San Diego Lightfoot Sue

by Tom Reamy

  “How long?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve never been more than three days. I can’t stand it any longer than that. He knew. He always knew when I had to have it. And he got it for me. I never helped him.”

  “Can you stay alive if you get regular transfusions?”

  He looked at me sharply, fear creeping back. “Please. No!”

  “But you’ll stay alive.”

  “In a cage! Like a freak! I don’t want to be a freak anymore. It’s over. I want it to be over. Please.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  I looked at him, at his face, at his eyes, at his soul. “There’s a gun in the glove compartment,” I said.

  He sat for a moment, then solemnly held out his hand. I took it. He shook my hand, then opened the glove compartment. He removed the gun and slipped out of the car. He went down the hill into the brush.

  I waited and waited and never did hear a shot.

  Insects in Amber

  The storm built in the southwest, turning the air to underwater blue, making the flat land look like the bottom of the sea. Lightning flickered in the approaching darkness and threw fleeting shimmers on the rolling clouds. Thunder that had been distant rumbles soon crackled across the Kansas prairie unhindered.

  Tannie and I watched the spectacular display through the rear window of the new Buick station wagon. The rain followed us like a vague, miles-long curtain. It caught us in minutes and turned the late afternoon to night.

  My father grunted and flipped on the lights and windshield wipers. He braked the station wagon carefully and hunched over the steering wheel peering into the downpour. Thunder crashed and rattled around us. The lightning flashes were so brilliant that they left a white streak floating before your eyes. The windshield wipers snicked away merrily, but futilely.

  Tannie sat beside me bright-eyed with excitement. She was seven and had the kind of inquisitive mind that drove certain adults up the wall.

  We were starting out on one of those vacations the auto manufacturers, the motel owners, the resort owners, the tire companies, Howard Johnsons and the curio sellers on Route 66 like to promote. We had piled into the station wagon for three weeks of butt-numbing travel. We left Lubbock that morning (my father was an associate professor of English at Texas Tech) planning to go up through Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, over to Wyoming and Yellowstone, then back through Colorado and home. It wasn’t the kind of vacation I would have initiated, though I didn’t mind it that much.

  I was fifteen, not too far from sixteen, and if given a guilt-free choice, I would have probably stayed in Lubbock to goof around with my friends. But since I had a special relationship with my family, the trip was no sacrifice.

  We had planned to make it to Dodge City by nightfall, but the rain seemed to have put the kibosh on that. Dad was creeping along about twenty miles an hour, barely able to see the road. It went like that for a while until we came up behind a couple of other cars going even slower. We were behind a red Firebird with Arizona plates, and it was behind an old pickup truck. Dad didn’t try to pass, and the Firebird seemed content to stay where it was too.

  Mom squinted at an Exxon road map. “The next town is Hawley, but it looks pretty small,” she said. “It’s an open circle, which means…” She shuffled the map. “Ah… under a thousand.”

  “Let’s hope it’s not too small to have a motel,” Dad said, giving up on Dodge City.

  “I don’t care about a motel,” Tannie chirped. “I just hope there’s someplace to eat.” She sat with her nose pressed against the window, fogging up the glass with her breath and then drawing pictures in it.

  “Eat?” I laughed. “You’ve eaten enough today to kill a horse.” I knew she really was hungry, but she liked me to tease her.

  Tannie turned from the window and surveyed me coolly, but with a twinkle in her eye. I knew she was about to devastate me. She leaned back in the seat and crossed her arms. “There’s a little too much sibling rivalry in this seat,” she said with an ultra-ladylike air.

  I groaned. She was always saying something like that. Mom and Dad laughed. I could see Tannie’s mouth beginning to twitch. She wouldn’t be able to hold that lofty expression very long.

  “It’s your own fault, Ben,” Dad chuckled. “You should never have told her she was precocious.”

  “Yeah,” Tannie said, grinning, “I looked it up.”

