelve-year-old boy, after all. Anyway, she could use a few minutes of quality time alone, a little peace and quiet for herself.

  Settling behind the steering wheel, she placed her briefcase on her lap and withdrew her lesson plans for the following day. Before she could begin reading, she sensed someone approaching her side of the car. In the brief moment it took for her to look up, she assumed it would be Paul. She was startled to see Bobby Caldwell standing there, leaning down toward her half-lowered window. She almost dropped the papers from her lap. Tobe was barely visible where he stood behind his brother, largely obscured by Bobby's bulk.

  Bobby smirked. "Lookee here, little brother. If it ain't our girly friend from the highway, sitting all alone without even her brat to protect her."

  "I haven't been a girl in quite a few years," Robin said. "I'm not your friend and I don't need anyone to protect me." It was a bravado she didn't feel. She told herself that these were kids, after all. Bad kids, sure, but this was not some deserted highway. This was a public school parking lot.

  Tobe hooted. "Oowee! City gal's got spunk, don't she?"

  Bobby rested a hand on the door handle. "I'll give her some spunk." He spoke in a leering whisper for her ears alone. "I'll give her plenty."

  She pushed down the lock button. "Get away from this car."

  Tobe hooted again. "Don't sound like she's too impressed, Bobby-o."

  Bobby said, "Maybe me and her, we just need to get better acquainted." He was about to reach through and unlock the door. She grasped the handle and started to roll up the window.

  She heard Tobe say, with feeling, "Aw hell."

  Bobby stepped back from the car.

  A police car came to a stop beside her vehicle. She'd been too concerned with Tobe to notice its approach. Sunlight reflected off the badge of the officer who stepped from the car. Despite the spare tire that filled out his uniform around the middle, the man looked more than competent. His uniform was sharply pressed. His hand rested on his holstered sidearm.

  He said, "Step away from the vehicle, Bobby. Slow and easy."

  Bobby obeyed. "Why, sure, Chief. We was just getting acquainted with the new teach, is all."

  The officer glanced at Robin. "I'm Chief Saunders, ma'am. I was patrolling and I saw these troublemakers giving you a hard time."

  Tobe had not moved from where he stood behind Bobby. "We wasn't giving her no hard time, Chief," he whined. "We was just talking to her."

  Bobby added, "Hell, Chief. I wasn't doing nothing but leaning on the lady's car, visiting."

  "Ma'am?" the officer asked. "Do you want to press charges?"

  Robin considered her options. What could she prove against Bobby and his whining little brother? There was no one to corroborate what they'd said to her, and just because she thought Bobby was about to reach in and unlock the door didn't mean he actually was. She experienced anger, immediately followed by a surge of defeat. She was exhausted. She did not need this.

  "I don't want to press charges," she said. "But these boys were harassing me. I'd like them to stay away from me in the future."

  Saunders glared at Bobby and Tobe. "You heard her. She's doing you a favor. Now haul your useless selves off these school grounds or I'll run you both in for trespassing. And if I ever find out you've been harassing her again, I'll just have to decide whether I want to throw you both in jail or take my badge off and drive out to your place and kick both your butts. Now scat."

  Little Tobe started to withdraw, then hesitated when he realized his brother wasn't with him. Bobby stood his ground, his fists clenched. He and Saunders stared each other down for what Robin guessed had to be at least a half-minute—under the circumstances, a very long time. Then, with a crude snorting noise, Bobby wheeled around, joined his brother and they strutted off toward their beat-up pickup truck, which she now saw parked on the public road fronting the school.

  When the two were gone, the bravado she'd mustered disappeared like air from a deflated balloon.

  "Thank you, Chief. They were hassling me. I just didn't want to make it worse for my son and me."

  They watched the pickup truck drive away.

  "Ma'am, at the next sign of any problem whatsoever from either one of those punks you call 911. I don't reckon Tobe would ever do anything on his own, but that brother of his is one bad apple."

  "I should introduce myself. My name is Robin Curtis."

  He smiled a kindly smile and tipped his hat brim in a courtly western gesture that she'd seen a million times in the cowboy movies but never in real life. "I know who you are, ma'am. Pleasure to meet you."

  Paul chose that moment to appear from the main classroom building, walking toward them, oblivious to what had just occurred.

  Before her son was within hearing range, Robin said, "Thanks again, Chief Saunders."

  "Just doing my job, ma'am."

  Another tip of the hat brim and he was gone. The police car was driving off as Paul got into the Subaru.

