Cold Dead Past

by John Curtis

  This whole afternoon had been a nasty reminder that he was just a few months from being broke. Worst of all, he felt like he had betrayed the one person who could save him.

  Jack let out a sigh and looked absentmindedly at the end table. The red message light on the answering machine was blinking. He leaned over, hit the play button, and slumped back into the sofa.

  "Hi, this is Linda! How are you? I heard about the book and was wondering if we could get together to discuss old times? My number’s the same. Call me!"

  Jay frowned.

  "Right, you bitch. I remember when you kicked me out of your apartment and told me my writing was shit."

  The next message caused the hair on the back of his neck to prick up.

  "Jay, this is Mark at Titan. I’m just calling to let you know we’ve scheduled some more book signings for you. We really need to get together on these, because it’s promotion, you know? I know that these things make you uncomforable, but the book’s been out for months and the momentum just isn’t there any more unless you get out and push.

  "Oh, and I talked to Pat this morning. She assured me that we’d be seeing something new from you soon. I’m really looking forward to getting together with you on that, too."

  Mark was Jay’s editor. He was right when he said that signings made him uncomfortable. It was an understatement. Jay didn’t enjoy spending hours developing writer’s cramp while listening to people tell him how wonderful he was when he knew better. He still couldn’t get over the idea that people actually paid for anything he had written, no matter how much Mark and Pat assured him they were getting their money’s worth.

  What bothered him even more was that Pat had talked to Mark before she had met him for lunch. That just put more pressure on him to come up with a good story. It wasn’t only his reputation at stake any more. Jay leaned forward and buried his face in his hands, rubbing them up and down over his eyes.

  He was about to reach for the erase button when he heard a familiar voice. "Jay, this is Meg."

  Her speech was halting and breathy, as if she were trying to hold something in.

  "Jay, the reason I’m calling…God, I hate these machines…the reason that I’m calling is that Jack Hauser is dead."

  She sniffled and he could hear her voice get more distant as if the phone had been moved away from her mouth.

  "The funeral is the day after tomorrow and it would be great if you could be there. There aren’t a lot of us left here in town and it would be really nice if you could come and pay your respects."

  There was a pause and then the machine clicked and went into rewind.

  CHAPTER 5

  The morning Jay was to leave for Jack’s funeral in Haddonfield, he awoke gasping for air and soaked with perspiration. He scanned the ceiling as he sought to collect himself. His eyes fell on the watch that had replaced the ruined clock on his nightstand. Five o’clock.

  Jay grabbed the remote and turned on the television. The weather news wasn’t good. When he’d set the alarm, it was based on the assumption that the weather would cooperate. Now, a front had come through with heavy snow up north. He’d be lucky to make it to the funeral at all.

  He shuffled off to the bathroom. While the water for his shower was warming up, he checked out his face in the mirror. Dark circles had formed under his eyes. He wished there were no such things as dreams.

  Jay wasn’t so sure he’d have gone if one of the others had called him, but Meg was different. He hadn’t heard from her in ages. She had been his first kiss, behind the Valentine’s display at the drugstore. To Jay, the kiss had been something really special. When he shared what had happened with Frank, though, he couldn’t understand his reaction. Instead of being happy for him, Frank had laid into Meg. Really nasty remarks that hurt. She had comforted him when Frank died and they promised to keep in touch.

  A couple of times, she came to the city with her parents during summer vacations. They spent hours together on the roof of his apartment building, watching the stars. Through it all, there had been another presence, Frank, whom he could never discuss with her. She never pressed.

  Jay thought that he was happy when Meg told him that she would also be attending Columbia. With her so close, it was hard not to fall into a relationship. It should have been the happiest time of his life, but things started to unravel after they began dating in earnest. Jay had bouts of depression. He went to a therapist. The guy said Jay’s closeness with Frank caused him to feel unreasonably guilty about being the one who lived that day on the pond. Maybe he was right.

