“I hope so, too,” she responded, sounding genuinely touched, with the oddly pleasing guilt felt when, sunk deep in self pity, you find a fellow sufferer.
They rode in near silence for the next few minutes, a silence broken only by the occasional crackle from the CB and a report of this or that or two jerks talking away at each other when they could just as easily have used a telephone and kept the world out.
Finally he said, “I guess from what you say that your marriage didn’t work out either.”
“Yeah, you could say that. He was an Air Force sergeant at Lackland. A drill instructor in basic. We met in a bar and got drunk on the town. He was older and a very lonely man, and, well, you know what I was going through. We just kinda fell into it. He was a pretty rough character, and after all the early fun had worn off and we’d settled down, he’d come home at night and take all his frustrations out on me. It really got to him, after a while, that I was smarter and better educated than he was. He had some inferiority complex. He was hell on his recruits, too but they got away from him after eight weeks or so. I had him for years. After a while he got transferred up to Reese in Lubbock, but he hated that job and he hated the cold weather and the dust and wind, and that just made it all the worse. Me, I had it really bad there, too, since what few friends I had were all in San Antonio.”
“I’d have taken a hike long before,” he commented. “Divorce ain’t all that bad. Ask my ex.”
“Well, it’s easy to see that now. But I had some money for the first time, and a house, and a real sense of something permanent, even if it was lousy. I know it’s kind of hard to understand it’s hard to explain. I guess you just had to be me. I figured maybe kids would mellow him out and give me a new direction but after two miscarriages, the second one damn near killing me, the doctors told me I should never have kids. Probably couldn’t, but definitely shouldn’t. That just made him meaner and sent me down the tubes. Booze, pot, pills you name it, I swallowed it or smoked it or sniffed it. And one day it was my thirtieth birthday I looked at myself in the mirror, saw somebody a shot to hell forty five looking back at me, picked up what I could use most and carry easy, cashed a check for half our joint account, and took a bus south to think things out. I’ve been walking ever since and I still haven’t been out of the goddamned state of Texas. I waited tables, swept floors, never stayed long in one spot. Hell, I’ve sold my body for a plate of eggs. Done everything possible to keep from thinking, looking ahead, worrying. I burned out. I’ve had it.”
He thought about it for a moment, and then it came to him.
“But you jumped out of that fella’s car.”
She nodded wearily. “Yeah, I did. I don’t even know why, exactly. Or maybe, yes, I do, too. It was an all of a sudden kind of thing, sort of like when I turned thirty and looked in the mirror. There wasn’t any mirror, really, but back there in that car I still kind of looked at myself and was, well, scared, frightened, maybe even revolted at what I saw staring back.
Something just sorta said to me, ‘If this is the rest of your life, then why bother to be alive at all?’“
He thought, but could find little else to say right then. What was the right thing to say to somebody like this, anyway?
Flecks of rain struck his windshield, and he flipped on the wipers, the sound adding an eerie, hypnotic background to the sudden roar of a midsummer thunderstorm on a truck cab.
Peering out, he thought for a moment he saw two Interstate roadways an impossible sort of fork he knew just couldn’t be there. He kicked on the brights and the fog lights, and the image seemed to resolve itself a bit, the right hand one looking more solid. He decided that keeping to the white stripe down the side of the road separating road and shoulder was the safest course.
At the illusory intersection, there seemed for a moment to be two trucks, one coming out of the other, going right, while the other, its ghostly twin, went left. The image of the second truck, apparently passing his and vanishing quickly in the distance to his left, startled him for a moment. He could have sworn there wasn’t anything behind him for a couple of miles, and the CB was totally silent.
The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and things took on a more normal appearance in minutes. He glanced over at the woman and saw that she was asleep best thing for her, he decided. Ahead loomed a green exit sign, and, still a little unnerved, he badly wanted to get his bearings.
The sign said, “Ruddygore, 5 miles.”
That didn’t help him much. Ruddygore? Where in hell was that? The next exit should be Sheffield. A mile marker approached, and he decided to check things out.
