by John Farris
She seemed perplexed by the knowledge that she had had a house once. "Who did?"
"Leland Howard it must have been, and the sidewinder who drives for him. They threw Molotov cocktails through the windows. Oh, and I saw him in town today."
"Leland Howard?"
"No, the other one who came to the house with Howard the night you were—don't you remember anything anymore, for Christ's sake?"
Mally shrugged. "It's all so . . . far away now, Alex. I'm sorry."
"Well, they nearly killed me and your father. I didn't know he was in the house too until—Mally, I didn't have time to find the key. I'll never find it now, so we have to come up with another way to . . . to skin that polecat," he finished, reaching into his memory stash again for the rich lingo from a thousand western-story pulp pages.
"What key?"
"Mally, stop doing that, you know what I'm talking about!"
"I told you, it's . . . too far away."
"But you've only been—your funeral was today! Down there," Alex said with an angry sideways chop of his arm toward the Little Grove churchyard.
"Oh, it was? Were you there, Alex?"
"No. I hate funerals. Anyway, I knew I'd see you tonight; I can see you anytime I want to, so you're not really dead, Mally! You never will be as far as I'm concerned."
"Shouldn't I have something to say about that?"
"What do you mean?"
"Alex, your power over me is growing, but it's not right, don't you see? This is not an evil place, but you can make it evil just with your thoughts. You're . . . holding me back for your own selfish reasons."
"I'm selfish? I'm trying to help you get even with the sumbitch who did this to you!"
"I don't mean to hurt your feelings. But I'm okay now, really. Takes a little time to get used to being dead. I don't hate Leland anymore. Pity him, maybe, but on this Side it's all bygones. I barely remember when I'm with you what was done to me, and when you're not here, well, ghosts don't dream, baby. Will you listen to me now? I said you are holding me back from where I need to go next, and when you do that you harm yourself. What's it costing you to pop Across night after night to chat with me? More than you can imagine, and I'm afraid for you."
He didn't understand her or want to make the effort. He felt wonderful being there. He turned his back on Mally and discovered a train had slipped in while they were talking. Streamlined splendor, wreathed in huffing white vapors, silver and blue on the outside, bewitchingly lighted within the parlor cars. Happiness on the faces of the few who were boarding at Cole's Crossing. Young or old, they all had made their grades.
The portly conductor looked around inquiringly at Alex, nodded toward the open doorway of a coach.
"Catching this one, son?"
For an instant, Alex imagined stepping up into the vestibule, entering the fabulous coach. And that would be all right; why not join them? What was so great about the life he'd be leaving behind? Bad fate and worse prospects. Then he felt Mally's dismay and disapproval; the silver train dissolved before his eyes like mist from chilled glass and he was looking down at the railroad grade and men walking with flashlights, his bike where he had left it, his scattered body in beams of light and gobbets of blood on gray ballast. He shied away from the scene and faced Mally, staggered, almost contrite.
"Now do you get my meaning, Alex Gambier? You almost went. Set foot on one of these trains, you are right away a dead boy on the other Side. This is not your time nor place here. Step wrong where you're not welcome yet, it will cost you extra lifetimes of hard work to catch up to yourself. I'm telling you: Go home now. Get out of here while you still can."
The negative pull she was exerting tightened the skin around his skull; he felt her desire to fade away. But tonight he wasn't letting Mally go so easily. As she had said he needed to do, he focused his mind and heart on her and was pleased by a surge of energy in his breast, a contained storm. She seethed before his eyes, then settled back into her shape and the ensemble from Dunkel's Womens' Wear Department with a stunned expression.
"Didn't have to yank so hard," Mally complained. She looked down at her feet. "Painted my toenails blue while you were at it," she said, marveling.
Alex smiled, just a little smug. "I don't want to go home yet. I make big medicine, Mally Shaw."
"What else can I say to you? It's not for my sake, Alex, that you're wanting revenge."
"Why is it so wrong for me to care? Nobody else gives a damn. Least of all—"
"Uh-huh. Almost spilled out there, didn't it? Because evening up the score with Leland Howard is really all about you and your brother Bobby. You bein' so angry because you think he's let you down again."