  The shit hit the fan when Meg suggested a trip back to Haddonfield to catch up with old friends. Jay viewed the whole idea with trepidation, but didn’t say anything because he thought that she might think he was being silly.

  He fidgeted during the trip and stared silently out the window as she drove. Once they passed the "Welcome to Haddonfield" sign, he fell into a deep funk. Meg tried everything she could to rouse him from it, but it didn’t do any good. He was irritable, had mood swings, there were arguments.

  Back at school, she tried to get him to talk about what was bothering him. He could see in her eyes that he wasn’t getting through to her, so he clammed up. The relationship didn’t end, really, it just sort of petered out as they drifted apart.

  Eventually, with lots of therapy, Jay felt able to put his feelings about that day and Frank behind him. Meg had been in the city on business a couple of times in the interim. Their relations were cordial. She was very understanding as he spilled out all he had learned about his psyche. He still hadn’t been able to get up the guts to ask her out again.

  Jay hadn’t thought of Jack in years. What if he were just seizing on the funeral as a chance to see Meg again? How sick was that? He shook his head and frowned at himself in the mirror.

  It was almost seven by the time he’d dressed and made it down to his car in the garage. Jay tossed his overnight bag into the back seat and fished around in his pockets for his keys and cigarettes.

  He pulled his sunglasses out of the center console as he drove up the ramp. They had been a ritual since the day, blinded by the sun exiting the garage, he’d almost run down an old woman pushing a shopping cart.

  Once he’d gotten acclimated to the light, he tossed the sunglasses onto the passenger seat. Jay turned on some music, loud, as he picked his way slowly through the streets in his Jetta. Through the thwick-thwick of his wipers, the city traffic’s normal staccato of color was changed to an impressionist smear.

  The light snow of the previous day had changed to a downpour. He thought about what a long drive it would be. If it were raining like this in the south, by the time he got to Haddonfield, the snow might be very heavy.

  Beyond the city, traffic cleared up. Jay sped up to take advantage of all the open asphalt. He didn’t relish the idea of spending any more time with his thoughts than was necessary. Being forced to concentrate on his driving would help.

  Unfortunately, his plan failed almost immediately. His hands squeezed the wheel so tightly that his fingers began to cramp up. It gnawed at him that he hadn’t been able to come up with any good ideas for his next book. The pressure from Titan, which had signed him to a new two book deal on the strength of sales of his first novel, wasn’t helping any. He needed time to let an idea simmer and stew.

  "Raven’s End" had taken him a year to flesh out, part-time, while he’d worked as a copywriter for an advertising agency. It had started out as a lark, something to do in his off hours. He wanted to prove to himself that his talents extended beyond writing quips about disposable diapers.

  As Jay got deeper into it, the story took on a life of its own. It went beyond an exercise in creativity to being a game. And it was a game that he enjoyed - moving characters and ideas around like the pieces on a chess board, playing with the action and reaction until he’d found something just right.

  That was all well and good, the money, the signings, critical success. These were all things t
hat he enjoyed. What he didn’t like were people like his editor, Mark, giving him calls pressing him to deliver when he wasn’t ready.

  Jay was afraid to allow himself the luxury of failure with the new book. So many times he felt that he had come up with that one great idea that he could run with, only to be faced with doubts as to whether it was worthy.

  It didn’t matter that there were people telling him how great his ideas were. He was the one who was going to have to spend months with them. Jay found it hard to explain to someone else why it was so easy for him to churn out ad copy compared to a novel, nor did he want to try. There was a lot more pain in digging into your self with the knife of introspection to write a novel. Maybe this was the real reason for delay. The moment of truth was coming, though. Money was running out. Titan was making polite, but insistent noises to his agent about threatening legal action to recover some of his advance money. Jay couldn’t miss his deadline without even the hint of an outline.

  He was snapped out of his dismal reverie by a patch of black ice. The rear wheels of the Jetta whipsawed and he almost sideswiped a passing delivery van. Jay pulled off onto the shoulder and sat for a moment, breathing hard.

