Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  They were parked in the circular driveway of a small, gray stucco house. Although the front porch and driveway were lit up, the house was dark.

  “Nobody’s home,” Terry said. “Let’s go.”

  “Dickhead, she’s in there, she’s in there, I can smell her,” Charlie snarled. “Don’t you think I fucking know her smell by now? Shit, it’s like a tuna factory.”

  When Terry glanced back at his buddy, well, it didn’t look like Charlie Urquart at all, and both Terry and Billy knew that when Charlie was like this, drunk and zoned out, his personality became like sharp, jabbing glass, to the point that even they didn’t want to be around him.

  “She dumped you, man,” Billy said, slapping him on the shoulder, “‘member?”

  “Dumped you like shit,” Terry added.

  Charlie’s eyes were like glinting steel. “No, my friends. She didn’t dump me. She just made me want her more.”

  4

  Life sucks and then you die, Alison Hunt considered as she looked out the living room window, trying to keep her head low so the boys in the Mustang wouldn’t see her. She’d been watching Saturday Night Live, enjoying her evening of having the house to herself—her mother and father had driven to Redlands to have dinner with her aunt Jenny, and her brothers were down at the garage working on some project they were keeping to themselves (although Ed Junior kept slipping up and mentioning her recent birthday, so she thought they must be fixing up the old T-Bird for her)—and then she’d heard the shouting from the driveway.

  “I love ya, Alison!” Charlie shouted. His voice sounded like he was chewing gravel and spitting it out. “I want to shoot you full of my love bullets!”

  Terry and Billy were laughing and making pig noises.

  “We know you’re home!” Billy shouted.

  “Yeah, come on, baby, we just want to make you feel more like a girl!” Charlie said, leaping uncertainly out of the back of the car, scratching a line down its side. He landed on his hands and knees on the driveway. His beer can clattered into the low juniper bushes, spraying beer as it rolled. He sprang up in the air like a jack-in-the-box, touching down on the balls of his feet, wobbling. He was grinning as he walked toward the front porch. “Alison, come on, you know I’m the only guy for you, sweetmeat. I know you’re somewhat confused about us. But you’re all woman to me, babe. Terry—wasn’t I just telling you that pretty little thing shouldn’t be a grease monkey or playing basketball? Wasn’t I?” He grinned like he was going to split his face open with his teeth. “You should be on your knees, bitchkin.”

  “Hey, man, what ya doin’?” Terry asked, sloshing beer over his shoulder. “We’re gonna miss the Big One, and like what if her mom’s home or—”

  “Her mama ain’t home, birdshit, and you can bite the big one for all I care.”

  Alison had kept her head low, to the left of the drapes, but she moved for a second, and his eyes followed the motion.

  He saw her now.

  He waved.

  Alison shut her eyes tightly, so tight it hurt. Just go away, just go away.

  As if to answer her, the doorbell rang. There was a pause. Then another ding-dong, and another and another, and she thought he would never stop.

  She arose from her hiding place and pulled the drapes aside. Charlie stood directly beneath the front porch light. He was the kind of high-school-handsome that made her sick: almost too pretty with his red lips, dark eyelashes, and dark, penetrating eyes. A shock of dark, thick hair fell over his forehead, fanning down around his eyebrows. And yet, she had been his girlfriend for almost a year.

  You stupid moron, she recognized now.

  In the year she had dated him, her reputation had been shot to hell, and she had only found this out when Than had told her to her face. “I know it’s not true, but he’s making up stories, like that you’re peanut butter ‘cause you spread so easy and stuff.”

  And then it had taken her another three months to dump the jerk.

  Charlie saw himself as the Big Man On Campus, and when other kids liked him, it usually was because of his being handsome and warped simultaneously: he had a thing for torturing small mammals, and he wasn’t too bad at mind-fucking his fellow students.

  But Alison had liked him for another reason.

  Pathetic, she thought now.

  Although, at the time, when he had opened up to her, really opened up, and told her his deepest, darkest secret in the whole world, she had felt he was good, at least at heart.

