Nights Towns: Three Novels, a Box Set

by Douglas Clegg

  Beneath this, she outlined her goals for the following week:

  1. To be a better wife, the best wife. The kind of wife Bill will want to be a better husband for.

  2. To accentuate the positive.

  3. To love and cherish those around me. Not to nag.

  4. To be free to be me.

  5. To lose ten pounds by Founders Day so I can fit in my Von Furstenberg.

  Alongside this, in the margin, she scribbled:

  If life gives you a lemon, squeeze it and make lemonade!

  Cappie, who was thirty-eight and in the kind of shape that is somewhere between aerobics instructor and refugee from the Scarsdale Diet, still could not rid herself of the cellulite on her thighs. Her husband had made another comment last night when she was doing her before-bed stretches and lunges. These usually turned him on.

  "How come you've got those bumps on your ass and you say you're keeping in shape?" Bill asked. "I don't see Jessica Lange with bumps like that. And your pal Hanoi Jane doesn't have them, either."

  "Her name is Jane Fonda, Bill, and they are movie stars, so of course you don't see cellulite on them. They have good lighting, and all I've got is a ten-dollar lamp from K-Mart." She refrained from mentioning his beer gut, his lardass, his puffy, beer-stoked face. He was President of Westbridge Savings and Loan. Bill worked hard for anything he'd ever gotten, including Cappie; how often had he told her this?

  While she was doing her Jane Fonda tape, squishing into the damp carpet, Cappie pretended it was Bill's face that her knees were hitting down on.

  The big event in town this particular Saturday morning would be Arthur Abbott's funeral. Just about everyone in town was related to Arthur in one way or another, because Arthur's mother was a Mackenzie, and his maternal grandmother was a Connally, and his paternal grandmother was a Houston, and if you went far back enough with anyone who was still hanging around Pontefract, you'd find they'd all practically sprung from the same seed. Dr. Prescott Nagle called this the Sins-of-the-Father syndrome that was the curse of small, out-of-the-way towns like Pontefract. This kind of inbreeding worried Prescott when he ran through the genealogical charts he worked on at the Historical Society. There was just too much old blood walking around Main Street. But this morning, that was the furthest thing from Prescott's mind as he sat in Maude Dunwoody's front window table, eating creamed chipped beef and hush puppies; even Arthur Abbott's funeral (which would take place in an hour) was not occupying his thoughts.

  Prescott Nagle was worried about a woman who had died in the storm of 1941. And, as if his memory was not cloudy enough, he was also wondering about a former student of his who was probably still asleep over at Patsy Campbell's Boardinghouse.

  2

  From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:

  JANUARY 3, 1987, SAT.

  I don't want to write much here. I'd like to forget I've ever come back down to this place. I don't like thinking about this. I really don't. But I've got to tell somebody, and you, fearless reader of forbidden diaries (even Nightmare Books!), are as good a father-confessor as any.

  I didn't sleep at all last night. Every time I closed my eyes I saw her, Lily, or thought I heard her calling me.

  I wrote several pages in this book, but I've torn them all out. Just trying to piece together

  It is five a.m. when I'm writing this. It is pitch-black out. As good a time as any to try to put it together—not that phone message, not even what I thought I heard Billy Bates say up at Hardy Elementary School—but what happened. What actually happened that night.

  Dr. Nagle asked me, when he dropped me off last night, how could I have not known what happened to Lily? Wasn't I close to her family? If I was going to come all the way down here based on one phone message, didn't I keep in touch? He was there, at the Founders Day luncheon at the Marlowe-Houston, and while she was dying, she mentioned my name. A dying woman doesn't just mention anyone's name—there must've been some significance.

  I cried in his car when he told me this. Lily and I had not spoken to each other since that night twelve years ago, eleven years before her death.

  That word—death. Sticks in my craw, as they say. There was a horror movie I once saw called Picture Mommy Dead, which is possibly one of the best titles for a scary movie, and here I am thinking, Picture Lily Dead. Picture her dying. And I could not.

