Just North of Nowhere

by Lawrence Santoro

  That's all HE knew of the Land of Death! It was filling up.

  “No!” Clem said to Clown. “Not yet.”

  And the rain kept sweeping down.

  Chapter 19

  THE HEART OF MR. CLAY

  As always, the killer was early. He backed the rental into the trees across the county blacktop from the entrance to the abandoned drive-in. The branches closed around the windshield. He still had a view. Above the gate, the marquee sagged. He read:

  Close for the Sea

  Rea ?

  Free in’!

  “Some poetry lasts forever,” he said to the car.

  The bluffs at his back, deep forest right and left, shadows everywhere. Being surrounded felt comfortable. In a minute, he got used to it. Another minute and he almost trusted it. Sunset was less than an hour away, a half an hour before the meet.

  Twenty-five minutes passed. Three cars passed. The sky became dark blue. The trees on the ridge beyond the drive-in were black saw teeth at the bottom of the evening sky. No one came and the sky got darker. He never saw that shade of blue in the city, that kind of sky. If he’d cared, he'd have liked it.

  He focused on the guy who wasn't there. The client, not the hotbody, the ‘customer.’ For now the consumer was just a name. No voice, no face. The consumer was Reb. For now, the killer's name was Mr. Clay. The name was a whim.

  The business was as usual. Someone needed to be dead. Someone else needed that death. He needed it so much that he began to think that making it happen might be possible. That thought had become a pain and the pain became an action. Someone became a consumer. Then Mr. White, or Mr. Todd, or Mr. Clay headed north from the city. His service was not hard to find.

  The consumer’s name was Reb.

  Rebel? May be? If Rebel, then, country. Likely. Mr. Clay looked into the deep woods that had his back and flanks. He checked the blacktop road that connected here to everywhere else. Nothing. He let the imagined Reb gather more detail. Reb would be thick necked, bearded, his eyes would be rimmed with fat. His breath would heave under his voice, come out of flannel and denim. He’d have a smell of armpit, gasoline, and beer belches. Gut wrapped him like suet. Macho tough oozed from him like sweat.

  He looked at the Reb he'd built.

  A cliché. Cliché’s were dangerous. They’d get you dead in the world Mr. Clay walked. They stopped thought. The other side was, most people lived in a world fleshed with cliché wrapped on bones of the probable. Of course most people weren’t consumers.

  He erased his Reb and let the consumer remain a blank.

  He leaned over and unlocked the glove box. His SOB holster held the hammerless S&W 442 where he had put it that morning. He removed it, checked the moon clip. A full five. Yes. He re-holstered the weapon and slipped it into the small of his back. He settled. The thing warmed to his touch.

  Another minute. The sky was darker blue. Reb was now…

  Clay checked his watch.

  …Late. Mr. Clay tingled. Lateness was one hate he allowed. There were a few. Hate needed to be meted-out with care. Hate gave birth to danger. He didn't hate the dead he'd made. He didn’t hate the ones who hired him. Police were irrelevant. He didn't hate them. He didn't hate evil. He didn't hate goodness. He hated waiting. Waiting was chaos. He feared chaos. Above all things he hated fear.

  The squeak of a bicycle preceded the cyclist. Clay tingled again. The rider rounded the bend, pressing up the shallow hill from the town, Bluffton, two thousand yards from this spot. When he saw the rider, Mr. Clay almost smiled.

  The Reb pedaled slower. When he drew opposite the drive-in entrance, he put a foot to the road and looked every way but the right one. Reb was tall and dead thin, not very old, but he breathed heavily. He wore brown gabardine slacks. His white dress shirt was buttoned to the throat. No tie. A soft gray fedora rested on his ears. The man fumbled a key ring, then unlocked a small door let into the car gate of the drive-in. Before entering, he looked up and down the road, again he missed Mr. Clay and his vehicle.

  Reb! Good one. Mr. Clay smiled completely. He gave the empty road another minute. The smile drained from his eyes. He gave his client another two and a half minutes to get jumpy, then he got moving. Such temptation. He wanted to ignore caution, go directly to him and ask, “who do you want dead, rabbi?”

