Blockbuster

by Richard H. Smith

  “I have the Volvo tonight.”

  “Great,” Spence and I blurted out in unison.

  Screams and then laughter came from the main theater.

  Spence said, “Since I’ve got me another helper, how about her and me get started now, show Carrie the ropes?”

  “Good plan. Get this tenderfoot ready for the main event. I need to finish the deposit bags.”

  Carrie followed Spence, almost skipping. Spence had a bounce in his step too.

  Kenny soon joined me in the office after he’d shut down the projector in theater two. With the haul of cash, we filled four deposit bags rather than the usual two. Jaws was close to over by the time we finished. We went down to the lobby to prop open the exit doors and watch the crowd leave.

  Hogan must have been thinking like us because he came out from the door leading up to the projection booth just as we entered the lobby.

  “Gonna watch?” I said.

  “Sure enough am. This is off the hook,” Hogan answered. Like me, he wanted to see the reactions of the crowd up close.

  “Party hardy,” said Kenny.

  “Out of sight,” said Hogan.

  “Radical,” said Kenny.

  “Wicked,” said Hogan.

  “Ah, Phil, can you stick around and help with the cleanup?” I said, having no rejoinder.

  “I’m all in.”

  A cheer erupted from the theater. I peered through one of the exit door windows. People clapped and continued to cheer as the pieces of shark flesh filtered down through the ocean water. And when Brodie saw Hooper surface, alive and safe, people cheered once again.

  We propped open each exit door, and the crowd streamed out, full of enthusiastic chatter.

  Hogan and I exchanged satisfied looks. We had all pulled through. Even the crowds were accommodating. Kenny looked like he needed another shower, but I was grateful to have him as an assistant. I looked forward to what we could do together with midnight shows after Jaws had completed its run.

  And what a movie we had on our hands. The poster, the theme music, the characters whose lives we cared about, the blend of terror and humor—the shark—everything. Critics might argue that there was no great trick in frightening moviegoers, but this hardly summed up what Spielberg had accomplished. I figured the movie’s effects would reverberate beyond the immediate initial experience. An instant classic, inspiring multiple viewings, a quantum leap forward in what we would expect for summer entertainment. Heck, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to try out a water bed, much less take a swim in the ocean.

  I thought about Bullock and felt a slight pang of sorrow. But it was fleeting. I found it increasingly hard to discover that his murder had led to anything but good outcomes—for the theater and those associated with the theater. Even Sue Ellen was better off for it. Was it bad luck to think this way about anyone’s death? That’s the path my thoughts had taken. I knocked on a doorway’s wooden frame.

  Spence and Carrie were making their way over from theater two.

  “Mr. Reeves has been telling me about his time with the Buffalo Soldiers. It’s amazing, simply amazing.”

  “Carrie listened it out of me,” Spence said.

  “My dad’s area is American history. He’s written about Teddy Roosevelt. Do you realize Mr. Reeves knew men who fought with the Rough Riders in Cuba? They saved Roosevelt from getting defeated in the Battle of San Juan Hill. My dad’s going to love hearing about this.”

  “A true fact, Nate,” Spence said. “I got that from Sergeant Berry of the 10th, hisself. Berry was the first one to place the flag on the second hill they took, Kettle Hill. Those aren’t the known facts but are the facts.”

  “Spence, this should be in the history books,” I said.

  “My dad can do something about that,” Carrie said with a fierce sense of justice in her voice. She looked so good I hurt inside.

  We remained quiet for a few moments. Carrie, with another turn of emotion, said,

  “Mr. Reeves, you—you contain multitudes. I mean it.”

  I agreed. A fitting description for Spence Reeves. The word caused a deep echo in my soul.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Spence and Carrie tossed the waste into a barrel while Kenny followed with a broom down each row. I did the mopping. When the barrel filled up, Phil emptied it into the dumpster behind the theater while we started on a fresh barrel. We made quick progress, and soon Spence split off from us to get a head start on the restrooms. Carrie volunteered to help there too. I turned to vacuuming the carpets. Kenny and Phil took off early.

