Jack took a step forward, his thick boot rapping on the linoleum floor, and Kyle moved back in reflex. His butt pressed against the edge of the short island in front of the Coke machine, which housed condiments as well as sugar and creamer for coffee.
“Trouble come looking for you,” muttered the Jack. “You don’t want none of it, and you ain’t ready for it, but cancel Christmas, boy, ‘cause look what Santy left in your stocking.” He clapped his hands in front of Kyle’s face, and they popped with tiny bursts of dust. “A whole heap of trouble, waiting on Christmas morning, and all you little faggots got to say is, ‘I don’t want none of this!” His voice rose half an octave, and he took on a mocking nasal lisp. “‘I didn’t want none of this trouble! This ain’t what I asked Santy Claus for!’”
“Look,” Kyle said, feeling an adolescent whine in the back of his throat. “Did I say something to offend you? Because I’m sorry, I’m just trying to get some food here and be on my way.”
Jack’s wiry eyebrows bent inward like a pair of mangy caterpillars touching feelers. The pitch-colored shark’s eyes continued to pucker and bubble. He took a step back, then another, and crossed his arms. “So you didn’t see that fine piece of flesh out there pumping gas,” he said.
“Which?” Kyle asked, but he already knew the answer.
“Black jeans, white shirt, puckered little teats.” Jack smiled. His teeth were the color of slate. “Long black hair. Wanna know what I’d like to do with something like that?”
“Not really,” Kyle admitted, swallowing hard to force the whimper back down.
“Grab her by the hair like this,” growled Jack, and with his right hand he grabbed an imaginary girl whose head came about to his sternum judging from the height he held her hand. With a quick snap, he bent his elbow and twisted his arm back, lowering his face to his fist, and Kyle knew he was imagining the girl’s face there, eyes pinched shut in agony as this monster tugged at her hair.
“Got her right like this,” said Jack, “and then with this hand—” He lifted the left hand and wiggled the fingers and then thrust it down, just below his belt line, curling his fingers against something invisible in mid-air. Kyle knew well enough where that hand went, and what the fingers were doing. It made him ill.
“How you like that?” Jack purred, his face still turned to the girl’s—to Molly’s—imaginary face. “How do you like that one, baby?” He cocked his head, turning the shark’s eyes at Kyle. “I think she likes it, boy. I think she looooves it, don’t you, baby?”
“She’s with me!” The words had burst out of his chest before Kyle could contain them, and he pressed against the edge of the island behind him.
Jack’s eyebrows wrenched toward each other even harder, and the shark’s eyes seemed to flatten. “What did you say?”
“That girl out there,” Kyle said. He felt his voice shaking, and he swallowed to steady it. “The one you’re talking about. She’s with me.”
Jack smiled wider, and those slate teeth seemed longer, sharper. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe it,” Kyle said. “It’s the truth. We’ve been together for the last 500 miles.”
Something like grunting, sexual and primal, seemed to crawl out of Jack’s chest. Kyle realized that this was laughter, but more dreadful than anything he had heard either awake or in dreams. “What’s a fine piece of flesh like that,” Jack sneered, “doing with a low-rent, half-built little faggot like you?”
“She’s with me,” said Kyle. “That’s all you need to know.”
He felt his feet take a step forward and to the right, making their way around the dreadful man with the black pools for eyes. He expected Jack to make another move to cut him off, but Jack held his place. Kyle took a second step and then a third, giving Jack a wide berth. The sweaty creature’s arms looked long, long enough to dart out and snatch him, and Kyle kept his eyes locked on Jack’s shoulder, waiting for the flinch. It was something his father had told him, he realized, way back when he was a child, to watch the shoulders of a bully because they gave away when the blow was coming and allowed you an extra moment to dodge it. Kyle wished his father was there now. Dad would not have taken this kind of talk from any man. Dad had too much respect for a woman to allow it.
