Wait Until Dark (The Night Stalkers)

by M. L. Buchman

And watching, always watching with those amber eyes.

  Until the moment he’d really looked away, and she was gone physically as well.

  There were things he wanted to know. How it would feel to hold her again. Kiss her again.

  And other things.

  He squeezed his mama tighter to his side for a moment.

  How could that woman not believe in marriage? It was one of those things where the words made sense, about not risking leaving behind a child, but somehow they were wrong anyway.

  Chapter 34

  Connie leaned into the spanner and shifted so she could throw her weight against it. It wasn’t going to budge. She needed—

  Grumps stood close behind her and handed her a three-pound sledge.

  Exactly! She struck the handle of the two-foot-long wrench once, twice, three times, ringing so loud it hurt her ears in the narrow bay. It might have once been a horse stall but now it held an ancient John Deere Unistyler tractor, one with the majority of its bolts rusted into place.

  On the fourth strike, a shower of brown flakes flurried into the air and the bolt let loose all at once with a low, grinding groan and a high squeal of steel.

  “Always the last one that’s most stubborn.” Grumps leaned on the half wall and watched her progress.

  She used a triple block and tackle she’d rigged from the overhead rafter. The old iron wheel stood four feet tall, a foot wide, and probably weighed more than an entire Black Hawk crew, even one that included Big John. Leaning her weight slowly into the line, she shifted the wheel to lean it against the one she’d knocked free last night.

  “Seems that way, sir.”

  Grumps nodded slow and easy. His hair was short and gray through and through. The morning sunlight washed over them both through the high windows in the barn, warm enough that she was working up a sweat. She stripped off her jacket and tossed it atop the half wall. The T-shirt and vest was plenty. And she’d never been one to mind a few goose bumps.

  “Pop didn’t believe in those newfangled rubber wheels that everyone was selling all of a sudden. Special ordered those old steel butt-grinders instead. Damn machine would just beat your behind to death by the end of a day.”

  She pulled out a large pipe wrench and slipped it around the driveshaft. Before she could lean in to test it, the weight of the wrench turned the shaft. Slow, but it turned and the axle, free of the two massive wheels, spun as well.

  “Ain’t that a lark?” Grumps nodded at her to keep going. He kicked an old metal and wood-slat milk crate upside down against a wall, sat down on it slowly, and then propped himself there.

  She found a pan and set up to drain whatever fluids were hiding in the old crankcase. About what you’d expect, a heavy sludge oil so old and stiff it might have been formed right there, back with the dinosaurs. Then a slurry of water that had found its way in over the years, but the oil had stopped from finding any way out. Could certainly be worse.

  “First time I ever drove her, she was brand new. Yep, 1938 was a damn fine year for tractors. Must say the next six or seven years sucked for everything else. I was too young for the war and Pop too old, what with me being a late child, but it was a damn fine year for tractors.” He kicked his feet out on the old straw.

  “I was ten when Pop told me it was time to learn to get on in the world and five years was school learning enough for any man. I was never much good at school anyhow. And when he showed me this new tractor, his first new one ever, and told me it was mine to drive, well, I tell ya, I was still in short pants and barely as tall as that wheel there.” He nodded at the pair stacked against the wall.

  She tried to picture him. The little tractor didn’t come much higher than her shoulder, but it had a stout, powerful, can-do look about it. It must have looked huge to a young boy.

  “I was a goner, I can tell you. It was all bright and shiny and beautiful and strong. Just like the first time I saw my Liza. Just a goner.”

  He left a long pause, and Connie glanced over her shoulder to see if he’d gone to sleep. He hadn’t, nor did he look sad. He just stared up for a bit at the dust motes spinning in the sunlight shooting through a high window.

  He blinked a couple times and looked at her.

  “Last time anyone drove that tractor was my boy, Paul Andrew Percy Wallace, Paps to you young ’uns. I didn’t let him on it till he’d made it through high school. Played football. Pretty good.” Again that drifting silence.

