Night Songs

by Charles L. Grant

  He put his palms on the sill and touched his forehead to the glass, staring at the swing sets, the seesaws, the benches and redwood tables. A man was out there- Denise and Frankie's father-stabbing listlessly at pieces of lunch paper and wrappings with a pole tipped with a nail, stuffing the catch into a canvas sack hanging from his shoulder. Colin watched him for five minutes without the man looking up.

  Finally, after a long escaping sigh that fogged the pane, he had to admit that what he had heard wasn't much of a threat. In fact, 'threat' was definitely too strong a word since Efron never had been very effective with thunder. Yet the fact it had been tried made him wonder what, if anything, was next, and if there had been something else on the man's mind that hadn't been said. As he turned away from the custodian cleaning the yard, he wondered what Cameron had said to make Efron act.

  He shook himself like a dog shedding rain, and decided he was overreacting to a perfectly reasonable suggestion. After all, it was Efron's job to keep his school and his teachers clean in more ways than one, and Colin was actually surprised it hadn't been brought up before. Surprised because Bill Efron was one of the casino's staunchest supporters, and if Colin won the election they'd be co-members on the Board.

  Good lord, he thought with a start, wouldn't that be something else? A hell of a thing, since the Board also hired and fired all the teachers. He could see it all now: a smoke-filled room, a dramatic confrontation, Efron trying to dislodge Colin's tenure, and Colin passionately voting against him. He laughed aloud, once, and looked to the ceiling. It would have to be a first, unquestionably. What other teacher in the state had the power to save his own skin? Not only a first, it was ludicrous. Unreal.

  He laughed again, this time to himself, and while laughing made his way back to his room for his jacket and briefcase. A check to be sure nothing was left behind, and he was out of the silent building before anyone could intercept him. He paused on the last step to allow his eyes to adjust to the sunlight, and turned right to follow the sidewalk past the school; a sharp left with the cracked pavement and he was heading toward Bridge Road. The block easily stretched twice as long as any he'd ever seen, so long in fact that each street was trisected by narrow concrete pathways lined with hurricane fencing and poplars for shade so pedestrians didn't have to walk all the way to the corner or the shops out on Neptune just to visit a friend.

  A flock of gulls swept low overhead, slow-riding the currents like black-and-white kites, and he listened for a moment to their cries on the wind. It was the only sound he could hear, and his footsteps the only proof he wasn't caught in a dream. Nice, he thought as he did each day, very nice indeed.

  Across the street there were high-mounted houses clustered under tall trees all the way to the corner, on his side the same until he reached Reverend Otter's fieldstone cottage, one of the few not raised for protection. Then the spired New England church with its vast rock garden on the side and a belfry ringed with a narrow widow's walk for sighting the fleet, the brown clapboard library that used to be someone's home (with an attending fat Doberman asleep and whimpering now in the sun), and finally he reached the corner and Cameron's Clipper Run.

  Several cars passed him heading east. Folks on their way to Flocks for a Friday night outing, he guessed. He grinned and waved when one of them honked a horn, and an arm poked out a window to give him a wave back.

  A group of kids playing ball in the street across the way.

  Someone practicing on a tortured saxophone. Nice, he thought; I should live again and be so lucky.

  A fluttering by the restaurant caught his attention, and he peered through the shade under raw-beamed eaves extending over the entrance. There was a white cloth banner tacked above the door, proclaiming the dancing and dinner that would be held tomorrow night, all in the name of a successful season's finish. As if, he thought in mild disgust, every season before this one had been a total disaster. But it was a good way to discover how many votes the man had, and how many he needed to pry away from Colin.

  He swung his briefcase out to batter at the hedge, and wondered maliciously where Bob had found the nerve to interfere with his job, but he also remembered those so-called friends he could have met last night, the ones Garve had described to him on the beach at Gran's funeral.

  Tomorrow, he thought, should be interesting indeed.

  He checked the sky, took a deep breath to smell the ocean, and decided he should go home before dropping in on Peg. He'd been wrestling with the idea all day, and now he felt a chill.