  No. First Principles. And the first of the First Principles was: Ignore no principle. He made an ice pick of the precept and drove it into his heart. Get sloppy, get splashed, he recited to himself. It was the way he’d first heard that First Principle. That commandment why he’d survived Falujah, the Cote d’Ivoire, Jalalabad and an uncounted number of dim bars, dark alleys and parking garages. He’d lived a lot of years after a lot of good people hadn’t. He took an even wider oblique than usual through the trees, rounding the bend in the road toward town. Once around the curve, he crossed the blacktop and climbed to the break in the fence he’d reconnoitered before he’d parked.

  The world inside was large, open. The shaggy cedar posts enclosed four city blocks of frost-heaved macadam and knee-high weed. Mr. Clay did not like large or open. People were comfortable in the open. Their disadvantage. The screen backed onto the trees and river at the far end of the space. It had sagged. Another winter, it’d be down. One peeling panel hung at an angle. The internal framework, a sagging web of probably rotted wood and rusted wire stays, was open to the failing light. Graffiti covered the screen to a high-water mark, a teen’s arm-reach above the ground. It was not the rococo tagging of the city, this was moon-barking: who loved whom, who bites dick, what class ruled. Next heavy snow would drop the whole thing, he guessed. Except for the screen, the stumps of speaker poles, and the ruin of the projection booth/concession stand, the place was open to the near night sky.

  The Reb stood by his bike. He faced the entrance. Clay didn't have to work at approaching quietly. Stealth was as natural as his heartbeat and the Reb’s neck and chin were in the crook of the killer’s arm, the fedora shoved over the man’s eyes. Happened like/that.

  “Once you see me,” Clay said to the Reb’s ear, “things start. They start, you don't stop them. Understand? Nod if you do.”

  “I can’t.

  “I’ll feel your intent.” Clay felt the nod.

  “I want you to know where you're going. Do you know what you're starting?”

  Reb nodded.

  “You don't stop it. You can't stop it. You won't stop me. You understand? You can talk.” He relaxed the pressure on the man’s throat. Just enough.

  “Yes,” Reb said. “I understand. Believe me, I understand that.” His voice was thin, little air under it.

  Clay eased. “After you turn around, somebody will die.”

  “Well,” Reb said.

  “Do you want to turn around?”

  Reb nodded.

  Clay released Reb and stepped back. He kept his hand ready to reach for the small of his back. The cool weight rested there.

  For a moment the man did not move. He stared at the screen, or beyond the screen toward the line of bluffs, black across the river. He shook his head. “This is so foolish,” he said.

  Clay waited. This was the consumer's turn.

  “Hubris,” the client said. He sighed.

  Clay waited.

  “Tell me something. What do I call you by the way...?”

  “Mr. Clay.”

  There was a moment. “Can you tell me, Mr. Clay? You're an expert on death? Can you tell me: Can something be killed that never lived?”

  “Rabbi, I kill people. That doesn't make me an expert on life or death. You want this death? You're the expert on this death. You tell me, Reb, can I kill this someone who never lived?”

  The man turned. His eyes were large. Clay did not think they were large from panic. The face bones were fine, orbital ridges, well defined, skin, tight, covered in sweat. The tight skin pulled the wide circles of his eyes into round dark holes in his face. The eye’s darkness was from lack of sleep. He'd seen that befor
e, on clients or on still-warm corpses. Reb's cheekbones were high and delicate. They'd break with a tap. The lips were full, they would split with a tap. His beard was thin, uncultivated, it fell below the top button of his shirt. His nose was arched, slender. It would break with a tap. Reb was 30, 33.

  “Can you kill this thing? I hope. I honestly don't know, Mr. Clay. I could, that I know, but I haven't the will. Whether you can or not? It's kind of an academic question, Mr. Clay.”

  Last light drained from the sky and the air chilled. A damp breeze blew across the broken ground from the river. The trees sighed, the dry prairie grasses that had pushed through the broken macadam made a sweeping whisper. The loose panel on the sagging screen creaked.

  The rabbi couldn’t see the killer’s smile. “This is a ghost story, isn’t it, rabbi? A winter’s tale?”

  The rabbi said nothing. Then, “No, he’s – it’s – not a ghost.”

  “Reb, I’m here to bring death. If this is something less serious than that, I will make it that serious. Do you understand me? I will bring death.”

  The voice was thin, airless again. “Yes.”

  “A man, then.”

