But then the raging red waves return and he gasps, not at the sight of his beloved Flo changing into a withered old man with a rusted box in his throat, but at the severity of the agony that consumes him.
The hand on his shoulder now is a gnarled one, and the grip is like a glove of fire, prompting Wintry to speak for the first time in years. “Who are you?” he croaks and the words are like glass scratching free of a scorched throat. He is not looking for a name, for it is one he knows. He’s looking for the truth.
“Opportunity,” Cadaver answers. “And punishment.”
Wintry thinks of drowning, or bashing his own head in with one of those slimy black rocks at his feet. He should be dead, he knows that, and he knows too that it isn’t going to take much to end it properly, especially now there’s someone here to make sure he doesn’t back out or come crawling back for the second time, even if it’s not anyone he considers a friend. He reckons he’s died with the only people he’d consider close once already tonight and shouldn’t be too fussy about not being able to do it again. He figures suffering of this kind is made to have an end, and surely Cadaver won’t stand in his way.
His head feels like it weighs a ton as he raises it to look at the old man, who smiles at him. “You might not think it, Wintry, but you’ve been through worse.”
“You do this?” Wintry asks. “You bring me back?”
“No. You brought yourself back. Crawled out in a hurry once you saw there was nothin’ could be done for your woman, or anyone else in there for that matter. Survival instinct got you out. Just like it got you out of prison. Just like it got you through life so far.”
Wintry understands what he’s being told, but he disagrees. He’s never suffered like this before, and suffering is no stranger to him.
“You’re a fighter,” Cadaver says. “Always have been, my friend.”
Wintry swallows a burning breath, and though his new kind of pain has inspired him to use his voice for the first time in fourteen years, it won’t come.
There is the creak and pop of old bones and Cadaver is suddenly hunkered down next to him, his eyes pockets of shadow in a pillowcase face, the smile still twisting lips that look sewn from dirty thread. “I can help you,” he whispers. “I can end this for you. Give you what you want. It’s why I’m here.”
Wintry shakes his head. Cadaver is the devil. He knows that now, and though what education he has comes from the street, the dingy alleys and shaded corners back in Atlanta, his fists the pen, hard faces his pages, he’s smart enough to know the devil never offers anything without taking something in return.
“Let me be.”
Cadaver sighs. It’s the sound of a cold breeze on a summer’s day. “You don’t want me to do that.”
“You…don’t know what I want, and can’t tell me neither. Go. Let me alone.”
“I can end your sufferin’. All of it. I can free you from the ghosts. I can give you the chance to clear your soul. I can help you save yourself.”
Wintry tries to smile but it’s as if fishing hooks are holding the skin of his face together. His flesh sings with agony. He shudders, restrains a gasp. At length, he sags, adopting the repose of death, though that mercy stays maddeningly out of his reach. “What you want from me?” he asks, licking his lips with a sandpaper tongue. “What will you take?”
Cadaver shrugs. “Nothin’.”
“You lyin’.”
“That’s one thing I never do. There’s never any call for it.”
“So you goan…set me free just cause you a nice…guy, huh?”
“No. You’re goin’ to free yourself. All I’m goin’ to do is tell you how.”
Before Wintry has a chance to say more, Cadaver stands and peers off toward the amber glow of the fire on the hill. Eddie’s is still burning, the air still reeks of smoke and burned flesh, though how much of that is from himself, Wintry can’t tell.
“You taught kids how to fight, Wintry. You trained them to defend themselves and inadvertently made them murderers. You beat a man to death with your bare hands, usin’ what your no-good father made you learn from him. He compensated for his abuse of you by teachin’ you how to use violence to get what you want. He hoped you’d use it on him someday if he pushed you hard enough. Hoped more than anythin’ that you’d deal him a fatal blow and set him free of his misery. But you never did. You let him die by his own clock because it was the kind of fight you were guaranteed to win. Tonight, if you want an escape from your own skin, you’re goin’ to have to fight one last time, use those hams of yours and beat your demons into submission.”
