by Tim Curran
Miriam was grinning ear to ear, just eating it up.
Tommy said, “Go ahead, Mitch, tell him what you think he is.”
“I think maybe you should stay out of this,” Lou Darin warned him. “Because, you know, you wiseass, we’ve got enough trouble without every idiot in the city crawling out of the woodwork and flapping their mouth. So, as I said, I think maybe you should just stay out of this.”
Tommy had the smirk on his face that told Mitch he was looking for a fight. And would keep looking until he found one. “And I think maybe your mother should have kept her legs crossed.”
Lou Darin was a very slick and officious man. He was master and commander and he was not used to being talked to like that. Standing there in his yellow L.L. Bean Southwester with his three-piece Kuppenheimer’s pinstripe beneath and his shiny black rubbers, you could see he was a man who demanded respect. “Who the hell do you think you are talking to me like that? Do you know who I am, you inbred little shit?”
“Easy now,” Tommy said. “You make ‘inbreeding’ sound like a bad thing.”
“It’s all just like the pamphlet said,” Russel piped up. “These are the End Times and all the horrors of hell have been unleashed.”
Miriam started laughing. “Well, isn’t this a fine kettle of fish, Mr. Mitch Barron! See what you and your kind have brought about? Do you see the evils you have set lose? You and your effing unions and your no prayer in school? Do you see what you’ve set into motion?”
Margaret had tears in her eyes. She looked like she wanted to swoon.
Mitch just stood there, getting pissed and feeling frustrated. If this really is the end of the world, he thought, then God must be laughing his ass off, because he left it in real good hands. He looked over at Tommy and Tommy just shrugged.
“I’m telling you, each and everyone of you, what I saw out there today,” Mitch tried again in a very calm voice, speaking very slowly. “I’m not making this shit up. I wish to God above that I was, but I am not. I have nothing to gain by lying here.”
“Except to stir a general panic,” Lou Darin pointed out. “And I believe there are laws against that. Now listen to me, all of you. This has gone far enough. Halloween is some weeks away and I’m really not in the mood for anymore ghost stories.” Then he turned to Mitch. “You know, I would have thought better of you, Mitch. A lot better. I would have thought you would have known better than to play silly, childish games like this. No, no, don’t waste your time arguing. I can see it in your eyes and, believe me, I couldn’t possibly swallow that nonsense. I don’t believe in ghosts or the boogeyman or prophecy for that matter. I know there are no such things. The sun rises and it sets. The sky is blue and the world keeps turning.”
“And when you wipe your ass,” Tommy said, “I bet it smells like a cup of sunshine.”
Mitch burst out laughing, couldn’t help himself.
“That’s enough!” Lou Darin said. “That’s enough from all of you, do you hear me? I won’t stand here and be insulted! I won’t stand here and have you tell me that this is the end of the world! Because if that’s the flavor of the day, then it flat out stinks!”
Mitch thought for a moment there he was going to drop that uppity sonofabitch. But he didn’t. There were bigger fish to fry here than Lou Darin. So he swallowed down his anger and sighed. “All right, Mr. Darin. You say I’m a liar? Okay, fine. Now, here’s what we’re going to do. You and I are going to jump in my friend’s truck here and take a little drive over to River Town. And I’m going to show you those things first hand.”
“The hell we are,” Darin said.
“Come again? I think maybe you misunderstood me, you greasy little sonofabitch. I wasn’t asking you, I was telling you.”
“You better stay away from me!”
Tommy grabbed Darin by the arm. “He’s not kidding, friend. I saw those things: they’re real.”
Darin pulled himself free. “You idiots! You goddamned idiots! Who in the name of Christ do you think you small-minded, shitkicking yahoos are dealing with here? Do you think I fell out of a tree yesterday?” His voice had taken on a high, whining timbre that you usually heard in brats who’d been denied candy or adults that had slipped a cog upstairs. He backed away from anybody because he saw no allies in the group of misfits around him. “Don’t think I don’t know what this is all about! I know! I know! None of you have ever wanted me in this neighborhood and now you’ve seen your chance to play a little joke on me and now you’ve had your stupid little laugh at my expense! Well, ha, ha, joke’s on you! Because I won’t be a party to this madness and I will not be your rubber stamp! Not now and not ever!”