  They had that as a bond.

  But no more.

  “What do you want?” Alison asked, rolling open one of the smaller windows alongside the picture window. But she knew what he wanted.

  He wanted to terrorize her.

  5

  Charlie licked his lips as he glanced toward Alison, staring at him from her living room window. “I see you, Alison. I SEE YOU.”

  “Get in the car, Urqu!” Billy called out. “It’s probably already started!”

  Without turning back to his friends, Charlie flipped the bird to them.

  “Hurry it up, will ya, Urqu?” Billy gunned the motor.

  “Just give me a sec so I can piss on her door—it’s the way dogs mark their territories and I wanna make sure no other dog gets to her first, I want her all to myself,” Charlie said, unzipping his jeans. He wobbled back and forth on the balls of his feet while he fiddled with his underwear. “I want her, man, she’s my girl.”

  “We’re leaving,” Terry said, no longer laughing.

  “Pussies.”

  But Billy did not drive off.

  Alison shouted, “My brothers’ll get you for this!”

  Charlie Urquart cackled. “You gonna send the retard after me, Al? What’s he gonna do, drool me to death? Or is it gonna be the faggot? And I guess we all know what he’d try to do. Tell me, sweetmeat, if I were to rape you, would you let me, or just try and beat me off?”

  6

  Although Alison could not quite see what Charlie was doing because he had positioned himself so close to the front door, she heard the steady hissing stream as he urinated.

  She turned and ran down the front hallway toward her bedroom, hoping he would not leave until she returned.

  7

  When Charlie finished peeing, spraying some last drops of urine on his shoes and hands (he wiped his hands on his red letterman’s jacket), he heard the bolt click in the front door. Then the door opened slightly. The chain was off. The door opened wider.

  The first thing he saw was the thing pointing directly at his balls, which still hung out of his fly.

  An arrow with a sharp metal tip.

  Alison stood there in a white tank top and blue shorts, barefoot, her blonde hair pushed behind her ears. Her blue eyes gleamed with the tears she was fighting. She had a bow and arrow in her hands; her hands trembled; the bow was stretched tight. In another second she might let go of the string, and the arrow would lodge somewhere either in his right testicle or his left, although she might be able to skewer both of them shish kebab style, if she gave a little twist to her wrist when she shot the arrow. Her lips curled back in anger.

  “I am less than a foot away from you, Charlie. Now you know my aim is pretty good, ‘cause you’ve seen me hit targets out at the dump. Of course, sometimes I have been known to miss the bull’s eye, but I can tell you, this is one time I won’t miss. If you want to take the chance that I will, well, be my guest. Now, get off my porch, and you and your boyfriends can go and do what you little boys do without your girlfriends on a Saturday evening.”

  Charlie grinned, nodding. “Very good. You’re bluffing, Hunt, but I’m not gonna to let you win this round.”

  “Get the fuck off my property,” Alison snarled.

  Charlie looked her directly in the eyes. “I will tell everyone I know. Unless you come out tonight.”

  She hesitated a moment, closing her eyes. I will not cry, I am not weak, he can’t hurt me anymore.

  “I mean it,” h
e said, almost softly. “Baby, you know how much I love you, but I mean what I’m saying. We’re good together, you know it. That girl in Yucca Valley didn’t mean a thing. It’s you, babe, always you.”

  Slowly, she lowered the bow and arrow.

  “Good girl,” he said, “that’s my good girl.”

  “Bastard,” Alison whispered.

  A minute later, Alison came out of her house, turned to lock the door, and then, without saying a word, got into the Mustang next to Charlie. She looked as if some part of her had died within just a few minutes.

  He put his arm around her and whispered the vilest obscenity she could imagine in her ear.

  “Good girl,” he murmured so close to her ear it was like a yellow jacket buzzing there. “It was only four months along, anyway, and nobody’s gonna know but me as long as you behave yourself.”

  But she had already blocked out the pain she was feeling, and pretended that this wasn’t really her life at all. She had become good at that, because everything in life since she’d become a teenager seemed like nothing but pain.

