The Folks

by Ray Garton

  “Well, I heard something.” She stood up straight, brushed a strand of her chestnut hair back from her forehead, then came around the counter, sat beside me and leaned close. Whatever she had heard, she wanted no one else to hear it.

  There was a quiet middle-aged couple at one booth, unfamiliar, probably just passing through. Old Pete was in his usual corner by the front window, a one-eyed World War II veteran who looked like he was made of old leather. He came to the diner every day. Otherwise, it was empty. Only one waitress, Lucy, was working. Everyone was busy preparing for the Halloween festivities.

  “A little while after the lunch crowd cleared out,” Carrie said, “Chief Ledbetter came in with that new expert they brought up here from the city.”

  “The forensics guy?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Retired. An old guy, but apparently sharp. They whispered to each other over coffee and pie so no one could hear, but when you’ve worked in a diner as long as I have, you learn to eavesdrop under any conditions. I could probably eavesdrop on a conversation in sign language outside at night in the middle of a blizzard, if I had to.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “The old man did most of the talking,” Carrie whispered. “He said it wasn’t a person.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whoever did that to Carla Firth? It wasn’t a who. This guy says it couldn’t be human, that it’s an animal, most likely a bear. And he thinks the same thing happened to the others. The ones he reviewed, anyway.”

  The bear theory had enjoyed a couple of periods of popularity in the town, but they had been brief, and a long time ago.

  “Then it’s a bear with some very specific tastes,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Young, blonde, and pretty. Anyway, Chief Ledbetter said he had a hard time believing it was a bear, or any animal, but just in case, he would quietly organize a hunt to track it down and kill it if it’s out there.”

  “Haven’t they done that before?”

  “Twice, I think, but it was a long time ago. The chief sounded pretty doubtful. But what if the old guy’s right? Wouldn’t it be nice if all we have to do is kill a bear to make it stop?”

  Lucy brought my dinner. I took a few bites, then asked, “Have you ever wondered why there haven’t been more experts up here from the city? Or why no reporters have covered this? How come it hasn’t shown up on Dateline or 20/20?”

  She shrugged one shoulder. “The killings are too far apart,” she whispered. “The killer’s too slow.”

  “But how many over the years?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t kept track.”

  “That’s what I mean. Nobody here keeps track, they just act like it’s no big deal, comes with the territory. The leaves turn in autumn, the fruit trees blossom in spring.

  “And oh, yeah, we found another dead blonde girl with her insides spilled all over the ground in the woods. Chief Ledbetter goes through the same motions each time. No reporters come to gather the facts.” I shook my head. “I’m glad I’m getting out of here.”

  “What? You’re leaving? When?”

  “I’m not sure. Sometime soon.”

  “When did you decide this?”

  “Today.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Anywhere but here. I’ve saved a little money. Enough to get me somewhere.”

  “What about your grandma?”

  “She’ll probably be glad to see my heathen ass go.”

  Carrie put an arm around my shoulders. “Andy, you can’t go. What am I gonna do without you here?”

  I smiled. “You can always pack up the kids and come with me. Wouldn’t you like to get out of this town? Go someplace where they don’t have bears and retired forensic experts?”

  She put her elbows on the countertop and her face in her hands. “This is too depressing. Can we talk about something else?”

  I continued eating.

  “You going to the grown-up party afterward?” Carrie asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, c’mon, it’ll be fun. You’re old enough now, remember? You were still too young to drink at last year’s party.”

  “I drank anyway.”

  “Yeah, but this is the first year it counts. Besides, Rick and Daisy always throw a great Halloween party at the bar.”

  The bar was the Rusty Nail, just two doors down from the diner. There was another bar in the old Mount Crag Hotel at the other end of Main Street, but it was patronized mostly by people who were just passing through, and there were never that many of those. All the locals went to the Rusty Nail.

  “We’ve still got to find you a costume,” Carrie said. “The boys will be here soon and they’ll be disappointed if you’re not wearing something.”