He started backing towards the door with a wild look in his eye like he thought maybe they were all going to jump him and beat him up. But nobody made a move. They just watched him back to the door and then go running right out of it, talking to himself the entire time.
“Well, scratch that asshole,” Tommy said. “He’ll be dead by dawn.”
After that, things got a little uncomfortable. Nobody seemed to know what to say and probably because there really wasn’t anything they could say.
Miriam looked happy about it all. For the first time in his life, Mitch actually thought she was looking happy.
Margaret finally said, “Mitch? Mitch, is it really true? Is all that really true?”
He nodded solemnly. “Yes, I’m afraid it is.”
Russel needed no more prompting. He took his mother by the arm and hurried her out the door and presumably to their house down the way where Mitch fervently hoped he would lock the door and not open it again.
“Miriam,” he said, “your door is shot up. You can’t stay here. You can’t—”
“You don’t worry about what I can or can’t do, Mr. Mitch Barron! I’ll take care of myself and I don’t need any effing help from the likes of you! So get off my property! Get off my property and stay off! Because next time, I swear to God, I will not miss!”
Tommy pumped the shells out of her Remington and then handed it back to her. Then they got out just like she’d suggested.
“What now?” Tommy said when they were outside in the rain.
“I wished to Christ I knew,” Mitch told him. “My goddamn head is spinning.”
They ducked under a tree and had a smoke, not saying anything, just twisted up tight inside and confused, overwhelmed.
“I been thinking,” Tommy finally said. “If the water keeps rising…it won’t be just River Town and Bethany that go under.”
“No, whole damn city will sink.”
Tommy pulled off his cigarette. “We might want to remember where the tallest buildings in town are.”
“It gets bad, there’s always the old Bleeding Heart Orphanage.”
Bleeding Heart sat on the highest ground in town, right in-between Crandon and East Genesee, overlooking Bethany. On a clear day, you could see it from just about anywhere in the city sitting atop Crooked Hill. The orphanage was a big, looming pile of brick that had been closed down for some twenty years now, was mostly boarded up, a nice home for rats and pigeons and bats. There was nothing else up there but lots of trees, an old ruined church, and a graveyard. The ownership of the property was disputed between the city and the Catholic diocese. It was all tangled in red tape and in the courts where it would probably languish for years to come.
“I’m thinking I’d rather drown than have to go up to that goddamn haunted house,” Tommy said.
Mitch just sighed. “We better get back to Lily.” He looked up at the darkening sky. “Night’s coming and I don’t want to leave her alone any longer than I have to.”
12
And then night came down smooth and swift and coveting. The sun, buried behind layers of leaden clouds, went out like a cigarette dropped in a puddle. It sought its grave and moist earth was thrown in after it and it was simply no more. The people of Witcham who had not wisely escaped this sinking ghost ship locked themselves down in the boxes of their
houses and apartments. They fastened and chained the lids and hid in the darkness like spiders in dark crevices. They did not turn on the lights because they were frightened that lights could be seen as beacons by whatever haunted that wet charnel blackness beyond their thresholds. But those that did leave the lights on, left everything burning. Not just bedroom, living room, and kitchen lights, but porch lights and garage lights and driveway lights. And when those were lit, they broke out the lanterns and candles and flashlights. Anything to chase away the grim tangles of shadows that might come knocking on doors or scratching at windows begging treats and offering tricks.
Out there, things dripped and things shifted and other things moved in that leaf-caked dead sea of stagnancy that washed turgid and oily up against the buildings and dirty windows. Now and again, a shadow would move or a pale hand would break the mold of wet leaves or a carnival waxwork of gray-white faces would rise from that watery murk, all grinning vapidly with crooked smiles and staring eyes that were terribly dark and terribly huge and terribly depthless. Then, in unison, they would sink away into the clotted bottoms of River Town like corpses into brine, forever drifting and forever nameless.