  "Hi, Mom. What was that all about?"

  She shuffled her study plans back into her briefcase, and started the car. "I was meeting the Chief of Police," she said conversationally, as if it really didn't matter.

  Paul seemed to have already dismissed the subject.

  As they drove home, she watched in her rearview mirror for the brothers' ancient pickup truck, but it was nowhere in sight.

  Chapter Ten

  "Guess what, Mom."

  "What, honey?"

  "Yo, Mom. You said you weren't going to call me honey anymore."

  "All right, Paul." She affectionately emphasized his name. "What?"

  "There was a murder in this house. A murder and a suicide, a long time ago."

  This was midway through their after-dinner ritual of Paul doi
ng the dishes while she put away the leftovers.

  She paused in wrapping meatloaf in a food storage bag. "What are you talking about?"

  "Jared told me," Paul did not interrupt or slow his efficient, practiced rinsing of the dishes. "It happened fifty years ago. It was a soldier from that war a long time ago, the Korean one. Jared said that the soldier and his wife built this house. Then he went off to fight in Korea. It happened when he came back. Did we win that war?"

  "I'm sure you can find a book all about it in the school library." She heard the sharpness of her tone, and told herself to relax. "Paul, what is supposed to have happened here when that soldier came back from Korea?"

  "Jared said the soldier killed his wife, then himself, with a shotgun. It happened right here in the kitchen."

  The glass cooking dish with the meatloaf slipped from her fingers, shattering loudly into a million pieces upon the floor.

  After that, they concerned themselves with cleaning it up. Paul was contrite. He broomed the mess into a dustpan while Robin used a sponge mop after him, assuring him that dropping the leftovers and breaking the dish was no one's fault but her own. She had pressed him to tell her, right? With that settled, she next had to know if there was anything else that Jared had told him about the tragedy. Paul said no, which was some relief to her at least. But he'd told her more than enough already, and what he'd told her stayed with her throughout the evening like an infection buried deep in the back of her mind.

  What could be the emotional truth, she wondered, behind a tragedy like that? Had something snapped psychologically with that soldier while he was off fighting in Korea? Had his wife been unfaithful, falling in love—or lust—with another man during his absence? Robin imagined the man walking into the kitchen where the wife could have been busy at the same spot where she had prepared tonight's dinner. Or had he chased her into the kitchen, the both of them screaming? Had she pleaded for mercy? Begged for her life? Or had he walked up quietly behind her and fired the shotgun? A shotgun. Dear God. He had killed her and in the same fit of insane passion—or despair, or both—had taken his own life. What could twist love into that?

  Wait a minute, she thought. Looking back on her own life thus far, what she'd thought was love for Jeff was only lust; the hot sex they shared when their relationship was new: his touch, his scent, the way he made her feel between the sheets. But what a stupid thing to base a supposedly life-long commitment on. The passion had left their intimate life even before Paul was born, and they'd had little intimacy whatsoever from the time of their son's birth on.

  What a fool I was, she thought.

  She consciously set her mind to blocking these thoughts of Jeff as she gathered her work notes together before her on the kitchen table in their new kitchen.

  In the living room, beyond the kitchen archway, Paul was indulging in his allotted evening television time. He found a science fiction movie on cable that held him transfixed.

  She wished Paul hadn't told her about the half-century old tragedy that had happened here. Sadness engulfed her, and she wondered if she would ever again step into her clean, cozy kitchen, in their nice cozy house, without thinking about a long deceased man and woman she'd never known, and their blood and brains splattered across walls and ceiling, their bodies lying for who knew how long before being found. . . .

  She tried to banish the bleak thoughts, the gruesome image. Every house had a history, and this history Paul spoke of was fifty years ago. Throughout the intervening years, dozens of people had resided here, hundreds more passing through the doorways. Thousands of meals had been prepared and eaten in this kitchen since that event. The intervening years had been kind to the house, as if in compensation for the horrors that had once visited here. The present and the living prevailed over the past and the deceased. Today, tonight, and as long as they lived here, this would be her and Paul's kitchen. This was their home. Fifty years ago was long, long gone. Forget it, she told herself. Lighten up.

  Robin sent Paul to bed at his regular time, then forced herself to stop working for the day. She found herself wishing she'd thought to knock off work earlier, so she and Paul could have had some one-on-one time together. She actually enjoyed some of the hokey science fiction and horror films they watched together. She must not allow herself to become so preoccupied with everything that she forgot the important things, like spending time with her son. She decided to reward herself, after such a grueling day, with some strictly pleasure reading. Before long she was drowsing off over Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire.

