On Monday, when Allen headed out on his morning commute, Darla went to the adjoining townhouse and tapped on the back door. A curtain parted, a bearded face frowned, and the door swung open. Even though they’d swapped keys, Wallace was peculiar about his privacy. Darla glanced at the neighboring balconies before entering.
The morning sun shone through the kitchen windows. The sink gleaming and spotless, the tiled floor an anchor of domesticity. She poured herself a cup of coffee.
“That’s bad for the baby,” Wallace said.
“I thought you didn’t care.”
“I never said that.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and added two teaspoons of sugar. They sat at the kitchen table. From her seat, Darla could see the computer screen in the living room, bright with the phosphor of Wallace’s work.
She would never have married a writer. The income was too unreliable, and they were too insufferably moody and self-absorbed. But they made perfect lovers. Home during the day, only too happy to have an excuse to escape the keyboard, clever with pleasing phrases during lovemaking.
Or was it love? What exactly had they been making these past two years? Besides babies, that was?
“You just want everybody to be happy,” she said. “Happy ever after. Damned Hollywood endings.”
Wallace’s dark eyes flashed briefly, and Darla felt a small thrill of triumph. Wallace was usually so cold and distant, rarely showing emotion outside of the bedroom. “You wanted it this way,” he said. “And I always promised to let this thing go the way you wanted.”
“But it’s your child. Doesn’t that mean a damned thing to you?”
He took a sip of coffee. “Not as long as my name’s not on the birth certificate.”
“You bastard.” She raised her coffee cup, about to dash the hot liquid at his face, but his smile stopped her.
He reached out and took her wrist, and lowered her cup to the table. He squeezed so hard that she was afraid he’d leave bruises. She didn’t want more mysterious marks to explain away.
“Look,” he said. “You want children. Your loving hubby does, too. I don’t.”
“He works hard, he’s good to me. Tender, gentle, and—”
“And boring as hell. What does an estate lawyer make these days? Two hundred grand? Three? Listen to yourself, sitting here selling your lover on your husband’s good qualities.”
His teeth were crooked, giving him a feral look. That aura about him—his wildness, that hint of danger—had attracted her, lured her into becoming chatty neighbors, then the chats led to the bedroom, and the bedroom led to Veronica. And now this new one.
Oh, she could have insisted on birth control, but she wanted a baby. She and Allen had been trying for three years. And the joy on Allen’s face when she told him she was pregnant that first time…
“I didn’t come over here to fight.”
“Sure. That’s the other thing you don’t get enough of at home.” Wallace let go of her wrist, his eyes daring her to splash the coffee.
She looked away. “I came to tell you about the rocking chair.”
“Rocking chair?”
“In the nursery. You know how I wanted it to be all new so we could forget about what happened to Veronica?”
“Don’t ever say that name again.”
“But she was yours.”
“No, dear. Possession is a voluntary state. Things belong to those that own them, and those that own them belong to the things.”
Damned writer. Always coming up with those deep, meaningless sayings. “The rocking chair was given to us by Allen’s grandmother. When Veronica—when she—died, the chair was rocking by itself. I saw it.”
Wallace leaned so far back in his chair that Darla thought he was going to tip over. Instead, he laughed. “A haunted chair?”
“It knew,” she said. “I swear, it knew that the baby wasn’t Allen’s, and it’s been in his family forever, and—”
Wallace laughed harder, even as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “A chair that came back from somebody else’s grave,” he said. “Sounds like something those assholes King or Koontz would write.”
Darla wiped her eyes, finally seeing an opening, an oozing wound where she could dig, the only weakness in the steel that encased Wallace. “If you could write half as well as those ‘hacks,’ I wouldn’t have to slip you Allen’s money to keep your rent paid.”
Wallace stood and knocked over his chair. He stormed into the living room, hunched over the computer, and clicked a couple of keys. “Fifty-seven pages,” he said. “Who gives a damn if I delete them?”
