Last Bus to Coffeeville

by J. Paul Henderson

  ‘Ha! You don’ know what you sayin’, Gene. No one likes workin’ in a cotton gin. Only reason I works there is to prove Dora wrong ’bout me, an’ ’cos I loves Wanda.’

  George drove into the deserted town and pulled up outside the deserted post office. ‘Push yo’ letters through that slot there,’ he told Doc.

  Doc got out of the car and checked to make sure he had all four letters: one for Nancy’s attorneys, one for his own attorneys, one for Jack c/o of Tina Terpstra and one for T-Bone Tribble. He pushed them into the box and climbed back into the car.

  They found Nancy and Wanda standing at the bottom of the drive looking down the road in their direction. ‘I tol’ you he’d be back, Ms Nancy; tol’ you there was no cause fo’ you worryin’.’

  Doc got out of the car and Nancy took a firm hold of him. ‘Everything okay, Wanda?’

  ‘Ms Nancy got herself in a tizzy, Gene. Thought you’d run off an’ left her. I tol’ her you an’ George had jus’ gone to pos’ some letters, but she wouldn’ settle an’ insisted we come lookin’ fo’ you. She kept sayin’ how you hadn’ done right by her, lef’ without doin’ yo’ job. I asked her what job she was talkin’ ’bout an’ tol’ her me an’ George could prob’ly do it fo’ her, but she couldn’ remember. You know what she mean?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, Wanda,’ Doc lied. ‘I’m going to call out a doctor next week and get him to take a look at her; see if he can come up with any suggestions. Is there a doctor here you can recommend?’

  ‘Call Dr Barefoot: he an’ his family been practisin’ med’cine in town long as I remem’er. He’ll know Ms Nancy. Travis name still stands in these parts.’

  Wanda walked with Doc and Nancy to the lodge and George followed slowly in his car. Wanda didn’t go into the house with them, explaining that she and George were driving to Jackson to see her sons the next day, and she still had baking to do. ‘I’ll come by once we gets back, Gene. Say goodbye to Ms Nancy fo’ me, will you. I don’ wanna go disturbin’ her now she all settled.’

  Doc turned on the television for Nancy and went to get a magnifying glass. He looked through the telephone directory and found the number for Dr Barefoot. He transcribed it in clear figures and then put the piece of paper in his pocket. It was too early to eat dinner, so he sat with Nancy and stared at the television without knowing what he was watching.

  That evening, he cooked pasta with chorizo sausage and tomatoes, and opened a bottle of red wine. Nancy pecked at the food, moved it around on her plate and then put her fork down. ‘I’m sorry, Gene, I’m not hungry,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now.’

  As always, Doc slept badly and woke early. His dreams had been many and disturbed but one remained with him. He was trying to light a cigarette by striking a match against a metal key, but however many times he struck the key the match refused to ignite. And then the key burst into flames and the metal started to bubble and melt. He threw it to the ground and the key fell through the bars of a grate. He lifted the cover and looked into the manhole. The key was resting fifteen feet below him, now shining and pristine, but because of a jumble of exposed electrical cables, impossible to retrieve. It was then he remembered it was the key to his parents’ house. He had no idea what the dream meant.

  He went into the kitchen and made coffee, and at nine o’clock phoned Dr Barefoot. ‘Of course I remember Nancy Travis,’ Barefoot said. ‘I can come out this afternoon, if you like.’ Doc thanked him, but said that Tuesday morning would be soon enough. ‘I’ll be there at ten,’ Barefoot said. Doc thanked him and put down the phone.

  Nancy was still in bed, her eyes open and staring. He took clean underwear from her drawer, selected a green sweater and a pair of grey slacks and placed them on a chair. ‘Come on, Nancy, time to take a shower,’ he said.

  He stayed with her in the bathroom while she showered, and dried her with a towel once she’d stepped out of the bath. Nancy stood there helpless and uncomplaining, more reminiscent of a small child than the sixty-eight-year-old woman she’d become. Doc helped her dress and then brushed her hair. ‘You’re as good as new, Nancy; beautiful enough to break the heart of any man who can’t have you.’

  Nancy smiled but said nothing. Her world was one of uncertainty; why would she listen to the words of a man she didn’t know? She followed him into the kitchen and swallowed the pills he put in her hand and washed them down with orange juice. She ate the slice of buttered toast he prepared and sipped the coffee he poured. The man took her to a chair and turned on the television. She heard the clatter of dishes and the sound of running water. She felt tired, wanted to close her eyes and fall asleep, but the man came back. He was taking her to the bedroom. He gave her more pills to swallow, called her Nancy – was that her name – and lay down on the bed next to her.

