by Gerald Rice
“Oh my goodness, will you look at this mess?” Wanda grabbed a bucket for clearing tables and began tossing pieces of broken dishes and glass into it.
“Be careful,” Toby couldn’t help saying, as if she’d been on the verge of accidentally slashing her wrist before he’d chimed in. He sat down and went through the motions of salting grits, and by the time he took a sip of his tepid coffee found his stomach alive.
Mel came out with plates in hand, saw what she was doing, and continued to the floor, placing the food before the elderly couple. By the time he got back, she had taken the bucket to the back and was waiting for him, hand on hip, a much mellower version of the laser stare upon the big man.
“Now what didja do that for?” she asked.
“You were busy.” Mel shrugged. “I do.”
“Mel, I don’t need you doin’. I got this. Those are my customers, they don’t wanna see you.”
It sounded more cruel than intended. Toby had been privy to this conversation before. Cooks were typically messy, with various sauces and meat juice stains on smocks, pit-stained shirts, and her personal opinion that people thought a cook out here meant something was burning on the grill. He was able to recite the next bit from memory, resisting the urge to mouth the words along with her.
“You don’t see me in the kitchen flippin’ burgers, Mel.” Her face softened. Sandy’s didn’t serve burgers, but the point was made just the same. “I . . . appreciate the help, but next time lemme do it myself, m’kay?”
She was chiding Mel, but either because English was a fourth language and something was lost in the words or nothing Wanda said had a negative effect on him. By the way Mel’s eyes always followed her, Toby suspected the latter.
“You should take break,” he said, his accent thickening. He put a paw around one of her skinny arms and stroked it. Only when they came in physical contact was he reminded of Bluto and Olive Oyl. Although now a little more svelt Bluto. “Go out back for smoke—I come with.”
“No, I don’t need no cigarette.” She gently slapped his hand away. It looked to Toby as if she’d liked it being there. Mel stepped close enough that his mouth was mere inches away from her ear and began speaking low and fast.
“Not in front of the C-U-S-T-O-M-E-R-S,” she whispered as if Toby couldn’t spell and shoved him away.
“The cus . . . the cus . . .” Mel had a big worry-knot between his eyebrows.
“Not in front of me, Mel,” Toby said. He couldn’t resist. He’d seen the two of them sneak quick little pecks and side-eye glances at each other. Wanda was widowed and Mel never spoke of his supposed family back in the old country, but they made a good-looking couple as far as Toby was concerned. She was nearly six feet, rail-thin, and strikingly pretty despite being somewhere in her fifties and Mel . . . was Mel. He wondered how a person could be on Earth for as many years as her and still care what other people thought, but as far as Toby could tell, Wanda was the holdout in that relationship going public. Maybe she thought she would have been dishonoring her husband or something.
She fixed Toby with that laser stare, daring him to say another word, to her now or to anybody else on earth at any other point in time.
“Not a word,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Toby said.
She turned and snatched up the money the man with the horseshoe mustache had littered on the counter, pulling a disgusted face. Mel almost put a hand on her shoulder.
“What is wrong?” he asked.
Toby almost thought she hadn’t heard. “Nothin’.” She looked at Toby one last time, an expression of half confusion, half something familiar he couldn’t nail down until later, before turning and heading into the back. He quickly went back to his food, wanting to eat his pumpkin pie before she came back and snatched that, too.
“Is good, no?” Mel said, a blocky-toothed grin on his face. Toby nodded, and the big man retreated into the kitchen, presumably to check on Wanda.
Toby finished lunch without further incident, not seeing the waitress for the rest of his stay, which forced Mel to cash him out. The man may have been a wizard on the grill, but a chochem he was not with his fat fingers on the cash register.
“Now that would make an interesting story,” Toby said after he’d climbed into his SUV, thinking of the incident with the two men. He turned the key in the ignition and put it in Drive, but before he could pull out someone walked right in front of his vehicle.
