The Listener

by Robert McCammon

  The Listener

  Robert McCammon

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  Baltimore

  2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Robert McCammon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  132-B Industry Lane, Unit #7

  Forest Hill, MD 21050

  http://www.cemeterydance.com

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-58767-666-6

  Front Cover Artwork © 2018 by Desert Isle Design

  Digital Design by Dan Hocker

  ONE.

  Someone’s Angel

  One.

  The Devil can be a man or a woman. The Devil can be a hard spring in the seat of a car, a gnat in the eye, or the whack of a wooden baton on the iron bars of a jail cell. The Devil can be a flash of lightning, a swallow of bad whiskey, or a rotten apple slowly decaying a basketful of good ones. The Devil can be a belt across the back of a child, or a cardboard box of cheap paperback Bibles swelling up in the hot rear seat of an eight-year-old faded green Oakland two-door sedan held together by rust and wires.

  Which, today, the Devil was.

  The man behind the sedan’s wheel looked to be someone’s angel. He was thirty-two years old and handsome in the way of a lost cherub, with two lines of sadness bracketing the corners of his mouth. He had curly blond hair, cut short, and eyes the color of summer smoke. He wore the pressed trousers of a white suit and a white shirt with a new collar and pleats down the front. His thin black tie was held in place by a silver clip of two hands clasped in prayer. A straw fedora with a black band sat on the cracked leather seat beside him, along with the folded white suit coat. His hands upon the wheel were soft. He was not a man who lived by physical labor, in a time when so many others dug ditches for their dollar-a-day. As he had an aversion to the fierce summer sun of southeastern Texas that burned men and women into withered and leathery sticks, he depended on his intelligence and wit to see him through the tough times.

  Trouble was, he’d never seen a time that wasn’t tough.

  He guided his tired car along a rutted and dusty backroad that cut through spiny pinewoods. Just below his right elbow was a hand-drawn map of the country he now travelled, with an inked-in “x” here and there along this track leading to many small towns and farms that dotted the scorched landscape. He had not far to go to this one, but many miles to cover today.

  His shirt was damp with sweat. The air that blew into the car seemed to steal the breath, and smelled faintly of rotten peaches. The aroma stirred a memory in him but he wasn’t quite sure what it was so he didn’t try to draw it up. Whatever it was, it belonged to the past. He was a man of the future, which was becoming the present second-by-second. He figured that in this tough old world if a man wanted to live he had to learn to shed his skin like a snake and move from the shadow of one rock to the shadow of another—move, move, always move—because the other snakes were on the move too, and they were always hungry.

  It was the first week of July in the year 1934. Less than five years ago on that black Tuesday in October the bottom had dropped out of the nation’s economy. On that day the stock market had collapsed, and one bank after another had begun to fail across the nation. The windows over Wall Street had opened, allowing rich men who found themselves suddenly reduced to paupers to follow their fortunes down to the hard pavement of reality. Businesses went under by the hundreds, as the flow of cash had stopped at the shuttered tellers’ cages. Debt and foreclosures boomed. In the aftermath of the stocks and banking bust, winters had never seemed colder nor summers so brutally hot. The Great Plains was hit by high winds that blew topsoil off the drought-stricken farms to scour the tortured land into churning dust storms. Breadlines grew in once-dynamic American cities. Many thousands of vagabonds rode the rails in search of work, and many more thousands roamed the land on foot or in cars and trucks that were a broken axle or blown gasket away from their last mile.

  It was a time of misery from which there seemed no end nor respite. The cheer from such radio shows as The Major Bowes Amateur Hour, The National Barn Dance, Amos ’n’ Andy, The Lone Ranger and Buck Rogers In The 25th Century was welcome, but was only a passing moment. Beyond the entertainment of disembodied voices and the merry golden glow of the radio tubes the harsh world remained, a fact that President Franklin Roosevelt’s measured and earnest “fireside chats” could not overcome. America—and indeed most of the world—had been shattered, and even now the pieces of the future were being gathered and reassembled by Stalin in Russia and a puffed-up mug in Germany named Hitler.

  But today, though it was hot enough to fry an egg on the hood of his car, the man in the faded green Oakland was on velvet, as the saying went. He’d had a good day yesterday and made nearly thirty dollars. He’d enjoyed a steak and fries last night at a cafe in Houston. There he’d gotten into a conversation with a travelling shirt salesman about whether the Feds were ever going to find out who’d kidnapped and killed the Lindbergh baby. It was called the Crime Of The Century and everybody who could listen to a radio or read a newspaper had kept up with it since the child’s corpse had been found, its skull smashed, a year ago last May.

