by Jeffrey Ford
My mother put her hand on my back and gently pushed me forward, Jim alongside. The closeness of the room and the increasing view of Mrs. Horton’s profile made me gag. Death was a silent island, and then we were there, standing over her. I knew if I looked at Jim, we would laugh, so I had to stare down into the grimace of her waxy face. In her sleep she was unhappy. It struck me then that none of the neighbors who’d come to the wake had ever been friends with Mrs. Horton. I crossed myself and turned away.
Peter Horton, his jacket button ready to pop, wearing his clodhopper shoes, sat in the front row like a cartoon cat hit by a mallet. His eyes were big blanks, and when I told him I was sorry about his mom, he grunted.
“Peter’s zombie-island,” Jim said a few minutes later as we stood at the back of the room near the doorway.
I nodded my head in the direction of Mr. Conrad, who sat by himself in the last row, working at his giant left ear with an open paper clip. “He’s digging to China,” I said.
Mrs. Farley talked Girl Scouts with Mrs. Bishop. Mr. Hackett wore his Korean War uniform, and I almost expected to see the back of the pants blown out where the grenade had hit his ass. Mrs. Restuccio dozed in her chair, and Larry March’s old man quietly told knock-knock jokes to Diamond Lil.
My father talked to Mr. Felina and Mr. Farley. My mother sat next to Mrs. Hayes, nodding at a long story. People prayed on the kneeler in front of Mrs. Horton’s coffin, walked away, and came back a few seconds later for more. An older woman with a black lace doily on her head was saying the bead prayers, and the Horton children milled slowly through like solid ghosts from Dorothy’s Kansas.
Leaning back against the wall, I was about to shut my eyes when Mr. Horton suddenly stood up from his chair, goiter bobbing, and looked toward the ceiling. He introduced himself and started talking to Jesus. At first everybody looked up, and then they all lowered their eyes when they realized nothing was there. “I was thinking the other day about Time, Jesus,” he said. Everything he said ended in “Jesus,” and at every mention of the name, spit flew from the corners of his mouth. When Mr. Horton asked Jesus to make his wife wake up and live again, my father walked back to us.
“Go outside and get some air,” he said, “but don’t go far.” He looked over his shoulder as if to check whether Mrs. Horton was stirring. Jim and I didn’t have to be asked twice. In the lobby we wove our way through a crowd of crying people letting out from one of the other death rooms. Mr. Dunden opened the door for us, and we walked down the long flight of steps. We walked back to the stone benches around a wishing pond beneath giant oaks. Stars were visible through nets of barren branches. The cool night air smelled like the ocean.
“Did Mr. White kill her?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe he couldn’t get Peter, so he got her instead. Then again, maybe she just died.”
He Kills People
The stench of oil paint and turpentine was everywhere, as if something chemical come to life. It made every hair on the back of my neck stand up. I sat next to my mother in the dining room and watched her. She was in her usual chair by the window at the end of the room, and before her on the table was a very short easel with Mount Kilimanjaro on it. To one side of her was a palette on which she mixed colors from fat silver tubes, and on the other was an old encyclopedia open to a page that showed a picture of a gazelle. With a brushstroke of burnt sienna and a touch of yellow, in two fluid movements, she formed the outline of an inch-high gazelle in the foreground of her canvas. She made three more, all in different poses, just as quickly. She added gray-and-white horns and black-and-white markings, and they looked real. They stood on an open plain bordered by a jungle of emerald green palm trees. Behind the trees rose the great mountain in varying shades of blue and gray, and the sun glinted off its snowcapped peak.
“It’s done,” she said. She stood up, wiped her hands on a rag, and took a step back to admire her masterpiece.
I pictured gorillas living in that jungle and wondered if any of them ever climbed the mountain and walked through the snow.
“What do you think?” she asked me, pushing the little easel away from us so it sat in the middle of the table.
“I want to go to Africa,” I said.