"What if it is?"
Mally walked away from him, crossed her arms, uncrossed them, held her head for a few moments, trying to control agitation or possibly squeeze out some inspiration.
"All right. Maybe we can strike a bargain, Alex."
"Yeah? About what?"
She faced him. "Let's say if I can help settle all those scores that are so important to you, make things better between you and your brother, will you promise to get back to the life you belong in, grow up to be the man I know you can be, and let me go once and for all? Because you're not needing me half as much as you've convinced yourself you do, Alex."
He was a long time replying.
"Fix Leland Howard?"
Mally nodded.
"You said your medicine wasn't that big."
"Let's just put our heads together and think about how. If we have ourselves a bargain, that is." Looking straight at him, challenging his doubts.
"Only if things work out like you're saying," he said reluctantly, hungry that whatever scheme they settled upon for Leland Howard's downfall would work out, agonized at the prospect of never seeing her again.
She took another walk. Deep in thought, nodding to herself. "Alex?"
"What?"
"Next time I see you, maybe it ought to be an occasion. I'd like a red dress. Fiery. Silk. Clinging."
"Okay."
"Pearls. Earrings too."
He smiled; she was enjoying herself. "Sure. Why?"
"Well, it's dim in my mind, understand, but I don't believe I was looking my best the last time I entertained Mr. Howard."
"The last—? I don't—entertain? What are you talking about?"
"Gettin' even, sugar. That's what we're both talking about, isn't it?"
After following the boy around Evening Shade for the better part of two days and observing his antics on the platform of the abandoned depot at Cole's Crossing, Jim Giles was convinced he had a mental deficiency. Walking up and down, crouching, springing up, waving his arms, crying; probably talking to himself in other people's voices although not a word or a shout reached Giles's ears. His half-brother Eugene was thataway before he lowered his common-law's eyebrows a good two inches with an iron fry pan and had to be committed. They said Eugene had multiple personalities. However many that was, Giles would have bet the kid at the Crossing probably wasn't far behind Eugene's entourage of spooky-doo's and insolent hangers-on.
So he came down here nights to rant and howl at the moon, which was nearly full, and get it or them out of his system if he could. Giles waited on the boy to cool out and wondered how to kill him tonight. Broke neck was a sure thing but obvious murder would mean a more intensive investigation. The past two nights other vehicles had driven by Little Grove, carrying niggers, kids, livestock; somebody curious might recall the old pickup parked directly across from the church two nights in a row. But nobody had seen Giles. He had broken the bulb in the gooseneck fixture above the doorway to wait in full dark, except for the tiny glow of the occasional cigarette he liked to smoke when he was tired of chew.
He already had left one body in the immediate vicinity, so it wasn't going to happen here. Giles would look from time to time at the double-barred grill protector on his '48 Chevy. A notion forming. The blue-and-white bicycle lying down at tracksid
e. Giles didn't wear a watch, but he knew it was late. The boy had come down from the platform at last and was standing between the rails. There was a green signal up, his face and mussed hair tinted putrid greenish like something from a foul-water grave. He hadn't bothered to unbutton his shorts, just hiked up one side to reveal most of an untanned flank, holding his cock out on that side, long arc of piss in the moonlight. Okay. Giles took the nearly smoked cigarette from his mouth, dropped it on the concrete stoop, his hand going to his groin. It had been a long time since he had cornholed a boy. But this one was crazy. Didn't fit in with his plans nohow.
Giles let go of himself. He was thirsty from waiting. A beer would taste good afterward. Didn't drink alkyhall but liked an occasional beer. So come on, kid. Let's get this over with. He had been studying on the risk involved. Other vehicles on the road with them as the boy pedaled doggedly toward town. But at this hour traffic was bound to be sparse. He knew where to do it. No guardrail. Accelerate on the curve, ram the bike with that high bumper, take off a leg at least before the boy and bike went tumbling thirty feet into a snaggled moccasin-infested slough. If he didn't break his neck in the fall, he'd bleed to death fast. Days, even a week before anyone chanced to find him down there.
