Lowland Rider

by Chet Williamson

  In the morning Jesse Gordon awoke with the feeling that everything had been a dream, that he had sweated through one of those tyrannical nightmares in which a loved one is taken and comes back to say good-bye and so makes the parting all the more painful. But when he found himself on the couch, he knew that it had all been real, and he wrapped the afghan's tired fringe around his fingers and tightened the cords until his fingertips turned red, then cried again.

  He made the funeral arrangements mechanically, and buried his father on a bright and sunny Thursday afternoon. He was surprised at the rapidity and ease with which his father's life insurance company paid off the fifty thousand dollar policy of which his father had made him sole beneficiary, and rather dazedly deposited it in a low interest, easy access savings account until he could decide how to invest it.

  Two weeks later he received a call from the assessor, who wanted to meet with him at his father's store. "I imagine it'll take more than a few hours," Jesse told the assessor, a soft-voiced man named Rhoads.

  "We can make several visits until I'm finished," Rhoads said. "I suppose evenings would suit you best?"

  "A weekend would be better," Jesse answered. Rhoads sighed. "It always is." They arranged to meet Sunday afternoon at the store.

  Just as Jesse was slipping on his jacket prior to their meeting, Donna decided she wanted to go with him.

  "What about Jenny?"

  "I'll bring her along."

  "It's such a bad neighborhood . . ."

  "It's always been bad, and that's never stopped me from going along to visit your dad before. What's the difference now?"

  She had a point. But there was a difference. His father, the protective totem, was gone now, and he realized that as long as his father had been alive, he'd felt assured that the Bronx was not a jungle, that if an old man could live there and remain happy, then he and his family could walk there unscathed as well. Now that totem had been toppled, evil had drawn too near, and he was afraid, afraid for his wife and child, afraid for himself, afraid for anyone human who walked the streets where his father had betrayed him by dying.

  "We'll be all right, Jesse. We'll be going down in daylight, and be out before dark, won't we?"

  "There's no reason for you to go."

  "It'll be the last time I see the shop," Donna countered. "There's so much of your father in it. It'll be like saying goodbye for the last time."

  If he had not been so weary, so full of grief, he might have argued with her, but his soul-sickness had sapped his will, and he only nodded acquiescence.

  The day was cloudy, but no rain darkened the city's concrete floor. They went by subway, taking the Lexington Avenue–Pelham Bay Park line, the fastest way to the Bronx. Jesse had no feeling one way or another about the subway. It was merely a part of New York life the same way as was standing in lines, or not taking your hand off your briefcase, not even for an instant. You watched out for crazies, but you learned that most of them were harmless—the weak, the poor, the dwellers in the jungle who had lost everything but the will to survive. There were bag ladies and winos and junkies, beggars slick and roughhewn. Generally the worse the appearance, the less cautious one had to be. Nevertheless, caution was the watchword. There had been plenty of times when he and Donna had moved to a new car because of a truly threatening presence at the other end of theirs, and even a few episodes in which they had left a train entirely, after which they would laugh away their discomfort, shake their heads, and murmur, "Weird . . ." trying to forget the fear that had palpably driven them from their car, theirs.

  Still they rode. It was a compromise between them and the evil in the city, not the city itself, for it was not the city that bred the evil, but the people of the city. It was the people who robbed and raped and killed, and if the city acted upon them, it did so only in the same way that the sea acts upon sharks.

  They got off at the Castle Hill Avenue station, and walked up into daylight. The odor of decaying garbage hung heavily in the air. Plastic bags the color of deep forests lay on the curbside, split by pressure or by claws, bottles and cans and boxes strung out through the rents like entrails dragged from carrion. Rusted autos, tireless, sat here and there, abandoned forts on some new frontier of civilization. Even in daytime, there were few pedestrians abroad. A sixtyish black couple walked past the boarded-up storefronts. The man, stout but muscular, wore a bright, lime-green leisure suit with a zebra-stripe shirt, and the woman, uncontrollably fat, wore a red pantsuit that circumnavigated her rolls like a second skin. The sartorial air of fiesta was belied by the pocked and pitted mine fields of their faces. Eyes were hollow, mouths drawn in flat, firm, and unyielding lines. The couple glanced at Jesse, Donna, and the baby, then looked quickly away, as though they expected the innocent white trio to transmute into apocalyptic beasts if gazed at for too long.

