Bled

by Jason McIntyre

  Bled

  a novella by

  Jason McIntyre

  Published by The Farthest Reaches

  Copyright © 2011 Jason McIntyre

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

  Fiction titles by Jason McIntyre

  On The Gathering Storm

  Thalo Blue

  Walkout

  Mercy and the Cat

  Black Light of Day: A Collection

  Nights Gone By: A Collection

  The Night Walk Men: A Novella

  The Devil’s Right Hand: A Night Walk Men Novel

  Corinthian: A Night Walk Men Story

  Kro: A Night Walk Men Story

  Dovetail Cove titles by Jason McIntyre

  1. Deathbed (Dovetail Cove, 1971)

  2. Bled (Dovetail Cove, 1972)

  3. Fled (Dovetail Cove, 1973)

  4. Redhead (Dovetail Cove, 1974)

  5. Zed (Dovetail Cove, 1975)

  6. Unwed (Dovetail Cove, 1976)

  7. Shed (Dovetail Cove, 1977)

  8. Dread (Dovetail Cove, 1978)

  - 9. [COMING SOON] (Dovetail Cove, 1979) -

  - 10. [COMING SOON] (Dovetail Cove, 1980) -

  Learn more about the author and his work at:

  www.theFarthestReaches.com

  Dovetail Cove

  May 26, 1972

  Part I

  Just You Wait

  1.

  “You gonna have the pineapple cheesecake today, darlin’?” Tina asked, with big brown eyes wide, one hand on her hip and one holding her chewed pen to her bottom lip.

  From the menu he never read, Frank Moort looked up at her, under his thin pate of salt and pepper hair and said, “Long as you keep bringing in that fresh pineapple straight from Tahiti, dollface.” He picked his burning cigarette up from the ashtray to take another drag.

  “Awrightee, then,” She said with a mild smile and an eyebrow raised, then turned and headed for the kitchen with long strides. Frank sucked on his cigarette and watched her dark mini skirt flip up as she went. His eyes trailed down her legs as the light from the windows over booths flickered on them like strobes. Teeny Tina was just twenty-two and had waitressed at the café for the last four years, right since high school. Like every day at five-to-noon, Frank, or Frankie-Moort to his buddies, jaywalked across the street from the Union Rail building, a squat four story job that was the tallest thing in the downtown core of Dovetail Cove, the only town on the island. He had his preferred booth, the one nearest the door, in the long, narrow Highliner Café and he never sat anywhere else.

  “Don’t forget,” Frankie called after her, exhaling a cloud of smoke, “Extra pineapple. If ya can spare it.”

  “Will do, Mister Moort. Will do,” Tina called back, holding her pen in the air, but not turning back. A half smile hit her face as she bopped through the swinging double-doors. That Frank, sure he’d hit on her a few times. It was harmless. All these older guys came in here and did it. Frank’s line was ‘extra pineapple.’ Usually he said those words while she was still at the table, with a wink and hitting the word ‘extra’ with more emphasis. One time, seated at his usual booth and facing the kitchen, he shot out his elbow just below Tina’s waist. The bony knob landed in the enclave of her privates, when he said, “Hey, dollface?” It was there in the warm spot right at the y-crook of her legs. He didn’t mean to do it, Tina had thought in a flash, but when he realized where his playful jab landed, he let it linger, even rubbed it in a few tiny circles before she backed away a step. Then their eyes met, hers with a couple blades behind them, his with a sheepish look and red cheeks beneath.

  Harmless, she had thought. He was just an old man. And she was Teeny Tina, just past twenty-two and pretty darn cute, whether you were a young man or an old one.

  And Mr. Moort, he wasn’t all that old. Not yet. But at 58 he was well past her, and seven years from retirement. As he ate his lunches alone in his booth, he would eye her shape under the café uniform, which was a dark mini skirt and almost sheer white top with name badge and short pink apron She was sure he got all heavy down below—why did he go for a booth every single day instead of a more wide open table with heavily padded chair? Why’d he face the kitchen when he could look out on Main Street and watch the cars pass? He tipped her really well and they’d developed a rhythm that she could live with. She knew that’s what men were like even though she’d not yet had a steady boyfriend to know for sure, for sure.