She smiled and lit a cigarette. Reaching down beside her chair, she hoisted up the half-gallon jug of wine and refilled her glass. She sat then, quietly assessing the painting. In those few seconds, I saw the recent burst of energy leaking out of her. As usual, it had lasted for a little more than a week or so, and she’d used it all up. Like a punctured blow-up pool toy, she seemed to slowly deflate while shadows blossomed in her gaze. She stubbed out her cigarette and said, “It’s okay.” All the brushes went into the old coffee can of poison-smelling turpentine, and all the caps were put back on the silver paint tubes. She picked up her wineglass, cigarettes, and ashtray and went in to sit in the corner of the couch. I followed her and sat at the other end.
“It won’t be for a while,” she said, her eyes closed, “but I saw the next painting I’m going to do.”
“George’s portrait?” I asked. The dog, over by the stairs, lifted his head for a moment.
She smiled. “No. There’s a tree at the arboretum. A giant, ancient tree with tendrils that reach to the ground. I want to paint every leaf of it in summer in the late afternoon.”
She was still but for her shallow breathing. Between two fingers of her right hand, an unlit cigarette seesawed. The wineglass was as close to spilling without spilling as possible. I grabbed the wineglass and ashtray and set them down on the coffee table. Then, creeping over to the cellar door, I whispered for Jim. He came upstairs with Mary, who we sent to get the Sherlock Holmes while we positioned my mother’s head on the pillows and lifted her feet.
I was already dressed, and Jim had stored our coats in the cellar earlier. We put them on and zipped up in the kitchen with the lights off. As we were getting ready to go out the back door, Jim said to Mary, “What do you have to do?”
“Go in, kiss Nan good night, and tell her everybody went to bed, and then go to bed.”
“Right,” said Jim. “Let’s not Mickey this up.”
She walked over to where he stood and kicked him in the leg with her bare foot. He laughed without making a sound.
“What if Mr. White comes?” Mary whispered.
“His car’s been all the way up on Hammond since Mrs. Horton croaked. He’s not coming here,” he said.
“What if he does?” she said.
“Call Nan, and she’ll get her gun,” I said.
Jim and I went out into the night. The door hushed closed, and as I went down the steps, I turned and looked back at Mary’s face peering out of the yellow square of light that was the kitchen window. We crept to the edge of the house and then made for the street. For the last day, Ray Halloway’s figure had been hanging out over near the school in Botch Town, so we turned in that direction.
We saw a bat flying crazy under the streetlamp across from the Hacketts’ house, and Mrs. Grimm’s white cat, Legion, was prowling in the ivy on the Calfanos’ lawn. Otherwise the block was quiet. It wasn’t quite ten o’clock yet, so there were still a fair number of lighted windows. As we wove our way around the glow of the streetlamps, we listened for the sound of tires on the street behind us, checked now and then for the brightness of headlights. Ahead of us rose the silhouette of the school. We passed the gates. The ring on the flag rope clinked against the metal pole. There was some sweet flower smell blowing out of the woods.
We crossed the bus circle and were just stepping up onto the sidewalk in front of the main door when a pebble hit the ground at our feet. We stopped cold and looked around. Fear grew in me, and then a noise came from above.
“Pssst.”
We looked up, and there was a person leaning over the edge of the school’s flat roof. I knew it was Ray the second I made out the white T-shirt. Slowly my eyes adjusted, and he came into view. He had an unlit cigarette in the corner of
his mouth.
“Meet me over at the gym door by the baseball diamond,” he whispered. Then he pushed up with his hands and was gone.
We ran as quietly as possible across the parking lot and the basketball court, keeping to the shadows along the wall of the school. The gym was three stories of solid brick. If you jumped off the roof of the main school building, you wouldn’t get hurt, but to fall from the roof of the gym was certain death. We followed the asphalt path around the corner of its enormous wall and stopped short at the metal door. I looked out across the baseball diamond in the moonlight and thought of Mr. Rogers, wherever he was, seeing the same thing.