  Doc watched nervously as Nancy’s eyelids fluttered and then closed, listened to her breathing as it grew deeper. ‘It won’t be long, Nancy. I’m here with you.’

  He never expected a reply, but Nancy opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘I love you, Gene,’ she whispered. ‘I married Arnold, but it was you I always loved. Thank you for being my friend.’ Her eyes then closed and she slipped into unconsciousness.

  ‘I love you too, Nancy,’ Doc murmured.

  He waited a few minutes and then took a syringe from a case and filled it with liquid from a small phial. He found a vein in Nancy’s arm and carefully injected the clear fluid. He then lay on the bed next to her again and took hold of her hand, squeezed it, and only let go once he felt the life drain from her body. He rose from the bed and checked her vital signs. There were none. He pulled the sheet over her face. Nancy was gone.

  The Day of Rest

  For the next two hours, Doc cleaned house. He turned on the air conditioning and switched off the television. He gathered soiled undergarments from Nancy’s room, and stripped the sheets from other bedrooms. He did laundry: washed, dried and folded. He emptied the kitchen of perishables and threw them in the garbage. He dumped any remaining tablets into the toilet bowl and pressed the flush. He tidied the lounge, cleaned the kitchen, remade the beds, vacuumed and dusted. He wanted no mess surrounding Nancy when she was found.

  He went into the bathroom and ran the shower. He washed, shaved and changed into his favourite plaid shirt and corduroy pants. He took a sweater from a drawer and his jacket from the wardrobe. He checked himself in the mirror and then returned to Nancy’s room. He pulled back the sheet from her face and sat down on the bed beside her, remained there motionless. He stared at Nancy’s countenance and smiled sadly. She looked serene: the demons that tormented her were gone, and his friend was now at peace.

  ‘We did it, girl,’ Doc said. ‘We did it.’ He kissed her gently on the lips and whispered his final goodbye.

  He covered Nancy’s face again and closed the door behind him. He went to the dining table and wrote a short letter of explanation to Dr Barefoot, and an apology for burdening him with the consequence of his actions. He then took a paper clip and attached three one-hundred-dollar bills. He placed the letter next to an envelope marked for the attention of the sheriff. The envelope contained the names and telephone numbers of both his and Nancy’s attorneys, and a facsimile of the letter Nancy had lodged with her attorney when the state of her mind had been unquestioned. In it, she made clear that dying was her choice and her choice alone, and that Doc’s complicity had been reluctant – the action of a dear and devoted friend.

  Doc read through his letter to Dr Barefoot, and once satisfied went into the kitchen for the bottle of Maker’s Mark and a glass. He walked out on to the porch and sat down in a chair. The sun was shining and the air was warm. He listened to the birds sing and wondered if they were off-key. He decided they weren’t – they sang in perfect harmony.

  It was a good day to die.

  In death, Doc foresaw no consequences, no judgement. Death was his get out of jail free card, his escape from eventuality. He filled the glass with bourbon and lit a cigaret
te. Perhaps because this was his last day on earth, he now started to enjoy it. The porch of Nancy’s lodge, he decided, wasn’t a bad place at all to die. Certainly, it afforded a better view of the world than his own terrace.

  Until Nancy had whispered to him that morning that she’d always loved him, he’d never once in his life been sure of her feelings. In fact, the only occasion he could remember her telling him she loved him was the day he’d agreed to kill her. With Beth it had always been different. He’d never had to promise to kill Beth.

  He took a small picture of Beth and Esther from his wallet. He stared at their faces and remembered the short time they’d been a family. He smiled sadly and then returned the photograph to his wallet and lit the last of his cigarettes. He inhaled and watched the ash as it lengthened and fell to the ground, contemplated the smoke as it drifted heavenwards, and then stubbed the cigarette out in the glass ashtray.

  He thought about what else in life he’d miss, and smoking was about the only thing he could envisage: he’d miss cigarettes – especially those he smoked with his morning coffee. And maybe bourbon; maybe he’d miss bourbon too. He’d always drunk beer or red wine at home, and the sour mash whiskey of the trip had been a departure from his usual drinking habits. He found that he liked its sharp taste and the fieriness of its sting as it slipped down his throat.

