Until You Are Dead

by John Lutz

"Don' matter," Maybelle said to Wilson with a perfect smile, and took in the other occupants of the car with a circular wave of her arm. "These'ns are all gonna be gone into the Army afore the end of summer."

  "How come you ain't in?" Bandy asked. "You look to be of age."

  "I tried," Wilson said. Unaccountably, he felt himself blushing. The change of his color wasn't lost on Bandy McCane.

  "How hard you try?" he asked derisively.

  "Hard enough," Wilson said. "They told me I was Four-F."

  "Lotsa reasons you can be Four-F," Zach observed skeptically.

  "Glad I ain't a reject," Josh said in a solemn voice. "Comes a time to fight, an' this is it."

  Wilson nodded. "I agree."

  "I'd like to see your pictures sometime," Maybelle said, blatantly changing the subject.

  "No time now," Zach shouted, jammingthe old Ford into gear and gunning protesting life into the clattering engine.

  "No call for painters in this man's war!" Bandy shouted over his shoulder at Wilson as the Ford's big wheels dug into the earth without slipping and the car shot forward. Maybelle lifted an arm in a languid farewell that Wilson barely saw through the dust as the car disappeared beyond the rise where the road gently curved.

  Wilson walked back up onto the porch, listening to the measured hollow thunder of his boots on the warped planks as he strode to his canvas. The conversation with the four native Ozarkians had disturbed him more than it should have.

  Two days later he returned after painting a landscape from high on a nearby bluff to find that the cabin had been broken into and many of his paintings had been slashed.

  He stood staring at the disruption of the cabin's interior, unable to see clearly for a moment as an aching helpless rage flared deep in his stomach, then gradually receded to a painful smoldering. So personal seemed the attack, it was as if the torn canvas were an extension of his own flesh.

  After cleaning up and salvaging what he could of his materials, Wilson drove into Colver to see the local sheriff.

  "Who knowed you was at the cabin?" Sheriff Bayne Haynes asked. He was a large man with a vast stomach paunch, beady intelligent black eyes in a fleshy mottled face, and a walnut-gripped .45 Colt revolver holstered to his hip. He was gazing at Wilson amiably from where he sat turned in his swivel chair facing away from the long rolltop desk against the office's far wall. His lean deputy, Rawly Krebs, slouched nearby against a dusty switchboard.

  Wilson hesitated, then told the sheriff about his conversation with Josh, Zach, Bandy, and Maybelle.

  "I don't know definitely that it was them," he added. "They's good boys, but they do tend to act up," Sheriff Haynes said absently.

  "Thass a fact," Krebs added.

  "Anything exceptin' your paintin's broke up?" the sheriff asked.

  Wilson thought about that. "No," he said finally. "A few things were knocked to the floor, furniture turned over, but nothing really broken."

  Haynes rose from his chair with the ease and seeming lightness of an ascending hot-air balloon. There were wide, almost black perspiration stains beneath the arms of his tan uniform shirt. "Down the road a short piece from your cabin," he said, "is a cutoff to Ezekiel Ferber's place. Now, Ferber's got himself a phone. You have any more trouble you run on down there, use that phone to call here, an' me and Rawly'li be up to your place faster'n you can shout rabbit."

  Krebs looked at Wilson and nodded his narrow pockmarked head. "Thass a fact."

  "All right, fine," Wilson said. There didn't seem much else that could be done.

  "If'n it was who we figure, they had their fun an' ain't likely to come back. Thass the way they is, those three boys. Not mean — jus' too full a vinegar."

  "As I said," Wilson emphasized, "I don't really know who it was. But I thought you should know that it happened."

  Sheriff Haynes' bushy graying eyebrows rose and fell like writhing caterpillars. "Oh, you did the right thing, an' no doubt about it." Deputy Krebs nodded silent agreement.

  Haynes licked his lips and squinted at Wilson. "You — uh — do anything to rile them boys? On accident, maybe?"

  "I don't think so," Wilson said. And that was true. He hadn't done a thing. It wasn't his fault they were going into the Army and he was 4-F, or that Maybelle had seemed to take a shine to him. "I take it Maybelle is Bandy McCane's girlfriend," he said cautiously.