  After finishing the carpets, I went up to the office for the deposit bags, which I placed in an old gym bag. It had a broken zipper, and so I couldn’t close it up, but it was a good enough way of hiding what was inside. Don’t give a thief an opportunity to steal, another Korean phrase my mom had been fond of using.

  When I got back down to the lobby, Spence had cut off the theater lights. He and Carrie were already outside and standing together. I joined them. It was close to one o’clock, the theater now dark and empty, except for a single light above the cashier window.

  The wind had picked up. Off to the south, a storm gathered. Spence placed a hand over his hat to stop a gust of the wind from carrying it away. Swirls of dry earth, dust, and trash kicked up and funneled near where we were standing. A car rocketed by on the main road, strangely in a hurry for so late at night. Maybe the driver wanted to beat the storm home. I heard the metal frame of the marquee creak as the wind whipped against it.

  The only cars in the parking lot were my Dodge, Carrie’s Volvo near the marquee, and Spence’s Buick, way down to the left, the closest space he had found. Dupree, I presumed, had taken off at least an hour earlier. With the theater lights turned off, the cars resembled three boats in anchor on a dark patch of water. This sense was so strong that I half wondered whether I would sink through the asphalt if I stepped onto it. A memory came to me of my dad describing the landing of the Marine Corps at Inchon during the Korean War. This had been at night too.

  Another gust of wind surprised us, sending Spence’s hat across the asphalt before he could grab it. Carrie was the first to react and ran to retrieve it before the wind caught it again. She faced us both and instead of handing Spence his hat placed it on her head.

  She gave the hat a slight tilt and said with a cowboy accent, “Name’s Carrie, Carrie Jenkins.”

  Spence and I stood there stunned by her transformation. He spoke first, trying out his own cowboy accent, “Sure glad you showed up, Jenkins. Got us a heap of cattle to rustle up ’cause of this here storm.”

  I said, “Let’s head ’em up, move ’em out.”

  Carrie gave the hat back and said, “The jig is up. Without your hat, I’m just a city-slicker.”

  We all laughed. None of us seemed eager to leave despite the coming storm and the late hour. I had been wanting to talk to Spence about Samantha, and I decided to bring Carrie into our small circle of those having inside knowledge.

  “Detective Riggs told you about Samantha, right?” I asked Spence.

  Spence gave me a glance suggesting he realized I was giving him a green light to talk about it in front of Carrie. “Appears she got a rattled,” he said.

  “They’ll get her,” I added.

  “Guess so,” he said, going along.

  “You don’t think she would have shown up again? That would have been stupid, wouldn’t it?”

  “Reckon so.”

  Carrie looked back and forth at both of us, trying to follow what it all meant.

  “We need to catch you up on things,” I said.

  Spence and I took turns filling in the details. I described how Samantha was hired and how we only became suspicious of her after noticing the poison ivy rash.

  “So, while we were reacting to the shark bite, you were thinking more about whether she had killed Mr. Bullock,” Carrie said.

  “Exactly.”

  Spence said, “But knowing this only
suggested she could have, might have done it. It didn’t explain why she would have done it.”

  Spence gave an account of his ride with Jesse Hooker.

  “I saw him. I saw him. So you were the guy with the Fu Manchu wearing that pink suit?” Carrie said in disbelief. “But how? I mean how did you engineer that with him knowing?”

  Spence took a few steps and recreated the stroll he had used while in character and gave us a satisfied grin.

  “You are looking at the master of disguise. I kid you not,” I said.

  Carrie examined Spence as if she was getting to know him for the first time.

  As she kept shaking her head in wonder, I explained what happened with Mr. Bullock in Georgia and Detective Riggs finding that Samantha was actually the woman who had accused Bullock of assault.

  “There’s the motive, the reason for hating him,” Carrie said.

  “Detective Riggs thinks she and Jesse Hooker have done a string of robberies,” I said.

  “Why would they stick around?” Carrie asked. “Why wouldn’t they just vanish?”