  “Uh-oh,” Dad said. He stopped laughing and slowed the station wagon. I leaned on the back of the front seat and looked over Mom’s shoulder. Wooden barricades with amber flashers were in the road ahead. Two cars were already stopped: a yellow Volkswagen and a dark, sedate sedan that may have been a Chevrolet. The pickup stopped behind the sedan, the Firebird stopped behind the pickup, and we stopped behind the Firebird. Everyone sat there for a bit in a neck-craning session; then a man in a raincoat got out of the passenger side of the VW.

  He hurried around to the driver’s side of the sedan, apparently intending to get in without comment, but the guy in the pickup stuck his head out the window and said something. The man in the raincoat hesitated, rather reluctantly, I thought, then came back to the pickup and stood there talking.

  “Guess I’d better get out and see what’s going on,” Dad said, with a resigned sigh.

  “Charles, you’re gonna get soaked.”

  Dad twisted around in the seat. “Ben, can you get to the umbrella back there?”

  I got on my knees in the seat and dug around in the back among the suitcases, blankets, cardboard boxes full of who knows what, and all kinds of vacation gear. I finally found it and handed it to him. As Dad got out in the rain, a girl got out of the VW, also with an umbrella. They met at the pickup. Then a guy got out of the Firebird and joined them. It was turning into a convention.

  They stood there in the pouring rain, all four of them, talking and waving their arms and pointing this way and that. Mostly it was the man from the sedan and the guy in the pickup. He was the smart one—he was in out of the rain. Then after a while, they dispersed.

  “We gotta take a detour,” Dad said when he got back in. “What’s wrong?” Mom asked.

  “Highway’s under water up ahead.”

  “Could you see it?” Tannie perked up at the first sign of disaster.

  “No. The girl in the VW said a highway patrolman in a yellow slicker told her the road was flooded. He stopped her, and then the old gentleman in the sedan came along. Seems they know each other.”

  “Did he say the detour was safe?” Mom asked, looking at the rain with a little frown.

  “I don’t know. The patrolman seems to have disappeared. The guy in the pickup lives around here. He said it was okay.”

  Tannie bounced in the seat. “Isn’t this exciting?” she squeaked.

  “You won’t think so if we have to spend the night in the car stuck in the mud somewhere,” I said.

  Dad grimaced. “Hold that thought, Cheerful Charlie,” he said and started the motor.

  The sedan pulled around the VW and turned left onto a gravel road that cut away from the highway at the barricades. The VW followed him, then the pickup, then the Firebird, and then us. Just like a camel caravan. The road wasn’t bad, a little rough with lots of standing puddles.

  I turned around in the seat and looked back at the highway, but I couldn’t see the flashers anymore. We must have gone over a rise, although I hadn’t noticed doing so. I also thought I saw the headlights of a car go by on the highway, but with the rain I wasn’t sure. It must have been lightning.

  Mom and Dad didn’t talk. The farther we traveled from the highway, the darker it seemed to get. Mom watched the road nervously, and Dad kept his attention on his driving. Even Tannie was quiet for a change. She had her nose against the window again, trying to see by the frequent flashes of lightning. I don’t know how far we had gone. It probably seemed farther than it was because we were moving so slowly. />
  Then I pressed my nose against the window and looked out. I don’t know if it was coincidence or not, but it couldn’t have been better if it had been staged by Alfred Hitchcock. There was a tremendous rattle of thunder and a flash of lightning that lingered for an unaccountably long time. I saw a house some fifty yards from the road on top of a low hill. It looked quite old, a big boxy shape with lots of tall chimneys and gables and a tower on one corner. The lightning faded slowly, and I turned my head to follow it, but the lightning wasn’t repeated.

  I turned as Dad braked the station wagon to a stop. The other cars in the caravan were stopped also, their brake lights flicking on and off.

  “You think somebody got stuck in the mud?” Tannie asked with a faint current of desire under the question. I think she would gladly be attacked by tigers just to find out what it was like.

  “Let’s hope not,” Dad grunted.

  Somebody up the row honked his horn. “Looks like they’re calling another conference,” I said.