  The sheriff raised his expansive chin and smiled faintly. "You might say she's the girlfriend of all of 'em, from time to time. Thass how it is sometimes here away from the city, Mr. Benton."

  Wilson swallowed and nodded, imagining despite himself Maybelle's pale languid arms and luminous blue eyes. Sheriff Haynes was staring hard at him.

  Wilson thanked the sheriff and walked toward the screen door to the street.

  "Things'll sure be quieter when them boys is gone to the Army," the sheriff remarked behind him.

  "Thass a fact," Deputy Krebs said.

  From the sheriff's office, Wilson walked directly across the street to Holfer's Service Center and General Store, a small frame structure with two gas pumps in front and a flat-roofed addition that stocked groceries and hardware. He noticed that the sheriff's '38 Dodge was at Holfer's being worked on by a lanky grease-stained young boy. The car was dusty-black with large gold replicas of a sheriff's badge emblazoned on its doors. When Wilson entered the store he saw Zach Wheelright slouching at the counter paying for a package of chewing tobacco.

  Zach turned, spotted Wilson, and grinned guiltily as he scratched at his sparse blond beard. He unwrapped the tobacco and slowly bit off a large plug. Then, chewing laboriously behind his wide grin, he walked past Wilson and out the door. Wilson saw that he had a slender broken paintbrush tucked behind his left ear.

  For a moment Wilson wanted to return to the sheriff's office and inform Haynes of what he'd just seen. Then he decided against it. There was no point in further stirring up things if, as Haynes had predicted, the matter was over.

  Wilson bought five dollars' worth of groceries to last him the week, loaded them in the trunk of the Chevy, and returned to the cabin.

  That Friday, when he was working indoors near the cabin's north window, Wilson heard a scuffling sound on the front porch and felt his heart double-pump, then grow heavy with fear. He put down his brush and palette and walked softly to the door.

  When he opened the door he found Maybelle standing on the porch alone.

  "Tol' you I wanted to see your pictures," she said, smiling. She was wearing a low-cut gray blouse and a long skirt of material so thin that the outline of her compact body showed through. She was barefoot, and Wilson found himself involuntarily staring at the dusty neat squareness of her pale toes. "Ain't you gonna ask me in?" she said.

  He raised his gaze to her eyes. The girlfriend of all of 'em from time to time. "Sure," he said brokenly. He gave her smile back to her, amplified. "Come on in."

  She seemed to be genuinely enthralled by his work, giving awed girlish exclamations as she examined the pastel landscapes, crying that she recognized most of the views before her on the canvas. Wilson brought up the subject of the vandalism that had occurred two days before and Maybelle seemed horrified. But she didn't deny the probable identity of the culprits. "Zach, Josh, and Bandy, I 'spect," she said, shaking her head in disdain.

  She offered then to show Wilson a spot he might want to paint, and they left the cabin. Maybelle led him up the hill on the other side of the road, then down along a path to a clearing dotted with wildflowers in the tall wind-stirred grass. It was an exceptionally pastoral spot, though too flat and indistinctive to paint. Wilson didn't tell Maybelle this. She teased him, moving up against him as if by accident as they walked, letting the backs of her fingers barely brush his hand.

  "The view from between those big pines is sure pretty," she said, pointing with Michel angeles que grace toward a patch of cloud-marbled blue framed by green branches.

  Wilson trudged up the slight rise to the high point between the pin
es, studied the unspectacular view, then turned to ask Maybelle where, specifically, she meant for him to look.

  Maybelle was gone.

  A hollowness in Wilson's stomach seemed to fill with something dark and bitter. He began to walk, then run back toward the cabin.

  When Wilson flung open the door and saw the wreckage a sob expanded to form a lump in his throat, then erupted from him in a frustrated snarl. This time the damage was worse — almost every canvas slashed, furniture ripped open, food pulled from cupboards and smashed or scattered. But worst of all, Wilson knew that Maybelle had made a fool of him; she had used herself as a diversion while the three men returned to the empty cabin. On the wall near the sink was scrawled 4-F in Wilson's yellow oils. The blood rushed to his face as he whirled, slammed the door, and stomped noisily from the buckled wood porch.

