Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01]

by Charles L. Grant

  The hills and mountains were no better—the ground was warm, lakes and ponds still and tepid, and the air smelled less like grass and flower than copper and sweat and things left to die; the beaches were almost worse, sand too hot to step on to get to the water still too cold to stay in for very long.

  Vacations took families from one furnace to another.

  By the eleventh day there were no games, in corner lots or parks.

  By the twelfth, there was only sound—sharp music turned dull; dull voices turning sharp.

  A drop of rain; that’s all they wanted.

  A single cloud.

  * * * *

  2

  The sun never set, not even at midnight; the heat only shifted from white to dark. Like the shift of a slow saxophone from low note to lower, the effect was the same—the heat never let go, it only eased back and waited, taking its time, knowing the score.

  Casey reached over to the end table and switched the radio off. The music died, didn’t linger, and the silence left behind was a tangible weight.

  He picked up a book lying on the mattress, flipped it open, read a word, and dropped it on the floor.

  His eyes, deep-set and dark, closed for a moment as he sighed, as much for the sound as for the note of self-pity. But he figured he was entitled; being stoic was no fun when there was no one around to watch it.

  He shifted, and sighed again.

  He had been in bed, or on the living-room couch, for six miserable days, and he was almighty tired of reading, of soap operas and game shows, magazines and the local, mostly-ads newspaper; not to mention the ceiling plaster above his bed. He had memorized every crack, noted every loose flake, had blurred it all into patterns only a fevered man could see; but when he began to see faces that looked back at him and winked, he decided he had had enough.

  He sat up slowly and gathered the sheet across his lap, rubbed his eyes with the rough heels of his hands, and waited to see if the familiar dizziness would take him back to his pillow. The bare floor was cool and clammy under his feet. A harsh cough made him grimace, but it was brief, more a bark, and no bubbling in his chest. That was a good sign. At least it didn’t sound as if he were driving his lungs into his hands, and there was no longer a tight pain around his ribs or a burning band around his head. He coughed again, another bark, and still the dizziness stayed away.

  He had been feeling awful since the beginning of the month, shortly after the heat wave had begun, hacking more than coughing, losing strength and weight, but when the fever dreams began, he had swallowed his pride and visited Doc Farber, who told him what he had was a classic case of walking pneumonia.

  He grunted, shaking his head, pushing his hands back through his hair.

  Walking pneumonia. How the hell can you get walking pneumonia in the middle of a drought? In the middle of a goddamn heat wave?

  The doc said it was easy-—too much hard work, he was run down, he smoked too damn much, he caught a cold ducking in and out of air-conditioned buildings, and he wouldn’t stop to rest. The prescription was easy—antibiotics, stay off your feet, eat right, plenty of liquids, and for God’s sake don’t answer the phone.

  Friends and neighbors came by for the first two days, bringing chicken soup and casseroles, reminding him that the isolation of the house didn’t mean he was alone.

  They didn’t return because he cranked at them, asserting his independence while flat and groaning on his broad, stupid back.

  They understood; they stayed away.

  Six days; Sunday now, and he was ready to shoot someone, just for something different.

  It didn’t make any difference how late it was, he had to get up. He had to do something. Besides, he realized as he glanced around the bedroom, he actually did feel better. So much so that he only now understood how truly awful he had felt before.

  Still moving slowly, not yet ready to take on the world, he pulled on black jeans and stumbled into the bathroom to splash cool water on his face, changed his mind and took a cool shower instead. Brushed his hair. Wondered if he could get away with getting a crewcut in the morning. He doubted it. There had been too much of it, dark and thick and thickly curled to his shoulders, for far too long; he would just have to wait for it to fall out.

  Still feeling slightly weak, he walked into the front room and used the wall switch to turn on the lamps.

  It wasn’t a fancy place, but it was comfortable—thirty-five feet long, half that wide, with a slightly vaulted, raw-beam ceiling. A large brick fireplace in the back wall, with the television and stereo in its mouth. The door to its left was the only bedroom, a doorless entrance to the kitchen on the right. Bookshelves on all the walls. Two short couches at right angles to the hearth, with a coffee table between them. A round, white pine dining table and ill-matching chairs set off to one side, his desk as well as the place where he ate. The house had been a summer bungalow like most of the other original buildings in town, and like them had long since been converted to year-round living.

  Yet despite the fact that all the windows were open, it was still warm, still muggy. He walked past them all, straining for a breeze, shaking his head at the moths clinging hard to the screens. Dopes, he thought, flicking his finger at one.

  It fluttered, but didn’t leave.”

  “Dope,” he said aloud, and went to the kitchen, stood at the squat refrigerator and stared. His stomach told him to forget it, don’t push your luck, so he grabbed a cigarette from the pack on the table instead and, after switching the lights off again, stepped out onto the front porch, pushing the slightly warped screen door shut behind him.