  This morning I've been thinking maybe old Nagle is senile, or doddering. It reminded me for a second of how I felt with Billy Bates, Jesus, a fifth-grader, and I wanted to hit him, I did hit Billy; I just wanted to strike out at Nagle, shut him up. To not hear what he was trying to tell me.

  And how could I not know about Lily?

  Who was there in all Pontefract, or Westbridge County, or the Western Shenandoah Valley, or even south of the Potomac River to tell me, to send me the newspaper clipping in the local paper: Lillian Cammack Whalen, wife of Warren Whalen, daughter of Dr. Brian Cammack and the late Rosalynn Cammack is that what the obit would say?

  No one in the world would've thought to inform me of her death. I never met her older sister, and her father probably forgot students as soon as they left the school. Although, given what happened that night, I might've been in the blessedly forgotten-on-purpose category. I was at best a bad memory to anyone who knew me at the school, except, as it turns out, Dr. Nagle who at the present moment seems less than reliable. Anyone who would possibly remember me would associate me with that incident over at the Marlowe-Houston, that thing with the good old hometown boy and the fire. But, someone might add, was it really an accident?

  And if Lily is dead, what kind of sick twisted mind left that message on my machine? Had someone in this boring town waited twelve years to play a bad joke on me? Or am I just losing the old marbles? Did I begin losing them that night twelve years ago, when a sixteen-year-old boy gave his heart and soul to the woman he would always love, and in so doing, inadvertently killed another boy? Does love demand sacrifices like that? Well, I should tear this book up—if anybody ever reads it they will lock me up.

  I've worked overtime trying to forget that night—as if it could ever be forgotten. Every time I feel that memory coming on, I swallow it like a sour taste in my mouth. My parents buried it in the garden of my childhood. I still don't know for sure what happened that night, what really happened, if there is an absolute reality—and I am an eyewitness. That night I got hold of a bottle of Jack Daniels and stole a bone from a mongrel; the night of my tribal initiation, which I never even made it to. The night of the faculty Christmas party, when Lily and I played "Smoke" for the very last time.

  The night the most beautiful woman in the world whispered in my ear what kind of monster she was.

  "The kind who kills her own children," and it is not specifically her own voice I hear replayed in memory, but one I've fabricated over the years, the way I imagine Lily's grown-up voice would be. A voice that just two seconds before possessed rare sparkling gems in its tone, but now took on the quality of crushed opals, all turned to sand, a tired voice.

  But how many children? I had asked her. She was twenty. I'd never seen her pregnant and I saw her all the time. I didn't even know she had a boyfriend. I remember it felt like a dagger thrust deep into my heart when she told me this.

  "Abortions, Cup, do you understand? Two. Abortions." As she whispered this word abortion, her delicate fingers shaped curves and helixes in the crisp winter air. I think my reaction to the word, the concept of abortion, was very liberal, what I thought was sophisticated. I blurted out, "Well, it doesn't make you a monster, it's not like you killed them."

  Lily seemed to me then, as we sat on the steps of the chapel, freezing, like a pale crushed flower, exactly what Grower Lowry had called her: a rare blossom. But she felt as if she'd done the worst thing you could ever do.

  I tried to laugh. "But you can't get pregnant when you're a professional virgin."

  "It's the truth," she said.

  When I drew her face back to mine with my
hand, she was crying. I reached my arm around her shoulders. I kissed her. Her lips were trembling. I remember her sweet warm breath intruding into my mouth and how I didn't care if she had sex with another boy, I didn't care because I knew that our love for each other was purer than that.

  "I love you," I said.

  Lily didn't reply.

  I told her she was beautiful. I told her I would always be there for her. Always love her.

  I didn't hear the dogs again until it was too late, until Bart Kinter and his cronies tackled us as we sat there, embracing.

  3

  From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:

  "I know what kind of monster I am!" Bart Kinter mimicked her in a high-pitched falsetto. Our attacker had come out of the snow-frosted boxwood hedge.

  "You fucking tramp!" Kinter shouted with glee. He looked like a demon, painted with bright red lines across his face, feather stuck in his white hair, naked from the waist up even with it being as cold as it was. His buddies had me in a half nelson; I felt like I was being strangled. I didn't know who was holding me down.