  Connie was okay with that. She’d never been comfortable around people who needed to fill each silence with words. Grumps was comfortable to be silent with.

  She dragged over an old wooden bench to start laying out the smaller pieces she’d already busted free. Stopped to blow on her fingers a bit. Not a hard cold, not like Nevada. But not exactly the Pakistan desert, either.

  “Never was as good as John, though.”

  What wasn’t? Who? Oh, Paps at football.

  “What position did John play?” She took up the sledge again.

  “Star quarterback. Senior year they got one game off the state championship for the first time in over twenty years. Haven’t been so close since, either.”

  Connie looked up at the man not all that much smaller than his son or grandson, if you discounted the thinning of old age.

  “With his size, I’d have thought he’d be a defensive tackle or something.”

  “Too smart. They had to find a use for those brains. And he was always good with his hands.”

  Connie nodded, she’d seen as much herself. Could still feel how he’d held her as if she were something precious rather than a woman to be manhandled. He’d shown her both strength and gentleness. Damn, she looked away. No worries about goose bumps now as her skin heated.

  She tried to return her attention to the transfer case but with less luck. The way John’s hands had wrapped around her waist, held her tight and close and… safe. Wow! That was a surprising thought. Before John she’d have defined “safe” as not being shot at. She’d have to think about that.

  A couple quick raps with the sledge returned a tight ring. The transfer case and axle might be rusted on the outside, as the brown clouds shivering off the steel proved, but the metal was still thick and strong. She whacked it again, then propped the sledge’s head against the steel and her ear against the butt of the handle. She couldn’t hear any loose bits twanging or rattling inside and there hadn’t been any metal shavings in the old oil sludge. Could still be trouble once she got inside, but it didn’t seem likely.

  “Like you. You’re good with those fine hands of yours.”

  Connie moved the sloshing pan aside to where she wouldn’t kick it into the inch or so of winter-dry straw that scattered over the stall’s dirt floor.

  “Been mechanicking a while.” Grumps wasn’t asking a question.

  “Dad started me out young.” The first toy she could really remember was a windup alarm clock designed to be taken apart by a kid. Maybe not a four-year-old, but all of the parts were big and well marked. She’d taken it apart and put it back together a thousand times, always impressed by the neatness of the winding mechanism, the prickly edges of the gears against her palm, the interlocking precision.

  It had taken her a while to puzzle out how to fix its running slow, but she’d solved that in the end as well, reworking the timing counterweight with a small file. That was all before moving on to bigger projects. Assembling her first bicycle right down to bolting on the training wheels.

  “I remember building my first go-cart. Scrap metal from my dad’s collection of junk and a lawn mower engine I rebuilt from the block up. Thought I was seriously hot shit in that.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Ten, I guess.” She’d really been eight, but people looked at her strangely when she told them she’d been a skilled welder at eight. Hers had been the only go-cart at Fort Bragg to have a full cowling with all of the weld beads ground smooth.

  “Did you win?” Of course, the old man would as
sume she’d raced it.

  “Got whupped. Jimmy Jepps’s dad bought him this fancy, duded-up, factory-built cart.”

  Grumps leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees, and inspected her with narrowed eyes.

  “What did ya do about it?”

  “I disappeared into the garage for three months. Designed and built this primitive transmission that gave me a one-time upshift. Once I was up to speed, I’d throw this lever that jacked in a different gear, if I handled the throttle just right, and then I flew. I also painted her lipstick red. Blew the doors off Jimmy Jepps, then I put her away and never raced again.”

  Grumps smacked his knee loudly with his open palm. “Good girl! Showed that Jimmy a thing or two, I betcha.”

  Connie had. She’d proven she was smarter, more of an outsider, even stranger than Jimmy and all her peers imagined, which was pretty weird by third grade.