  “A man? Something. It's coming. It comes every night. It wants. It wants something from me. We have a few minutes, Mr. Clay.” Reb said. “This was so foolish.”

  “You've said.”

  “A bet.”

  “Much of my business begins with a bet.”

  “Oh that's not what I mean.” Silence. “This isn't about money. There were no stakes. Well. A bottle of wine. Nothing important. It's just…” Another silence. “It's that I won the bet and being right, in this case, was wrong. Very wrong. If I had lost, you wouldn't be here. We'd all be happy.”

  Mr. Clay had an urge. He wanted to shift his weight, adjust himself. He didn't. Part of the image and another First Principle: In place, stay till there’s a reason to move and a place to go.

  The rabbi spread his arms. The move nudged Clay’s spine. His legs, arms, brain readied. “This is mine,” the rabbi said. “You believe that? My family. They build a drive-in theater here. North of nowhere. Summer? Spring? They’re four days long here.” He dropped his arms. “I’m my family, now. Town rabbi; the only Jew a dozen miles in any direction. My father had the place from his father. Now I have it and now it's closed. Who needs drive-ins, here? Anywhere, right?”

  Clay said nothing.

  “I could have torn it down, put up some nice homes. Made a profit.” He shrugged. Mr. Clay tingled and relaxed again as the rabbi turned and pointed toward the town. “I could have drained the marsh at the confluence, there,” he pointed with his chin. Mr. Clay didn’t move. “I could have made a park, a community. Made something nice.” Another silence. “No, I become a tzaddik. A rebbe,” he explained to Clay. “Then I come back here where I have no people.” He made a gun of his right hand and pointed it at his head. “Meshugena, you know? Nuts. But me? I don't want to be in business. I want a life of the mind and so I become a rebbe with no one to lead, no community to teach. No friends.”

  “The customer is on his way you said?”

  “I believe. It’s why I’m talking, now.”

  “Coming here?”

  “It's our usual place.”

  “You need to tell me...”

  “Sorry. I am. I am telling. I just can't believe it. Okay. Father Inques... The priest and I. We golf. We fish. We trade Gods. Swap Old Testament for New. Roman mysteries and Jewish mysticism. Christ and Kabala.”

  Beyond the screen, high branches shivered against the first stars. Leaves chattered, broke. A scream echoed down the river valley, as though a child died there. Another something thrashed for a half-minute.

  The Reb jumped at the sound. His bike fell with a metallic crash. “Fox and Rabbit,” he explained to himself. “Wouldn't think a rabbit would scream like that, dying, would you? It does.”

  The sudden wind chilled Mr. Clay's temple. He flipped the fallen bike with his toe, caught and tipped it back to Reb. “A priest then?” he said.

  “What? No. Lord no! Joe, the priest? He’s my friend. No, please.”

  Mr. Clay smiled inside. Much business was friend to friend.

  “I'm a proud man, Mr. Clay. It's probably best I have no congregation. Best, the practice of my profession is limited to a briss now and then, a wedding, sanctifying the slaughter of meat. Kosher mechanics, you know?”

  Another silence.

  “Okay. I made a man, Mr. Clay.”

  The killer remained quiet. He knew this consumer would tell it all. More than all. This consumer was beginning to annoy.

  “A bet with Joe Inquist, Father Inquist. See? Catholics have Christ, the saints, a hell of a lot of them. Catholics pray to them for protection. Quite a few listen. Joe’s God listens because that God? He’s about life after death. He listens then all he ever says is, be patient, there’s better coming.

  “So we were talking. Wine and cigar talk, you know? I mention the Jews. We Jews have our golem. That’s our protection. Here and now. Joe laughed. ‘Our savior. A golem?!’ A golem's an artificial man, by the way. It’s a notion. He’s a thing animated by the name of God. A protector. I guess he is our savior. I said our savior is about now, salvation for us is about making it to tomorrow. We make this savior from the mud of the earth with our deeds. We bring him to life through scholarship, thought, action.

  “So, Joe says, ‘well and good, but, all due respect and this creature hasn't done you many favors lately.’ He says pogroms, Hitler, terrorists. ‘What does it matter,’ he says, ‘study, ritual cleansing, preparations, the care of numbers. What good is your fairy tale and millions are dead and more dying!’

  “’Fairy tale!’ I said.”

  “Rabbi.” Clay’s voice was hard in the darkness.