Both of us jumped when the metal door groaned open. I was halfway back to the basketball court before I heard Jim laughing. Turning around, I saw him and Ray waving me back.
“Come on,” said Ray as I drew up next to them. He put his hand lightly on my shoulder, and I stepped inside behind Jim. The door closed with a bang.
Inside the sleeping school, it was pitch black, and the smells of red stuff, old books, bad breath, and the slightest trace of that day’s baked haddock were so much more powerful in silence.
“How do you get in here?” asked Jim as Ray led us across the polished wooden floor.
“There’s a door up on the gym roof. There’s no lock on it. When the weather’s too cold, I stay down here in the furnace room. I was here all through the snowstorm.”
He opened a swinging door, and we stepped out into a hallway of the main building. We walked through the darkened corridors, passing Krapp’s room. The door was open, and when I looked in, I half expected to see the glow of his white shirt—him sitting at his desk with his head down.
“How do you get on the roof?” asked Jim.
“There’s a pipe that runs up the wall at the back corner of the school by the playground—for the oil or something. I get my foot onto that, pull myself up, and reach my fingers over the edge of the roof. Once I’m on the roof over there, it’s easy to get to the ladder that leads up the side of the gym.”
“I don’t think I could do that,” Jim said.
“Well,” said Ray, “not many people can.”
We entered one of the halls that ran along the courtyard. The enormity of being in the school illegally was just beginning to dawn on me.
“Do you ever get afraid of heights?” asked Jim.
“No,” said Ray. He stopped and turned to look out into the courtyard. We halted beside him. A little wash of moonlight fell there, and we could make out the dead weeds and stone bench. “The only thing I worry about,” said Ray, pointing through the window, “is falling in there.”
“Why?” asked Jim. “The roof’s not even that high there.”
“Because there’s no way out. They built it without a door, and there’s no place to get a foothold or a leg up. If I fell in there, I’d be trapped and have to try to break a window to get out. After Calfano busted all the windows, they wired them with alarms, and if they break, the cops come.” He turned and continued past the main office and the nurse’s office, striding confidently as if the school belonged to him. “Did you ever wonder why they have a bench in there?” he asked over his shoulder. At the end of the hall, he opened the door to the furnace room and held it for Jim and me to enter. As I passed by him into the warm total darkness, I noticed he didn’t have his white sneakers on, but instead he wore a pair of pointy black shoes kids called “cockroach killers.”
“Hold on a second,” he told us. The door swung shut behind him. “I have a flashlight right here. I can’t use it in the school, because someone might see the beam.” A light flicked on, and there was Ray’s head like a flame in demonic shadows, smiling. I almost ran but realized he was holding the light under his chin. Jim and Ray laughed.
He led us down a ramp and onto a concrete floor. Moving the beam around, Ray showed us Boris’s office: a corner that contained an old desk with dozens of cubbyholes all stuffed with papers, a swivel chair with a tuft of stuffing coming out of the seat, and a workbench. In another corner stood at least ten barrels on rollers. Ray walked over to one of them and shone the flashlight on its contents. The red stuff.
“What is this shit anyway?” he asked.
“Pieces of eraser?” I said.
“Chemical rubber bits,” said Jim.
He showed us the furnace, a potbellied man of metal with numbered-gauge eyes within circles of glass, a spigot nose, and two pipe arms reaching out and into the walls. The latch on the furnace door squealed when Ray opened it to reveal small blue flames dancing in its depths.
“They only use this to get rid of trash,” he said. “The oil burner’s over there.” He turned and illuminated it with the flashlight. “That heats the school.
“Over here,” he said. He ducked under one of the furnace’s long arms and into a passageway that ran beside it. Once past the back of the machine, the alley got narrower. Eventually I had to turn sideways and scrape myself along the smooth stone walls. Two steps through and the walls opened immediately into a vast underground cavern supported by concrete columns.