  She focused hard on getting the axle out of the tractor’s transfer case to bury the memories. The bad times along with the good times, like the cold evenings in the garage with her dad on those rare times when he made it home from tour. She’d always trained her mind to leave the past behind. Live in the present. Definitely not the past, and no real point in betting on an unknown future. There was only the now. That was all that mattered. She kept telling herself that so often that she almost believed it.

  But it suddenly seemed important to know what had happened to that old clock. Now her life fit in a duffel bag and a small storage locker at Fort Campbell, one that was mostly empty.

  “Been doing it a long while,” she told the axle, grunting a bit as she slipped the inner shaft free and hefted it, hoping she could get it onto the bench for breakdown and cleaning before it slipped free from her oily grasp.

  A large hand grabbed one end. John. She’d know that hand anywhere. Between them they levered it onto the makeshift table.

  She glanced over at Grumps. He’d fallen asleep in the shaft of sunlight with his feet crossed in the hay and his head resting against the barn wall.

  “This was his tractor.”

  She nodded.

  “Almost bankrupted great-gran’da to buy it. Grumps drove it every day for thirty years to make it up to him. He made the success of this farm with this little machine.”

  They bent down together to inspect the driveshaft. She fetched the sledge and a massive pin punch to drive out the main joint, then glanced over at Grumps.

  “Don’t worry, he’s pretty deaf. Larry said he sleeps through most anything these days.”

  She looked at John. Really looked at him as he watched the old man sleeping. Could see on his face how much he cared for—No. Scratch that. How much he truly loved the old man. Close enough to worship to leave no real difference.

  She knew that feeling. Knew it and stayed as far from it as she could. There lived pain. Deep pain.

  She aimed the punch and slammed the hammer down. Drove it until the pin flew loose and the driveshaft thudded to the ground.

  Grumps stirred but didn’t wake.

  Chapter 35

  All afternoon they worked together on the tractor. The silence of the farm a background to Grumps’s gentle snores. John enjoyed the easy rhythm as he and Connie worked back to front, breaking the beast down to parts.

  John dragged over an old milking stool and started cleaning the parts with a splash of diesel over an old bucket. No holds barred in the design of this machine. They’d planned for it to last by building it heavy and building it big. Not even twice the horsepower of a modern push-around lawn mower engine, yet she could deliver it year in and year out through the worst mud and hard-baked soil Muskogee could hand out. And a big enough bore that it took more than hard winter soil to slow the machine down. Not fast, but it won the race of sheer stubborn endurance.

  Grumps had never let him fix up this tractor, though he’d started at it a time or two. The old man had always chased him off without ever explaining why. Yet here he’d fallen asleep perched on an old milk crate while watching Connie break it down.

  John continued to clean the subassemblies as she dislodged them from the frame. Take ’em apart, clean ’em up, and reassemble ’em. It was soothing, easy work. A real pleasure.

  Another pleasure of his current occupation was his excellent view of the woman at physical labor. Her hair pulled back through the hole of an old John Deere cap Grumps must have dug up for her. If you saw her on the street, you might not look twice except for the beautiful face and fine figure. Mr. Civilian, if he noticed her shoulders at all, might think “gym queen.” Whereas John couldn’t look away.

  It was when she leaned in, when she flexed hard to drive some resistant part into submission, that the difference showed. She didn’t wear her muscles on her sleeve, so to speak. But when those long womanly arms flexed, the muscles stood out in clear and surprising definition. Her strength lay beneath the surface, closer to the bone.

  “Are all women like that?” he asked before he had a moment to think about it.

  “Like what?” She had the front steering assembly on the run. At this rate they’d start building her back up in another hour or so. Though the transmission would take some serious time tomorrow.

  Now that he’d asked, he wasn’t sure of his question. He hunted around the barn seeking the answer but not finding it. The next stall down had the big combine, more power in its power steering than in this whole tractor. The other direction, in the next bay, an old GTO hunkered on blocks. He and Paps worked on it together when they were bored or Mama told them to get out from underfoot.