  There was another silence.

  “'Fairy tale,’ I said, ‘huh? I'll show you,' I said. See? It was all irony. A joke. That was some time ago. And then, I did it.”

  Something creaked. Not far. The sharp edge of it sent a bolt up the killer’s backbone. His hand wanted the revolver in the small of his back. His eye wanted the target, the customer. He fought the impulse, kept his eyes on the Reb.

  The rebbe’s mouth moved without a sound. “That may be he, she,” he whispered a second later. “It,” he amended.

  Clay steadied the Reb by his shoulder. He turned. There was nothing in the darkness yet something was. Another First Principle: When it’s time to go, be there already.

  They went. He steered the Reb by his shoulder. Clay moved surely. His feet found the level despite broken asphalt, weed and gathering river mist. The Reb stumbled but Mr. Clay steered, kept him vertical. They moved quickly and were halfway to the screen when the rabbi’s bike hit asphalt. Then they were there and the screen had their back. Mr. Clay smelled rotten wood. The Reb had pissed himself. He smelled that. Then a new smell made an entrance. The new smell was sewerage, old vegetation and more. It came from the fence, the woods behind? He didn’t know. He didn’t like not knowing. With it was a rustling of leaves, a wind through rushes, a cold sweep across the lot. The rush in the air picked up old dust and plastic bags. It shook the trash that had gathered and been dumped there. The weeds crackled and Mr. Clay saw childhood. The boy played where buildings once were. The open space they all called the Field. Several blocks of city gone to ruin, bulldozed. Waiting. It was theirs. His. Tenements had become holes in brick-scaled dirt. Like shell holes. He and the others played on the shores and bluffs around the tiny lakes that filled the basements holes. Around heaving blocks of concrete, they played war, space, old west. Trash remained and more gathered. Dead things rotted. He and the others watched them as they vanished. They did in just a few days. Flesh, maggots, bone, gone. Dogs, cats, rats, birds. Dead smells mixed. And mixed among the small carcasses, the leftovers of human lives. Beds, pictures, chairs, plates, frames, dolls, clothes, spoons, toys were left, not needed. They mixed slowly with muck and bones. Their smells mixed. The smel
l of the place came to him, now, and what a wonder of a place to play in it was when he was what? Seven, eight. A wheel of the Reb’s bicycle turned. Mr. Clay was back to the here, with the Reb and now. He blinked himself back. An act of will.

  “It’s here,” the Reb said. The Reb did not point. He pressed his face to the wood of the screen.

  “You have been a bad boy, Rabbi.”

  The Reb said nothing.

  “This can be killed, you say? You can kill this? How can it be killed? How would you kill it?”

  “Reach in. Remove the name of God.”

  “And I can do that?”

  The Reb said nothing.

  Mr. Clay took a breath. The smell. It wanted to draw him back. He clamped a fist on the memories and squeezed them. Still, they squirmed, twitched, they flickered trying to ooze in elsewhere. Faces, remembered names, music. He felt…

  He smashed his fist into the base of the screen. The skin on his knuckles broke as the soggy wood shattered. The structure vibrated. Mr. Clay was back and the Reb was panting. Mr. Clay stepped away from the screen and looked across the lot.

  There was a thing, like a man but not. The thing was a man’s height and width but moved like something else. It moved light, like tumbleweed, half floating, bouncing with the breeze. The smell, yes, came from the thing.

  Forget that ‘thing’ business, thought Mr. Clay, there is the customer. It is alive. It can be dead. The .38 was in his hand. Small, light, simple. For close work. “Reach in, pull out the name of God,” Mr. Clay said.

  Night was complete now. The two approached one another. A damp mist covered the ground. From the river, Mr. Clay’s memory again. He came to the river on hot nights in the city where he’d lived… He shook off the memory. …when he was a kid. Cooling off. The morning snakes of mist raised heads from the gray river, and the water cooled the air like… He wiped his eyes. Focused.

  The customer was less than a meter from him. It was still. A gentle wind, a cool wind, stirred parts of it. The parts ruffled like wind shadows in a field of wheat. Its arms were at its side, its weight rested on its right leg. Its head was cocked. Mr. Clay could see no eyes but the customer looked at him. Into him. Into his eyes. Down into him. He knew that. He knows I’m here to kill, thought Mr. Clay. He wants it.