  Tina pulled Mr. Moort’s page off her notebook and pushed it through a pin on the old order wheel, then turned it to face Miguel, the sixty-something latino fry cook who would handle the sandwich. Also on Frank’s order was extra pickles, coffee—of which he’d already started a strong cup heavily saturated with sugar—the pineapple cheesecake, and a glass of water.

  “Chicken salad sandwich,” she said in Miguel’s general direction, then stuffed her pen and her notebook into the front pocket of her clean, pink apron.

  Miguel leaned forward and pulled his bifocals down his nose with the pinch of two greasy fingers. He liked to confirm what was written on the paper, not that he didn’t trust the girls, but that he needed to see it with his own two eyes. He turned back to his low counter to grab a bag of bread. “Oh-kaaay,” he said in his thick accent, but exaggerated like always when it was a simple-minded order. He said nothing more as he went about fixing the sandwich. He’d probably go out back and smoke with one foot propped up on the grease pails after this. The kitchen wasn’t that hot because only one stove was up and running and there’d been few orders since the breakfast rush of bacon, sausage, eggs, ham and hash browns. The morning crowd had all gone to their office jobs across the street, leaving just Miguel and Tina back at the café to round out the day until seven p.m.

  Miguel would handle the sandwich, but the wait staff handled extras like pickles and desserts like the cheesecake. She’d go to the cold room in a few minutes to get a can of sliced pineapple and then to the big rear freezer—which was hopefully not on the fritz today—to grab a pre-made cheese cake base. Drop the pineapple on that and let it sit on one of the warm stove burners for a minute, it would be ready to serve. The restaurant was slow today, as it usually was on a Friday before a long weekend. Lots of regulars took the ferry back to land for mall shopping and other weekend activities. Only Mr. Moort remained in the restaurant.

  Tina was raised in a good Christian family, with good Christian values. Out here on the island, it was still easy enough to get your kids to church on Sundays. Tina still went with her mom and her brothers every week at 11:00, had started going sometime after her sixth birthday. Still lived at home with them too. Her two brothers both worked the trawlers and mom kept house living off dad’s remaining pension. Teeny was out of school four years, now, and saving for a technical school on the mainland. Today or tomorrow, she expected a letter and a cheque in the mail and after her night shift she’d run to the post office and get the mail before walking home, which was in the east part of town on Lannen Lane.

  Tina went to the prep counter around the corner from Miguel and pulled out a sweepstakes ticket from the front pocket of her apron. She leaned over and grabbed a copy of the Press from a stack of papers and office supplies that the owner, Dabney Saum, usually had lying around. He would often open invoices at the prep counter, and like the older men they served, enjoyed watching Tina and the other girls flip around in their miniskirts as they got orders pl
ated. Rod Davies, Dovetail Cove’s only mailman had brought a stack of mostly bills, a postcard, and today’s Press about an hour ago. He almost always came by at around eleven on weekdays in the spring, summer and fall. Rainy season held him off a bit but he was prompt, even though he was a notorious gossip.

  Casually, Teeny rifled through pages of black-ink newsprint to come across the sweepstakes numbers near the back. She had a minute or two to kill until Frank Moort’s sandwich was ready. He was the only customer in the café.

  Teeny clasped her hand to her mouth, stifling a scream into a mere gasp, then looked sideways, first to the right towards where Miguel would be making the sandwich, then to the left where the swinging doors led out to the long café of vinyl-covered benches and chairs.

  Her numbers were an exact match for the ones in the paper. She read them quickly four times, glancing at the numbers in her clutched hand on the sweepstakes ticket then back to the newspaper. Back and forth, back and forth, her eyes pitched. Then she willed her heart to calm and read them more slowly. She whispered them to herself, barely a muffled mutter, but more for her own sanity than to hear them spoken aloud.