She hurried to him, put a hand on his shoulder, and pulled him around to face her. “I’m sorry, hon. You’re as good as those guys. You’ll make it someday, and Wallace Hatcher will take up three shelves in every bookstore.”
He patted her stomach. “Looks like I’m not the only Hatcher. That’s a pun, in case you didn’t get it, my dim-witted sex slave.”
“Bastard,” she said, kissing him. The odor of his Kenyan-coffee-and-cigarette breath inspired simultaneous queasiness and desire. The smell was all Wallace.
In his bed, after the second time, she stared at the ceiling as he rubbed her belly. “How does it really make you feel?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you writers always had a line handy.”
“I want you to be happy.”
“Cheap.”
“Okay, how about ‘I want you both to be happy.’ Is that noble enough?”
“Boy, you’re creepy.”
“As creepy as a haunted chair?” He took his hand away. “You know this will be the end, don’t you?”
“The end?”
“Of us. You’re going to feel guilty, then decide the only way you can redeem yourself is to dedicate your life to your family. No more sneaking over to play Boff-the-Bard.”
“No. I love you. I never asked you to love me back, but I can’t lie to myself.”
“Sure you can. You’re a born liar and you’re getting better with practice.”
Darla pushed him away, turned, and faced the wall, staring at his Hemingway poster. “Bastard.”
“A baby will definitely come between us. Just like after the first. You never came over. Until she…went away.”
“I thought you never wanted to talk about it again.”
“Oh, it’s a survival mechanism. Family planning, you might say. Because when sweetie goes away, starts devoting herself to changing diapers and visiting the pediatrician and having hubby’s supper on the table when he walks through the door, well, the money will go away soon after. You won’t need a kept man because you’ll be busy keeping the one you married.”
“Wallace Hatcher, you’re a real son of a bitch.”
“Because I know you far too well.”
“Oh, God.” Darla froze, tensed. She took his hand from her breast and put it on her stomach. “Do you feel that?”
“No.”
The twitch came again, but harder this time. The real thing, not Braxton-Hicks. She rolled out of bed, and then bent with effort to retrieve her clothes from the floor. “I’d better call Allen.”
Susannah Hart Benson came home that Friday. Everybody at the hospital said she had her father’s eyes. Allen’s grandma said the child was Benson through and through, and then she embarked on a recitation of Benson genealogy, from her own mother Veronica, back through the twins Hannah and Susannah, then to Luke, Mark, and a host of other Biblical names.
Of course, Darla had let Allen pick the child’s name. It was only natural he’d choose one of the family favorites. Rocking chairs, names, money, everything had to be Benson in his family.
“Oh, Susannah, don’t you cry for me,” Allen sang in off-key giddiness, as Darla leaned over the changing table and checked her daughter’s diaper.
Wallace had come over for the occasion “to help the new member of the family get settled,” he’d said when Allen answered the door. Grandma Benson
was there too, just as she’d been on hand to help when Veronica came home. Grandma stood by the rocking chair.
“Been a long time,” Grandma said. “But, finally, it’s seven generations of Bensons for this old rocking chair.”
“No, it’s not,” Wallace said. “Not officially. Darla hasn’t sat in it with her yet.”
Darla shot him as harsh a look as she dared. Allen was also staring at Wallace. Allen rarely mentioned their neighbor, considering him a deadbeat who could use a trip to the barber. But now he seemed pleased to have an ally.
“Why not?” Allen said. “Come on, honey.”
Allen rolled his eyes toward Grandma as if to say to Darla, this will make her happy, and then we can put away the chair like you wanted.
Darla backed away, clutching the baby to her chest. She could feel the milk leaking from her nipples, and wondered if the stains showed. “Not right now, I’m feeling a little…a little dizzy.”
Allen came to her and took her elbow to give support. Grandma said, “All the more reason to sit down for a spell.”
Then to Allen, Grandma said, “I can remember the hours and hours I spent rocking your dear Momma, God rest her soul. Got troubles, rock them away, I say.”