Ray held the flashlight out in front of him and pointed it away from the foundation of the school. “I don’t know how far it goes on,” he said. “I went in there once and came to a place where I could hear running water up ahead, like a little waterfall, but then the flashlight batteries ran out and I had to make my way back through total darkness. I think it’s an air-raid shelter. You know, in case the Russians drop the big one.”
He continued, “I keep my stuff over here,” and led us in among the columns. He shone the light into a corner made by the foundation of the school and the walls of the cavern, where a sleeping bag was spread out near a collection of paper bags. Next to the bedroll was an electric lantern. He leaned over and turned it on, and a greater light came up around us—warmer and yellower than the harsh flashlight beam. He slipped out of his jacket and sat down Indian style.
Jim sat and finally I did, too. It was like we were having a campout in a nightmare. There was too much darkness for me, and I was breathing fast. Ray rummaged in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and matches. Once he had them, he reached into a brown paper bag and brought out a clear plastic sack. He laid it down in front of us and said, “You want some candy?”
When I got a good look at it, I saw it was the half bag of candy Pop had thrown out. He’d eventually given up on the contest and wrote the words “hard shit” on a three-by-five card and sent it in to the candy company. Then, with the back of his arm, he’d swept the half-full sack off the table and right into the trash can four feet away.
Jim saw me looking at the candy and shifted his eyes. I knew he’d caught it.
“What are you doing here?” he asked Ray.
“There’s two reasons. First, I’m looking for something,” said Ray. He took a drag of his cigarette and stared into the lantern.
“Mrs. Conrad’s ass?” said Jim.
Ray laughed, “Well, there is a lot of ass. But I lost something. I’m here looking for it.”
“What?” I asked.
He said nothing for a moment, and I thought I’d pissed him off. Finally he said, “That part’s a secret.”
“What about Mr. White?” asked Jim.
“The guy in the white car?” said Ray. “Yeah, I know all about him. I watch him. That’s the other reason I’m here, to warn everyone about him.”
“He kills people,” I said.
“I know,” said Ray. “I saw that he was watching Boris’s house, and I knew he wanted to get rid of him to take his job and get closer to the kids. So I wrote Boris a letter and put it in his mailbox to scare him away for a while.”
“We think he killed Charlie Edison,” said Jim.
“He did,” said Ray. “Behind the stores last fall. He crept up on him like a bad thought, broke his neck, and then threw the kid into his car. He kept him in that big freezer until after the cops dredged the lake. Then he got rid of him in there.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I saw it. And I saw him break Mr. Barzita’s neck like a Popsicle stick on Halloween night. I watched through the old man’s basement window. He’s killed a lot of people, mostly kids.”
“Mrs. Horton?” asked Jim.
“I think she just died from being too fat,” said Ray.
“Does he know you know?” I asked.
“He knows I’m watching him,” said Ray, flicking his cigarette. “He tries to catch me all the time, but I’m too fast for him. I haunt him constantly.”
“How come you didn’t tell anyone?” asked Jim.
“How come you didn’t?” asked Ray. “If someone finds out I’m here, they’ll send me back to my parents’ house.”
“That’s bad?” I said.
Ray nodded. “If I find what I’m looking for here, I’ll never have to go back there.” He sat quietly for a time, staring. When he finally looked up, he smiled and said, “I’m going out to make the rounds. You guys should come for a while. We’ll see some stuff.” From one of the brown paper bags, he retrieved his sneakers and changed out of the black shoes.
“Nice shoes,” said Jim.
Ray shrugged. “I took them from the Blair kid. Right out of his closet.”
“You go in houses?” I asked.
“During the day when everyone is out. I can get in anywhere. That’s how I get the stuff I need,” he said, tightening the laces of his right sneaker. “I only take what I need,” he added, a little defensively.
We left the school through the door in Mrs. Plog’s kindergarten room, which led out into the playground with monkey bars and a slide. Jim couldn’t help himself from spinning the whirly thing as he went past. Ray opened the gate and let us out, and then he took off across the field. We followed at a run as he crossed the bus circle and went up onto the grass, where he knelt down next to a fence that bordered the school.