  “Keep their strength hidden?” That was about the best he could find for it. He didn’t wait for her answer. He’d learned that conversations with Connie, especially while she was mechanicking, moved at a serious mosey. Words clearly took second place to machinery. He had the carburetor more than half torn down before she answered.

  She stood up for a moment to stretch, cricked her neck off to one side.

  “I don’t.” She squatted back down.

  His hands were moving slower and slower with the more time he spent watching her. Squatting on the concrete inspecting the bearings on the front axle.

  He couldn’t imagine a woman who kept more pieces hidden. And each time he learned one piece, he wanted to learn two more.

  “Hey, Connie?”

  She didn’t look up but instead reached in with a pair of needle-nose pliers and began extracting ball bearings from the thick grease in the steel race.

  “Yes?”

  “How about going out to dinner with me tonight?”

  “Don’t you want to be with your family?”

  He did want to be with his family, but also, “I want to be with you.”

  “It’s gonna piss off your sister.”

  John expected she was right.

  “She’s used to it.”

  And he just didn’t give a damn.

  Chapter 36

  Connie looked at herself in the mirror. At least as well as she could between the football trophies. She’d showered off the grease, even dug the worst of it out from beneath her nails.

  Tan slacks, a gray cotton blouse, and a jeans jacket. She didn’t have a parka with her, didn’t own a dress except for her U.S. Army Class-As, and those were in a storage locker back at Fort Campbell where they’d been for over a year.

  She looked ridiculous. Her friends, well, the flight crews that were still in Bati, were wearing armor and fighting for their lives in a country where both sides would prefer they were all dead. She shouldn’t be here. She should—

  She spotted Noreen’s reflection in the mirror as the girl came to lean against the doorjamb to John’s room. Arms crossed tightly over her chest.

  “John’s wearing a jacket. Only one place in town you can wear a jacket without getting laughed out. He’s never taken a woman there.”

  Connie simply watched her in the mirror.

  “You can’t go dressed like that.”

  Connie inspected h
erself once more. “I look fine. Besides, it’s the best I’ve got.”

  Noreen looked up at the ceiling, either counting to herself or cursing, it was hard to tell. She refocused on Connie.

  “C’mon.”

  When Connie didn’t move, Noreen took three quick steps into the room, snagged Connie’s arm, and began to drag her out of the room toward the stairs.

  Noreen’s room was small, tucked partly under the eaves of the old house. The closets were low built-ins decorated as you’d expect with posters of bands. In contrast, a big quilt draped the bed nearly to the floor, lending the room a deep, homey feel. An old rug showed age, wear, and care. It was the insides of the closets that were a surprise.

  They weren’t packed with glitz or leather or any of the dozen other variations Connie had expected. They weren’t packed solid with a disorganized array of items. Neatly arranged, there was space to see what hung in each spot, and the clothes were beautiful. Jewel tones that would offset Noreen’s complexion. A neckline with an elegant, draped design to it. Pastels that would accentuate and warm her tones. A small rack of cozy sweaters and practical but feminine shoes.

  Connie would expect someone of Noreen’s beauty to have closets of slinky or… Well, there was more to the girl than first appeared.

  In moments Noreen selected a forest-green top and handed it to Connie.

  Connie stripped off her top, because it was clearly expected.

  “Oh, give me a break.”

  Connie froze. “What?”

  “You can’t wear a sports bra.”

  “Why not?”

  Noreen dropped onto the bed. “What hole have you lived your life in?”

  “The U.S. Army and it isn’t a hole.”

  “A deep and dark one, apparently.” Noreen turned to a small dresser and dug around. Then she held out a pair of bras. “Blue or sunshine yellow?”

  “What’s wrong with—”

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Noreen muttered at the ceiling before focusing back on Connie. “First, it will make you look nicer, give my brother something he’ll enjoy looking at from across the table. Second, I really am going to say this, crap! Second, if he gets that blouse off you, he should find something a little more interesting than a faded-out sports bra.”