The little green number said, “4.”
He frowned again, beginning to become a little unglued.
Four? That couldn’t be right. Not if he was still on I 10.
Uneasily, he began to think of that split back there. Maybe it was a split that other truck had seemed to curve off to the left when he went right. If so, he was on some cockeyed interstate spur to God knew where.
God knew, indeed. As far as he knew or could remember, there were no exits, let alone splits, between Ozona and Sheffield.
He flicked on his interior light and looked down at his road atlas, held open by clips to the west Texas map. According to it, he was right and no sign of any Ruddygore. He sighed and snapped off the light. Well, the thing was wrong in a hundred places, anyway. Luckily he was still ahead of schedule, so a five mile detour shouldn’t be much of a problem. He glanced over to his left again for no particular reason. Funny.
The landscaping made it look as if there weren’t any lane going back.
A small interstate highway marker, the usual red, white, and blue was between mile markers 3 and 2, but it told him nothing. It didn’t even make sense. He was probably just a little crazy tonight, or his eyes were going, but it looked for all the world as if it said: ∞? What the hell was that? Somebody in the highway department must have goofed good there, stenciling an 8 on its side.
At the 2, another green sign announced Ruddygore, and there was also a brown sign, like the kind used for parks and monuments. It said, “Ferry Turn Left at Stop Sign.”
Now he knew he had gone suddenly mad. Not just that he knew that I 8 went from Tucson to San Diego and nowhere near Texas, but a ferry? In the middle of the west Texas desert?
He backed down to slow very slow and turned to his passenger. “Hey, little lady. Wake up!”
She didn’t stir, and finally he reached over and shook her, repeating his words.
She moved and squirmed and managed to open her eyes.
“Urn. Sorry. So tired. .What’s the matter? We in El Paso?”
He shook his head. “No. I think I’ve gone absolutely nuts.
Somehow in the storm we took an exit that wasn’t supposed to be there and we’re headed for a town called Ruddygore.
Ever heard of it?”
She shook her head sleepily from side to side. “Nope. But that doesn’t mean anything. Why? We lost?”
“Lost ain’t the word,” he mumbled. “Look, I don’t want to scare you or anything, but I think I’m going nuts. You ever hear of a ferryboat around here?”
She looked at him as if he had suddenly sprouted feathers.
“A what? Over what?’ He nodded nervously and gestured toward the windshield.
“Well, then, you read me that big sign.”
She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and looked. “Ruddygore exit one mile,” she mumbled.
“And the little brown sign?”
“Ferry,” she read, suddenly awake and looking very confused. “And an arrow.” She turned and faced him. “How long was I asleep?”
“Five, maybe ten minutes,” he answered truthfully. “You can still see the rain on the windshield where the wipers don’t reach.”
She shook her head in wonder. “It must be across the Pecos.
But the Pecos isn’t much around here.”
“Yeah,” he replied and felt for his revolver.
/>
The interstate road went right into the exit, allowing no choice. There was a slight downgrade to a standard stop sign and a set of small signs. To the left, they said, were Ruddygore and the impossible ferry. To the right was Oblivion.
“I never heard of any town named Oblivion, either,” he muttered, “but it sounds right for these parts. Still, all the signs said only Ruddygore, so that’s got to be the bigger and closer place. Any place they build an interstate spur to at a few million bucks a mile has to have something open even this time of night. Besides,” he added, “I’m damned curious to see that ferry in the middle of the desert.”
He put on his signals, then made the turn onto a modest two lane road. He passed under the highway and noted glumly that there wasn’t any apparent way of getting back on. Well, he told himself, he’d find it later.
Up ahead in the distance he saw, not the town lights he’d expected, but an odd, circular, lighted area. It was particularly unusual in that it looked something like the kind of throw a huge spotlight, pointed straight down, might give but there were no signs of lights anywhere. Fingering the pistol, he proceeded on, knowing that the road was leading him to that lighted area.