  “Okay. But something simple. A hat, or something. Okay?”

  “Okay.” She smiled and kissed the top of my head as she walked away.

  Everything seemed too dark and ominous for me to enjoy Halloween, a holiday I usually relished because it gave me an excuse to cover my face. Another dead girl in the ground. Gathering children on Main Street again instead of taking them trick-or-treating from house to house at the foot of the mountain. All to protect them from whatever was out there. A bear? Maybe, maybe not. I reminded myself to look in next week’s Mount Crag Sentinel for the details Carrie had overheard in the diner. But I doubted I would see them. Carrie found a pair of purple antennae that bobbed on springs attached to a headband, which she put on my head. It made her happy, and that made me feel a little better.

  The Chamber of Commerce put on a small Halloween parade just before the sun disappeared. The drizzle had become little more than a mist by then, as if the frowning, angry sky had decided to give us a break. The gutters ran with brown water and puddles spread here and there over the street. The parade just danced around them. There were monsters and clowns, a fairy Godmother and a couple of bunny rabbits. All the costumes were homemade but impressive. Even Mayor Tucker had dressed up to take part in the parade. He zigzagged along the wet street, growling at the children, who squealed and laughed. He wore a bulky, furry bear costume.

  It was a lot like last year’s Halloween celebration, and the others before it. But it was always fun to see. The children had a great time, and in spite of all the complaining some of them did, so did the adults.

  The thing that was different about that night—the thing that had never, ever happened to me before—came later.

  Four

  It was all over in a couple of hours. The adults took the children home with their candy and prizes, leaving behind the pumpkins in the shop windows, carved faces somewhat withered by the heat of the candles that had been burning inside them.

  Crepe paper and artificial cobwebs sagged as if from exhaustion. Having already arranged babysitters, most of the adults returned almost immediately and went to the bar, in costume and ready to party.

  Carrie’s boys went home with their grandma, Carrie’s mother, who lived with them, after promising their mom they would not watch any monster movies that were too scary. The diner had a large bathroom in back with a shower, and Carrie used it to shower and put on makeup. I did not feel much like going to a party, but Carrie did not want to go alone, so I went with her, wearing my antennae and holding my umbrella over both of us against the slowly increasing rain.

  The party was already well underway when we got there. Rick and Dixie had brought in a band from somewhere out of town, and they were playing “The Purple People Eater” when we arrived. A few people were dancing, and others quickly joined them. Smoke filled the place. It was the only thing that bothered me about the bar. I didn’t mind that anyone was smoking, I was never one of those people. It wasn’t the smoking I didn’t like, but the smoke itself. There was a tiny part of me deep inside that started screaming with terror every time I saw all that smoke hovering ominously in the air. It brought back memories.

  Carrie knew better than to ask me to dance. I
had the rhythm of a bowl of dirt and was far too self-conscious to get on a dance floor. I had a beer or two. Or three. Occasionally picked at the bowls of nuts and candy that were set out all over the place. Ninety minutes after Carrie and I arrived, the bar was deafening and had a capacity crowd, with late-comers trying hard to catch up on drinks. The people of Mount Crag did not party often, but when they did, they partied hard.

  I played darts with a couple of guys I’d met while enrolled at Hand of God, both colossally drunk. They were second year students who, through some miracle, had not yet been kicked off the campus. I played a game of pool with Red Prater, who ran the autobody shop over by the park. He was about as good at the game as I, so it took a lot longer than it should have because we were both lousy, but he finally beat me. I was walking back to the bar when she came in.