  It was time. Perhaps it was too late. When he awoke this morning and watched the dawn shadows slip off the ceiling, he'd realized that not calling her when he'd returned last night was more than breaking an understood promise; it was stalling.

  And not done very adroitly at that.

  As he reached the police station and turned onto Neptune, he mocked himself for his procrastination. Subtle as a sledgehammer. Ross, you dumb jerk. Thank God you didn't decide to try your hand working for the State Department; World World Three before you even unpack your bags.

  "Hey, Mr. Ross."

  He blinked and looked to his right, saw El Nichols standing in the station doorway. "Hey, El, how's it going?"

  The younger man looked tired, and his uniform was faintly rumpled. "Could be better, could be worse. You know how it is. I think the Screamer's put ants in the town's pants today, though. I've been out on more calls…" He shook his head once to mark his exasperation. "Little old ladies seeing prowlers on their back porches, stuff like that. And in the middle of the day, yet."

  "Little old ladies know no clock, El. A prowler's a prowler whether the sun's out or not."

  The deputy laughed, a rich and smooth sound that effectively smothered the rest of his souring mood.

  "So," Colin said, "you catch any?"

  "You kidding?" Eliot slumped against the frame and leaned forward, lowering his voice as if conspiring, or guarding against the ire of his friends. "Hattie over at the library had me go up and down between every damned stack while that monster dog of hers barked his damned fool head off the whole time I was there. Then she made me listen to some theory she has about this Greek or Roman guy named Tantalus and why he did what he did. Jesus, who the hell cares? I never even heard of the jerk.

  "Then, I had to go out to Tess Mayfair's boarding place. She say's someone's tramping through her garden killing the flowers. Well, hell, those flowers have been dead since the Fourth of July ten years ago come Sunday, but that don't make a difference to her. No sir. I have to go a hundred yards into the woods out back to prove there wasn't anyone there try in' to rape her."

  Colin sighed his commiseration. "You have to admit, though," he said finally, "Tess isn't anyone you'd want to get angry."

  "Tell me," Eliot said with a mock shudder. "Three hundred pounds and six feet if she's an inch. I lived there for a couple of years, y'know, but I got out soon as I could swing it. Jesus, I couldn't even bring a date to the living room!"

  Colin lowered his head in sympathy.

  "And the westerns," El said. "God, the westerns! Even when I did bring someone in, we couldn't do anything. She has six TV sets, and just before I left she got one of those videotape things. My lord in great blue heaven, cowboys shooting up every damned town in the West twenty hours a day, every one of them John for God's sake Wayne." He shook his head with a slight frown. "Do you know that she once took a vacation to Hollywood and spent the whole time sitting in front of some theater or other, just waiting to see him? Can you beat it? Two weeks just waiting to see John Wayne?"

  "Big star."

  "Dead star," El said, "and I don't think she knows it."

  "That bad?"

  "I think she lights candles to him every night. It was hell living there, man, believe it."

  "Life's rough on the range, pal," Colin said taking a poke at Eliot's arm and receiving a friendly poke in return. He was about to move on when he saw a sudden and somber alteration in Nichols' expression. "You
feeling all right, El?"

  The man plucked at his shirtfront. "Yeah, I guess so." A deep breath, a loud exhalation. "Well, not really, actually. A little guilty, I think, because I missed the funeral last night. It was that… well, I got tied up, you might say."

  "Oh."

  "Everything go okay?"

  Colin remembered the torch, the look on the girl's face, and it took him a moment before he finally nodded.

  "Good. Good. I'd hate to think-" His eyes widened, and his right hand clasped hard over his heart. "Oh my God," he whispered loudly, "you'd better run to get Doc Montgomery, Ross. I think I just now died and ended up in heaven."

  Colin almost laughed aloud. With his back to the avenue he was facing the police station's plate glass window; the venetian blinds were down and he could see the other side of the street reflected as clearly as if the glass were a mirror. There was a gray stucco cottage, and a tiny green lawn, and Annalee Covey standing on the stoop. She was in her nurse's whites, a sweater draped over her shoulders, and her dark blonde hair was dancing with the wind. He had to admit she was more than a little stunning.