  “Jesus,” he gasped.

  It was like stepping into a room lined with damp cotton, and it dismayed him to think that this was only June.

  July or August would probably put him in his grave.

  He lit the cigarette and sat on the railing, ankles hooked around the spindles below.

  The yard was wide, not very deep, with a flat-stone walk, a quartet of old giant oaks that did their best to give him shade, and a low and weathered picket fence that swung around the house to the corners of the much larger backyard. A one-car garage to the left at the end of a short dirt-and-weed driveway. Nothing but woods across the road beyond the fence; the nearest neighbor a hundred yards to the left, nothing but trees and shrubs between.

  One hundred yards to the right, the road curved sharply and dipped down to the Delaware River.

  He drew circles in the air with the cigarette’s tip.

  He watched a spark linger, winking out without falling.

  He looked up at the stars.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the night, but the leaves didn’t move, and Star Creek had almost dried up, and even the crickets had given their songs a rest. Nothing hunted. Nothing stirred.

  He was convinced, at that moment, he was the only living thing on the planet.

  “Oh boy,” he whispered, and smiled when a shooting star flared over the woods. He made a quick wish for a break in the weather, finished the cigarette and caught himself with a laugh when he nearly crushed it with his bare heel. He ground it out on the railing instead, and stuffed the filter in his hip pocket.

  He was ready to return inside, when he saw a light across the road, bobbing between the trees, sweeping upward, aiming down. Two of them, then three, heading his way.

  He frowned and moved to the steps, clammy wood reminding him again he wore nothing on his feet.

  Faint voices, one of them laughing until another hushed it.

  He backed up until he reached the door, opened it just enough to slip inside and grab a pair of boots from beside one of the couches. He pulled the boots on, head tilted and listening, watching the beams dart across the windows on either side of the door, and slipped out again, moving to the far corner so he could duck between the porch swing and the wall.

  They came out of the woods.

  White lights, pointing at the ground now, almost-shadows behind them.

&n
bsp; “Shit, ouch,” one of them muttered.

  “Will you shut the hell up?”

  “Turned my ankle, stupid.”

  “Just shut up, okay? He’s sick, he ain’t dead.”

  Casey almost laughed aloud, it was so easy.

  Reed Turner, Nate Dane, and the other one, the silent one, must be—

  “Not through the gate, you jerks. It’s rusty.”

  He smiled. Cora Bowes.

  Still complaining, they climbed over the fence and made their way toward the porch across the grass. One light swept across the front, paused at the door, and slid away over the floor and three steps.

  “How the hell are we going to do this?” Nate asked, his voice too high for a boy his age.

  “Jesus,” Cora said, “we only went over it a million times.”

  “But suppose he catches us?” Reed demanded, keeping his voice down.

  “You don’t think you can outrun him?” Cora was scornful. Casey knew that tone; it was her weapon of choice.

  They stopped at the steps, flashlights off, only a faint glow of starlight giving them form.

  He tried to figure out what they were up to, unable to make out what they carried in their free hands. Spray paint wasn’t their style. Most likely it would be manure or something in paper bags, even though he couldn’t smell it.

  They moved up the steps, testing them for sound.

  Hissing, pointing, while Casey waited until the moment he was sure they would turn the flashlights back on.

  Then he rose from behind the swing.

  “ ‘ “Vengeance,” ‘ “ he boomed, “ ‘ “is Mine,” sayeth the Lord!’ “

  * * * *

  3

  He didn’t know who screamed first, but it was enough to send them all flying. They might have escaped had Reed not tripped as he grabbed the porch post to launch him down the steps. He landed flat on his chest, and Casey was over him before he could recover. He grabbed the boy’s shirt and hauled him effortlessly to his feet, snapped the hand from shirt to nape, and squeezed.

  “Stop!” he yelled, ignoring Reed’s squirming.

  Nate did, halfway over the fence.

  Cora, light and fleet, was already on her way back up to town, no intention of stopping.

  “Cora!” His voice, rough and deep.

  She ran on a half dozen steps before she threw up her hands and slowed, and turned around.

  “With me, boy,” he said to Reed, and pulled him back to the porch, where he turned on the single bulb over the door.

  The moths stirred.

  He let Reed go, aiming him gently but firmly toward the swing. The boy didn’t argue; he sat, glowering at Nate, who dropped sheepishly beside him.

  “Pussy,” Reed said.

  Nate glared. “Who ran first?”

  “Oh, shut up,” Cora told them, stomping angrily up the stairs. She didn’t look at Casey until she’d hip-shoved a space between her friends, and even then she made it clear she wasn’t about to talk.