  For some reason, he thought of Captain Ahab riding to his death on the back of Moby Dick, and wondered why Ahab had smelled freshly cut grass at that moment and not tobacco smoke or bourbon. Maybe it was because he’d lost his leg in a lawnmower accident, he mused. (Doc had never read the novel.)

  He looked around at his surroundings for one last time and then took a small bottle of pills from his jacket and emptied them on to the palm of his hand. He swallowed the pills one at a time and washed them down with the bourbon. He sat there and stared into the distance, started to feel drowsy. He wondered what life would have been like if he’d known at its start what he knew now. Would it have been different? Would he have done better? He heard Bob’s voice from deep inside his head.

  ‘You’da still screwed it up, ol’ man. You’da been better off as a rhinoc’ros.’

  Doc broke into a broad grin and shortly closed his eyes. The glass dropped from his hand and the bourbon spilled on to the floor. His head slumped forward and the drool from his mouth collected in the fibres of his sweater. He snorted twice and then fell silent as he embarked upon the deepest and most uninterrupted sleep of his seventy-two-year-old life.

  He was found the next morning, the smile still on his face.

  Epilogue

  Eric is in his counting house counting out the dead. He wonders how many are in Heaven, and which of them are his parents’ friends. He can’t think of many. He thinks his parents will prefer the company of his grandparents and ordinary people like them. In his heart, he also knows that Mrs Skidmore and Doctor Gene are in Heaven, and that one day he’ll meet them again and introduce them to his parents.

  He’s finished the books of the New Testament and adds their deaths to those of the Old. He starts with an unknown number of males aged two years and under living in the area of Bethlehem at the time of Christ’s birth. They are put to death on the orders of King Herod, who later executes John the Baptist and serves his head on a platter to Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. He adds the name of Judas Iscariot. There are two versions of his death: one says that Judas hangs himself; the other that he buys a field with the money paid to him by the enemies of Jesus and falls headlong while walking in it, bursts open in the middle and his bowels come gushing out. The last name Eric adds to his list is Antipas, a witness of Christ killed in Pergamum.

  Eric totals and then re-totals the number of dead. Only one hundred and seventy-eight of them are named. Once satisfied, he walks into the living room. He no longer wears washing-up gloves.

  Jack is practising his skills on a wig, and Susan is putting the finishing touches to a chocolate cake. Jeff is sitting at his computer working on a story about an Indian boy who lives in a slum and wins a popular television quiz show and becomes a millionaire. ‘Son of a goddamn gun,’ he mutters to himself. ‘This is good. No son of a bitch is going to tell me this is derivative!’

  Eric clears his throat. He’s ready to make his announcement. He has their attention and tells them that the final number is not exhaustive and never can be. These are only the documented deaths; there are others referred to that probably run into their hundreds of thousands.

  ‘Don’t keep us all in suspense, Eric. Tell us!’ Jack says.

  Eric beams proudly. ‘Two million, five hundred and seventy-one thousand, one hundred and eight!’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Jeff exclaims.

  The smile disappears from Eric’s face and is replaced by a look of disbelief. He’s made a mistake. He takes out his pen and amends the total, and then makes another announcement.

  ‘Two million, five hundred and seventy-one thousand, one hundred and NINE!’

  THE END

  And a taste of more to come…

  The Last of the Bowmans by J. Paul Henderson

  After an absence of some seven years, Greg Bowman returns from America to find his father lying in a bamboo coffin, his estranged brother Billy stalking a woman with no feet, and his seventy-nine-year-old Uncle Frank planning to rob a bank. While renovating the family house, he is unexpectedly visited by the presence of his father and charged with the task of ‘fixing’ the family. In the course of his reluctant investigations, Greg discovers not only the secrets behind his brother’s and uncle’s strange behaviours, but also an unsettling secret of his father’s, and one that brings him face to face with the unintended consequences of his own past. The Last of the Bowmans is about a family on the run from itself in a city with no place to go.

  This ebook edition first published in 2014

  First published in 2014

  by No Exit Press

  an imprint of Oldcastle Books

  P O Box 394,

  Harpenden, AL5 1XJ

  NoExit.co.uk

  @NoExitPress

  All rights reserved

  © J. Paul Henderson 2014

  The right of J. Paul Henderson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  For further information about Crime Fiction please visit @CrimeTime.co.uk/@CrimeTimeUK

  ISBN

  978–1–84344-265-3 (print)

  978–1–84344-266-0 (epub)

  978–1–84344-267-7 (kindle)

  978–1–84344-268-4 (pdf)