  The rain had changed to sleet. Little pellets of ice clicked and popped as they bounced off the windshield. "Fuck," he exclaimed. The wheels spun as he threw the car into gear and pulled back out onto the freeway. The sleet mixed with snow and what little traffic there was, slowed to a crawl. Jay checked the dashboard clock and found that he’d lost almost an hour.

  Four hours had elapsed when the car’s radio began presenting mostly squawks and static when he punched the seek button. When he did find a station, Jay discovered he was in a hell for anyone who didn’t like country music or the oldies. Hit radio in the sticks was the music that time forgot.

  Once he got to the outskirts of Albany, he ran into white-out conditions that made it seem like a curtain had descended around the car.

  CHAPTER 6

  Jay was more than an hour behind schedule and out of gas by the time the sign for the Haddonfield exit flashed into view. The storm had let up some, but he still had to snake his way through the deep ruts left by other drivers on the exit ramp. Not much had changed. There were still no gas stations near the freeway. He just hoped he could make it into town and get fueled up before the Condition Red denoted by the gas pump on his dashboard became really serious.

  He didn’t relish the idea of tramping through a foot of snow for several miles in his new designer shoes. For a moment, Jay even imagined ending up like one of those people he always heard about when he was a kid.

  They went off into the forest to do a little hunting and a storm like this, which was really minor by mountain country standards, would blow up and catch them. Sometimes, they were found alive. Other times, they would be found frozen and buried in a drift, their toes turned black from frostbite, their cheeks imparted with a permanent blue hue. Jay shuddered.

  Over the next five miles, the snow cleared up and the going was a lot easier. Still, he kept a tight grip on the steering wheel and one eye planted on the gas gauge needle, which was pressed hard up against the "E". He finally made it to where the old county road began its descent into the valley and let the car coast the last mile into the lot of the "Blue Lightning Service Plaza".

  Calling it a service plaza must have been Frank’s dad’s idea of a joke. It was just four pumps with a convenience store and repair bay that looked like its better days were long past. Jay got out of the car and stretched. He took a deep breath and looked around.

  The cinder block building was covered with peeling paint. In some spots, the layers of pigment were like an exposed bank of sedimentary rock that told the history of the land. No one had made any effort to clean the snow from around the pump islands, so he gingerly stepped to the back of the car through the slush to unlock the gas cap.

  The interior of the station wasn’t in much better shape. The concrete floor was painted battleship gray. It looked like it hadn’t been mopped in a week. Furnishings were sparse, just a metal desk and office chair. A set of dented metal cabinets with an ill-fitted Formica counter top ran the length of the rear wall. Above the the cabinets hung an odd assortment of fan belts, fuses, pine tree air fresheners, and other accessories. On the counter itself were strewn a collection of oily rags, tools. "No Sale" blinked in cool green on the electronic cash register.

  Gene Jordan sat slumped behind the desk, browsing a copy of "Hustler". He looked grubby, with a three-day growth of beard. Greasy curls fringed the edges of a New York Yankees stocking cap. His filthy coveralls were streaked with oil and reeked of old sweat. He barely took notice of Jay through the grimy, cracked window.

  "He’s dressed good," Gene thought, and turned his attention back to Cherry Topps, whose main claim to fame was a freakishly large pair of breasts that were "all natural and certified".

  Gene never worried about the folks who were dressed well. It was usually the ones who looked like trailer trash, driving the twenty-year-old beaters, who would try to do a drive-off and beat the bill for a tank full of fuel.

  This guy was in a new German car, wearing a nice leather jacket and new jeans. Gene laughed to himself about the shoes. If they were new, too, they sure wouldn’t be once the guy had to make his way inside to pay. It was one of Gene’s games to leave the lot covered in snow and slush. That way it would fill the shoes of those not smart enough to know they should be wearing boots.

