The Living and the Dead

by Greg F. Gifune

  Anger rises in him but he remains in bed, helpless.

  “It’s OK. I’m not crying anymore.”

  “It’s all right to cry, Lacy,” he says, fighting back tears of his own.

  No, she tells him. There will be no more tears. She will never cry again. She’s already decided this will be the last time.

  “Are you all right?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Is he asleep?”

  She nods. “He passed out.”

  “Where is he?”

  “The kitchen table.”

  She knows what he’s thinking because she’s thought the same thing. But it seems too much, impossible, and besides, what if they fail? What then? It will only get worse…if such a thing is even possible.

  He offers her his love. It’s all he has. “Get up off the floor,” he says, pulling the blankets back. “Come on.”

  She stands. Her movements are cautious and controlled, not by fear or fatigue, but pain. The front of her nightgown is stained with blood and dirt, as are her hands. She stands there before him a while, as if to be certain he has seen everything he needs to see.

  She has sworn there will be no more tears.

  He has made no such promises.

  One day, he thinks, I’ll kill him. I’ll kill the sonofabitch with my bare hands.

  “There’s a whole world out there waiting for us,” she whispers. “Believe in your dreams and they’ll come true.”

  What neither of them knows then is that her dreams are those of the dead.

  Chris wiped tears from his eyes but failed to brush away the nightmares along with them.

  “Are you all right?” Anita asked suddenly.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Why were you crying?”

  Before he could answer, they reached the boarded up, decayed buildings that had once constituted the midway. Just beyond the distant boardwalk lay Main Street. All the buildings sat dark. The General Store, Post Office and hardware store had all been shut down and appeared unoccupied. Even the police station was closed up and looked deserted. A few empty cars and trucks were parked along the side of the road but none were moving and there was no one on the street.

  Chris slowed the Audi to a creep as he drove across the old boardwalk and pulled onto Main Street. It was unusually dark for this time of day—even in a heavy storm—but it was clear he and Anita were the only two there, which did nothing but raise the tension and fear coursing through them both.

  “I know it’s a bad storm and people wouldn’t want to be out in it,” Anita said, “but this whole area looks deserted.”

  The car came to a stop, and he looked around. She was right. No sign of anyone in either direction. “Even the police station’s shut down,” he mumbled.

  “Do they normally close police stations around here?”

  “Not that I know of, but—”

  “Then what the hell’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.” He eased off the brake and the car rolled forward, slowly along the main drag. “Like you said, it’s a bad storm. Maybe everyone went home and hunkered down to ride it out.”

  “Yeah, and maybe garden gnomes will fly out of my ass tonight but it’s pretty goddamn unlikely.” Anita frantically yanked her Blackberry from her purse. “Jesus Christ! Is there anywhere around here you can get a fucking signal?”

  Stop with the tough broad routine, he thought. It’s not who you are and you don’t wear it as well as you think you do. What you think comes off as cool is actually embarrassingly ridiculous coming from a pampered small town girl who never wanted for much of anything. You’re not streetwise. Never have been, never will be. “Easy,” he said, glancing at her nervously. Where had that come from? It was true in a raw sense, but seemed unnecessarily nasty to think such things about someone he was so fond of. “Don’t get yourself all worked up. Things are different up here, Nita. Obviously they’ve closed things down and—”

  “Including the police station?”

  “It’s possible,” he said, though even he wasn’t buying it. “It’s a tiny force.”

  She grabbed his arm and squeezed until he looked her in the eye. “Let’s just get out of here. Please, Chris. Please. Let’s turn around and go.”

  All those months watching her, undressing her and making love to her in his mind…all those memories of the night in the car together…all that unbridled lust that had built for so long and still existed between them, taunting and constantly drawing them together, none of it seemed real suddenly. He knew it was, and devastatingly so, but in that strange and uncertain moment, all he felt when Anita touched him was pity…and something new.

  Regret?

  He thought of his wife Nancy, alone in their house back in Massachusetts, wandering the halls and staring out windows at the same storm falling on them. And what else, he wondered. What else do you see beyond the panes of glass?

  “Chris?”

  I’ve abandoned you too, haven’t I? I’ve run and left someone I love behind. Again.

  “Chris, answer me.”

  Or are you just looking for salvation in the dark like that scared little boy huddled in the night, saying all the right prayers to all the right gods in the hopes that his deranged father will level his wrath on someone else?

  Survival is a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless.

  He pulled free of her gently and put both hands on the wheel. “It’s going to be all right. We’re only a few minutes from the house. Let’s get to it and try to figure out what’s going on from there.”

  “What if your father’s nowhere to be found either?”

  “Then we’ll do it your way and get the hell out of here. OK?”

  Anita nodded, albeit reluctantly, and the car continued on, leaving the ghost town Main Street had become in the rearview mirror.

  22

  The candlelight was both comforting and disorienting. Moving and bending along the cottage walls, it made everything seem a bit smaller somehow, more intimate, and yet, more vulnerable. Normally it would not have been dark so early, but the storm had produced a state of premature dusk and night was steadily rolling in behind it, creeping closer with each passing moment.