“Can’t,” is all Wintry can say.
Cadaver clucks his tongue. “You will if you want to be with your beloved when death does come for you.”
“Can’t fight.”
“You can and will. It’s the only way.”
Wintry frowns, winces. The expression yanks on burnt nerves. “Who?”
Cadaver is by his side again, breathing foul breath in his face that ignites the ruined flesh. “Tonight, my friend, you’re goin’ to fight the fight you dreamed of for years through frustrated adolescent tears.”
Wintry bares his teeth, feels anger cocooned in pain squirrel its way up his throat. “Who?”
Cadaver leans in close, his blind eye like a distant view of an icy sun. His whisper is almost reverential in tone. “Daddy.”
* * *
I should sleep. I’m dog-tired, and stinking of grave dirt and old blood that’s going to stay now that the rain’s finally giving up the ghost. I don’t look back at the tavern, though the heat’s dropping. Eddie’s’ll finish it’s burning soon enough. Whatever Gracie’s putting back into that place isn’t anything the fire’s going to be able to touch. Not tonight, or more accurately—as a quick check of my watch tells me—this morning.
Not this fire, but maybe the next catastrophe that blows in when folks’ sins start outweighing virtue.
Out there, past the willows and pines and beech and scrub, the sky’s starting to lighten like someone’s holding a flashlight down under the bedclothes. It won’t take long to spread, but when it does and that horizon catches fire proper, it won’t make Milestone any prettier. It’ll only send long shadows racing toward the borders.
There’s dirt caked beneath my fingernails and my knuckles are throbbing something fierce. Should’ve asked Gracie if she could conjure me up a shovel, but it’s a little late. The whore’s not buried deep, but she’s planted all the same. If I put all my weight on the earth when I pack it down, it sinks until if I poked a finger into the grave I’d be able to feel her under there, so I go gentle, patting it with my hands until there’s only a slight soggy hump in the earth to say anyone’s here at all.
In a few hours there’ll be stragglers on the streets as folks make their way to the church on Hymn Street. They don’t want to go, not when they know God has fled the place, but they’ll be there same as they always are, afraid Reverend Hill will come find them if they don’t, as he’s done in the past. They don’t yet know he’s dead, of course, so maybe if there’s time and I’m still breathing I’ll cruise on by the place and let them know. It’ll be worth it just to see their relief that the old bastard is finally gone from their lives.
But what’s gotta be done’s gotta be done soon before there are too many people around to see it. Business of this kind always goes on when the town’s quiet, so people can wake up in the morning and tell themselves nothing strange has happened while they’ve slept and the world’s just as dark and shitty as it ever was without being helped along by sinners.
I finish patting down the grave, then retrieve the bottle of whiskey Gracie was good enough to send along with me without me asking for it, and I head for my truck.
I’m going to drive with the windows down so the cold keeps me awake, and alert, so I can try to pull some inspiration from my ass and figure out how I’m going to handle Kyle, who Gracie tells me is all set to sell me out.
“Can I get
out?”
I know what Brody wants, and I guess I should give it to him. The man has a right to say goodbye to his woman. But I’m not going to. I doubt he gave the family and friends of the people he’s killed such consideration.
Rich coming from me, I know.
“Just sit back and keep quiet.”
“C’mon man…just a few minutes. I’m not going to run.”
“Maybe later. Right now I’ve got some business to attend to.”
I put the truck in gear and ignore his protests from the back seat. He’s putting on quite a show, thrashing, spitting, cursing, but for all of that I’ve got the strangest feeling he really doesn’t care all that much that his girl’s dead. Not sure why that suspicion takes hold of me, but there it is. Maybe I’m way off base; maybe not. For now there’s no way of knowing.
“I can’t believe you, you hick son of a bitch. This isn’t fair and you know it.”
“Yeah, I do, but your little crime spree took away any privileges you might think you deserve.”