13
Night hung over the rooftops of River Town like funeral crepe, black and thick and dank with the smell of rot and things disinterred.
Into this sunken graveyard of burial and un-death, three inflatable boats came, their hulls easily gliding through the leaves and bobbing wreckage that had been vomited up by the drowned city in its death throes. They were each seventeen-footers with fifty-five horsepower Johnson pump jet engines and each carried three men of Bravo Company, 32nd Engineer Battalion, Wisconsin Army National Guard. They had been deployed to search for survivors in the flooded sections of Witcham and they were commanded by none other than First Sergeant Henry T. Oates, a guy with twenty-five years of experience in the regular army. Oates had cut his teeth in the 1st Infantry and 101st Airborne Divisions and would only be too happy to tell you so. Just as he would also happily tell you that he was only hooked up with these weekend jugheads in order to put in his thirty and get his retirement.
“Okay, boys,” he called out into the sullen darkness of River Town, “drop your cocks and grab your socks, let’s do this and do this right. We get back, shit yes, we’ll be the pride and glory of the Thirty-second. Which, I might add, is like being the shiniest turd in the kitty box.”
A few laughs rolled through the squad.
Oates was riding shotgun in the lead boat with Hinks and Neiderhauser. Jones had the second boat with Strickland and Chernick. And pulling up the rear was Hopper with Liss and Torrio. Oates tried damn hard to be patient with his squad, being that they were just as virgin as boots fresh out of Leonard Wood, but, Jesus, sometimes it was a little hard to swallow. Oates was a real soldier and here he was bopping with these weekend warriors who spent their weeks flipping burgers at Mickey Dee’s and working housewares at the Walmart when they weren’t parading around in baggy pants wearing goddamn earrings and listening to faggot rap music.
Yeah, it was all just pretty damn peachy, this situation.
But maybe it was just the whole damn new Army with their high-tech toys, half-ass politically correct leadership, and those damn fairy berets that made ‘em look like a bunch of French pedophiles. And these weekenders were the very lower strata of that particularly limp-wristed organization. Oates just thanked God that this bunch didn’t get deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan or some equally cheery hellhole, because these boys would get bagged in a week in a real combat duty station.
Not that the Army seemed to understand that or the fat-cat politicos in Washington. Need came, they’d deploy these misfits. But that was the American way, Oates figured. Getting into wars we had no business fighting in the first place. Sticking our noses into one smelly cow-pie after another. But he supposed that was the American way of war: whoever grabs the quickest, gets the mostest…even if no pre-planning went into it.
Not to take away from God, country, and all that happy horseshit, Oates thought.
Problem with war, Oates also figured, was that Americans didn’t have the sort of national psyche necessary for the prolonged battle and body count of combat. Not just Ma and Pa Kettle on the homefront either, but the soldiers themselves. You had a generation weaned on fast food and instant gratification with synthetic values and the attention span of most toddlers. These boys and girls were spoiled and selfish and shallow, the idea of sacrifice was unthinkable to their little minds programmed by MTV, Nike, and the NBA. The way Oates saw it, these kids were good-hearted, but soft and gutless and just as lacking as the name brands they worshipped. No substance, no discipline, no nothing. Back in ‘60’s, your average ma and pa supported the war in Vietnam even though they knew it was the greatest clusterfuck since McCarthyism. They had stood against the hippies who threatened their old school values. But even those hippies they hated had stood for something. They had drawn a line in the sand and they were not going to back down from it: war is shit and the society that supports it and turns a blind eye to the corporate-political deceit behind it is the biggest shit of all.
But this generation?
Hell, they didn’t stand for anything. They just didn’t have the gumption or perseverance necessary. Paris fucking Hilton was a good representation for the entire generation: easy, empty, and heading for a crash.
“Well, well, well,” Oates said. “I see we all got our fancy-ass berets on and that makes me feel like I’m part of the elite. You feeling elite today, Hinks?”