  "Down boy," he said. "Garve will have your heart out with his bare hands for drooling like that on duty."

  Eliot curled a lip in well-practiced disgust. "You kiddin'? Garve? Hell, all he ever does is sit in his chair and wait for her to leave, to come home from the doc's office. It's like a religion or something with him. He looks, but that's it. If she ever winked at him, he'd shit in his pants. I keep telling him he oughta have more gumption, like my grandmother used to say, but I don't think he has any more sense than Frankie Adams."

  Annalee hurried down to the sidewalk, turned to Colin's right, and when she was in front of the Anchor Inn she angled across the street with a hasty glance at her watch and a waggle-fingered wave to the two men before she vanished.

  "A lovely woman," Colin said.

  "I can't argue there, but I tell you, Mr. Ross, I don't think he has a prayer."

  Colin raised a warning finger. "Mr. Nichols, you must never underestimate the power of a Native American."

  "What the hell is that?"

  "An Indian," he said solemnly. "Garve has a little Navaho blood in him, remember? They have power we poor whites don't."

  "Shit. The only power he's got is to fire my ass if I don't get back to work."

  "Point and hint taken," Colin said with a smile, and gave him a two-fingered salute before moving on.

  Eliot grinned, returned the salute, and was in the office before Colin had a chance to say good-bye.

  ***

  A wooded lot separated the police station from a long, low building with a red-tiled roof and white clapboard siding. On one end was a hardware store, on the other a five-and-dime; in the center was Fletcher's Drugs, one of the few local businesses that kept normal hours once the season was over. It was brightly lighted, its aisles wide and uncluttered, and was serviced by a short counter near the door and a longer one in back.

  Peg was there, and she waved when he came in. He smiled and moved toward her, a loud greeting at his lips swallowed when he heard giggling and a slap off to his left. Immediately, he veered over, toward a display case of costume jewelry. As he rounded a rack of greeting cards for Halloween, he almost collided with Denise, who was dancing away from Cart Naughton's grasping hand. Without a pause, he said, "There's no one up front, you'll have to pay for that in back," and pointed to the ring box in the boy's his pocket.

  "Yeah," Naughton said, "I was gonna." A careful touch to his hair and he swaggered away, Colin slowly following with Denise at his side.

  At the register, Peg was ringing up the sale and dropping the box into a white paper bag. She smiled at Cart, at Denise and asked if she'd seen her brother.

  "I don't know where he is," she said without interest. "Maybe he tried to walk on water and drowned." Then she giggled, took Cart's arm, and they left hip to hip.

  Colin leaned against the counter and watched them, saw them laughing hysterically as they passed by the window, nearly colliding with a woman pushing a shopping cart filled with groceries. "A lovely couple. The salt of the earth."

  "She's a bitch," Peg said, "and he's a prick. Rumor has it his father never wanted him and isn't above letting him know it. On the other hand, there's also a rumor that he wasn't born at all, that he was found in a cave by Tess Mayfair, who thought he was the reincarnation of John Wayne. I, myself, of course, do not listen to such nonsense because I am a professional dedicated to alleviating all human misery with two aspirins and a condom."

  He laughed and turned to face her, and was taken as always by the sparks in her auburn hair, by the smooth lines of her face, by the green-gray of her wide eyes so much like his own. A frilled white blouse and a simple black skirt, with a thin gold chain looped close about her neck. He felt himself blushing like ten kinds of a fool, his anger at Cameron now completely out of mind.

  "You want something, teach?" she asked with a mock frown. "You want me to answer that?"

  "Not now," she said.

  He tried to ignore the suggestive tone, and looked around the store as if searching for something. She did that to him, knew it, and loved it-innuendo and leering, former provinces of the male. It had taken him a while to get used to it, longer still to understand she was only partly jesting.

  "The party," she said, slamming the register drawer shut.

  "Huh?"