It was Pete Erskine, who had been at the far end of the counter nursing a cup of coffee with a little something extra in it, if you could believe Mitty Hayes. Toby could believe he was drunk by the look on his face, but did a double take, realizing it was the same half confused, half something expression Wanda had worn.
Erskine backed away from him, crossing Ames Street, but having eyes only for Toby.
“What is wrong with you?” Toby asked, but didn’t wait around for the off chance the man might have provided an answer. Twenty minutes later he was in front of his typewriter again, but had nothing to give. He sat forward, his hands poised over the keys.
Nada.
His cell rang. His daughters had changed the ringtone to nonsensical conversation between two minions from Despicable Me.
“Saved by the bell,” he said, then, “Hey, honey.”
“How’s the writing going?” Phyllis asked. His wife was always a straight-to-the-point kind of girl.
“I’m great, how are you?”
“Trying to figure out where to hide the bodies.”
“Really?” he asked. “How many?”
“Just three this time.”
“Oh, well, there’s a small patch that hasn’t been dug up in the corner of the backyard.”
“I didn’t even look over there. Thank you.”
“No problem. Get the girls to help.”
They both laughed and she proceeded to tell him about the three jerks she’d run into at the grocery store. Joking about murder always helped to depressurize stressful situations. He proceeded to tell her about the run-in at Sandy’s and ended it with the odd expressions of Wanda and Pete Erskine.
“You don’t think you should call the police, do you?”
“Nah. Those guys were in a bad way. The girls could take them.”
“The girls could take down a lot of people, though.”
“Good point. Maybe I could use them to work security.”
There was a metallic scraping sound outside.
“What was that?”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something outside. Hang on while I check.” Toby dashed downstairs, peeking out the front window before stepping out. It didn’t take long to figure out what it was; a large piece of aluminum siding had been pulled away from the house and half of the strip was missing.
“—’s going on?” Phyllis was saying when he put the phone back to his ear.
“Somebody stole a piece of the house.” It was so laughable he wasn’t even upset. He’d needed to replace the siding when he’d bought the place; the insurance claim would be just the boot in the butt to get it done. He explained to her exactly what he meant, and his wife told him to call the police immediately and call her back. Toby nodded, then responded with actual words, then hung up.
Since his area wasn’t on the 911 system just yet, he called the sheriff directly. Interim sheriff Fran Carey had given him her number in case anything ever came up and said it would be her personal pleasure to answer the emergency call of a famous writer. Toby was freaked out just enough to set his humility aside and call.
She showed up less than three minutes later and examined the damage as if she were a claims adjustor. Carey was Red Deer Rapids’ first and only female sheriff’s deputy and had been filling the shoes of sheriff since last year. The city council hadn’t seen fit to give her the job proper even though Sheriff Karlo’s stroke had all but officially retired him.
“Prob’ly done it with some prunin’ shears or sum’nlikeat.” It had ta
ken Toby a good week before he’d learned that last word was actually three words: something like that. There were a couple of others he’d had the pleasure of eventually translating, like “paper saik” (paper sack) and “fixin’ to” (getting ready to).
“Any ideas on who could’ve done this?” Toby asked. Sheriff Carey looked at him.
“I wish in Sam Hill I knew, but I imagine I’d be usin’ that particular ability for the numbers. We ain’t had a case of vandalism in nigh on four years. You didn’t see nothin’?”
“No. I was upstairs writing.”
“Really.” The sheriff smiled. “Durand gonna be dealin’ out more death in this one than last time? ’Cause I thought he was gettin’ a bit too talky last time out.”
Normally, Toby invited these sort of criticisms. He felt it gave him a better understanding of the perspective of his fans, and he could in turn share what he was trying to accomplish. Durand getting talky was Toby’s attempt to keep his main character from being just an assassin. He wanted him to have an actual backstory that fans would care about and provide a solid foundation for why he would eventually kill more than ninety people in the last thirty pages of the book.