  8

  Back at the Rattlesnake Wash, some of the men had gone to get Sloan’s pit bull, and within ten minutes, the fight had already begun.

  “Jesus Christ,” Peter gasped, flattening himself against the side of the truck. Than had convinced him to drink a beer (“You’ll be less pissed off at me,” he’d said with typical Campusky logic, over Peter’s protests—and Campusky logic won out). Peter was feeling buzzed; it was his first beer ever and he had become suddenly paranoid that the cops were going to bust him.

  “Right, Chandler, they’ll bust you,” Than said, grinning, his eyes widening with glee. “Then they’ll fingerprint you, and put you in the cell. And then…” He rubbed the palms of his hands together. “Then you’re in with five hardened criminals for a long hot night. And one of them, the one who smells like sweaty underarms and looks like a Sherman tank looks at you and says, ‘You’re kinda purty.’”

  Peter stared over the bed of the track and thought he recognized the voice of someone shouting, flickering lights moved in off the highway.

  “What is it?” Than looked over the truck to see if someone was coming their way. The fight had only been going for a few minutes. Some of the men showed up with a large growling pit bull in the back of another truck. Peter couldn’t see the dog clearly. There were about sixteen men standing around the edges of the Wash looking down into it, swearing, waving their cash in the air like fans, alternately goading and coaxing the two dogs down in the fight. And then there was the endless growling and snapping of dogs.

  Neither Than nor Peter had been able to bring himself to look down into the Wash at the damage the dogs were doing to each other. Beyond the group of men, two headlights had just turned down the dirt road to the Wash.

  “Campusky, Jesus Christ,” Peter whispered a third time. “Why didn’t you tell me he was going to be here?”

  “He who?” Than asked, but then saw who Peter meant.

  “Charlie Urquart.”

  Or not quite Charlie, but his father’s red Mustang convertible, kicking up gravel and dust as it turned off the highway and onto the ridge overlooking the Wash. Looked like one of Charlie’s Unholy Trio, Billy, was driving—and Than made out Alison Hunt sitting in the backseat next to Charlie.

  “We could run,” Than blurted out.

  “Not a bright idea, the only direction is out there,” Peter nodded toward the endless canyons blossoming beyond where they stood. “I don’t even know why I turn spineless around that guy. It’s my wimp factor coming through.”

  “I think when you deal with a kid who uses switchblades to make a point, we can safely assume fear,” Than said. “But he’s probably not interested in bothering us tonight. And if he is, it’s probably gonna be you who gets it. Seems to me he owes you one.”

  9

  “All right, bitch, stay in the car for all I care,” Charlie spat. “Just be here when I get back.”

  Charlie Urquart slammed the car door shut; the noise reverberated in the canyon, above the buzz of the gambling men, above the snapping of the dogs in the Wash. The air carried the acrid scent of cigarette and marijuana smoke, the smells of beer and Brut aftershave. Charlie glanced down at the dogs.

  The dark one they called Lammie had Silver Molly by her throat and was shaking her mercilessly. Then Molly tone herself free, bleeding beneath her collar, blood spotting her muzzle, and rose up on her hind legs, coming down against her opponent with all her weight. Lammie was momentarily crushed beneath the larger dog. She rolled over, Silver Molly went for her stomach, sharp teeth flashing in the headlights from cars above them; Lammie rolled out from under her and spun around to face Molly. Jaws snapping like steel bear traps, dripping with foam, muzzles bloody and wrinkling. Lammie went down on her forequarter and leaped for Silver Molly’s throat again. Her jaws slammed together, teeth almost touching through Molly’s fur and skin as she shook the dog mercilessly.

  From the edge of the Wash, above the dogs, Charlie slapped Pepe Alvarado on the back. “Hey, Pepperoni, how’s it hangin’, amigo?”

  “Too late, Charlie, we already got two dogs—no need for you, too.” Pepe didn’t turn away from the fight.

  “Hey-hey, good one, wasn’t that a good one?”