  She leaned her elbows on the counter, and rapped her knuckles on his head. "Earth to Colin Ross. Hello in there, are you still with me? I said party. Maybe you've heard about it? Robert Cameron? Free booze and food? He's the opposition, in case you've forgotten."

  "Believe me, I haven't forgotten."

  "Then will you take me?" And suddenly she smiled slyly. "To the party, I mean."

  "I didn't think you meant anything else," he protested.

  "Sure, okay. But I want to know now, because if we're going, I have to get a sitter for Matt."

  He leaned close, and looked anxious. "Will you just die if you don't go? I mean, will you absolutely and positively wither from mortification at missing the social event of the year?"

  "Like a magnolia in a blizzard."

  "Well-"

  "And I won't ever be able to show myself in town again. My god, Colin, I'd be another Hester Prynne."

  "Since you put it that way, I suppose I'll have to."

  She laughed and kissed quickly the tip of his nose. "He'll die! God, Colin, he'll have a class-A fit!"

  "Yeah." And he nodded.

  He had planned to use the occasion to sound out his strength, but having Peg there on his arm would jab yet another thorn in Cameron's tender side. A small one, but nagging, and there'd be no Androcles around to pull it out and make him grateful. Bob Cameron jealous and being forced to hold it in was something he definitely did not want to miss.

  Petty, he supposed, but why the hell not.

  Peg rapped him again on the forehead, to show him she knew exactly what he was thinking.

  He exaggerated a pained expression and ducked away before she could hit him again. "Where's Muriel?" he said, looking around the store for signs of Peg's regular clerk.

  She scowled. "Family trouble, she says. She won't be in for at least another hour.

  "Ha. She probably found a hot pinochle game at the boarding house. If you want the truth, I think you pay her too much. She makes enough for both of us with those damned cards of hers."

  "Muriel North," she said mock-primly, "is a pillar of the church, a fine and upstanding woman, and I have never heard a foul word spoken from her lips. I trust her implicitly."

  "She's still a shark, Peg. I know. I lost fifty bucks to her my first week on the island. Never again. She respects me now because she knows I'm not stupid."

  Then his attention wandered as he saw a flyer for a new flavor ice cream being touted by Naughton's Market. It made him think of the luncheonette, closed now and looking old. "Lilla," he said softly.

  Peg fr
owned. "Lilla?"

  "I just had a thought," he said, tapping the paper to show her the connection. "I wonder if she'd go tomorrow? I mean, I know it's only a couple days after the funeral, but with that storm coming I don't know if she should be alone. Besides, she's been hiding out there in that shack for so long, it would do her good to get out and see people again."

  Peg's smile was small and loving. "Leave it to you to think of something no one else would. Tell you what, we'll-" She snapped her fingers suddenly. "Oh, hell, Col, would you do me a favor?"

  "Ask."

  She fussed meaninglessly with the register. "You're not going home to work or anything? I mean, you said you were taking some time off, but-"

  "Nope. Hadn't planned on it."

  She looked at him closely, at his eyes and the set of his mouth, to be sure he wasn't simply being polite. Then she ran a slow dusting finger over the top of the counter. "Well, look, I really could use your help for a while, honest. I've got an appointment in ten minutes and I don't dare leave the place empty. Frankie, the sweetheart, hasn't shown up yet."

  "You mean you want me to run the store? Alone?"

  Before he could move, she was already around the counter and shrugging into a green jacket he'd given her on her last birthday.

  "Nothing to it," she said hurriedly. "You've worked the cash register before, and you know the prices. If someone brings in a prescription, tell them to come back in an hour. I should be back by then."

  "But where-"

  She kissed his cheek and lay a palm against his chest. "You're a darling, you know that, right?"

  "I think I'm a sucker."

  She agreed with a wink and headed for the door.

  He watched her with a baffled smile, then remembered why he had come. "Hey, Peg," he called after her, "will you go for a drive with me later? When Muriel comes in?"

  She nodded without turning, gave him a wave over her shoulder and was gone before he knew it. Reprieve, he thought with a guilty sigh of relief; the governor hasn't called, but the power's temporarily gone out.