  Jesse's father's shop cupped a corner of a street, its windows facing west and south. The glass, which had before always been polished, now brooded dully under a layer of grime behind the security bars. An illegible scrawl of yellow spray-painted graffiti coated both bars and glass. The legend, "Gordon's Antiques," painted in the fifties on the inside of the glass, was completely hidden from view.

  Jesse fit the first of the three keys into the heavily paneled door. It took several minutes of turning the keys in different directions, but finally the door swung open. He fumbled for the light switch, flipped it on, and Donna followed him in with the baby. He closed the door behind them, locking the sturdiest latch.

  The interior of the store was cluttered but neat. The stock consisted primarily of furniture and bric-a-brac, each item bearing a card on which was written the price and a letter code beneath, telling what his father had paid for each item. "You should have seen this place twenty years ago," he told Donna. "It was loaded with treasures, not all this junk."

  In truth, the shop had ceased being profitable years before. But Jesse's father, in the days in which the neighborhood had had a certain gentility, had saved and invested wisely enough to run the business as little more than a hobby in his later years. Only, at the time of his death, instead of selling marble-topped tables and Louis Quinze settees, his inventory had been reduced to old television cabinets and overstuffed sofas, hulking, upholstered lumps that he bought for five dollars and sold for ten. The books and art still in stock were likewise negligible, mostly book club editions and forgotten bestsellers of the thirties and forties, worthless, though carefully dusted and free of mildew.

  The only remaining pieces of value were secured in a half-closet, half-safe, which had always stood fast against occasional burglars. It was on the second floor in a back room which was itself kept locked. As Jesse opened the door and stepped into the room, he remembered when its shelves had been filled with richly bound books, magnificently illustrated. But now those shelves were bare. He tried not to look at them as he picked out the key for the closet and slipped it into the lock.

  He was not disappointed by its contents. There were framed Icart etchings, some fine Parrish prints, and several original oils by the more obscure members of the Hudson River School which Jesse thought might be worth five figures each. For a moment he toyed with the idea of hiding them in the basement so the assessor would not see them, but then decided not to, whether out of morality or fear of being caught he was not sure. There were books as well, duplicates, he imagined, of those in the collection in his father's barricaded apartment. He slid a volume from the shelf and examined it, an early edition of Percy's Reliques rebound in leather. He remembered reading a popular edition of the work when he lived with his father and mother. As he glanced over the contents he recalled the titles more vividly, and felt a touch of the same chill that the ballads had inspired in him when he was eight—"The Bride's Burial,” “The Witches' Song,” “Admiral Hosier's Ghost," and "The Lunatic Lover."

  There was a bookmark further back, and he opened the volume to "The Lady Isabella's Tragedy," and let his eyes roam over the verses about a s
tepmother who caused her stepdaughter to be killed and baked into a pie for her unsuspecting husband.

  Thou art the doe that I must dresse;

  See here, behold my knife;

  For it is pointed presently

  To ridd thee of thy life. . . .

  For pitye's sake do not destroye. . .

  My ladye with your knife;

  You know shee is her father's joye,

  For Christe's sake save her life.

  Then came the slaying of the daughter, the making of the pie, the accusation of the kitchen boy, the burning to death and boiling in zinc of the treacherous stepmother and master-cook. Jesse began to think that perhaps New York was not the worst conceivable place in which to live.

  An unfamiliar sound jarred him from his reverie, a clattering from down below, and it took a second for him to realize that it was the crash of knuckles on glass, someone knocking at the front door.

  "Donna!" he cried, and ran out of the room, the book still in his hand. He pictured her innocently throwing the door open wide with one arm, the baby in the other, revealing the man who had killed his father, come back to claim the rest of his family. "Donna! Wait!" he called, dashing down the steps three at a time, feeling them wince under his weight. "Don't open it!"