Giles yawned. The boy had picked up his bike, thumbed on the streaky beam of the fender-mounted light. Giles felt a keenness rising in his blood.
Okay.
"Francie, this is Bobby Gambier. Sorry to be calling so late."
"That's all right, Sheriff. Mama and Daddy came back from Kentucky with just the prettiest two-year-old bay filly. Everybody else's out in the barn with a case of new-horse fever; I came in a minute ago to put coffee on. If you're wanting Alex, I don't know. He left here hours ago. Wanted to borrow my scooter, but I had to say no; Daddy would bust a blood vessel and I'd be grounded 'til school starts. He didn't make it home?"
"Not yet."
"Ohh, that worries me too."
"Give you some idea of what he wanted the borrow of your scooter for?"
"I think he was going someplace it's a chore to get to from here on his bike." She paused in thought. "Someplace he had to be at a special time, because he kept looking at the clock. Had him excited, because he didn't finish half his supper."
"Such as the movies? No, I didn't see his bike in the rack out front of the Gem. He's not shooting pool either."
"I wish I could help."
"You've been a good friend to both of us, Francie. He's just got this wandering streak in him, Lord knows. Has to be running off somewhere all the time."
Bobby put the receiver of his phone on the hook and looked at Ramses, who had been at his stash of morphine in the bathroom and was sitting now, slack and exhausted, in the only other chair in the office. Eyes closing, opening to focus woozily on a yellow chamber-pot light, one of a pair overhead with dark residues of insects inside them.
"This dear friend of mine I was telling you about. Dr. Charles Martorell? He was also a medical officer during the Great War. Which is how we met, at the base hospital outside of Amiens in 1917. For more than thirty years he has specialized in repairing acute trauma done to the throats of soldiers damaged by gunshot or war gasses; also pompieres or workers in hazardous places who breathe invisible flame from explosions or flash fires. In the past few years he has performed successful surgeries on children muted by diseases such as pneumonia and diphtheria. Charles has established an international reputation."
"That so? All the specialists who looked at Alex when he was younger said that his larynx was just shot to hell." Bobby was looking at a six-foot-square map of Evening Shade on the wall behind his desk, the yellowed celluloid sheet covering the map pinholed and marked up with a grease pencil. "My mother and my daddy had Alex up to St. Loo and down to New Orleans, trying to find him help. All Alex got out of it was the train rides, but at least he always enjoyed those. His Lionel electric train set was destroyed in the house fire and I never did replace it, but most weekends after I came home from Germany we'd drive out to Cole's Crossing, sit for hours watching the freights and the big streamliners go by. The Dixie Traveler, there's a humdinger, every night at"—Bobby looked at the clock over the door to his office—"nine oh four sharp it would hit the Crossing, ten coaches long plus the dining and club cars. We talked, I mean I talked, about getting on sometime for the trip to Washington, D.C. but I've always been so busy—"
Something clicked behind Bobby's eyes.
"Think I'll drive down to the Crossing before I call it a night. Want to go along or lie down on the couch in Luther's office?"
"Some fresh air would be a good idea," Ramses said, sweating and looking as if his latest injection of morphine was not getting the job done fast enough.
There is something lonely about peddling a bicycle hard, getting up to twenty miles an hour on the good stretches on a little-used country road in the dark of a sultry summer's night with only a D-cell battery light and the yellow moon sometimes visible through high-banked trees to the left of the road for illumination, the asphalt lumpy or even gummy except where there are potholes or large washouts along the crumbling right shoulder (northbound) that Alex has nearly memorized in all of his excursions up and down that road; hit one at speed and take a nasty tumble. His light ignites the eyes of animals (possum, coon, armadillo, a skunk), and the moon puts a high shine on portions of the mucky slough downhill to his right that are not covered by a froglike skin. There are insects, of course; mosquitoes can't keep up with him, but hardshell fliers aiming at the bouncy light sometimes veer off course to smack him in the face or tangle spikily in his coarse mop of hair. If he forgets and breathes momentarily through his mouth during a particularly tough stretch of road, he can catch an insect spang in his teeth. They all taste the same, bitter, takes a lot of spitting to get one off his tongue and his spit is scarce; he's always near to dehydration by the time he winds up back in town. Not uncommon for his calves to cramp and his quads burn unmercifully but he doesn't like to slow down and hates to stop. Expanding his endurance is one of his summer's goals. He expects a lot out of his growing body, lifts weights in the garage, does pull-ups on an iron pipe nailed between a couple of elm trees in the backyard of the house he is not sure he can call a home anymore.