“She told me it was a mistake coming this way, you know. Should have listened to her.”
“Yeah, you should have.”
The truck rolls down the hill, the tires splashing through potholes in the dirt road that have filled with rain. Eddie’s burns but the light is growing dim, the flames appear caged behind walls that grow more solid as their shadows band together. Brody keeps talking, but I’ve stopped listening. There’s too much else on my mind. Kyle, for one, and where I might find him.
I decide to head for Winter Street, and Iris Gale’s place of business.
* * *
Most folks think Doctor Hendricks came to Milestone to make his fortune, ignoring the fact that most of what he gets are corpses, or the living dancing at death’s door, like the dead girl the Sheriff and his boy brought earlier. There’s no money to be made here, but just because he insists on dressing real nice and being respectful toward anyone who crosses his path, he’s labeled a gold digger. It’s almost funny. There hasn’t been anything worth having in this town for as long as he’s lived here.
Good thing then that he came here to die.
As he sits watching the embers dying in the fireplace, a freshly brewed cup of tea warming his palms, he’s aware, as always, of the long shadow above the mantel. It’s his father’s Winchester rifle. Now there was a man who decided young that he was going to be rich and didn’t stop until he was, no matter how many people he had to step on to get there. There was your 48-carat gold-digger, a man who only ever smiled in the company of people he was going to ruin.
At home, Hendricks saw his father smile a lot.
A breeze against the window makes the curtains shift a little. There is no keeping it out. The house is old and draughty. Upstairs, Queenie’s asleep, piled beneath enough covers to ensure she stays warm. She’s not alone though. Never alone. She’s got the cancer to keep her company, infecting her dreams with its promises of death, eating away at her brain while she snatches as much peace from her final days as she’s permitted. For Hendricks, who despite his profession can do nothing but sedate her and feed her painkillers in near-lethal doses, it’s become a lottery. First, he wonders if this morning will be the one he goes up to the room to find her dead. Then he wonders, if she does wake up, will she attack him, or scream hysterically because she’s forgotten who he is? And lastly, he wonders if today’s the day he takes that shotgun down and puts them both out of their misery once and for all.
He intends for it to happen, accepts that it must. The gun’s loaded, ready to go. It’s just a matter of when, and how many bullets he’ll need. The thought does not disturb him. He has watched his beautiful wife lapse into psychotic rages and foul-mouthed fits for almost two years now. He has sat with her while she wept, and thanked the Almighty Jesus for her spells of lucidity and apparent health. For the past two weeks, there have been no episodes, no late night panic attacks or spells of spouting gibberish like a possessed thing. It’s almost as if she’s been his, and his alone. As if he hasn’t had to share her with a parasite.
The lull won’t last though. It never does, and he fears that this is merely the calm before the final devastating storm that takes her for good. If it does so before he takes that shotgun down, so be it, but he has no intention of surviving her.
There is a knock on the door. It surprises him, jerks the cup in his hand and sends tea sloshing over the side. He grumbles, checks his watch, then rises, sets the cup aside, and casts a final glance at the shadow over the mantel.
Chapter Ten
Though Milestone’s creeping toward dawn, it always feels like deep night on Winter Street, and if you’re looking for sunshine, you’d best look up on over the roofs and not through the windows.
Time was you came here for your groceries, or for a haircut, or for some new clothes to impress your latest date. If you wanted the fancy stuff, you’d have to carry your ass clear into Saddleback, which I’ve always thought is a long haul just to spend twice as much as you would in Milestone for more or less the same damn thing. Doesn’t matter now though. These days, you come here to get laid or listen to the wisdom of Horace Dudds, one of only three town drunks who haven’t yet realized the town’s died around them. The others are Maggie, Horace’s unofficial girlfriend, and Kirk Vess, though he tends to wander and isn’t welcome on Horace and Maggie’s turf. Apparently they have standards he doesn’t meet. Politics of the homeless, I guess. If Maggie has a second name, she has never seen fit to reveal it, and no one ever asks. I guess we all figure when you’ve got nothing else to call your own, no one will begrudge you keeping your name to yourself.