  When he saw her standing beside a playpen she'd made from sofa cushions, he realized she had had no intention of opening the door without him being there. Jenny, clad in a bright green sleeper, was bouncing from side to side of her temporary confines, gurgling with amusement at the novelty of her surroundings.

  "I waited," said Donna, as if puzzled by Jesse's alarm. "It's probably just the assessor."

  Jesse went to the door. Through the murky glass he saw a hatless man in a trench coat. He was clean shaven and nearly bald, and a red-striped, regimental tie peeped from beneath his drawn-together lapels. His eyes were small and sharp, and narrowed when he noticed Jesse observing him. "Rhoads?" Jesse said through the door, stretching his mouth around the word. The man nodded, patted a briefcase at his side, and Jesse undid the latch.

  "Come on in," Jesse said. "Sorry to be so cautious."

  "Can't say I blame you," said Rhoads. "I wouldn't be so quick to open my door in this neighborhood either."

  Introductions were made, and Rhoads said that he preferred to start on the first floor. Within a few minutes, the short, balding man was quietly appraising, Jenny was sleeping, and Donna was looking through a pile of old National Geographic. Jesse slipped upstairs, locked the closet with its treasure of artwork and books, and put the key back into his pocket. He spent the rest of the afternoon helping Rhoads, pulling furniture out from dark corners so the man could see what lay behind.

  When they were halfway through the goods on the second floor, Rhoads stopped. He had been chain-smoking all day, and now looked at Jesse apologetically. "Out of smokes," he said, carefully extinguishing a Winston. "There a store around here?"

  "There's a bodega two blocks west. But it's getting dark. Want to knock off?"

  Rhoads shook his head. "I can finish in another hour. Took less time than I thought. Frankly, a lot of this stuff only has salvage value. Now the books and artwork in the closet I can only list. They'll have to be appraised separately later." He sighed. "But I'm not gonna get there without my smokes."

  "All right, look. You just keep going, and I'll go for the cigarettes."

  "Winstons. Two packs, huh?" Rhoads took out his wallet, but Jesse waved a hand.

  "On me," he said.

  "Thanks, but a man's got to pay for his own vices." Rhoads thrust three dollar bills in Jesse's hand.

  Jesse went downstairs, where Donna was napping on a fifteen dollar foam rubber couch. He shook her gently till she awoke. "'I've got to go get Rhoads some smokes. I'll lock up." She nodded sleepily and closed her eyes again.

  He stepped outside into the dusk. The street was quiet and empty, with only an occasional car passing. If the three of them walked to the subway with Rhoads, they would probably be all right. There was little profit in accosting three adults, or at least he hoped any prospective muggers would see it that way.

  Jesse turned the key in the top and strongest lock, and jiggled the door handle. Then he started down the street, squaring his shoulders and drawing himself up to try and look even bigger than his six feet two, 190 pounds.

  The bodega was still open, and he entered its painted-over door thankfully. He had seen no one on the street, but had felt watched for the entire two blocks. The interior of the store was stuffy, cluttered, and hot, and the overpowering scent of spices nearly staggered Jesse. Unsure if the proprietor, a thirtyish, whipcord-thin man with onyx hair, spoke English, Jesse held up two fingers and said, "Winstons. Two."

  The man, with an air of insouciance, turned and pulled a pair of the red packs from a plastic dispenser. "Anything else?"

  "No." Jesse handed him the three bills. "That's it."

  The man unlocked the heavy register and fitted the bills inside, then closed the drawer. He looked at Jesse, who was still standing in front of the counter. "Matches?"

  "Uh … change?"

  "Buck-fifty a pack," the man said, then smiled. Jesse looked at him a minute longer, then turned and walked out, wondering if the man ripped off his own people as well, or just whites.