And it was bright when he reached it, although no source was apparent. The road, too, seemed to vanish into it, and the entire surface appeared as smooth as glass. Damnedest thing he’d ever seen, maybe a thousand yards across. He stopped at the edge of it, and both he and the woman strained to see where the light was coming from, but the sky remained black blacker than usual, since the reflected glow blotted out all but the brightest stars.
“Now, what the hell... ?” he mused aloud.
“Hey! Look! Up ahead there, almost in the middle. Isn’t that a man?” She pointed through the windshield.
He squinted and nodded. “Yeah. Sure looks like somebody.
I don’t like this, though. Not at all. There’s some very funny game being played here.” Again he reached in and felt the comfort of the .38 in his pocket. He put the truck back in gear and moved slowly forward, one eye on the strange figure ahead and the other warily on the woman, whom he no longer trusted.
It was a great sob story, but this craziness had started only after she came aboard.
He drove straight for the lone figure standing there in the center of the lighted area at about five miles per hour, applying the hissing air brakes when he was almost on top of the stranger and could see him clearly.
The woman gasped. “He looks like a vampire Santa Claus!”
Her nervous surprise seemed genuine. Certainly her description of the man who stood looking back at them fitted him perfectly. Very tall six five or better, he guessed and very large. “Portly” would be too kind a word. The man had a reddish face, twinkling eyes with laugh lines etched around them, and a huge, full white beard the very image of Santa Claus on all those Christmas cards. But he was not dressed in any furry red suit, but rather in formal wear striped pants, morning coat, red velvet vest and cummerbund, even a top hat, and he was also wearing a red velvet lined opera cape.
The strange man made no gestures or moves, and finally the driver said, “Look, you wait in the truck. I’m going to find out what the hell this is about.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Wo!” He hesitated a moment, then nervously cleared his throat. “Look, first of all, if there’s any danger I don’t want you between me and who I might have to shoot understand?
And second, forgive me, but I can’t one hundred percent trust that you’re not in on whatever this is.”
That last seemed to shock her, but she nodded and sighed and said no more.
He opened the door, got down, and put one hand in his pocket, right on the trigger. Only then did he walk forward toward the odd figure who stood there, to stop a few feet from the man. The stranger said nothing, but the driver could feel those eyes following his every move and gesture.
“Good morning,” he opened. What else was there to say to start things off?
The man in the top hat didn’t reply immediately, but seemed to examine him from head to toe as an appraiser might look at a diamond ring. “Oh, yes, you’ll do nicely, I think,” he said in a pleasant, mellow voice with a hint of a British accent. He looked up at the woman, still in the cab, seemingly oblivious to the glare of the truck lights. “She, too, I suspect, although I really wasn’t expecting her. A pleasant bonus.”
“Hey, look, you!” the driver called angrily, losing patience.
“What the hell is all this?”
“Oh, dear me, forgive my manners!” the stranger responded.
“But, you see, you came here, I didn’t come to you. Where do you think you are and where do you want to be?”
Because, the man was right, it put the driver on the defensive.
“Uh, urn, well, I seem to have taken a bum turn back on Interstate 10. I’m just trying to get back to it.”
The big man smiled gently. “But you never left that road.
You’re still on it. You’ll be on it for another nineteen minutes and eighteen seconds.”
The driver just shook his head disgustedly. He must be as nutty as he looked, that was for sure. “Look, friend. I got stuck over here by accident in a thunderstorm and followed the road back there to what was the town? Oh, yeah, Ruddygore. I figure I’ll turn around there. Can you just tell me how far it is?”
“Oh, Ruddygore isn’t an ‘it,’ sir,” the strange man replied.
“You see, I’m Ruddygore. Throckmorton P. Ruddygore, at your service.” He doffed his top hat and made a small bow.
“At least, that’s who I am when I’m here.”
The driver gave an exasperated sigh. “Okay, that’s it. Forget it, buddy. I’ll find my own way back.”