  He got into the Chevy and started the engine. He would drive down the road to Ezekiel Ferber's place, as the sheriff had suggested, and phone for the law.

  Wilson had pulled out onto the narrow road and traveled fifty feet before he knew something was wrong. The car was bouncing violently, swerving and pulling to the right. He braked, turned off the engine, and got out.

  The right rear tire was flat. Wilson kicked the misshapen rubber and pounded on the gray rounded slope of the car's fender. He would have to walk to Ferber's.

  Then, bending down, he saw the wide slit in the tire's sidewall. It had been slashed.

  But why only that tire? Could it be that his antagonists wanted him to think it was only an ordinary flat so he would walk to Ferber's? So they could return and do even more damage? Wreck anything they'd missed? Scrawl more messages? Perhaps even burn down the cabin?

  Wilson opened the trunk of the car and got out the spare tire, the jack, and the X-shaped iron lug wrench. He could quickly change the tire, drive to Ferber's, and maybe phone the sheriff in time for him to get back up and catch the vandals in the act.

  He jacked up the back of the car, loosened the lug nuts with the wrench, and fumbled with them, removing them the rest of the way by hand. Sweat was trickling down his face and tiny insects circled him, buzzing about his eyes and flitting at his mouth and nostrils. He wrestled the airless tire off the car and turned toward the spare.

  Then he heard the unmistakable roar and clatter of Zach Wheelright's decrepit car approaching. He remained crouched behind the Chevy and peered over the fender to see traces of raised dust beyond the road's bend. The engine noise was loud; the car was almost upon him. They must have thought he had taken the path through the woods to Ferber's on foot and the cabin was again deserted. Then came the crash.

  The surface of smooth metal before Wilson smashed into him as the Chevy was struck and bounced backward off the jack. There were startled cries, tinkling glass, and the hiss and trickling surrender of a broken radiator.

  Wilson was on his hands and knees, fighting to catch his breath from the blow he'd received in the chest. Hazily he could see Zach, Bandy, Josh, and Maybelle tumble from the wrecked Ford. Zach sat down and held his head in both hands. Maybelle stood leaning dizzily against the side of the Chevy. Josh and Bandy were swaying, supporting each other. They had expected him to be gone, all right, Wilson realized. But they hadn't expected the crippled car to be jacked up in the middle of the road just beyond the bend.

  "You wrecked my car!" Zach was saying, staring at Wilson from between splayed fingers vividly marked with blood. He cursed and struggled to his feet.

  Josh and Bandy moved nearer to flank him, lending the threat of their presence to his words.

  "You wrecked it!" Wilson managed to gasp.

  "You come over here!" Zach screamed.

  Wilson didn't move.

  "Ain't you got ears?" Bandy asked. The initial shock of the accident had passed and although he was holding his injured left arm tight against his body, he was grinning. Josh still seemed woozy from his head striking the windshield. He was standing, swaying, with his fists on his hips.

  Wilson sighed and began to rise.

  "Not like that, you yellow coward scum!" Zach shouted. "Stay on your hands an' knees where you belong!"

  Maybelle began to laugh.

  Wilson stayed very still.

  "We'll kill you if you don't," Josh said to Wilson. "Maybe we'll kill you if you do."

  Wilson was paralyzed, breathing painfully as if each lungful of air were somehow thickened almost to a liquid consistency. Fear was a thing alive within him, pulling marionette strings despite his humiliation.

  He began to crawl.

  Maybelle laughed again. They were all laughing now except Zach, who was staring with a thin knowledgeable smile at Wilson.

  Then Wilson's left hand was stung by one of the glass fragments from the shattered windshield and headlights. He paused.

  "Keep comin'!" Zach warned.

  Wilson's right hand came into contact with the lug wrench.

  "You heard!" Bandy said, not laughing now. For emphasis he slapped his right hand hard against the loose fender of the Ford, causing the metal to twang and vibrate loudly.