  I said, “I think they were seduced by how much money they could get after the first night of Jaws.”

  “But then, like you said, Mr. Reeves, they got spooked,” Carrie said.

  “They flew the coop,” I said.

  “Chickened out,” Spence added with a grin, Carrie joining him with a drop-dead gorgeous smile.

  “She must have really hated Mr. Bullock,” Carrie said.

  “But she took her time to get him,” Spence said. “Which is often how it happens. When it’s ripe. Reminds me of something I heard Jackie Robinson did, not too long after he got his chance to play in the majors.”

  “Jackie Robinson?” I said.

  “Yes, Jackie.”

  The wind blew Carrie’s hair across her face, and she used a hand to clear it from her eyes. She gave me a puzzled look, still unfamiliar with Spence’s roundabout way of making a point with a story. Just hold on, you’ll see, my returning expression tried to communicate.

  “Well, Jackie, he knew he would get a lot of abuse when he first started in the professional leagues—being the first Black man. But he’d have to take it. Ignore it.”

  “I read about that, Spence,” I said.

  “A right fielder named Enos Slaughter was one of the players who didn’t like Jackie being in the league,” Spence continued. “One day, Slaughter—this was early on—was at bat and Jackie, he was playing first base. Slaughter hit a grounder, and as he crossed first base, he spiked Jackie’s foot.”

  Spence stomped his right foot.

  “He did it deliberate, on purpose. It hurt, and it bled, but what did Jackie do? Pretended like it was nothing.”

  The urge for payback welled up in me. Carrie’s face had the fire of injustice stamped on it too.

  Carrie said, “How could he just take it?”

  “Jackie was an educated man. Graduate of U-C-L-A,” Spence said, elongating the letters.

  “But might that have made him even more angry?” I said.

  “Didn’t say he won’t angry. This is what he did. Or, what he didn’t do. He said to Slaughter, quiet like, ‘I’ll remember that.’ About two years later I think it was, at least that long. The teams were playing each other again. Slaughter was at bat, but this time Jackie was playing second base. Slaughter hit a ball past the infield and tried to stretch a single into a double. Jackie took the throw from the outfielder and tagged Slaughter in the mouth, accidentally on purpose, and knocked out six of his teeth.”

  “Yes!” I said.

  “Just what he deserved,” Carrie said.

  Spence continued, “And know what Jackie said?”

  “What?” Carrie and I both said together.

  “He said, he said, ‘I told you I’d remember it.’”

  We laughed.

  “Looks like Samantha got her revenge too,” I reflected.

  “In her own good time,” Carrie said.

  “Another thing,” Spence said, “Slaughter told this story—it was a radio interview—years later. That’s why I know it’s likely true. He felt bad about what he’d done. He’d changed along with the times. He grew up down the road in Roxboro, by the way.”

  Lightning flashed, so thick and bright it seemed to remain in the sky as if it left a shell of hot steel, still full of electric charge and climbing to the top of the heavens. In outline, I saw storm clouds, churning and steamrolling in our direction. We’d been so wrapped up in Spence’s story we hadn’t noticed their quick advance.

  “We’d better get moving,” I said. I hoped I could make the deposit before the storm hit.”

  Spence said, “Don’t look too good, does it, by the looks of it.”

  “I’ve never seen lightning like that,” I said.

  “Neither have I,” Carrie said.

  “Didn’t grow up a farm, did you?” Spence said.

  “No, but I know we’re in for something potent,” Carrie said.

  The thunder from the lightning suddenly shattered the air. Carrie and I flinched.

  “Agreed,” I said.

  A black cat came from around the marquee and streaked past us and across the road.

  “Did you see that?” I said.

  “Sure did,” Spence said.

  Carrie said, “That can’t be a good sign.”

  “A black cat is good luck in Korea,” I said, remembering that my Mom would say this whenever we started believing silly superstitions.

  The mass of advancing storm clouds seemed darker still and frightening in power. I imagined one of those long-legged Martian creatures from The War of the Worlds appearing at the head of these clouds, ready to obliterate everything in its path.