  Duck was only able to find three candles in one of the kitchen drawers, but they were like new and would last the night if need be. He’d left one on the kitchen counter, positioned on a small plate and held in place by a pool of its own wax. The second and third he placed in glass holders then handed out, one to Lennox, the other to Lana. “Sorry,” he told them, “I have an old hurricane lamp buried in the closet somewhere but I’m out of fuel. We’ll have to make due.”

  “It’s a wonder the lights stayed on long as they did,” Lana said.

  Perry released a snort of contemptuous laughter and fingered the .38 tucked in his belt. “So are we going to sit around telling ghost stories or are we out of here? I say we make a break for it, bitches.”

  Lennox dropped onto the couch. “If you want to go so bad then go.”

  Perry looked to Duck. “What do you say, boss?”

  “You’re not a prisoner here, I won’t stop you.”

  “Come on,” Perry said, crouching down in front of Lennox. “Let’s go for it.”

  “Haven’t I made it clear that I’m not going out there?”

  “This is ridiculous. What do you think is going to happen, it’s—”

  “Enough.” Lana moved closer, the light from her candle merging with Lennox’s.

  As Perry looked up at her the shadows retreated, leaving his face pale in the burning light. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “Can’t you see she’s scared to death?”

  He rose to his feet. “I’m just trying to have a conversation with my girl.”

  “She doesn’t want to leave.”

  “Then she can tell me that herself.”

  “She just did.”

  “It’s all good. Relax.” He offered a passive smile. “I’d just appreciate it if you
didn’t interfere when I’m trying to talk to my girlfriend. You feel me?”

  Rain pounded the cottage, spattered the windows.

  “Perry, stop being a dick.” Lennox sighed and gave the cushion next to her a pat. “Sit down and be quiet like a good boy so the grownups can think.”

  “I’m only saying—”

  “Maybe the best move right now is to stay put and ride the storm out a while,” Duck said, glaring at him, “see how we do and if anything else happens. Come morning, we’ll head for town together.”

  Perry grabbed his video recorder from the couch, sat next to Lennox and began fiddling with it like a reprimanded toddler. “Fine with me, I’m easy to get along with. You guys do what you want.”

  Lana watched Duck retreat to the kitchen. A moment later, she followed and found him staring out the window, straining to see the cat’s house. His shotgun lay on the counter. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Needs to be a little more space between him and me for a while is all.”

  “So what’s with all the firepower?”

  Duck dug his cigarettes from his shirt pocket and offered her one.

  She watched his eyes. Just like the day before in his cab, he was trying to gauge her, to read her, and he wasn’t exactly subtle about it. She held her candle out for him. “Quit a few years back.”

  “Good for you.” He leaned into the flame, drew on the cigarette then exhaled through his nose. “The guns give me a false sense of security. From a long time ago, another life, when I was taught they’d keep me safe and alive. And maybe they did. I have them in the house but haven’t fired them in ages.”

  She held the candle a bit higher, gaining a better view of his face and letting him know it was her turn to read him. “They haven’t exactly been tossed aside in a box either. They’re meticulously maintained and cleaned, cared for.”

  “Habit, I guess.”

  “It’s quite an arsenal for a cab driver.”

  He left the cigarette between his lips, folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the counter. “Is this the part where we get to know each other?”

  “Mystery, everybody’s got some. Isn’t that what you said when we met?”

  “And wasn’t your answer: No mystery, just privacy?”

  “I’m trying to understand what’s happening, to make some sense of this.”

  “And you think the answer might be in my past, is that it?”

  Lana moved to the table, set the candle down and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe it’s in all our pasts.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “What are you doing in Tall Tree Junction?”

  “I came here by accident.”

  “Nobody comes here by accident.”

  “What are you doing in Tall Tree Junction?”

  “Wound up here is all. Long time ago I was running. Just like you.”

  “Who said I was running?”

  “I did.” He took another drag from his cigarette before he spoke again. “Is Lana even your real name?”

  “This from a man called Duck.” She found him through the semi-darkness and smoke. “Does it matter?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Then why ask?”

  “I’m trying to figure things out, too.”

  “None of this has anything to do with me.”

  “I don’t know that. And neither do you.”

  “I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  A crooked smile eased some of the tension. “Aren’t we all?”

  “You’re the one who lives in this godforsaken place.”

  “And where do you live?”

  Lana stuffed both hands into the pockets of her denim jacket and sat in one of the worn wooden chairs at the small kitchen table. She’d taken note of this place from the moment they’d arrived. Though it was obsessively neat and orderly, it was also lonely and unremarkable. Clearly a living space belonging to a single man, it lacked even a hint of feminine presence, but along with its detached practicality, the cottage radiated sparseness so striking it was palpable. Had he wanted to simply pick up and leave at a moment’s notice, she thought, it wouldn’t be difficult, there’d be very little to take along and even less to miss. It was like he’d purposely deprived himself of anything more, anything better. “Massachusetts,” she said softly. “I live in Massachusetts. I used to anyway. Maybe I still do, I don’t know.”