  She hung her umbrella over my jacket on one of the coat racks by the door as she entered, peeled off her coat. It was snowy white, with an enormous black fur collar. I recognized it as monkey-fur—or something that was supposed to look like monkey-fur—which used to be very popular back in the twenties, and she was clearly a “flapper” from that era. The sleeveless, beaded dress beneath was red and black, with a low neckline and a scarf hemline. There were a lot of lines involved, all of them very pleasing. She held a black, beaded clutch in one hand and a lit cigarette in a long, slender, black-and-silver holder between the first two fingers of the other. She wore stockings, black, low-heeled shoes, and a beautiful jeweled mask covered the top half of her face, with a fan of red and black feathers on each side that obscured the rest. The costume was probably as shocking in that bar as it might have been in its own day.

  When the woman walked in, there were a lot of double-takes, and more than a few triple-takes. There probably were some arguments on the way home that night, as well, involving the length of time some boyfriends and husbands spent gazing at the stranger in red. I could tell by the looks on the faces of a couple of women that their husbands would not be getting any candy that Halloween. But then I did a double-take of my own as I reached the bar.

  The flapper was looking directly at me, even coming toward me. Her blood-red, bee-stung lips smiled without parting. She held the cigarette up, elbow cocked, and threw her hips into her walk. Her nails matched the red of her dress.

  The band did not stop playing, of course, but voices fell away like cardboard ducks at a carnival shooting gallery. Not all of them, but enough to make a dip in the sound level.

  Do I know her? I wondered as she came toward me, her smile growing. She did not look even a little familiar. As far as I could tell, I had never seen her before. But she was coming straight for me, and a lot of people were watching her. Soon, they would be watching me, too. I hated being watched.

  “Well, aren’t you adorable,” she said in a low, smoky voice, pointing her cigarette at my antennae. She scooted the next stool closer to me, then perched herself on it and leaned close. Her beaded dress chittered with each movement, and she smelled of lilacs. “What planet are you from?”

  I was right. They were all watching us. When I glanced at them, every face turned away.

  “I come from the planet of people who need another beer,” I said, smiling, but my lips trembled because I was so nervous. I waved at Rick, who was laughing at somebody’s joke at the other end of the bar.

  “’Nother beer, Andy?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” I asked.

  “That’s very sweet of you, but I don’t drink. In fact, no one in my family drinks or smokes. They never have.”

  My eyes moved to the cigarette in the long holder, then back to her deep brown eyes behind the mask.

  “Except for me,” she said finally, reluctantly. “But only sometimes. On special occasions. Very rarely.” She paused a moment, then leaned closer and whispered into my ear, “Just don’t tell my father, okay?”

  Then she laughed and touched my wrist, and I was so surprised by that touch, I nearly fell off the stool. To cover, I laughed, too, then asked, “How about a ginger ale, then?”

  “A ginger ale! What a fabulous idea! I’ll take you up on that.”

  When Rick came with my beer, I put some money on the bar and said, “A ginger ale, too, Rick.” He nodded. I was surprised to see him smile at the woman.

  “Great costume this year,” he said to her. “Probably your best.”

  Rick knew her. I wondered if the others had been looking at her out of curiosity or familiarity. I took a couple swallows of courage and asked, “Excuse me, but, um, do I know you?”

  She shook her head slightly. When she spoke, I watched her pillowy red lips form the words slowly and perfectly, saw the quick flick of the tongue within, then the smile.

  “No, not really.”

  Applause erupted when the band finished an old Hank Williams foot-stomper.

  The lead singer and bass player started telling a joke and the chatter died down as everyone listened.

  When I turned back to the woman, she was sipping her ginger ale. “Very sweet of you to buy me a drink,” she said, leaning close to me again. “It’s delicious.”

  I was too uncomfortable to continue engaging in casual conversation. I extended my hand and said, “I’m Andy Sawyer.”

  With the cigarette holder clamped beneath her teeth, she took my hand between both of hers and stroked it in a way that sent crackling tendrils of electricity directly to my genitals. “Of course you are,” she said.

  The singer’s joke got more groans than laughs, and applause broke out as the band started to play again. The woman removed her cigarette butt from the holder, stabbed it into an ashtray on the bar, set the holder beside her drink. She turned to me with mouth open, gently pressed a palm against my chest. “This song!” she squealed. “I love this song!” It was the old Righteous Brothers hit, “That Loving Feeling.” She declared, “We absolutely must dance!”