I pull up outside a narrow gray building that looks like something from an angry child’s drawing with its funny angles and not-quite-straight edges, boarded up windows and trash stuffed in the wide cracks between the short run of steps leading to main door. Through the gaps in the boards nailed over the store’s plate glass window, a blinking florescent light shows a bunch of mannequins stripped of their clothes, and lewdly posed so they look like they’ve been frozen mid-orgy. A faded wooden plaque above the door bears the legend THE HOUSE OF IRIS.
On the opposite side of the road stands what used to be a clothing store for children before people stopped having them. Beneath the tattered red-and-white striped awning, sit two figures huddled against the weather.
“Evenin’ Sheriff,” Horace says, and offers me a toothy grin, at the same time drawing his bottle closer to his chest, like he’s afraid I’m going to snatch it. Horace may be a drunk, but he’s got a long memory, and can probably recall every bit of graffiti in my old drunk tank.
I nod my head, “Horace, Maggie,” and slam the truck door behind me. The sound echoes along the street and returns as thunder. I join them under the awning.
“Bad night. You two should be indoors, by the fire.”
Horace wears a purple peaked cap he won in a card game from an Irishman. A week later he played another game and lost everything he owned. Claims to this day it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t beaten that ‘potato-eatin’ Mick’, who he says, “Went home with my luck snug in his ass pocket.” Beneath the cap’s peak, a huge nose keeps a pair of piercing gray eyes from meeting, though they seem determined, the pupils like black balloons anchored by dark red threads. His belt is a stretch of skipping rope with the wooden handles lopped off. People call him old, and he looks damn old, but the thing is, he’s been in Milestone his whole life and it seems he’s always looked exactly as he does now.
“Plenty of fire,” Horace says sagely, “But it’s too wet to walk a’far as Eddie’s.”
“What happened up there anyway?” Maggie asks. She’s dressed in her signature floral print dress—sky-blue barely visible beneath an explosion of pink roses. Maggie’s a formidable woman, heavy, and quick to anger. A tornado with a head of hazel curls. There’s no doubt in my mind she could throw me from one end of the street to the other if I pissed her off. So I don’t, even in the past
when she’s given me reason to. See the problem is that when Maggie’s not sitting by Horace’s side wherever he’s chosen to settle, she’s standing in the town square, blocking traffic and hollering her damn fool head off about the government and how they’re going to round us up one by one and brainwash us to their way of thinking (whatever the hell that is). As if that wasn’t bad enough, her pontificating and gesticulating is usually enough to allow certain parts of her to spill out of her loose-fitting dress, causing quite a stir among those who don’t have the sense to drive around her. I’ve always thought that in another life she and Cobb would have made a happy couple.
“Cobb lost it,” I tell her. “Burnt the place up.”
“Oh,” Maggie says with a shake of her head. “He had a lovely voice.”
“Anyone inside?” Horace asks, after a puzzled look at Maggie. I know how he feels. No one I know ever heard Cobb sing, assuming that’s what Maggie means.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t suppose the Reverend was one of ’em?”
“Matter of fact he was.”
Horace nods his satisfaction. “Good. Bastard ruined this town. Place had a hope afore him.”
Maggie shakes her head, effortlessly snatches the bottle, which I see is a flagon of cider, from Horace’s protective clutches. “I wouldn’t say he done ruined it. Minin’ comp’ny and greed did that. Hill just helped is all. Set the stage for the men in suits and too-tight ties to come waltzin’ in and make us regret ever settlin’ down here.” She ponders this for a moment, then takes a swig from the bottle that’s so generous, Horace’s eyes widen and he makes a grab for it. They scowl at one another for a few seconds like two dogs over a piece of meat, then Horace shakes his head and looks at me. “Your boy’s okay though. Counts for somethin’.”
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