  The man who looked like someone’s angel didn’t care if they ever found out who’d killed the baby. Such things happened, it was the way of the world. The Lindberghs were richer than Midas, they’d be okay and they’d already had another kid since that one died. These were desperate times and people did desperate things.

  The car’s tires jubbled over railroad tracks. He passed a roadsign pocked with rust-edged bullet holes. FREEHOLD, he noted the sign said. He drove on from blinding sun into pine shadow and back again.

  The sight of the bullet holes drew him to an area he thought more interesting and surely more entertaining than the matter of Lindbergh’s kid. He’d been following the exploits of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow since the pictures of the two of them clowning around with pistols and shotguns had been found in a camera they’d left behind up in Missouri and had gone out to all the read-rags. Too bad Bonnie and Clyde had been shot to death by a posse of six lawmen on a backroad in Louisiana not two months ago. He’d read that there were so many holes in the bodies the embalmer had trouble getting the fluid not to leak out, and that the cops who’d done the shooting had gone deaf from all the blasting.

  He hated that because he was going to miss hearing news about the Barrow gang, who all they’d robbed and killed and so forth. Sure they’d been living on their rabbit’s foot, but there was something to be said for making your own way in what the country had become even if that meant using the noisemakers. The odds were against the regular joe, it was you against the big blue, and what was a joker going to do but find a way to blast out of that gray concrete vault they were always trying to wall you up in?

  Well, there was always John Dillinger to follow. They hadn’t gotten that rowdy bastard yet, and he’d been lying low since April but he was bound to show up somewhere soon. His shootouts were always arousing news.

  The man drove his raspy Oakland into the little town of Freehold, which came up from the pinewoods just beyond a red stone church and a small cemetery with a statue of an armspread Jesus at its center. He was approaching a little forlorn-looking Texaco gasoline station coming up on the right. Though he needed no fuel because he’d filled up in Houston and he always carri
ed a spare can of gas in the trunk, he turned into the station. He pulled his car up beside the Ethyl pump and waited with the engine running. In another few seconds a young man with one leg shorter than the other and wearing a built-up shoe on the foot of his afflicted limb came out of the hut wiping his hands on an oily rag.

  “Mornin’. Need to cut your motor, sir. How much you need?” the young man asked through the toothpick in his mouth. He added, “We just got some of that new Fire Chief gas in.”

  “No gas,” said the driver in a soft, quiet voice. It was a voice carrying a nearly-musical Southern accent that had been called both refined and aristocratic. “I am needin’ some information. Do you know how I can get to the Edson place?”

  “Toby Edson’s?”

  “That would be it.”

  “Well…yessir. It’s on along Front Street, past Wahouma Street and take a right at the next one, which would be State Road Sixty. You go out about another mile…mile and a quarter, I reckon, and you’ll see the mailbox on the left says Edson on it.”

  “Thank you kindly. And for your trouble.” The man brought a shiny nickel from his trouser pocket and placed it into the oily palm.

  “Much thanks,” the young man answered. He frowned. “If you got business with Mr. Edson, I have to tell you he passed away last week. Buried him on Thursday. His heart give out.”

  “Oh.” Now it was the driver’s turn to frown. “I am sorry to hear that. Still…I do have business at the Edson house, and possibly I can be of a comfort. Good day to you.” He gave the young man a nod, put the car into gear and started off again.

  Freehold was a dusty town with several shuttered storefronts. He passed a farmer driving a watermelon wagon on Front Street. A couple of old cars and a battered Model A with an iron pick-up box welded to the back were parked in front of a place whose sign proclaimed it as Betsy’s Cafe. Nearby, two elderly gents wearing overalls and straw hats sat on a bench watching the man in the faded green Oakland glide past; he waved at them, just being neighborly, and of course they waved back.

  He turned right on State Road Sixty and picked up some speed after he’d left the town limits. The mile and a quarter passed. He saw the Edson mailbox on the left. He pulled off onto a dirt road that threw whorls of dust up behind his tires. Pine trees and underbrush grew on either side of the road. In another moment he came out upon a clearing where stood a small white-painted house under the spreading limbs of a huge oak tree. A few cows were grazing in a fenced-in pasture, and about fifty yards distant from the house was a weather-beaten barn. He stopped in front of the house, cut the engine, retrieved his white coat and his fedora, unstuck his sweat-damp back from the seat’s leather, got out and put on both coat and hat. He smoothed his tie and adjusted his collar so that the coat hung as perfectly as he could manage. He noted a tire swing hanging from one of the oak tree’s lower branches and briefly envisioned Toby Edson’s two kids, Jess and Jody, playing there in the sweet shade.