  Kinter had Lily by the wrist and was twisting it, while another boy, whom I recognized as another school bully, held tight to her other arm.

  "Get your hands off me," Lily whimpered. She was sobbing; her face had turned a deep red.

  "I'll bet Daddy would just love to hear about what his little girl is doing in college these days, don't you?" Kinter sneered.

  Whoever was holding me down pushed his knee hard into my back. I couldn't utter a word; probably the worst physical pain was the bone in my coat pocket which now felt like a crowbar thrust into my gut. The boy on top of me shoved my face into the snow, telling me to eat it. I tried kicking him, and the hand on the back of my head pushed harder. I began coughing into the snow.

  "Shit," the boy spat out, "this douche bag's kicking me like a girl."

  Kinter snarled, "Well, kick the motherfucker back." I glanced to the side and saw Kinter glaring at me with eyes like red embers. He pointed at me with his free hand. "And when I'm finished fucking little Miss Slutburger, I'm gonna cut your fuckin' balls off, jizzface."

  Lily let out a scream—one boy had cupped his hand over her mouth to keep her from doing just that, but he had stupidly moved it for a second.

  "You cunt," Kinter snarled and smacked her across the face with his fist. "They say that debutantes like you need a good fuck, bitch, so boys, hold her down—"

  While the boy held both her arms, Bart Kinter undid the snap on his jeans.

  I found new strength—in fact, strength I didn't know I had. Adrenaline was pumping through me. I began to rise from my attackers. "You son of a bitch!" I was able to get out, and then the world went to blackness, and it was like I'd gotten a shot of morphine and was going under.

  When I came to, I knew it had not been anything as pleasant as morphine. The back of my head felt like a train had just run through it, and I tasted blood in my mouth. Whoever hit me had hit me hard, with that damn Jack Daniels bottle. I am surprised now that I didn't need more than the stitches I later received. I also felt pains in my side, along ribs I didn't know existed. I was lying in Lily's lap, looking up at her tear-streaked face.

  "You're all right?" I asked. "They didn't ?" I couldn't bring myself to say the word: rape.

  "No," she shook her head, "they didn't." But to Lily Cammack, what those boys were going to do would be as bad for her as if they had raped her.

  Kinter and his buddies were going up to the Marlowe-Houston House. They were going to break in on the party and tell them everything.

  "No way," I mumbled, "they just said that to scare you."

  "Daddy will die," Lily repeated over and over, sobbing, "he will die."

  "They're not going to even get as far as that house." I felt heroic as I said this. It was my time to shine. To set right the balance that had been forever destroyed by that devil Kinter. I would slay all of Lily's dragons.

  And the wasp of revenge must've been buzzing there in the back of my mind. It was just as though my enemy were being delivered right into my hands.

  I ignored the throbbing pain in my head and sides. I just got up and started running toward the house. The Jack Daniels hounds were barking up ahead, running alongside Kinter and his drunken crew.

  What I remember of those last moments before it happened:

  Those dogs barking, howling, the shadow-gray footsteps in the crunchy snow, several boys running ahead of me, some turning to laugh as I ran after them. One fell down in the snow, so drunk he couldn't continue on. I passed him by—it wasn't some toady I was after; I wanted Kinter. The boy shouted out to me as I ran by, "Don't get pissy, fart face, he isn't really gonna go through with it!"

  But I kept running.

  One of the big oafs was out of breath as he reached the back porch of the Marlowe-Houston House. "Hey, weenie, you ain't gettin' in this way," he said, swinging the bottle that I'd already been bludgeoned with. In my hurry, I slid into a slushy puddle of melting snow and I heard laughter all around me.

  Standing above me was Bart Kinter. His hands on his hips. He whispered, "After this, Coffey, your fuckin' balls."

  One of the teachers opened the kitchen window and shouted, "What in God's name is going on out here?"

  Kinter flipped me the bird, and went over to the cellar doors of the house. These two wooden doors were thrust open as if to welcome him.