  “Looks like you’re right.” Dad pulled out the umbrella.

  I leaned my arms on the back of the seat and watched them gather around the pickup truck again. Then the rain slacked, or something, and I could see by the headlights of the sedan a sheet of muddy water flowing across the road. Trash and debris swirled around on it; weeds and tree limbs.

  After a bit they disbanded and Dad got back in, wrestling with the umbrella. “This road is flooded, too,” he said in a discouraged voice. “We’ll have to turn around and go back.”

  “Doesn’t look like there’s room to turn around. You might get stuck in the ditch,” Mom said matter-of-factly. She was worried but wouldn’t show it; she didn’t want to frighten Tannie and me.

  “According to the guy in the pickup, we just passed, quote, the old Weatherly place, unquote. We’re supposed to back up and turn around in the drive.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I saw it. Looked like something out of a horror movie.”

  “Terrific,” Dad groaned.

  “I want to see!” Tannie squealed and scrambled on top of me, pasting her face against the damply cool window.

  “Watch it!” I grunted. “You’ve got bony knees.”

  “Okay. Hold it down back there,” Dad said, but he was smiling. He backed the car slowly, looking over his shoulder.

  “Can you see where you’re going?” Mom asked.

  “Actually, no.” He grimaced.

  Dad had it the worst. The others could see by the headlights of the car behind them. Tannie and I had our noses against the window again, watching for the house. A flash of lightning came right on cue. Tannie let out a little sigh of appreciation.

  Dad stopped the station wagon with a lurch. Brake lights flashed on sequentially down the row. Dad raised up in the seat and examined the drive critically with a little frown on his face. A culvert crossed the ditch of rushing water, though more water seemed to be going over the drive than under it. He looked at Mom. She looked at the water. Dad shrugged, rippled a tattoo on the steering wheel with his fingernails, and pulled slowly in.

  The front end had nosed in about three feet when it lurched suddenly sideways and slipped into the ditch.

  “Are we stuck in the mud?” Tannie asked with cloying innocence.

  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised.” Dad put the station wagon in reverse and tried to back out. The tires whined and the rear end slithered farther into the road. Dad cut the engine and settled back in the seat with a snort.

  “Looks like it’s time for another conference,” I said when I saw the others converging on us.

  “Don’t be a wiseacre,” he groaned. He grabbed the umbrella and got out. I scooted over to the other side and rolled down the window so I could hear.

  “Sorry folks,” Dad said.

  “Tough luck, Mr. Henderson.” That was the guy from the Firebird. They had apparently introduced themselves at a previous conference.

  The girl in the yellow Volkswagen was Ann Callahan. She was twenty and absolutely lovely. That was the first time I had had a good look at her. When I did I couldn’t keep my eyes off her.

  The old guy in the sedan was Professor Philip Weatherly. That’s right: Weatherly, as in “the old Weatherly place.” He was sixty, with a kindly but slightly befuddled expression. I also caught, inadvertently, a certain amount of nervous strain, but I didn’t think much about it under the circumstances.

  Carl Willingham was the driver of the pickup. He was about fifty, with a slightly protuberant beer belly and a cigar that he worried about in his mouth. He was wearing boots and a sweat-darkened Stetson. I think he had been sent over by central casting.

  The guy from the Firebird was Poe McNeal. He was about twenty-five, with a cheerful face and a quick smile. He had a stocky muscular build and a pleasant, rather than handsome, face. I liked him immediately.

  Ann Callahan and Carl Willingham went to the front of the car, as close as they could get without wading, and examined the mired wheels.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Mr. Henderson,” she said with a voice that did funny things to me. “The pipe is clogged and the drive is badly undercut.”

  The others moved up to check on it. “Maybe we could put something under the wheels to give it some traction,” Poe McNeal suggested.

  “Won’t do no good,” Carl Willingham grunted. “Car’s too heavy and in too deep. Have to get a tow truck.” The brown water swirled around the bumper.

  “Great,” Dad said. “How do we do that?”