The headlights of the car or small truck that has been about a hundred yards behind him almost since he left Cole's Crossing appear like smeared apparitions in the mirror on his left handlebar. He's stopped paying it any mind. Trying to decide now, with four miles to go until he hits the town square, where he'll spend the rest of the night. Francie's house is out; her folks are back from Bowling Green, and they think he's dirt. Maybe he ought just to go home, hose off in the driveway, curl up in Bobby's station wagon to sleep. Not bother anybody, he thinks grimly, a burning dismal anger in his breast. They didn't want him in the house anymore. So what? He'd get some breakfast out the back door, like a tramp passing through, from sympathetic Rhoda. Cut the grass for his grits and gravy. Owe them nothing. Then take off. He is almost fourteen. He can bum his way around the country. Robert Mitchum did it, and now he's a big movie star (Alex has learned this reading one of Francie's fan magazines). Robert Mitchum has done jail time as well and doesn't take shit from anybody. Just hop a freight, never look back . . .
That will have to come later. First he and Mally need to take care of Leland Howard. But Alex doesn't have a clue where to find that mangy owlhoot, and if he does find him, how to get his attention.
Coming now to the sixty-foot bridge spanning a ravine with a mostly dry creek at the bottom of it. Stagnant pools of water amid some big flat rocks. The bridge isn't paved. There are two lanes of planks laid over four-by-fours with space between them. Six-inch-high wooden curbs but no railing on either side. Strict load limit. Most drivers obey the yellow warning signs posted well in advance and go across the bridge in low gear.
So Alex wonders why the driver who has been lagging behind him for miles is now speeding up.
Jim Giles in his assas
sin's mind gave the accelerator of his rackety pickup a goosing, and large reflectors nailed to posts on either side of the dangerous bridge strafed his own headlights back at him. The boy darted a look around at momentum sprung on him like a lion charging in a 3-D picture show and lost his cycling rhythm halfway across. The front tire of the bike slipped off the worn plank on the right side of the bridge and hit a space between four-by-fours. The boy lost his grip and left his seat in a soaring sprawl. As the upended bike jumped and pivoted in the air the truck ran into it and crunched it whole beneath the front wheels. Twisted metal dragged the undercarriage and loosened the oil pan. Giles blinked at the impact as he braked, too hard, and the pickup's back end swerved off the planks. He was busy trying to avoid dumping his truck into the ravine and lost sight of the boy.
When Giles had control again, he didn't see the boy anywhere.
He shifted to neutral, grabbed a flashlight, and got out. While he was dragging the wrecked bike out from under his pickup, he heard the pierced radiator hissing and smelled hot oil dripping. Well Goddamn. But he had to make sure this sorry business was over with and right now.
Giles walked slowly along the left side of the bridge where there was a wooden curb six inches high. He flashed his light down through some dead trees and saw the boy beside the rocky creek bed. Sitting up, not lying there unconscious. Holding the back of his neck. He didn't look up when Giles flashed the light on him. There was blood on his face.
"Hey, kid!"
He looked up slowly, dazed and maybe with a cracked skull, but obviously he had a lot of luck going for him. Giles reckoned his brains ought to be coming out of his ears. A litter of dry branches sticking to his clothing suggested his fall had been broken somewhat. So that's how it was, still alive; but Giles wasn't going to wait around town for a third crack at him. It was going to be Murder One after all and the hell with it.
Giles returned to his pickup and reached inside to take his Remington shotgun down from the rack. Eighteen-inch barrels, customized by a gunsmith, but enough range to do the job from, say, a distance of thirty feet. Deer slugs. Giles cocked his shotgun and was on his way back to a good vantage point, flashlight beam lancing into the ravine, when somebody else showed up.