  Casey stepped to the porch post, slipped one hand into a pocket, and looked pointedly at the brown bags left scattered in their flight. The aroma was strong; he had been right—horse shit.

  “Look—-” Cora began.

  “Hush,” Casey told her.

  He straightened, deliberately slowly, and swallowed a grin when the two boys tried to push their way through the swing’s laddered back. He was used to the reaction, and though it had caused him much trouble most of his life, he had also been able to turn it in his favor.

  He was a tall man, five inches over six feet, and broad from shoulders to thighs. He wasn’t as solid as he’d once been, things softened and he was growing a paunch, but no one in Maple Landing ever doubted his strength. Yet it was his face that usually cowed them—the heavy brows, the once sharp nose, the high cheeks and dimpled chin that never hid the bad times he had suffered, never softened the blows they had taken. And the lines age had laid there only made him seem more fearsome when he kept himself from smiling.

  These kids were in their late teens, but now they looked like children when he stood before them. Hands on hips, looking down. Meeting their gazes, making their gazes drift away.

  “Seems to me,” he said at last, “you’re trying to take advantage of a sick man.”

  Reed looked up, wide-eyed in disbelief. “But you were sick.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So what was it?” Cora sneered. “A miracle or something?”

  “Antibiotics,” he answered blandly.

  Nate’s hands danced nervously in his lap, long fingers drumming, then twisting around each other, then drumming again until Casey covered them with his own hand and pressed them hard until they stopped.

  “We didn’t break any laws, you know,” Cora said defiantly, arms folded under her breasts.

  “That’s true.”

  “You can’t keep us here.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Reed and Nate exchanged nervous glances behind Cora’s head. But for the difference in their heights—Reed was taller and dark-haired, Nate slightly thinner and fair—they could have been brothers. Neither looked at the girl.

  Casey gestured at the bags. “Was I supposed to stomp on them when you lit them? Or were you going to smear the house with all that shit?”

  Nate gulped.

  Reed bowed his head, shook it once. “Stomp on them,” he admitted quietly.

  “Oh ... Jesus,” Cora said.

  “Jesus,” said Casey mildly, “had nothing to say about this.”

  Nate’s lips almost grinned; Reed’s did, but it didn’t hold.

  Casey stepped back. The boys visibly relaxed; Cora was harder, but he could see her shoulders slump. Just a little. Just enough.

  A moth flew at his face; he swatted it, and Nate jumped.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Cora snapped. “He’s not going to beat you up.” She looked at Casey again, defiance returned, a pretty girl turned ugly. “I’m going to tell my father, you know. You’re keeping us against our will.”

  Again he almost smiled. “Cora,” he said, “shut the hell up.”

  Her face reddened.

  Reed looked steadily at the house wall, a muscle jumping in his cheek.

  “So tell me, Nate,” Casey said, “what did I do to deserve this particular honor?” He looked at the roof in mock concentration. “It’s not Halloween, not my birthday, it’s not your birthday yet, and...” He looked back at him. “Don’t tell me—you’ve started a club, and this is the initiation?”

  Nate shook his head, misery working his hands again.

  Reed, on the other hand, was angry, but not at him. “Look, it wasn’t our idea, okay?”

  “Oh, I know that,” Casey answered mildly. “But you were stupid enough to do it anyway, weren’t you.” He took a long stride toward them, heel loud on the flooring. Nate had sense enough to cringe; Cora only glared. “It’s my fault there’s no camp, my fault there’s no trip to the Poconos, my fault there’s nothing for you poor kids to do around here but watch TV and swim and hunt and boat and...” He drew himself up, full height, eyebrows down. “Screw around when you think nobody’s looking.”

  Nate choked when he tried not to laugh.

  “And,” Casey continued, a little louder, “it’s probably also my damn fault that it’s so damn hot your own damn brains have probably fried.’’

  The boys’ heads were down, but they were finally grinning without caring about the girl.

  He made sure they heard his exasperated sigh, made sure they saw him glance heavenward in search of divine patience, before he pointed again. “Take those ... things off my porch. I don’t care what you do with them, just get them out of here. And go home, okay?” he added as the boys jumped to their feet, Cora moving deliberately slower. “I’m an old man, a sick old man, and I need my beauty sleep.”

  They hustled, giggling, until the bags were fetched, then hurried down the steps.

  “And use the goddamn
gate this time!” he yelled after them. “It’s not that rusty!”

  Reed exploded, laughing so hard he could barely work the latch, and after the others were through and on their way, he raced back to the porch. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Reverend Chisholm, really,” he said breathlessly, and raced away again.

  Oh, I’ll bet, Casey thought as he watched them merge with the dark; I’ll just bet you do.

  But he smiled.