At last Kyle was past and made his way to the counter. He pulled out his wallet and offered the counterman a $10 and a $20 for the gas and the food. The counterman put the sodas and chips in a paper sack. Kyle could hear Jack’s boots clocking the floor somewhere behind him in the store. He grabbed the change and the sack and scurried to the door, pushing it open and stumbling out onto the pavement. Molly was there by the car, having finished pumping but waiting, frowning. Kyle moved toward her, and the clocking of the boots was still there, having followed him out of the C-store.
“Hey boy!” Jack’s voice, from somewhere in the early evening behind him. “What if I kill you, boy? What if I kill you and take that pretty little piece for myself?”
Kyle felt an itch in the space below the back of his neck, right between the shoulder blades, as if sensing a sniper’s rifle. He opened his mouth to speak, and Molly raised a hand.
“Don’t listen to him,” she said.
“Get in the car,” Kyle whispered. “We need to make a run for it.”
“Don’t run,” Molly said. “And don’t listen to him.”
“You hear me, boy?” Jack shouted from behind him. “Know what I’m going to do to you? I’m going to break everything about you. Everything. Break you so hard you can’t move, and then the real fun starts.”
“Don’t listen,” said Molly. “Don’t move, and don’t listen.”
“You be lying there, crying and begging like the little faggot you are, and I’ll be taking my big old hunting knife and skinnin’ you ‘live like an old ten-point buck.”
“Don’t.” Molly again, locking eyes with Kyle. “Don’t say anything.”
Kyle could feel the cold creeping up on him, all around him in the late August heat like being smothered in a block of ice. He opened his mouth, longing, pleading, but Molly silenced him with a stare.
“You ain’t no ten-point buck though,” laughed Jack. “Are you, faggot-boy? More like a two-point, maybe a one-point. No, more like a half-point. And I’m gonna cut you up like an old block of cheese and eat you in big, tasty chunks.”
The cold was fierce now, and Kyle’s arms begin to tingle. The sharpness of the evening breeze faded. His arms could not feel, and the bag of soda and chips slipped from his hand. He heard a bottle crack about its cap and fizz as it hit the asphalt.
“Turn around, boy!” Jack snarled. “Turn around and be the hero.”
“Don’t,” Molly said. “Don’t.”
“Heeeerooooo,” Jack sang. “Let me see the heeeeerooooo …”
Kyle began to tremble all over, and his eyes blinked. Fresh tears squirted from them and streaked down his face. His legs began to shake, and his toes tapped on the pavement.
“You will not run,” Molly said. “Look at me.”
Kyle made himself look, shaking the tears away.
“Bet you crying, aren’t you?” Jack’s voice was deeper now, but it lifted and mocked like an awful song of taunting children. “I’ll make you cry, boy, make you cry good.”
“Kyle,” Molly said. “Keep looking at me. Stand tall and look.”
Kyle snapped his head back and forth, shaking the tears out of his eyes and looked at Molly, waiting for the judgment in her face, that bitter disgust like the looks he got from the girls back in high school. Molly’s face was hard, but that hardness was not for Kyle.
“Did he touch you?” Molly said.
“What?”
“You heard me.” She pressed her lips together and looked past Kyle, then met his gaze again. “Did he touch you?”
“I’m fine,” Kyle said. “He didn’t hurt—”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” she said. “Look at me. Did … he … touch … you?”
Kyl
e thought and shook his head. “No,” he said. “He didn’t lay a finger …”
“Do you know why?” Molly asked. “Because he can’t. He can’t touch you at all. All he can do is talk his way into your head. But only if you let him.”
“You believe that, sissy-boy?” Jack said somewhere behind Kyle. “You listen to that stupid little girl of yours? Man, the things I’m gonna do to that little girl …”
“You can get in the car,” Molly said. “He won’t do anything because he can’t.”
“You’re the one who can’t, boy.” Jack’s voice was closer, off to his left, but it floated above and to the right as he spoke. “Can’t do nothing. Not enough of a man, little boy, not enough at all.”
“Get in the car,” Molly whispered.
“Can’t, can’t, can’t,” Jack grumbled. “That’s your middle name, boy.”
Kyle hunched forward, tucking his elbows into his sides to warm himself. It was freezing now, a terrible winter chill in August that had to be touching negative digits.