  "Never!" I cried out as he took the first step down. The entire party must've heard me shout, but I didn't care. I got to my feet and rushed to the cellar doors.

  I unsheathed the only weapon I had on me.

  The bone.

  Things started to go in slow motion, but perhaps this is just my memory trying to dissect the actual moves, what happened, who put whose foot where, whose hand went for the light, the bone as I swung it at Bart. The loud crack as the bone hit the wall, missing Bart. His turning around, twisting his ankle. The look of shock in his eyes. How he was reaching out to grab the bone. To hit me with. But no—that can't be, because he was going to fall; he was trying to grab the bone to balance himself. To keep from falling.

  And I let go of the bone.

  The whoosh of air escaping his lips. The water from the melting snow on the stone floor. I fell. My chin hitting the bottom step. Holding those slatted wood steps for dear life. Looking up. Kinter's scream. Turning, reaching, in midair, grasping the light cord. The whole light fixture tearing from the wall with his weight. Kinter falling. Flying. Across the cellar. Hitting the cement floor with a loud smack. Sparks. That wet snap.

  I lost consciousness. I dreamed of fire.

  Beautiful, sudden fire like a million suns bursting across that cellar, through rows of dusty bottles and spiderweb-covered books. And in the dream, that towhead boy was dancing a crazy, electric dance. "I know what kind of monster you are!" he shouted. When I awoke from that dream I was coughing smoke. Pains running through my entire body. Covered in a soft blanket. Firemen above me, hosing down the cellar.

  Now I've told so many twisted versions of that story to myself, lies upon lies. This present version perhaps just being a variation on that theme. I'm not even sure sometimes whether I lived it or dreamed it.

  Because there was something else in that fire dream, the Mother of all my Nightmares.

  Something other than bursting flames, barking dogs, melting glass bottles, and burning books.

  There was a monster in that fire. It was someone I knew, but he had lost all semblance of humanity in the conflagration. (Bart Kinter, I can tell myself from the safe distance of twelve years, and I know it was him and it wasn't him.) It was simply faceless. It was angry for burning, but the kind of annoyed anger of one who doesn't much enjoy being awakened only to be told to go back to sleep again.

  Next time, the steaming mouth gasped, next time, it's going to be me coming for you, boy, not some townie, some horny country moron, and I'll be somebody you trust, and you'll forget you're afraid until it's too late.
Do you know what it feels like to burn from the inside out? It's like maggots crawling under your skin, maggots with stingers and suckers boring through you, eating their way out slow at first, real slow, but then—

  But that faceless voice dried like parchment and the monster's body folded in on itself, shriveling into the heart of the fire.

  That is all that I experienced that night.

  But the next afternoon, when I discovered that I was not as badly hurt as I would've liked to have believed, I learned the actual facts.

  Bart Kinter died from his fall, breaking his neck.

  The fire originated from the light switch; the electric current that had gone through Kinter couldn't have even killed a dog. I must've seen the fire all wrong, because it was isolated to a small area of the cellar, part of an old septic tank.

  I also learned that Lily had lied about what had happened, and I understood. If she had told the truth, everything would've come out. She would have admitted what kind of monster she was. In the story she told, the boys had jumped me while we were walking back to the dorms. That was all.

  But one of Kinter's cronies swore on a stack of Bibles that I had taken a stick or something, and hit Bart Kinter hard across the back of the neck, causing him to fall.

  As my parents drove me out of Pontefract the following day, we passed the Marlowe-Houston House and I realized that neither Lily nor I had even said good-bye.

  4

  From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:

  JANUARY 3, 1987

  So, before noon I got dressed and walked back into town to the churchyard where Lily was buried.

  When I arrived at Christ Church, having walked all the way imagining the morning chill would revive my spirits, I went around back. This part of the church was shaded by a half-dozen oak and elm trees, and felt fifteen degrees colder than the rest of the world. Scaffolding entwined like dying vines around the back of the church spire and bell tower. I narrowly avoided getting my ankle caught amongst the tangle of hundred-year-old bricks and thick, gnarly roots, with mud puddles all around.