  My shoulders dropped. I remained seated as she stood. She started to walk away, assuming, I suppose, that I was at her heels. When she realized I was not, she spun around and came back.

  “Andy, honey, this is not a dance-alone song,” she said.

  I looked over my shoulder at the dance floor. “Looks pretty crowded,” I said.

  She leaned against me from behind and her breasts pressed to my back. Her lips touched my ear as she whispered, “Fine, then.” Her right hand slid across my right thigh and between my legs, lingered there a moment, then slid down to my knee and pulled.

  The stool’s seat turned until I faced her. She smiled, took my hands, and said, “We’ll do it right here.” Then pulled me off the stool with a sudden, and surprisingly powerful, jerk.

  Next thing I knew, her body was making slow movements against mine. Movements that were quickly becoming embarrassing for me.

  When she felt my erection, she asked in my ear, “Is that the mother ship signaling you, spaceman, or are you just glad to see me?”

  I could not reply. I was embarrassed, but not as much as I would have been without a few beers in me. The feathers on her mask tickled my face, and I considered asking her to remove it, but she spoke first.

  “You are a very tense young man, Andy,” she said as her tongue flicked over my earlobe. “You need to relax. Have a good time. You know that? It’s Halloween.” She pulled away from me, leaned toward the bar and called, “Hey, Ricky! A Long Island iced tea for the gentleman.” Then we were together again, swaying. “What do you usually do on Halloween?”

  I ran my tongue around in my dry mouth. “Nothing much to do but come here.”

  She kissed me—a quick, soft, brush of her lips against mine, then looked into my eyes for a reaction. I have no idea what she saw, but she must have liked it because she kissed me again, longer than before. Her tongue opened my lips with gentle, coaxing pressure.

  I had never been with a woman before. I was very realistic about it, I knew my chances. I suspected it would happen one day, sooner or late
r, but I wasn’t holding my breath waiting for it. I had heard from several people there was a whorehouse in the hills east of town, and I had considered trying to find it, but had never gotten around to it. I was too afraid of being turned away. However, that would be a marked improvement over “It was God’s will.” More honest, anyway.

  As excited as I was while we danced—if it could be called dancing—I knew without a sliver of doubt that nothing would happen between myself and the strange, nameless woman beyond what was happening at that moment. But that made it no less exciting, and it did not keep me from enjoying her affection.

  She whispered in my ear, “Have you ever fucked in a graveyard?”

  I cleared my throat. “Um…no.”

  “That sounds like a Halloween kind of thing to do, doesn’t it?” The tip of her tongue slowly ran down the outer edge of my ear, firing needles of sensation all the way to my nipples. “And it’s Halloween, right?” Her tongue slid up the back of my ear, from bottom to top. It felt like it was wrapping around my ear, about to swallow it, then it was gone. My breathing had changed and my knees felt weak, and something warm and wet touched the back of my neck.

  I spun around quickly with a startled grunt and my hand went to my neck, which was wet. But there was no one standing behind me or hurrying away with the slinking jog of a practical joker.

  “Your iced tea is here,” the woman said.

  She was already returning to her stool. I joined her. My heart was firing heavy artillery in my chest, trying to start a war with the rest of my body, as I stared at the tall, fat glass filled with a dark, toxic mixture of gin, vodka, tequila, rum, sour mix, and triple sec.

  During one of my many hospital stays, I’d found a book on the dayroom shelf called The Fun Guide to Bartending and read it. It was an unlikely book for a hospital dayroom, but I had memorized the ingredients of most of the drinks covered, and for some reason, remembered them still.

  “I thought you said you don’t drink,” I said. I had a little difficulty with my tongue and realized I was feeling the beer. Now I had the world champion of mixed drinks in front of me.