  “I guess we could wait till another car comes along and send them,” Poe said without much conviction.

  “How will they turn around?” Trust Dad to put his finger on it. “We may have three hundred cars piled up before the night’s over.”

  Poe grinned. “The tow truck drivers will love it.”

  “What about that house there?” Dad asked, squinting through the rain. A flash of lightning and a roll of thunder punctuated his question. Much too convenient; more like William Castle than Alfred Hitchcock.

  “I noticed some chimneys. Maybe there’s a fireplace where we can dry out and get warm.” That was Ann.

  Carl looked up the hill with displeasure. “Nobody lived in that house for fifty years. Like as not, it’s about to fall down.”

  “Guess we could check it out,” Poe said doubtfully. “Do you think the owner would mind a band of pilgrims taking refuge?”

  Professor Weatherly spoke for the first time. “I suppose I’m the owner. You have my permission.” His voice had a tenseness in it, like somebody with a pat hand.

  Carl’s frown grew deeper. “Don’t know that I’d fancy spending the night in that house.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s haunted!” Poe cried with suppressed excitement.

  “Don’t rightly know,” Carl answered with no trace of humor, “though I’ve heard folks talk.”

  The professor looked at Carl with a little frown, as if he’d misread one of his cards.

  “I’ll get a flashlight,” Dad said and opened the door of the station wagon. He leaned in, trying to keep himself covered with the umbrella. “Ben, hand me the flashlight.” He looked at Mom. “We’re gonna check out that house to see if it’s fit to spend the night in.” Mom nodded and looked through the darkness, trying to see it.

  I dug the flashlight out from behind the seat. “May I go with you?”

  “No, you can’t. If it’s not fit, there’s no point in your getting wet.”

  “Heck!” I said.

  “Heck, yourself.” Then he grinned. “Come on.”

  I got another umbrella from the back seat cornucopia and scrambled out. Poe was leaning in the window of the Firebird telling the other people what was happening. Then we all traipsed up the hill to the house.

  With the darkness and the rain and trying to see where we were putting our feet, none of us really paid much attention to the house until we made it to the old-fashioned porch around three sides. Once out of the rain, we looked about without sa
ying anything. The house was a little weather-beaten and badly needed paint, but it wasn’t what one would call dilapidated. A few pieces of gingerbread were missing from around the top of the porch, and a few boards squeaked when stepped on, but I’ve seen people living in a lot worse.

  Dad looked at the others and opened the wide front door with a fanlight over it. He shone the flashlight around, and the rest of us crowded in behind him. My arm bumped Ann’s. She smiled at me. It was just one of those friendly but noncommittal smiles you give to strangers, but I felt my face getting warm.

  We were in a large entry hall—I finally noticed. A wide stairway ascended to a second floor landing at the rear. We looked at each other with no small amount of bewilderment. Everything was clean and free of dust. The carpet running down the middle of the hall and up the stairs was faded but in good condition. The lace curtains over the windows on either side of the door, though somewhat yellowed with age, were clean. A tall grandfather’s clock at the top of the stairs suddenly rattled and struck six times. We all stared at it, hardly breathing, until it finished.

  “When does Vincent Price arrive?” Poe muttered.

  “What?” Ann said, turning her head suddenly toward him.

  “Nothing.” He grinned.

  Dad looked at Carl. “Are you sure this has been empty for fifty years?”

  He shrugged stoically. “Always thought it was. Musta been wrong.”

  We wandered into the living room (though I imagine it was called a parlor in its day) which opened to the left off the entry hall. “If this belongs to you, Professor,” Ann said softly, “you should know if anyone’s been living here.”

  He was genuinely confused. “Mr. Willingham’s right. No one has lived here for fifty years. When I was last here, thirty-five years ago, I hired a man to look after the place. Apparently he’s doing his job very well.”

  The living room/parlor was completely and neatly furnished in that blocky, ungainly style of the early twenties. Even so, it didn’t actually look as if someone lived there; more like a display; the Sunday parlor kept spotlessly unused for company that never came.