  Billy Simpson and Terry Boyd passed the joint they’d been smoking back and forth, but Charlie waved it away. They grinned stupidly at their leader.

  Charlie Urquart reached into his back pocket, His hand came out with a wad of cash. “Fifty bucks, my man, count ‘em, fifty.” He waved the money in front of Pepe’s face. “I bet you could buy a lot of poon with this.”

  “Also too late for your bet—we got Lammie up against Silver Molly. No second fight tonight.”

  “Now that is a pity, my friend. Isn’t that a pity, boys?”

  “Really,” Terry coughed, sucking on the joint.

  “Sure enough is,” Billy added.

  “Maybe,” Charlie shouted, and a few men turned to his voice. “We need some real entertainment here, comprende?”

  “Maybe you should get the chinga out of here,” Pepe spat out.

  “Translate, William,” Charlie said, turning to Billy.

  “I think it’s their word for ‘fuck,’ man, yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Chinga, chinga, chinga,” Charlie said, “that’s cool, Pep, that’s cool.”

  “You boys excuse me,” Pepe said, brushing Charlie to one side, “I’ve got to get back to the fight.”

  “Hey!” Terry started after Pepe, but Charlie socked him in the shoulder.

  “Leave Alvarado to his fight. I spy something that has more possibilities for fun. Give me that,” he said, grabbing the dwindling joint from Billy’s fingers. “You been bogarting it too long.”

  As he took a long drag on the joint, Charlie waved toward the truck where Than and Peter stood.

  10

  Peter Chandler/Confessions

  All it took was my first sip of beer, and instead of the proverbial bravado alcohol is supposed to give you, I became a shriveling wimp. I was fifteen, but inside I felt about seven years old. All because of Charlie Urquart, pointing at me and Than over by the truck.

  I completely understood what Charlie had against me, but I think if we had met under different circumstances he might not be at my throat so much—perhaps if we lived in a town where there was more to do on a Saturday night than bet on dogs. Not that I would’ve liked Charlie very much: he was a sadistic son of a bitch, but one thing I learned from constantly being uprooted is that you can get along with a lot of different kinds of people if you put your mind to it, sons of bitches included. But we’d met in March, at school, about the same time Than Campusky and I were getting to know each other, soon after I’d moved to Palmetto. And I guess, as Charlie himself would say, he “owed me one” after our introduction to each other.

  New kids are always easy targets.

  You couldn’t be Charlie Urquart, quarterback,
heartthrob, son of the man who developed Palmetto into the middle-class slums it had become by 1980, you couldn’t be Charlie Urquart, brown-noser extraordinaire, without wanting to mutilate poodles and pummel a few kids senseless. It came with the territory. Charlie always “owed” somebody “one,” because the one thing everyone pretty much knew about Charlie was that his old man beat him up and otherwise terrorized him on a regular basis, and I guess Charlie was just giving back to the world a little of what he got. He and I actually had a lot in common; come to think of it only I handled my end of things in a different way—or not at all.

  Charlie, he lashed out. It was rumored that he popped Black Beauties like they were going out of style, too, and in his letterman’s jacket pocket he usually carried a paperback Satanist’s bible.

  What had endeared me to Charlie in March occurred, as do all bad memories of high school, in the locker room after gym.

  I was coming in from intramurals when I heard some boys yelling, “Squeal like a peeg!” Students passed around Deliverance that year in the library, along with Portnoy’s Complaint, The Happy Hooker, and Fear of Flying, reading only the dog-eared passages (so the only novel anyone read straight through was the Xaviera Hollander opus). Some of us managed to see the movie of Deliverance, too, with that scene where Ned Beatty is about to be raped by the weird backwoodsmen—so I recognized the “pig” line when I heard it From the steamy yellow-tiled locker room came the sounds of a struggle, the clang-banging of locker doors slamming, the wet snaps of rat-tailed towels hitting someone’s backside, and finally a boy’s weak tenor squeaking, “Oink, oink, ree-ree-ree!”