“Well, I’m not too far into it. What can we do about this, though?”
“Oh, I imagine nothin’. I s’pose . . . I could go up the road a bit and knock on a few doors and see if somebody saw anyone carryin’ a piece of aluminum sidin’, but honestly, that’ll prob’ly turn up in the river. It’s one of those”—she began snapping her fingers—“y’know, one of those things you steal you don’t really want. What’s the word?”
Toby didn’t know if there was a word for that. “Kleptomania?” he guessed.
“No. I think it’s French. Like je ne sais quoi or sum’nlikeat.”
Toby nodded in understanding without having a clue what the woman was talking about. Sheriff Carey pinched the brim of her brown hat, climbed back into the cruiser, and pulled out the driveway.
“Come by the station later to file a report,” she said. “You could also ask your neighbor over yonder if y’ontoo,” she said out the cruiser window before pulling off.
Toby should’ve been frustrated, should’ve yelled or kicked something, but the muse had grabbed him just then and he charged back into his house and plopped down in front of his typewriter. He had written for hours before realizing he hadn’t called his wife back. Instead of focusing on one story, he had found himself dancing between two, ideas that put flesh on the bones of his outlines coming almost faster than he could write.
When he reached for his cell phone, he realized it wasn’t in his pocket. Toby had never gotten around to buying a holster for it. He ran downstairs, supposing he might have left it on the kitchen counter. When he didn’t find it there he widened his search, checking places he knew he hadn’t gone into, like the bathroom and the garage. He refused to check the crawlspace; that freaked him out just enough that he refused to go down there. If that were where his cell phone had wound up he would simply purchase another.
“The writer toiled fruitlessly in search of his cellular device,” Toby said. He only referred to himself as “the writer” when he was alone, utilizing expansive prose. When he was in Red Deer Rapids he spoke with a faux-British accent to balance out the odd southern twang that had somehow invaded northern Michigan.
He regretted not setting up the internet in this house and bringing along his laptop. He could have emailed his wife so she wouldn’t have been worried. He could almost feel her anxiety ratcheting up by the moment the longer he went without contacting her. His wife could make rash decisions when she was frightened and he wanted to avoid her stressing out and doing something crazy like driving all the way up here.
Toby stepped outside, walking along the path from the front door to the driveway where he had met the sheriff. After pacing the lawn he was certain the phone was not out here, unless in an unremembered act of horrible decision making, he had thrown it into the road.
He was getting antsy about not speaking to his wife. She’d be beyond worried by now and it would be dark soon. He hated the notion of heading into town to buy another cell phone when the one he had had been perfectly good. He had to call just to reassure her that he was all right, though.
Maybe he could just borrow a neighbor’s phone. He really didn’t know the man who had the house down a ways from him beyond hello and good-bye when they both happened to meet up at the bank of mailboxes. Everyone else had been friendly enough; Toby could use a phone for a few minutes, couldn’t he?
Toby had no reason for why he was nervous. Maybe because, semifamous writer or no, he was still black and this was a very rural area. The people he knew seemed to legitimately like him, but he needed to call upon a stranger now and adding in the oddity of what had happened at Sandy’s, he was a little hesitant to reach out to people he wasn’t on a first-name basis with. The movie Deliverance swimming into his mind didn’t help, either.
Maybe he could just hop in his car and go back to Sandy’s or to the little cell phone store. They always had those working display models people could use to make a call. Toby felt squeamish about going into town for some reason, though. What he really wanted to do was go back in his house and stay there. Today just wasn’t right, not to mention yesterday he hadn’t written a single word.
The sooner he could set things right with Phyllis, the sooner he could close the books on this day. It was starting to get late, maybe he could grab something quick to eat and turn in.
But the muse was still thrumming in his bones. Despite his mounting, unjustified fear, he had to write. To simply scurry into his room and shut off the rest of the world beneath bedsheets would be the opposite of what he wanted most right now and, superstitious writer as he was, offensive to the muse.