  While preparing for bed, after turning off the lights, she happened to glance out a window and noticed that a single light again shone from the house next door. She hadn't seen her neighbor since yesterday. She did feel a sense of security, knowing that she wasn't alone out here at the end of a country road. At the same time, this mildly irked her. Becoming a single working mom had ingrained in her a determination to be self-reliant. But Mrs. Lufkin was right. It was good to know that there was a capable man in the vicinity. Yes, she took pride in her independence. Yet it was Charlie Flagg who had intimidated the Caldwell boys into leaving her alone that day on the highway, and Chief Saunders had done the same in the school parking lot today. What would have happened either time if she'd been alone, without those men being around? Could she have defended herself if those men had not come to her assistance? She had to admit . . . she wasn't sure. And that irked her most of all. She found herself wishing that she had pressed charges against those Caldwell creeps for harassing her.

  Lying in bed, trying to banish these thoughts from her mind, she drifted off to sleep.

  And that's when the dream began.

  Chapter Eleven

  Paul waited for awhile after his Mom went to her room, after she turned off the lights in the house. When his bedside clock told him it was time, he dressed quietly in the moonlight filtering in through his bedroom window. He arranged the sheets around his pillow and a bunched-up clump of clothing to make it appear that he was still curled up and sleeping soundly in the bed, buried beneath the covers, just in case Mom looked in on him while he was gone.

  He felt no pride in this. He knew it was wrong, sneaking out like this to meet Jared. His mother worried about him like any good mom would. That didn't necessarily mean there was reason for her to worry. Moms always worried too much. This way his mother wouldn't worry needlessly because she wouldn't even know he was gone. He'd be back within the hour. He'd made Jared promise him that much.

  He eased open the window over his bed, the rising sash sounding incredibly loud. He told himself it wasn't really that loud, it only seemed that way. He hoped so, anyway. He pried the screen loose and climbed out, dropping to the ground.

  This was something he wanted to do. He wanted to learn more about Devil Creek. This little western town was so different from any place he'd ever known. Back home there was more to do—malls, video arcades, school activities. Kids seemed more into movies and books and different types of music. Night in Devil Creek, especially living on the outskirts of town, meant the totally dark quiet of the country, except for moonlight and the chattering of insects and an owl or two. It was so foreign after a lifetime in the 'burbs, he was curious about the things that made everything out here so different from the world he'd known in Chicago.

  He took off running across the front yard. The moonlight rendered his surroundings as vague, silvery images like some old, dimly projected black-and-white movie.

  Jared was waiting for him under a big cottonwood tree beyond Mike's house, where they'd agreed to meet. The chubby, red-haired boy's thick eyeglasses caught and weirdly reflected the moonlight. He held a flashlight, which was not turned on.

  "Ready?" Jared asked.

  "Ready."

  They started walking. The shadows here were deep and murky. An owl hooted nearby. There was a permeating chill to the air that made Paul glad he'd decided to wear his denim jacket.

  He asked, "Now can you tell me where we're go
ing?" Without hesitation, Jared left the road with the authority of a jungle guide leading the way. "Just over this hill."

  A trail cut deeper into the trees, taking them to a ravine. "Come on, Jared. Tell me something."

  Jared's breathing was becoming labored from the exertion of walking uphill. "Okay, okay," he said. "From my bedroom I can see a road that leads up here. One night I saw lights coming up here, and I went up to investigate like we're doing now. There are these guys, and almost every week, on the same night—tonight, they . . . well, you'll see."

  "You're not going to tell me?"

  "You'll see."

  "You know your way around up here pretty good."

  "Sure do. I explore further on up the mountain, too. Most of the time it's during the day. I like to look for a quiet spot where I can be by myself and read."

  "Don't your folks mind you coming up here alone?"

  "Naw. My folks are divorced. Mom acts like she's glad to get rid of me. Says I never do any housework, but she's the one who never does anything. I do all the housework. I don't know where my dad is. He left when I was a baby, so I don't care. I never knew him anyway. Mom, she's a drunk. Likes to bring guys home on the weekend, or go off to Cruces or Albuquerque. But she never takes me along."

  "That's too bad."

  Jared shrugged. "I don't care." He spoke between gulps of air. "The old lady's always yelling at me anyway. Only time she doesn't yell is when she's watching her soaps."