  Through the rapidly growing darkness, the antique shop windows glowed with a dull yellow light as Jesse approached them, as though it were aged oilcloth rather than glass in the windows. He could make out nothing distinct within. He fitted his key into the lock and pushed. Suddenly the door swung inward far faster than his gentle shove could have caused it to, and he felt his right forearm grasped by a powerful hand that tugged him forward so that he lost his balance and fell heavily onto the floor. There was a roaring in his ears through which he heard the crash of the door closing like a scream through deep water. Then there was laughter, slow, cool, and methodical. Jesse Gordon looked up.

  There were six of them. They were Chicanos in their late teens or early twenties, and they were big, with none of the bantam size that Jesse had always associated with Latins. They wore no identifying gang colors, but Jesse received a dominating impression of leather and metal. "Welcome back, baby," a voice said, coated with a Spanish accent, and there was more laughter.

  "Thought you was never gonna leave," sneered another voice.

  Jesse got to his hands and knees and shook his throbbing head. He looked directly at the largest man, whose hair was oiled in a cock-fighting pompadour and who wore a thin wisp of moustache like an ancient scar. "What do you want?"

  "Everything," the man leered. "But first, money. You know?"

  "Where's my wife? Donna!" Jesse leaped to his feet and was grabbed immediately by three of the men. The leader, to whom Jesse had spoken, smoothly took a pistol from his jacket pocket and trained its black eye on Jesse's own.

  "Your wife's fine. Take a look." He gestured over his shoulder, and in the shadows of the strangers he could see Donna lying on an old davenport, her hands bound behind her, a dirty gag jammed in her mouth. Her eyes were wide with terror. "No harm done, man. Not yet."

  Jesse looked around frantically and saw Jennifer, still sleeping serenely in her jury-rigged crib. "Don't you hurt them," he snarled.

  "No way," the man with the gun said. "Not as long as you help us out."

  Then Jesse remembered Rhoads. "The man. The bald man. Where is he?"

  The leader jerked his head upward. "Upstairs."

  "Is he . . . did you hurt him?"

  "Don't know. I guess we hurt him. Chico." He turned to the boy at his right. "Bring that guy down. Let's see if we hurt him." The boy disappeared into the back, in the direction of the stairway. "Whyn't you sit down? Sit down by the lady, huh?" Jesse moved to the davenport and sat, touching Donna's head with his hand, smoothing back the hair from her sweating brow. "Sure is a pretty lady. Your wife, huh?" Jesse nodded. "And your kid." He nodded again. "Be a shame anything happen to them."

  "Just leave the
m alone. You take what you want, but you leave them alone."

  "All depends on you."

  Somewhere in the building there was a rhythmic thumping, as if something hollow were being struck over and over at regular intervals with a stick. Or a bone. Jesse looked around in confusion, but was unable to determine exactly what the thumping was. Then it stopped, and in its place came a swishing noise. The curtains to the back room parted, Chico appeared with a pair of feet and ankles jutting from beneath his arms like some monstrous growth, and Jesse realized that what he had heard was Rhoads's head striking each step as he was dragged down them.

  "There he is." The leader smiled. "You think we hurt him?"

  Jesse got up and ran over to the prostrate form. Rhoads's bald head looked like a cracked egg with an aborted bloody yoke seeping out. His eyes were opened so that only the whites showed. His mouth was also bloody, and his front teeth were cracked. Jesse listened for the sound of breathing, but it didn't come. "You killed him!" He reached for a pulse, found none.

  "A little accident. He wouldn't help us out. But you will, won'tcha?"

  Jesse's gut cramped. He knew beyond doubt that he and his family were in the hands of madmen who were capable of anything. His first response, barely contained, was to attack, to take as many down with him as he could before he died. But that, he knew, would do nothing for Donna and Jennifer, and they were the ones he had to think about, the ones who must not end up like Rhoads, poor dead Rhoads who had come with his box of sharpened pencils and legal pads to perform a sane act of toting up in a nest of insanity; oh God bless poor, foolish Rhoads, who was dead and could not be helped, and that was what he had to remember.

  "What do you want? I'll give you whatever you want."