  She didn’t want her words to be heard. Having them heard might make this unreal.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” Teeny said out loud, but still only a whisper. “Oh my lord in the good heavens above.” If someone had been standing right next to her he might have heard her speak, but otherwise, these voiced proclamations were hers alone to hear. Besides that, they were a whisper-shouted mess of jumbled nonsense to anyone one but herself. And maybe God.

  Her first thought was, Mama can’t know. Bless her heart, but oh dear God, she’ll never let me go to the mainland. Not alone. Good gracious me, no, no, no.

  Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Is it mine? Oh God in heaven above. Is it your wisdom that has seen fit to bless me with this?

  “Orderrrrr Uppp,” Miguel said beside her and dropped a sandwich and lunch plate on the counter beside Teeny, making her jump.

  Of course, Miguel didn’t notice he’d startled her. “I take break nowwww,” he said to the back of Teeny as he pulled out his pack of cigarettes and drew one from the pack. He headed for the back door of the kitchen which led to the alleyway.

  Teeny’s hands were shaking. She focused her mental energy on keeping the ticket paper from rattling in her hand then took a deep breath. She put the ticket in the front pouch pocket of her small pink apron and took the plate to the counter next to the big fridge where she fished two large dill pickles out of the jar. One slipped from her nervous fingers to the floor so she had to replace it. She kicked the mislaid one off to the side but got its replacement plated.

  She stopped for a moment and leaned the heels of her hands on the counter.

  She saw herself walk out into the dining room of the café with her sweepstakes ticket held over her head. “I won!” she’d shout and everyone would crowd around her, congratulate her, tell her how exciting it was.

  Then they’d ask her, “How much, Teeny? How much didja win?”

  And she’d say, “Two hundred and fifty thousand. The big prize. All my numbers matched.”

  And they’d all look at her with such adoration and jealousy. With a feeling of pride that one of their own, Tina McLeod from Dovetail Cove, had won the sweepstakes and was destined for a big life filled with exciting things. Nice things. New things.

  But she couldn’t announce it. Not like that. For one, there was no one in the café this afternoon, a Friday before a long weekend. And secondly, much more importantly, she had Mama and her brothers to think about. She wasn’t greedy, by no means. But she didn’t want them to find a way to keep her here. She’d been planning and saving for more than a year. This win meant she could do it now. And on her own terms. Mama had no right to take any of this money. But still she’d try. Teeny knew she would.

  With a flourish of colour in her cheeks, she raised her head, pushed thoughts of the sweepstake ticket as far to the back of her mind as she could and went to fetch a carafe of hot coffee before heading back out to Frank Moort’s table at the end of the Highliner Café that Friday afternoon.

  Frank looked up and smiled as she approached the table. At fifteen paces, her mind blurted another thought: I can’t tell anyone.

  Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  It was five past noon.

  2.

  “Seem a little…frazzled, dollface,” Frank Moort said, taking his first forkful of pineapple cheesecake into his mouth. Teeny stood beside his table, holding the half-empty coffee carafe with steam wafting into the air. She tilted her hip to shift weight from one foot to the other. She’d calmed down since delivering his meal, two refills of coffee, and finally his cake but her feet were tired and she felt like she needed to sleep.

  “I’m fine,” Teeny said, smile. And, in truth, she was. She was elated and the shaking in her hands had almost entirely retreated. She just didn’t know how she was going to go to the sweepstakes office on the mainland and claim her winnings without tipping off all of Dovetail Cove. She felt like she stood precariously perched on a small thin branch over a body of water.

  “D’y’ever just have one of those days, Mr. Moort?” she asked, laying a hand gently across the pouch pocket of her apron, as an expectant mother might touch her unborn child.

  Frank scrunched his eyebrows and tilted his head at her. “Have those at least six days a week, my dear.” Then he smiled a thin one at her, no teeth.

  He pointed his fork at the red vinyl bench across from him. “Take a load off, dollface.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” Teeny said in a breathy, half-laugh exhale. “Dab would have my job.”