  Most of the people who stopped at the station were "richies" and better off than him. It was his way of showing them who was boss, getting them back for the working man. It wasn’t the only odd habit he’d developed over the years.

  Originally, Gene had installed the self-serve pumps so that he could sit on his ass in the warmth of the office during the winter. As they say, the best laid plans often go awry. He glanced up from his reading to check out the customer again, just in case. He scowled when he saw the man fiddling with the lever on the side of the pump.

  "Dammit!"

  The pump had been giving him fits for the past few months. There hadn’t been any extra cash to fix it. He slapped his magazine face down on the desk, open, so as not to lose his place, and headed out the door.

  Jay was still moving the pump lever back and forth when Gene walked up around the driver’s side of the car.

  "Having trouble?" asked Gene, with a crooked, gap-toothed smile.

  "Yeah, it doesn’t seem to want to start for me here," replied Jay.

  Gene stepped over the extended fueling hose, crowding Jay out of his way.

  "There’s a trick to it sometimes, ya see," he said, looking back over his shoulder at Jay. "You gotta give a whack to it."

  He took his fist and gave the pump a bash on the side. Jay noticed a dent there about the size of a fist. The electronic display remained blank.

  "Son of a bitch!"

  Gene turned back to Jay, who feigned interest, but was feeling the bite of the cold. He was trying to remember whether you could get trench foot from slush-filled shoes.

  "Or maybe two."

  Gene laughed and hauled back with his fist, giving the pump a mighty wallop. There was some whirring and a clunk as the display came to life with large, orange LED numbers.

  "Damn Japs."

  Jay noted the panel on the front of the pump which said it had been manufactured in Michigan. For a split second he considered correcting Gene, but it didn’t take a particularly sharp mind to realize it was a bad idea.

  Gene loped over to where the nozzle was thrust into the filler and gave the switch on the handle a squeeze. The numbers ran on the display like a slot machine. He eyeballed Jay with his dry, bloodshot eyes. Recognition flickered across his face.

  He tilted his head, grinned, and pointed a finger at Jay. "You know, you look mighty familiar."

  Jay was rubbing his hands together and shuffling his weight from one foot to the other in an attempt to keep warm. He was used to the idea that sometimes th
ere were people who gave him a look and thought that they recognized him. It had happened quite a few times since the book had come out with that photograph of him on the jacket.

  "I get that a lot," he said. "I’m a writer."

  "Nah. That ain’t it," said Gene, as he scratched at his scalp through the stocking cap. "Not unless you were to write some of them sexy letters in to one of my magazines."

  Jay shook his head and laughed.

  "No. Nothing like that."

  Jay squinted and took a long look at Gene. There was something there underneath all the dirt and stubble that caused a spark in his brain.

  "You know, come to think of it, you look kind of familiar, too. I used to live around here. Left about fifteen years ago."

  Then he noticed the name tag with half of the stitches torn that hung loosely on the attendant’s coveralls.

  "Gene. Gene? Frank’s brother?"

  "Why, yeah."

  Jay smiled and patted his chest. "It’s me, Jay."

  He held out his hand. Gene gave him a puzzled look. Then his rheumy eyes lit up. He pulled a dirty rag from one of his back pockets and wiped off his hand before taking Jay’s in a firm grasp. Gene’s hand felt damp and clammy.

  The hairs on the back of Jay’s neck stood up as Gene held his hand in a tight embrace, looking him straight in the eyes. Those eyes looked dead, as if there was something hidden behind their blank gaze.

  The smile washed from Jay’s face. He tried to pull his hand loose. Gene kept pumping it, a yellow-toothed, crooked grin spread on his face from ear to ear. "I’m damned glad to see you, Jay," he said. "I ain’t seen or heard of you in ages."

  Jay gave their entwined hands a little glance and Gene looked down and released his grip. "Sorry ‘bout that," he said, laughing. "It’s just that I don’t see many of the old bunch anymore."