“Okay, one step at a time.” Toby took a deep breath, realizing he’d been rooted to one spot for the last five minutes. He had to break this up into mentally digestible pieces so he wasn’t overwhelmed. Without giving it another thought he began walking down the road toward his neighbor’s house.
The Laferle residence was just as small as his house, same style, with a slightly different elevation. Toby would have called the color of the house powder green with emerald trim, although it was difficult to tell in the lessening light. A tree that looked like it had begun life as a weed was much too close to the house, leaning over and scraping the roof with its naked branches. The landscaping looked to have been managed by a professional; otherwise, the lawn was kept at a trim two inches, edges sharp. Toby didn’t know much about vegetation, spotting the golden spirea at either side of the house and the dark-leafed Japanese maple nearer the road amidst all the other bushes and vines.
The walkway was unpaved as he circuited to the porch. Again, without giving it significant thought, he knocked on the door. The impending night brought a strange silence. No animals called, no grasshoppers reeped, no wind stirred the air. One of the most relaxing things about this place was sitting on the porch at night with a beer and a couple citronella candles to keep mosquitoes at bay. The coming dark dragged across sky and earth, a giant eraser that would take away everything when the sun finally set.
Even him.
Toby knocked again and the door pulled open immediately. There hadn’t been any sound from inside—no approaching footsteps, no one calling for him to hold on or a television being muted. It was almost like the empty-eyed man who was staring back at him had been waiting right behind the door all along.
“Mr. Laferle,” Toby said, putting on a smile and trying to swallow his heart back in his chest. The wan light coming from inside was a lifeline and it was all he could do to keep from cramming himself through the semi-open doorway. “I’m sorry, I’m your neighbor up the road in the corner house. We see each other when we pick up the mail at the same time sometimes. I hope this isn’t a terrible imposition, but I could really use a phone right now. I seem to have lost mine and I have to call in with the missus.”
&
nbsp; He was a little more verbose than he had intended; however, it couldn’t be helped. When Toby was scared, he tended to get wordy. Any grade school bully who had thrashed him on the playground could have vouched for that.
Mr. Laferle stepped back and Toby took that as a sign to enter. Once more, not thinking, otherwise he might have caught the too-wideness of the man’s eyes, like he was drinking Toby in.
He was grateful to be inside and resisted the urgent and clichéd need to put his back to the door and let loose a sigh of relief. The man was still walking backward, his eyes on Toby when Toby realized he had a more pronounced version of the same expression as Wanda earlier today. Hers had been budding confusion and . . .
. . . and adulation?
No, that couldn’t have been it, could it? And Pete Erskine was probably one of the only people who hadn’t read him. Could both men be fans?
They made their way to the kitchen, which was immaculately well-kept in comparison to the shambles that Toby had seen so far. The kitchen smelled of mothballs, pizza, and roach spray with an undertone of good old human sweat. An off-white phone was on the wall next to the fridge and he made a beeline past Mr. Laferle and snatched it up.
The dial tone had to have been the sweetest sound he could have asked for at that moment. He turned to his neighbor as he began thumbing in his wife’s cell phone number while the man stood by the stove, a pot of boiling water over one of the gas eyes.
“You’re going to have tea?” he asked, and regretted immediately. It came to him like he was asking without asking for his own cup and Toby wasn’t interested in anything in here beyond the phone call. “I don’t know how long-distance works but I’m more than happy to pay for the call,” he said, hoping to erase the tea request.
The line buzzed three times before Phyllis answered.
“Hello?” his wife said.
“Honey, it’s me,” Toby said. “I lost my cell phone and I’m at the neighbor’s—Mr. Laferle—using his phone.”
“What happened?” The panic in his wife’s voice was thick. “Why didn’t you call me back? The girls and I were so worried about you!”