“Not a man,” said Jack in the air somewhere above his head. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking otherwise.”
“You can shut up now,” Molly barked, her voice rasping like a smoker’s. “Kyle, look at me. Don’t look at anything else.”
Kyle stared at Molly hard, taking in that amazing, quiet, beautiful face, and at once the block of ice melted. A warmth spread up his back, and the twitching stopped, and without really thinking about it, he stooped to pick up the bag of chips and sodas. As he gathered the bag in his hands, he heard the clocking of boots coming toward him. Jack’s voice, low and primal and forming no words, just a raging war cry as he charged into battle, and Kyle braced himself, arched his spine, waiting for one of those boots to drive hard into his back somewhere at the level of the kidneys, making him piss blood for days.
The scream grew louder, filling the air, rattling the awning above the gas pump islands.
And then it stopped, and all was silent.
“Let’s go,” Molly said. “We have a lot of road ahead of us.”
Kyle stood, the bag in his hands, and glanced over his shoulder. The dark, hairy biker who smelled of something rotten and dead was not there, and the breeze from the west, while cool, had started to warm his bones. He walked over to the driver side of the car and opened the door for his friend, his love, his Molly. Molly looked up into his eyes and smiled.
“Thank you, kind sir,” she said with a wink.
He nodded at her and closed the door, and as he walked around the front end of the car, the voice came. It was Jack, he was sure, whispering, hovering just behind his right ear, the side of his head turned away from Molly.
… can’t …
Kyle stopped and looked about. There was nothing there, no one. He looked through the windshield of the car. Molly was watching him, a thin smile on her face. She gave him a slight nod, and there was a hint of pride in her eyes, the same look he had always longed to receive from his father.
… not … enough … of a … man …
Kyle gritted his teeth and headed around the front end to his door. The whisper stayed with him like a gnat in his ear.
… can’t … can’t … and never … never … will …
He jumped into the car, slammed the door, and turned the key hard in the switch. The Impala roared to life, and he dropped it into drive without bothering with the seatbelt. The car jolted away from the island with a chirp, and then the street was there, the on-ramp, and Interstate 25 stretched ahead of them as they bellowed north, the sun fading to their left, the voice all the while hovering in the distance not far behind.
… can’t … can’t … can’t …
Company of Friends
The previous afternoon, before Kyle’s altercation with a biker named Jack, Sarah Smallhouse was introducing Tom and Trudy to a new old friend.
In the bedroom, Strawberry dressed in the canvas work slacks Tom had bought for Sarah, finding them a little tighter than she liked but serviceable nonetheless. She slid into the Seattle Mariners t-shirt, the one with the upside-down trident projected on a baseball, and it was also a bit small. Despite the discrepancy in size, the clothes looked good on Strawberry, enhancing the kind of natural curves that most women in the real world could only dream about. Strawberry was striking, almost intimidating in her loveliness, and Sarah felt a stab of jealously. Certainly, Tom would be taken by her beauty as well, and given that he and Strawberry were of the same kind—The Glaring, Strawberry called it—where did that leave Sarah in the mix?
The two girls made their way downstairs, and instead of walking on through to the kitchen, which was part of the new extension built by Trudy’s father, Strawberry tugged Sarah’s arm and led her to a living room on the first floor landing, right below the bedroom where Sarah has slept. The carpet was crushed and gray and looked as if it had been there since this wing was originally assembled by Trudy’s grandfather, and there was a single green sofa with worn upholstery against the north wall. To the west, an air conditioning unit was mounted in the window, and in the corner next to it was an old wood stove—the old-fashioned means of climate control.
Trudy was sitting in a rocker near one of the three leaded-glass north windows, staring out into her yard. She did not turn when the girls entered.
“Trudy,” Sarah said.
“You know how often cats fight?” Trudy said, her back to Sarah. “In this mix, I get three, maybe four fights a day. Some of these strays come in here too late, and no amount of loving can take the fight out of them. Especially the males, always trying to be the top cat in the barn.”