  “Let’s git a going,” Spence said.

  “Yeah, let’s split,” I agreed.

  “Wait, wait,” Carrie said. She stretched her body and gave Spence a peck on his cheek. Then she turned to me and pressed her lips to mine, rocking all five of my senses, every cell in my body.

  “Thanks, you guys,” Carrie said.

  Another scary bolt of lightning lit up the sky. All of us moved fast, even Spence. I got to my Dart first, just as another blast of thunder reached us.

  “Jeesus,” I said out loud, but I watched to make sure Carrie was safe inside her Volvo. I was so wired from Carrie’s unexpected kiss that I wondered whether a lightning strike would affect me. I tossed the gym bag across to the passenger seat and threw myself into the front seat. I cranked the engine and could see Spence’s Electra shake and rumble to a start as well, with a few plumes of burnt oil, buffeted by the wind. Carrie got her Volvo going too.

  For a few moments we all remained poised, ready to leave, our engines idling. Spence move closer to the exit and stopped, continuing to chug away. He hit his horn and waved us ahead. He wouldn’t be leaving until we left first.

  We exchanged waves and nods. Carrie led the way, and I followed. Her lips seemed to have made a permanent imprint on mine, joined with an unfading taste and fragrance. I had all the signs of running a high fever, but I’d never felt in better health.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  My life had turned on a fulcrum. Before the kiss and after it. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough, my anticipation of seeing Carrie again, maybe kissing again, so intense.

  I entered the mall’s parking deck in a form of trance, barely aware that I had a task to complete, and possibly a dangerous one.

  The parking deck was mostly dark and empty except for two cars parked close together near the entrance to the mall’s second deck, likely belonging to the nightly cleaning crew. Still under Carrie’s spell, I was ready to get this last manager’s task done for the day.

  The bank deposit box, lit by a small overhead light, was just to the right of the mall’s second-floor main entrance. A bridgeway stretched from the deck to the entrance. Four metal poles were set a few yards apart to prevent vehicles from driving onto it.

  I drove to where the poles stood
and parked at a slight angle so that the headlights gave the deposit box area the most light. Another terrifying flash of lightning, followed a few seconds later by a blast of thunder, shook me from my dream state.

  The rain would soon come down hard and heavy, but I hoped to drop the bags in the deposit box before this happened. I kept the engine running, removed the spare deposit key from the glove compartment, grabbed the gym bag, and exited the car.

  I ran across the bridgeway toward the deposit box as large drops of rain polka-dotted my clothes. Another fork of lightning and a simultaneous detonation of thunder froze me for a second. It felt like a direct hit on the bridgeway, and I covered my head with my free arm. This was stupid. The deposit could wait. I started back to the car, but my sudden movement caused me to slip on the rain-slick concrete. Two deposit bags fell out of the gym bag and slid across the concrete.

  “Damn!”

  The rain began in full force, enveloping me. I reached back toward the deposit bags but got little traction, and I fell to the concrete, striking a knee. The deposit key fell from my hand and skidded to the edge of a drain.

  “Damn!” I yelled again.

  Water thickened near the drain. I reached for the key, but too late. It disappeared down the drain. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I rubbed my knee to relieve the sharp, throbbing stabs of pain. I was wet through.

  The lights on the deck and the deposit box flickered and went out, the walkway now partially lit by my car headlights. I had to shield the rain from my eyes. The deposit bags were dark shapes spread a few feet apart.

  Two bright lights appeared to my left—car lights, their beams made thick by reflection off the rain. They were from one of the parked cars I had seen earlier, now advancing right up to the poles. This was trouble. I grabbed each rain-soaked deposit bag and stuffed them back into the gym bag, thinking I’d make a run for it. But someone exited the car and moved in front of its headlights, creating a squat, rounded silhouette. Another flash of lightning briefly illuminated who it was. Samantha. I froze, shaken by what I saw.

  She bent to a crouch and raised her arms to chest height. She had a gun pointed at me.