Lightspeed Magazine - January 2017

by John Joseph Adams [Ed. ]

  “You sneak out a lot?” he asks. “I’m guessing with those juvenile delinquents. The ones you play that game with?”

  “Not really,” I say. “Yeah. I won’t do it again. Ever.” I start to cry, but Dad laughs. The sound is so surprising that my tears dry up. It’s warm, not angry. I realize how long it’s been since I heard that laugh of his. Before my parents split up.

  “I don’t care if you do it again. Just don’t get caught, and don’t get me up on a work night to come get you,” he says. “I’ll drop you off home, but don’t fuckin’ tell your mom about any of this. She’ll have a stroke.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re lucky I went to high school with Dan Burtowski.”

  It’s a short drive back to Coyote Rise. I want to ask Dad all kinds of questions. Why hasn’t he come to get us for the weekends lately? Why isn’t he mad at me for breaking the rules? I just think them. I don’t ask them.

  “Don’t slam the door when you get out. I’ll see you later, okay?”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I don’t ask when. I don’t want to hear him lie tonight.

  He sighs. “It’s okay. I was your age not very long ago. I still remember … anyway. Night.” He drives off. I sneak back inside. I can’t even tell how long it takes me to go to sleep.

  • • • •

  In the morning, the complex is blanketed in a thick fog. I wake just in time to hear Mom at the door calling out to me from downstairs.

  “Be careful today! There’s supposed to be freezing rain later. Call your grandma for a ride if it starts up, okay?”

  “Okay!” I lie. No way would any of us call Grandma for a ride. She makes us feel guilty the whole way, even in the worst weather, and complains about everything all the time. It’s better to walk, even if it gets a little slippery.

  I make sure Sissy and Gnat are up and moving. I have a fistful of dry cereal and a glass of milk, grab my bag, and walk to Brendan’s building. I figure he won’t be there, or the old Brendan will come back and he’ll be waiting to taunt me. But he’s waiting on his stoop. He smiles when he sees me and bounces up onto his feet.

  “Isn’t this fog fucking awesome?” We begin to walk towards school in the white-out world. I worry for a moment that I might get lost, but our feet know the way.

  “Brendan?” I ask as we cross the dry creek.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are we friends now?”

  He doesn’t say anything for a moment. I can barely see him in the mist. “Do you want to be friends?”

  Do I? I think so, but I’m not sure. “Yeah,” I say. “You?”

  “Yeah, okay. This doesn’t mean I’m going to go easier on you when you’re being a dork, though.”

  In a way, that’s a relief. “Okay.”

  We continue walking. Past the pond, the fog is even heavier. The world is quiet. No ducks, no bird song. No cars on the freeway in the distance. Just the sound of dry leaves and grass beneath our feet.

  Up the hill, past the cul-de-sac.

  “Did you come up with an experiment?” He asks.

  “Ah … not really,” I say. I want to tell him about last night. But I’m afraid what will happen to him if I do.

  “I don’t think it matters if we know about the Triangle,” he says. “I think you’re right. It does something to parents. Nobody will ever listen. I told my mom about it and she just laughed and shook her head. Told me to stop listening to your crazy stories.”

  “Oh.”

  “She doesn’t have the energy to care about anything by the time she comes home. She just tells me to be careful and goes to work. They all do, I bet. When I grow up, I’m not going to have a real job. I’m going to work for the Nintendo Help Line.”

  “What about … your dad?”

  He laughs that kind of laugh when you think something should be funny but you know it isn’t. I laugh it all the time. “My dad left when I was a baby. Nobody knows where he went. Maybe he went into the Triangle and never came back.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “Maybe that’s where everything goes when it goes away.”

  Down the nice streets with the houses now. We don’t talk anymore. The air seems to swallow up all sounds. We reach the fence at the edge of the fields that surround the school. The school is erased from the world by a grey smudge of fallen sky. We are the only people in our pocket of world.

  “I can’t see anything,” he says.

  I squint, then feel dumb for having done so. I can’t be sure where the sky ends and the ground begins. I know the sun is up, but I cannot tell where it is. Was this what the pilots of Flight 19 felt like?