“Rock them away, Darla,” Wallace said gleefully. “Welcome that child into the Benson family.”
They were blocking Darla’s path to the door, all of them smiling, and Darla hugged the baby tighter. What could she do? Tell them all that the chair was going to get her, was going to take the baby away, was Benson through and through? That the chair was going to chew her up with its wooden teeth, then swallow her and the child, and spit only one of them back into the land of the living?
Allen’s eyebrows arched in concern. “Honey, you really do look flushed. Just sit down for a minute. Please.”
He tried to take the baby but she turned away. Their eyes, their smiles, they all knew. They were closing in, backing her toward the rocking chair, and into the ancient cherry that had mingled with and absorbed so much of that Benson flesh over the years.
Now she really did feel faint. Just before her legs collapsed, she sat.
She tried to scream, but the wind died in her lungs. The baby squirmed between her breasts, sensing mother’s panic. Grandma stood over them, breath smelling of denture paste. Wallace folded his arms, victorious in this latest cruel game.
Allen knelt beside Darla, feeling her forehead. “Maybe we should get you back to the doctor.”
“No, I’m fine,” she said.
And she was. Because nothing had happened. The chair was only wood; old cherry, nicked, pocked, and rubbed smooth by a hundred Bensons. Not a monster. Only a chair.
She looked up at the “family” gathered around her and then kissed Susannah’s forehead. She leaned slowly forward, then rested back, pushed again, and gathered momentum. Grandma clasped her shriveled hands together, her eyes misted by tears and cataracts.
The chair’s runners squeaked the Benson name as Darla laughed at her foolish delusions. Allen beamed like a proud papa, seeing her evident relief. Everything would be okay. Wallace was still a jerk, but this would work out. Susannah would be a Benson, Darla would have her family and her lover, Grandma would have her descendant, and Allen could keep his goddamned chair that was nothing but wood and scars.
Allen was in the middle of an estate war and couldn’t take time off from work. Grandma stayed on for a few days. Grandma had stayed with Veronica, too. Up until the end.
Darla wanted the baby to sleep in the bed with her and Allen, but Allen said that was too dangerous. A baby could get smothered, a sleeping parent could crush her little lungs, a pillow could fall over her face. Too many things could go wrong. Better to let her sleep in her own bed. That’s why they’d bought the cradle, after all.
They kept the cradle in the bedroom the first four nights, but Darla had awakened every twenty minutes to check on Susannah. Allen made her move the cradle into the nursery because she was so exhausted she could hardly feed the baby. As helpful as Grandma was, she couldn’t provide breast milk. So Susannah ended up in the nursery where the rocking chair waited under the window.
The day Allen started back to work, Darla settled down for a nap on the sofa. She’d left Grandma in the nursery with the baby, the old woman rocking in the Benson chair and singing “Bye Baby Bunting.” Darla felt as if she’d hardly closed her eyes when a hand tugged her shoulder.
She looked up into Wallace’s face.
“You’re not supposed to let yourself into the house,” Darla said, bleary. “What if Allen were home?”
“I saw hubby dearest drive away.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Long enough. I’m getting lonely.”
“Be patient. The doctor told me four weeks. You don’t want to tear my episiotomy stitches, do you? How would I explain that to Allen?”
“Tell him you cut yourself shaving.”
“You’re still a bastard, aren’t you?”
“Just the way you like me. Is the old bat still here, hell’s answer to Mother Theresa?”
Darla smiled. “She can’t keep her hands off the baby. Her first great-grandchild.”
“Not her first.”
“The other one didn’t count.”
“If she only knew—”
“She’d probably claw your eyeballs out. Now get out of here before she sees you.” Darla gave Wallace a peck on the cheek. He grabbed her chin and kissed her hard, sliding his tongue in her mouth as she tried to wriggle away.
“Hey, I’m a happily married woman,” she whispered when the kiss ended.
They heard a noise behind them. Darla turned. “Guh…Grandma?”
Darla waved Wallace away. He sauntered through the kitchen toward the back door. She pulled her nightgown closed and hurried down the hall. She heard a door close.