“Trudy,” Sarah repeated. “I have something to show you.”
But Trudy wasn’t listening. The back of her head sat still as a bust on a plinth, and her voice was indistinct and peaceful. “First time in all of my years here that I’ve seen them all together without a fight. You should see them, Sarah. They never get like this. Never. Come and take a look.”
She turned in her chair, extending an arm to motion for Sarah, and that was when she saw her new house guest. A crease appeared between her eyes, right across the top of her nose, but then her eyes softened and smiled.
“This is Strawberry,” Sarah said.
“Yes,” Trudy said. “I had a feeling.”
Strawberry nodded. “Tom wasn’t the first, was he?”
“No,” Trudy whispered. “He was not.”
Strawberry strode across the room, padding on her bare feet with the grace that carried over from her feline self, and pulled back the thin lace curtain. From Sarah’s vantage point by the doorway, she could see the yard and the small multitude of cats that waited, surveying the house.
“There are more of us,” Strawberry said. “Out there.”
“I know,” Trudy said, turning to look out the window. “How many?”
“I don’t know,” Strawberry said. “They’re the ones that called me here. When I was sick. Because they knew.” She motioned to Sarah with a flick of her head. “They knew she was coming.”
Trudy lifted a hand to touch the leaded glass of the window. “Which ones?”
Strawberry shook her head. “Not for me to say. But they’ve been here for some time. Protecting you.”
“It’s like that sign in Trudy’s kitchen, isn't it?” Sarah asked. “‘Cat’s are angels in disguise.’”
Strawberry looked back at her and smile. “In some cases.”
“So that’s what The Glaring is?” Sarah asked. “Angels?”
Strawberry shook her head. “Figure of speech,” she said.
Trudy continued to look out the window, her head moving slowly as she took in each of the attentive cats in her front yard. Sarah imagined she was trying to see into each one, trying to separate those few that were of The Glaring from the many more that Tom called strays. There had seemed to be hundreds of cats when Sarah arrived, and the truth was, it was impossible to tell, regardless of which form they were in. It wasn’t like
Tom’s human ears were tufted with a tip of red fur like his cat’s ears, nor did his human eyes have those elegant slit feline pupils. Quite simply, when Tom or Strawberry were cats, they were cats, and when human they were human, with no telltale signs to distinguish them from any others. Given that, any cat Sarah had known—and any human, for that matter—could be one of The Glaring.
Her thoughts were broken by a metal strumming sound from the kitchen. Someone was opening the old wooden screen door, and the spring that held it fast was stretching with a twang like an untuned guitar. She heard the scuff of shoes, the rubbery soles of sneakers, and then the screen door was drawn shut with a bang. Seconds later, Tom appeared from the kitchen behind her and placed an arm on her shoulder.
“Sleep well?” he asked.
“We have company,” Sarah said.
Tom looked past her at Strawberry, and Sarah felt his hand tighten on her shoulder. With a gentle push, he guided Sarah out of the doorway and stepped into the living room, his shoes whisking on the crushed gray carpet. Strawberry turned to him from the window, and took a step toward him, and the two stopped, facing each other like a pair of wrestlers about to brawl. Strawberry smiled and nodded, and Sarah’s pang of jealousy crept into her heart and tightened in her chest. This was it now. This was where she lost Tom. He had seen Strawberry, looking quite stunning in the soft afternoon light that filtered through the lace curtains, and he was no doubt already smitten.
“Hello, Tom,” Strawberry said, her voice light and playful.
Sarah took a step back, creeping toward the doorway to leave the two newfound lovers alone with the moment, but then Tom cleared his throat, offering one of his patented humphs to indicate his annoyance.
“Those clothes you’re wearing,” he muttered, voice flat and incensed. “I didn’t buy them for you.”
* * * *
“But see here,” Tom said, slamming his hand on the linoleum tabletop. They were all sitting around said table in the kitchen, Sarah nearest the window. “I’m the one who found her. I’m the one who brought her here. Hey, I’m the one who saved her from that guy in the woods. And from Jack in the car.”
Strays Page 17