“The way back is easy, Joe,” Ruddygore said casually. “Just follow the road back. But you’ll die, Joe nineteen minutes eighteen seconds after you rejoin your highway. A second storm with hail and a small twister is up there, and it’s going to cause you to skid, jackknife, then fall over into a gully. The overturning will break your neck.”
He froze, an icy chill going through him. “How did you know my name was Joe?” His hand went back to the .38.
“Oh, it’s my business to know these things,” the strange man told him. “Recruiting is such a problem with many people, and I must be very limited and very selective for complicated reasons.”
Suddenly all of his mother’s old legends about conjure men and the demons of death came back from his childhood, where they’d been buried for perhaps forty’years and the childhood fears that went with them returned as well, although he hated himself for it. “Just who or what are you?”
“Ruddygore. Or a thousand other names, none of which you’d recognize, Joe. I’m no superstition and I’m no angel of death, any more than that truck radio of yours is a human mouth. I’m not causing your death. It is preordained. It can not be changed. I only know about it found out about it, you might say and am taking advantage of that knowledge. That’s the hard pan, Joe. Finding out. It costs me greatly every time I try and might just kill me someday. Compared with that, diverting you here to me was child’s play.” He looked up at the woman, who was still in the cab, straining to hear. “Shall we let the lady join us?”
“Even if I buy what you’re saying which I don’t,” Joe responded, “how does she fit in? Is she going to die, too?”
The big man shrugged. “I haven’t the slightest idea. Certainly she’ll be in the accident, unless you throw her out ahead of time. I expected you to be alone, frankly.”
Joe pulled the pistol out and pointed it at Ruddygore. “All right. Enough of this. I think maybe you’ll tell me what this all is, really, or I’ll put a hole in you. You’re pretty hard to miss, you know.”
Ruddygore looked pained. “I’ll thank you to keep my weight out of this. As for what’s going on I’ve just told you.”
“You’ve told me nothing! Let’s say what you say is for real, just for the
sake of argument. You say I’m not dead yet, and you’re no conjure spirit, so you pulled me off the main line of my death for something. What?”
“Oh, I didn’t say I wasn’t involved in magic. Sorcery, actually. That’s what I do for a living. I’m a necromancer. A sorcerer.” He shrugged. “It’s a living and it pays better than truck driving.”
The pistol didn’t waver. “All right. You say I’m gonna die in I guess fifteen minutes or less now, huh?”
“No. Time has stopped for you. It did the moment you diverted to my road. It will not resume until you return to the Interstate, I think you called it.”
“So we just stand here and I live forever, huh?”
“Oh, my, no! I have important things to do. I must be on the ferry when it comes. When I leave, you’ll be back on that road instantly, deciding you just had a nutty dream for nineteen minutes eighteen seconds, that is.”
Joe thought about it. “And suppose I do a flip, don’t keep going west? Or suppose I exit at Fort Stockton? Or pull over to the side for a half hour?”
Ruddygore shrugged. “What difference? You wouldn’t know if that storm was going to hit you hard because you were sitting by the side of the road or because you turned back you can never be sure. I am. You can’t avoid it. Whatever you do will take you to your destiny.”
Joe didn’t like that. He also didn’t like the fact that he was taking this all so seriously. It was just a funny man in a circle of “Where does the light come from?”
“I create it. For stuff like this, I like to work in a spotlight.
I’ll turn it off if you like. “He snapped his fingers, and suddenly the only lights were the truck headlights and running lights, which still illuminated Ruddygore pretty well.
Suddenly the vast sea of stars that was the west Texas sky on a clear night faded in, brilliant and impressive and, somehow, reassuring.
Joe heard the door open and close on the passenger side and knew that the woman was coming despite his cautions. He couldn’t really blame her hell, this was crazy.
“What’s going on?” she wanted to know.
Ruddygore turned, bowed low, and said, “Madam, it is a pleasure to meet you, even if you are an unexpected complication. I am Throckmorton P. Ruddygore.”
The River Of Dancing Gods Page 2