  “Do you think the school’s still there?” Brendan asks. His voice sounds distant to me, like someone shouting through a storm drain.

  I’m afraid, but I don’t know what I am afraid of most: that the school is there and obscured by fog, or that it’s vanished into the Triangle, taking our teachers, Mr. Howard, the school library, almost everything in my life, good and bad. I’m afraid to know if it’s all gone, or if I am.

  It feels good to be afraid. It feels good to feel like I have something worth losing.

  I begin to run. I don’t know if I am running forwards or backwards; towards or away. I run for what seems like a very long time, Brendan trailing behind me.

  *

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jeremiah Tolbert has published fiction in Lightspeed, Fantasy Magazine, Interzone, Asimov’s, and Shimmer, as well as in the anthologies The Way of the Wizard, Seeds of Change, Federations, and Polyphony 4. He’s also been featured several times on the Escape Pod and PodCastle podcasts. In addition to being a writer, he is a web designer, photographer, and graphic artist. He lives in Kansas, with his wife and son.

  *

  Nine

  Kima Jones | 6497 words

  1902

  Phoenix, Arizona

  FRIDAY

  Tanner named the motel Star Motel because calling the place North Star Motel would’ve been asking for it. Colored folks recognized that “star” and the little lights Jessie insisted they burn in the windows. Most of their customers were hungry, travel-weary young men who did not believe the VACANCY sign as they approached the motel and did not believe that Tanner, round as a dishpan, wide as the door, was its owner. None of them had the nerve to ask her if she was a man or a woman, but she saw their longways looks anytime she entered a room. They never stayed more than a night or two and spent most of that time asleep. Tanner checked them in at $1.25 a night on weekdays and $2.00 on weekends. She never shamed anyone for not having the full fee and would accept three quarters and a “thank you kindly.”

  “Get up, Tanner, sounds like the iceman is here. Last time he didn’t ring the bell and most of the ice melted all over the porch. We don’t have money to waste, and I can’t stretch half a block of ice for a whole week.” Jessie was sitting up in bed, her breasts and collarbone soaking in the day’s first light. “I said go on and get the ice. The Campbells are checking out this morning, and Flo needs to get breakfast out to them by nine.”

  “If you run me out this bed one more time, woman, you’re going to know it.”

  “Ain’t nobody running you, just go get the ice. You can come back to bed after. Oh, and feed Rinny!”

  Tanner knew Jessie was lying, but she got out of the bed anyway. By the time Tanner got the ice into the icebox and came back to their bedroom, Jessie would be halfway dressed, talking about the ledgers and dividing the day’s work between them. Best to go get the ice and start the day.

  The ice was melting by the time Tanner reached the porch, but not enough to make Jessie have a fit. The iceman slipped everybody’s blocks into their iceboxes. Except for colored people. He left their ice sitting outside, anywhere, in dirt or sand or on a dusty porch. Tanner poured hot water down the block and quickly lifted it inside of the wooden box. Didn’t make no sense to tip the iceman but Jessie tipped him every delivery. “He don’t have to come out here, Tanner. Ain’t like we can leave t
o go into town and get it,” she would say.

  Tanner headed back into the house and to the bedroom she shared with Jessie. “Mr. Campbell say what time they’d be heading out?” Jessie stood wearing a white blouse and ankle length skirt, her brown leather ankle booties tied tightly. “He wants an early start on the road. Almost fifteen hundred miles between here and Seattle. He thinks they could be there by this time tomorrow.”

  Tanner grunted. Could be. She tried to talk more sense into Mr. Campbell the night before, but he was determined to make it his way. Tanner thought it would be better for them to stop somewhere in California for a few days and then head back to the road. Maybe leave his wife and newborn in San Francisco for a week or two and then send for them later. But Campbell wouldn’t hear of it. Said he was driving straight through, driving even if his eyeballs went bloodshot and burst through his head. “Give me the rundown, baby,” Tanner said to Jessie as she pulled her work trousers over her belly and bent to cuff them.

  “Did you feed Rinny?”

  “Yes, I fed Rinny, now give me the rundown.”