“Yes sir!”
Oates laughed. “What you got under that beret tonight, Hinks? One day your hair’s purple, the next it’s green. What kind of crazy faggot ‘do you sporting tonight?”
“Just my natural color, Sarge.”
Now that was something wasn’t it? When you had to ask some grunt what color he was dying his mother-humping hair?
The boats moved along at a slow clip, sliding through the murky waters and bumping through the bobbing debris. River Town wasn’t entirely dark. The streetlights were still working in most of the neighborhoods, but many were out. The buildings were mostly high and dark. Storefronts empty and washed by shadow. Cars and minivans sunk right up to their door handles, radio antennas rising from the slop like swamp reeds. Looked like some kind of surreal ghost town out there with water flooded up over porches and licking against windows. The boats moved on, the running lights glowing at their bows, searchlights casting a few questing fingers through the ebon byways. The boats were all Zodiacs, silent-runners. About all you heard was a throb and a thrum as they passed, the water splashing in their wakes. They’d been designed for Special Forces and the flood was the only way these knotheads of the National Gourd would ever see the inside of them, Oates knew.
“Don’t look like any life out there at all,” Neiderhauser said. “What the hell are we supposed to find in this mess?”
“Your mother’s virginity,” Oates told him.
“Sarge? Why you always dissing my mother all the time?” Neiderhauser wanted to know.
“Because I love and respect the dear woman, son. Weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have the pleasure of serving with you. And where would this man’s Army be without you?”
Hinks giggled at that. “That’s good,” he said.
“Your mother have any children that lived, Hinks?”
“No sir…I mean, yes sir. I did.”
Oates chuckled. “Don’t be so sure about that, son.”
“This is bullshit, Sarge. It’s just a waste of time,” Neiderhauser said.
“Is it now?”
“Sure, Sarge. We ain’t gonna find nothing but bodies from that cemetery. Not shit else.”
“I see. Is that your professional opinion of the matter?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Quit your whining, son. And I do mean quit it,” Oates told him. “This isn’t making my shorts rise either, but it’s gotta be done. Beats the shit out of patrolling Bag
hdad. Now, we got lots of missing people in this goddamn city and it would make me very happy to find a few so their mothers could maybe get some sleep. So don’t you dare piss on my boots, soldier, there’s plenty out there who’re suffering and now it’s your turn.”
That shut Neiderhauser up.
Oates was not, in general, a very compassionate sort, so when he talked like that, you knew he meant it. Which meant you’d better toe the line or they’d be pulling about twenty feet of it out of your ass surgically, compliments of First Sergeant Henry T. Oates.
Hinks was at the wheel, doing whatever the man said. That was how you did it. “Sarge? That true about that missing bus full of kids?”
“It is. And despite the fact that I am one ornery, full-mouthed, neo-fascist, intolerant war-mongering son of a St. Louis whore, it would give me great pleasure to deliver those young-uns unharmed unto their families. I can’t say I’ve done a lot to help in this life and far too much to hurt, but that would give me satisfaction.” Oates looked over at Neiderhauser. “And if you do not want to assist me in this, Neiderhumper, then I would just as soon as sodomize you with this here oar and drop your queer white ass into the drink, God bless America and Union Carbide.”
Neiderhauser grumbled something and Hinks laughed. But as usual with Oates, he wasn’t entirely sure he was supposed to laugh. Sometimes you just never knew. Was Sergeant Oates the funniest man since Larry the Cable Guy or was he was just a mean-spirited asshole like most people thought?
They came to a little two-story house in a block of the same with lots of nice hedges barely breaking the surface of the water. A boat was tied to the porch. Oates figured that was a sign of life. He ordered the boats to pull up by it, which they did after a few minutes spent bumping into each other, the troops swearing at each other and blaming all but themselves.
“Okay, you god-blessing idiots,” Oates told them, “happy hour is over. Get your shit together and get it together now. By Christ, you boys drive like I fuck.”