  Wilson didn't remember rising, but he had, still clutching the lug wrench. He surprised himself even more than the three men as he was suddenly before them, swinging the tire iron, hearing and feeling it smash the flesh and bone of Zach's skull. Arcs of bright blood glistened in the air. The injured Bandy tried to grab Wilson's arm. Wilson was too strong for that now — stronger than anyone had ever been. He brushed the clutching fingers aside, brought the wrench down behind Bandy's ear. Someone was clawing at Wilson's neck with sharp fingernails. Maybelle. He whirled, lashed out with the wrench that seemed weightless in his hand, then pursued Josh, who was trying to stagger around the rear of the Ford, and laid open his skull with one effortless swing. Then he returned to Bandy, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground before Maybelle's bloody body. Bandy started to beg with his eyes and distorted mouth. The shadow of the raised lug wrench fell upon him like a cross. The shadow grew. The wrench descended.

  It was Ezekiel Ferber who came across the scene and fled home to phone the law. Sheriff Haynes and Deputy Krebs arrived within half an hour in the sheriff's dusty black car with the gold insignia on the doors. The doors slammed in unison as Haynes and Krebs left the car to swagger toward where Wilson was sitting slumped on the Chevy's running board, the heavy lug wrench on the ground between his feet. The sheriff and his deputy paused.

  Somewhere in a far dark part of Wilson's mind he could feel himself spinning, falling in intermittent, sweeping plunges toward an inevitable timelessness.

  "Gawd, Gawd, Gawd," the sheriff was saying, "he killed 'em all." His face was white. "There weren't no reason whatsoever for this."

  "Thass a fact," the deputy said in a soft, awed voice.

  "Those are the facts," the prosecutor said.

  "They're the plain facts," the jury foreman said.

  "–Until you are dead," said the judge.

  The Chess Players

  The sky beyond the old man and the boy playing chess was dark and occasionally fractured by lightning. Against that backdrop, neither of them noticed the dust of the car approaching on the dirt road from the county highway.

  Both the old man — who was younger than he first appeared, with his white hair and beard — and the boy looked up when they heard the crunch of the tires and the soft thunking of rocks bouncing off the insides of the car's fenders. They remained seated beneath the branches of an elm, in the wooden kitchen chairs they'd dragged from the tiny farmhouse to place on either side of the small cedar table. On the table was a cheap chessboard and plastic pieces that were so light that from time to time the wind building up from the southwest tipped over the taller king, queen, or bishop. If the wind got much stronger, the pieces might blow from the board, but the old man and boy knew they wouldn't go far once they worked down in the coarse grass.

  The boy, who was eight years old and named Andrew, looked at the old man, who was his grandfather. He was a thin, dark
-haired boy with a narrow, symmetrical face and bright but sad blue eyes. The old man swiveled slightly in his chair to watch the car, and the boy's calm, intelligent gaze followed.

  The grandfather, who was sixty-seven and whose name was Willis Sharp, watched the car brake to a halt next to the cottonwood tree near the barn. Beyond it, all around the farmhouse and barn, the cornfields spread for acres and acres so that only the water tower at Centerville, fifteen miles away, was visible from the house. Wavering in the heat, it looked like a drab gray lightbulb supported by a spindly framework. Andrew, who had quite an imagination, had once told Willis he'd dreamed the water tower was an alien spaceship that had landed so its occupants could learn chess.

  The car was a dusty black Chrysler New Yorker with a rental decal on its front bumper. Both its front doors opened simultaneously, and the two men inside climbed out. One was short and broad, the other tall and broad. The shorter one had on faded Levi's and an sleeveless red T-shirt. When the two men got closer, Willis saw that the T-shirt had one of those yellow smiley faces on it, only this one had a bullethole seeping blood in its forehead. The blood was the same red as the rest of the shirt.

  "Whaddya know?" the short one said by way of greeting, when the two men were about ten feet from the old man and boy.

  "Not much," Willis said.

  "I don't doubt it," the tall one said in a voice that cut. He had pale eyes like diamond chips, thin, cruel features, and was beginning to go bald on top. The breeze whipped the long, sandy hair above his right ear out away from his head as he lifted a hand and smoothed it back with a look of irritation. "Kinda isolated out here in Dullsville, aren't you, old-timer?"

  Willis thought he recognized his accent. "We like isolation."

  "You didn't ask us what we know," the short one said with the same accent as his companion. He had greasy black hair slicked straight back, a coiled snake tattooed on one bulging bicep, and two glittering rings on each hand.

  "You two don't need to be asked, being from New York."