  “Well, Campbell’s checking out this morning. That’ll leave us empty for the weekend, which is good because we’re sure to fill up the singles.” Tanner nodded. Single people always ran off the job on Fridays, soon as the boss paid them. By Monday morning, they were long gone and so far on their way north or west it didn’t make sense to send Klan after their families. They were just gone. “Flo is getting started on the weekend menu, and I’m waiting for a cigarette delivery and the bread delivery. Me and Flo will get the parlor ready for this evening. I’ll air out the singles and Newt will sweep them. All you need to do is change the oil on the Campbells’ car and check the tires and whatnot. Maybe wash down the sides of the house.”

  The house was peach-colored with a brown roof and sat a quarter of a mile from the highway. Travellers could see the Star’s marquee from the road whether on foot or automobile. The marquee was its own detached, two-pronged structure painted in mint green and white and lit up every night at 9:00 p.m. The house’s front room served as the motel’s lobby, stripped of all furniture save an upright and uncomfortable sofa, two wing chairs, a wall clock, and a small lobby desk with a silver bell. Tanner kept a wide black leather barstool behind the desk to sit on when her knee acted up. All other times, she preferred to greet her guests standing. The single rooms stood in a row of six to the left of the house. The doubles, another six, off to the right. The only formal place for colored folks to stay headed west on the lonely, desert highway.

  It was Flo who came up with the idea of having jook nights on Fridays for the locals and travellers alike. Black folks were starting to stay in Phoenix to make a home and needed a place to go on the weekends. Friday nights at the Star Motel were for card playing, thigh slapping, and smoky mingling. Tanner hated the idea at first. She needed to keep her family safe and didn’t want all of colored Phoenix in their parlor room on Friday nights, but the women were lonely. Flo complained of never having company and Jessie didn’t have to open her mouth for Tanner to know she was cross about it all.

  Flo was one of Tanner’s first guests. Flo arrived with a belly brimming over its due date. Tanner knew the kinds of things that would make a woman run, pregnant and all, out of the swamps of Florida. They never spoke about it or how Flo found the place. She was flat out with her intentions when she checked in that night. “I can cook. If you let me stay on until my baby big enough, I’ll be your cook. I used to cook lunches for the orange pickers and deliver them in my truck. I can cook anything, and I can kill anything.” After Flora went into labor, she named the boy Newt, half because Tanner slipped on birth water running over trying to catch him out of the birth canal and half because he kind of looked like one.

  Jook night at Star Motel started at nine o’clock, but folks trickled in around ten thirty. It gave Flora and Jessie time to change, time to tuck Newt in, time to perfume behind the neck, time to cast their muscled legs in nylon. The women always wore all black, including Tanner. That was the rule, everybody in something bright. Other rule was no outside food and no outside liquor. Tanner played the doorman and Jessie worked the bar. Flo managed the kitchen, bringing plates out to the cards players and collecting tips in her bosom. Flo wore a deep, matte red lipstick but kept her fingernails short and bare. “Can’t cook with that shit on my hands,” she’d say and wink at whatever woman was questioning her manicure. The manicure-questioning woman always knew Flo’s reputation: She could outlast a man, she took her time, she could cook, and she didn’t lie. Flo was thickset, with an impressively square jaw and roundish eyes. She openly bedded other women; the few nights a month she spent with Tanner were in one of the single rooms.

  Tanner stood at the front door of the house, on the porch, collecting the dollar fee it cost to get in. “Order your plates with Flo,” she said, “All plates from Miss Flora. All booze from Jessie.” The parlor was lit just enough to see a card hand but barely enough to see if you were putting your fork in meat or vegetables. As soon as the brass band started up, Jessie rattled her tambourine. She bounced it off of her hip and then smacked it into her open hand. Her feet moved in time, and her hair wagged back and forth on her head with every tambourine slap. They would bring in an easy three or four hundred dollars between the food and hootch and card games. They split the income evenly and saved for their future plans. Jessie was going to Los Angeles, Miss Flora was sending Newt to Howard, and Tanner would open another motel.