  “Ah, no matter. Dabsie and me gamble together. He won’t mind. ’Sides, he’s not here ’n you look like you could use a break.” Then he glanced around at the empty restaurant, exaggerating the size of his eyes under his thick silver brows. “What’s the difference if you take it with me or out back in a cloud of Miguel’s cigarette smoke?”

  Teeny looked at the empty bench of red vinyl. Her feet were throbbing and she really could use a sit-down. Even just for a minute or two. Besides, what’s the worst Dab could do? She had the sweepstakes ticket. Wouldn’t matter now if he fired her. She could buy and sell the Highliner if she wanted.

  “’Kay. Just for a minute, though.” Teeny looked around the empty café and smiled. Then she plopped onto the bench across from Moort, like a schoolgirl ten years younger might have done.

  For the first time in four years, she set a hot carafe of coffee on a customer’s table, a big no-no according to owner Dabney Saum.

  “So,” said Frank as he continued to eat. “Dish. What’s the gossip.”

  “No gossip, Mr. Moort.” She laughed. A small girlish sort. “I’m not that kind.” Then she thought a moment. “I was accepted into a secretarial school. On the mainland?” She said this last almost as a question, like seeking an under-the-table approval from this older member of the opposite sex. Then she wondered, in a flash, if she’d even need to go to secretarial school. Would a quarter of a million dollars be enough to live on the rest of her life? She had no idea. She’d have to do some serious thinking about all this.

  Then she added, “And, well, I’m also waiting on a cheque. A little scholarship that I might have won, too. Waiting to hear back.”

  A smile touched Frank’s lips and he took another bit of cake, this one full of thick white foam and the dripping yellow of extra pineapple on top. “Great news, dollface. That’s just…great news.” Then a pause. “I didn’t know you had…aspirations.”

  “I do. I do, Mr. Moort. Of course I do.” Teeny’s eyes went off to an imaginary horizon near the front of the restaurant, out past the tall panes of glass to the street beyond and the dark tinted windows of the Union Rail building where Frank Moort had worked most of his adult life. “I’m not going to spend my whole life on this island.” Then she saw the Union Rail logo over the doorway and went cold down her back at what she’d jus
t said.

  Teeny blushed. “—I don’t mean—”

  Frank pursed his lips and gave a little wave of his hand with a solemn, closed-eyed nod. “Don’t fret, dollface.”

  “I just meant that for me—”

  “Come now. Don’t give it another thought, y’hear? Wife and I settled here after I got on with Union. Rail line’s been good to me.” And it had. Union Rail set up the small administrative office in Dovetail Cove in 1951 right after a large uranium mine was opened near the island’s south west point. A partnership with the ferry company saw a small stretch of rail built from the mine to the ferry terminal where the uranium was shuttled off for burning on the mainland. Frank Moort had started with the company a few years earlier, just another young, eager junior executive, then moved here to help set up the operation. Because of rising uranium prices, this had become Union Rail’s most profitable ‘per-spike’ operation in the country.

  Teeny’s shoulder slumped a little and she looked at the small tendrils of steam whirling and disappearing from the lips of the carafe. She started to get up and reached for the carafe.

  “I should get back.”

  “Sit a spell.”

  “No, really—”

  “Sit.”

  Teeny did as he said. Slowly. She settled back down with a small squeak of the fabric uniform mini-skirt against the vinyl of the booth. She avoided eye contact with Frank. She sat in silence, still looking at the carafe.

  “Back,” Miguel shouted from the kitchen. He’d come in from his alleyway smoke-break.

  Without thinking, Teeny took this as an opportunity to jump up from the booth. Nervously, she grabbed her pen and notebook from her apron pocket to—she didn’t know—make it look like she was taking an additional order from Mr. Moort?

  What was Miguel going to do? Even if he looked through the kitchen pass-through or one of the two round fish-eye windows on the swinging doors, would he rat Tina out to Dab?