Oh, God, Allen hadn’t come home, had he?
She took the stairs, out of breath by the time she reached the top. She glanced out the window. The drive was empty. She gasped in relief and headed for the nursery.
“Grandma?”
Darla could tell something was wrong before she even entered the room.
She didn’t even have to look in the cradle to know. It was too perfectly still to hold any life. The cradle was dead silent, hushed, quiet as a coffin.
The air in the room was heavy as grave dirt. The world shrank, condensed to a series of broken senses: sunlight streaming through the window, Grandma answering in a concerned voice from down the hall, shivers drawing her skin tight, Wallace’s kiss drying on her lips.
But it was the room’s smell that made her scream. The smell of Kenyan coffee and cigarettes.
The empty rocking chair wobbled back and forth. Its runners whispered a family name, a name that owned the chair, a name that the chair possessed.
Except this time the rockers whispered “Hat-cher, Hat-cher, Hat-cher.”
The End
Missing Pieces Table of Contents
Master Table of Contents
###
SILVER RUN
By Scott Nicholson
Silver Run #19 ain’t much in the daytime. A little longer than a football field, it’s about three miles from Cairo, West Virginia. Now, I don’t rightly know what a “football field” is, but that’s what I hear folks say when they lead tours through the tunnel. Walking tours, as if the rail’s not good enough for them. O’ course, they went and took up the rails some years back, hear they made this into some sort of state park. No appreciation for the Iron Horse, these modern folk.
I don’t get out much, so I don’t know the ways of the world, and I ain’t got a lick of sense for time. Some days it seems I just opened my eyes after the train snipped me in half, when I looked toward the east mouth of the tunnel and saw a couple bits of myself being drug off by the undercarriage of the caboose, dribbling red everywhere. Other days it seems like I been here since the world was born, before these Appalachian hills rose
up from the belly of the Earth and then settled down to the long, slow business of erosion. But maybe all days are the same anyway, when you get down to it.
I used to think so. And then she came along.
Pretty little thing, dressed up in her evening gown. You can see right through it, and if I wasn’t old enough to nearly be her grandpap, I’d probably look more often. But you can see right through her as well, so I reckon there’s nothing ungentlemanly in letting my eyes linger now and then. Even dead, a man’s still a man.
She happened during one of the wars, I reckon. The wars all got mixed up for me because all I remember is the real one, when the Yanks and Rebs went at it and Virginia got split up by Lincoln. I stayed out of that one, I was out in Missouri territory at the time, where the rail was just starting to catch on, and Chinamen and Irish were dying by the dozens laying steel and spiking ties. I came back when the B&O line was booming, working the firebox and generally trying not to get tied down with women, card debts, and such because I figured on heading to the Pacific Coast eventually. And I stayed clear of the women just fine until this latest one.
Well, I didn’t really choose her like you might do a wife. And her gown ain’t rightly a wedding dress, neither. For one thing, it’s not white. It’s sort of green like the leaves of a chestnut tree in April. At least when it has color. In the tunnel, color comes and goes, at least to folks like me and her.
That’s a little peculiar, but you get used to it after awhile. And—
Tarnation. Here she comes now, so I reckon I’d best see what she wants.
“Have you seen my head?” she asks.
It’s in ghost words, ‘cause her lips don’t move but her voice is in my ears. Maybe that’s why normal folk, them still alive, never hear us when they walk through the tunnel. Some of them shiver and hoof it just a little faster, some look around at the slick masonry walls like they expect some secret message to be wrote in the slime.
“I done told you a thousand times, your head’s on top of your shoulders where it belongs.” She has a fine set of shoulders, smooth as rounded marble and the color of cream skimmed right off the top of the butter churn. Her head ain’t no less a marvel, with her hair swooped up in a fancy bundle that only ladies in companion houses wore back in my day. During her time, though, it might have passed for normal ladylike dress-up.
Mad Stacks: Story Collection Box Set Page 29