  Hours of dancing passed on top of hours of drinking and the night winded down. Couples were filing out on foot, holding each other up. Tanner walked over to each spades and craps table and announced that it was closing time in ten minutes. “Last bets for the night. Make them count.” A hand reached out for Tanner’s and caught her at the wrist. Tanner looked down at her hand and over to the arm holding hers. “Can I help you with something, sir?” She was used to the belligerent drunk from time to time and escorted them to the front yard to sober up. Come morning, they’d be gone and ashamed. This man’s front tooth was as gold as his watch, and he smiled big as payday, not a whiff of alcohol on him. His suit was a butter yellow and his white shoes were unscuffed. There was no dust on them either. He was a good foot and a half taller than Tanner and his reach, she estimated, twice that of hers. “I think maybe you can help me, ma’am. I’m looking for a missing person. Any information you could fetch me would sure be a nice gesture on the part of you and yours. Name is Tanner Harris, wanted dead or alive. Ring any bells for you, ma’am?” The man’s grin faded as he whispered through his teeth, “Maybe you want to be clearing the party on out of here so we can settle this. You got a debt to pay, girl.”

  Flora, never missing a thing, hit the lights. “All right now, y’all heard Tanner. Jook’s closed. Next week, same time, same place.” She moved from table to table, pointing folks to the way out. Some of the drunk ones begged a dance from her, and she chided them, “Go on, now. Go on, I said.” The last patrons bid farewell to Jessie and promised to be back. Jessie thanked them for coming and walked them to the front porch. Tanner stayed in the parlor with the gold-toothed man. When Jessie returned to the parlor, Flora headed in a quick scramble for the kitchen door. “Come on over here and take a seat,” the gold-toothed man said. He kept his hand wrapped tightly around Tanner’s wrist and had a smile on his face as she sat. Flora returned to the parlor with a gun pointed at the back of her head. The man had not come alone. His companion was thin, with a face slender as toilet plumbing. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nudged Flora forward with the gun. “This one here was reaching for this gun, boss.” The gold-toothed man looked over at Flora and smiled at Tanner. “Tanner love a talented woman, don’t you, Tanner? I’ll be damned. I come to talk to you and your girlfriend here want to shoot me down.”

  The gold-toothed man let go of Tanner’s wrist and draped an arm around her shoulders. Tanner looked over to Flo, but she ignored the gaze. Flo pushed back on the mouth of
the gun, putting weight on her captor’s arm. Jessie was still sitting at a table, weaponless and remote. Jessie was good at disappearing inside of herself. The gold-toothed man cleared his throat, making a show of himself. “Seems to me like we have us a problem here. See, I only need Tanner, but it don’t seem like you girls gonna let me leave here with what I need. Second problem is I know either one or two of you bitches helped this fat nigger kill off all my brothers. I’m no adding man, but that’s simple enough math to me.” Droplets of sweat populated his upper lip as he talked. “Except Maud can count and do. Eight dead boys divided by three living niggers ain’t enough change at all.”

  “Speak plain, if you come to speak. Kill if you come to kill,” Jessie blurted at the man.

  “I’ll be damned, Tanner. I thought that other one was a robust woman, but this one here, this one got some nerve, don’t she?” The man turned his full attention to Jessie. “You want it plain, country girl? I’ll give it to you plain, baby. Name’s Glenn, Maud’s baby boy, and I come to collect this here debt. You see, girl, dead don’t scare Maud because Maud been dead, but she lonely something awful. Now Tanner here, and you bitches, the two of you, end up killing every messenger she sends. That ain’t right. Maud took her time when she made her sons. Took her time when she found Tanner, too. You know what taking time is, country girl? Let me spell it out for you. Eight niggers minus three niggers is five and you going to pay that five out in lifetimes. With Maud. Maud’ll like you. She’ll like your big girlfriend over there, too.”

  “I never did nothing to Maud,” Jessie said.

  “You call killing eight grown children nothing? If that’s nothing, I sure would like to see what you call something,” Glenn said.

  “Maud’s the one doing it. She already done cursed us. Why she keep sending her sons to kill us?”

  “That don’t have much to do with me. I come for Tanner, and I come for Tanner’s women keep helping Tanner. That’s all.”