  “You’ve got a wedding ring on. You left some kind of life behind.”

  “Sorry, I’m afraid I don’t have any dramatic tales to tell, nothing admirable or even all that interesting for that matter.” Lana gazed at the gold band and diamond ring stacked atop it. “But I do have a husband.”

  “How long you been married?”

  “Long time.”

  “Kids?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “I’ve never been married. No kids I’m aware of.”

  “We’ve talked about it for years but never gone through with it,” she answered. “My husband’s always wanted to but I…”

  He let her hang a moment. “What do you do? For a living, I mean.”

  “Accounts Receivable at an insurance company.” Lana forced her eyes from her jewelry and returned them to the candle flame. She stared deep into it, and let it consume her. “My husband’s in sales. We have a nice little house in a nice little neighborhood, two nice little cars, a nice little dog and a nice little hamster. Every year we take a nice little vacation. Friday nights we get takeout, usually Chinese or pizza. Saturdays I clean the house and do the laundry. Sundays we go to church and then out for breakfast. It’s a good life, I suppose, I really have no right to demean it. I’m blessed, as people like to say. All you need are some children, people say. Why no kids? They ask all the time. If I never hear that question again it’ll be too soon. When a woman doesn’t have children people become suspicious. There must be something wrong with her. She must be sick, or maybe she’s just a self-absorbed, selfish bitch. It’s got to be something horrible because it’s natural for a woman to want a child, and if she doesn’t then she’s a freak, right?” With a detached look of sorrow, she turned away from the flame, breaking its spell. “But hey, warts and all, my life is secure and predictable and steady. My husband loves me. My dog loves me. Even the hamster loves me. It’s all so happy and perfect.”

  “Then why run from it?”

  It took a while for her answer to arrive. “I’ve lived life with my eyes closed for so long it’s like I’m on automatic pilot. I move through it by rote, never questioning anything because I already know what’s next: the same as the day before. And no one seems to see that but me. Even if they do, they don’t care. I’m drowning, and no one sees, no one wants to. Then a few weeks ago my husband suggests having a baby again. We’re getting older, he says. If we’re going to do it we need to do it now. And I look into his eyes and think how could I bring a child into this? I can barely stand it myself. How could I be part of making another human being that might be anything like me?”

  Duck stayed quiet, watching her through the flame.

  “You’d think after twelve years of marriage I could be honest with him. I’m a grown woman, thirty-six next week.” She shook her head, recalling old conversations, distant promises. “But if you could see him, the love and trust in those eyes…”

  Duck took a final pull on his cigarette, turned the faucet at the kitchen sink on and ran the butt under it, extinguishing it with a quiet hiss. “Your husband doesn’t have any idea where you are, does he?”

  “I didn’t make any grand announcements, no. I got up, did everything I do every other morning, got dressed, kissed him goodbye and left for work. Only I didn’t go to work. I went to the bank, emptied our savings account and bought a bus ticket.”

  “So that’s what’s at your cottage, money?”

  “Try every dime we have.”

  “Is it a lot?”

  “To me
it is. It took us years to save that money. Do you have any idea how hard we had to work and sacrifice to put that away?”

  “And you plan to live on it until you decide where life takes you now?”

  Lana nodded. “Apparently I’m a thief, too.”

  “You should at least let him know you’re OK.”

  “I’m sure he was frantic at first—same as my parents and my friends and a sister I have in upstate New York—but when he discovers the money’s missing he’ll know nothing’s happened to me. He’ll realize I’ve left on my own. He won’t understand, but at least he’ll know. Then he’ll have to tell everyone. He’ll be mortified, and I would be, too. I had no right to do this to him—none—but it’s too late to change it now. I’ve done what I’ve done. Sooner or later, he’ll figure out that he doesn’t love me. He depends on me and takes me for granted. He’ll figure out he isn’t happy, he’s complacent. He’ll be better off without me.”

  “Funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “How people always think they know what’s best for somebody else.”

  She let his comment go. “It felt like if I didn’t leave I’d die.”

  “Life has a way of backing us into corners now and then. There’s not always a clean way out.”

  “They say the worst thieves are those who steal from themselves and their own families.” Lana wiped perspiration from the base of her neck. “I guess that makes me pretty awful.”

  “All thieves are the worst kind. The good news is they aren’t always beyond redemption.”

  “Redemption, what are you a preacher, too?”

  “Not even close.”

  “You must think I’m a horrible person.”

  “Not for me to judge. I got my own sins.”

  “When I got off that bus I wasn’t sure I wanted to live at all.” Lana rose from the chair, wrestled free of the emotion strangling her. She needed to be up and moving, to feel something solid beneath her feet. “Now all I know is I don’t want to die here.”

  “We’re not gonna die.” Duck reached out, gently touched the shotgun on the counter as if to be certain it was still close by. “I still can’t quite get my mind around what happened out there, but I saw what I saw. So did Lennox.”