  The screened front door groaned open. “Mornin’,” said the woman. She sounded both weary and wary. “Help you?”

  “Yes ma’am, I believe so. This is the Edson residence, if I am correct?”

  “It is.”

  He was already walking around to the other side of the car. Dust from the road drifted in the air and sparkled golden in the sunlight. “I have somethin’ here for you and the children,” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Somethin’ for you and the children,” he repeated. He opened the passenger door, pulled the seat up and reached back to get one of the Bibles from its box. The proper one was marked with a yellow tag with the number One on it, meaning it was the first delivery of the day. Moving quickly and deftly, he removed the tag, dropped it onto the floorboard, and slid the Bible into a white cardboard box designed to fit it snugly and made to look like leather. The words Holy Bible were tooled across its front in gold-colored ink. Then he closed the door and turned toward the widow Edson, summoning up the proper expression of both regret and expectation.

  “I am sorry for your recent loss, ma’am,” he offered, with a slight bow of his head. “I learned at the gas station in town that your husband has only recently passed away.”

  “Buried Toby last Thursday,” she said. She was blonde-haired, had a pale long-jawed face, a sharp nose and eyes that looked drowned. The man from the Oakland noted that she held the door open with her right hand while her left hand was out of view in the house, and he wondered if she might be gripping onto either a pistol or a shotgun. “What’re you wantin’?” she asked, ready for the stranger to clear out.

  He paused for a few seconds before he answered. “Well…this is a difficult time for you, I know, but—”

  He was interrupted by two children who came out of the house and stood around their mother’s skirt. They were both blonde and fair, like the woman; the boy, Jess, was maybe eight and the girl, Jody, was about eleven or so. They were clean and cleanly-dressed, but they had the rawboned look of kids who’d been hit hard by life. They both stared at him as if he’d just dropped down from another planet.

  “May I approach you, ma’am?” he asked.

  “What do you have there? I’ve paid what I needed to pay this month, I’m all square with the bank.”

  “I am sure. And you are square with Jesus and the Holy Father, too.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Allow me.” He lifted the Bible in its white presentation box and waited for her to motion him forward. As he reached the woman and her children, he heard a dog half-barking and half-baying from the direction of the barn.

  “Dottie wants her pups back,” the woman said to her kids, though her eyes never left the white box that the stranger carried. “Go on and take ’em.”

  “Ma, we just brought ’em—” the little boy started, but the woman shushed him. The man smiled politely, waiting for this small family drama to pass. It was then he saw that both the boy and girl were holding a puppy cupped in their hands, the one dark brown and the other a lighter shade with a cream-colored spot between its eyes.

  “Newborns,” said the man, maintaining his soft smile. “Nice lookin’ pups.”

  “We got six of ’em.” Jess held his up closer for the man to see. “Fresh-baked.”

  “Hush that,” the widow Edson said sharply, and the man from the Oakland thought it was probably an expression her husband had used. “Go on, do like I told you.”

  The boy started off, though reluctantly. Jody said, “Jess, take Dolly with you too.” She gave the pup a quick kiss on the nose and then handed Dolly to her brother, and with one puppy cupped in each hand the boy trudged on toward the barn while the mama dog continued to bay forlornly. Then the little girl stood at her mother’s side, her face expressionless but her jaw set, and her blue eyes seemed to cut right through the skull of the man who looked like someone’s angel.

  “You have somethin’ for us?” the woman prompted.

  “Most certainly I do.” He offered a smile to the little girl, but she wasn’t having any so he turned the full force of his gilded charm upon the widow. “First, ma’am, let me show you my business card.” He reached into his inside coat pocket and brought it out, a clean white card fresh-baked, as Toby Edson might have said, last night in the hotel room. When he offered the card, the woman seemed to pull back a space and the little girl took it.

  “Says his name is John Partner, mama,” said Jody after looking it over. “Says he’s the president of the Holy Partner Bible Company in Houston.”

  “That I am.” John Partner retrieved the card and put it away. He thought the woman can not read and she depends on the child. Well, that is interesting. “As I say, I know this is a difficult time for you, but possibly my visit will be some comfort to you today. I have the Golden Edition Bible your husband ordered last month.”

  “The what?”

  “Oh…pardon. You weren’t aware of this?”

  “You need to speak plain English, Mr. Partner,” said the
woman, near exasperation. “I’m awful wrung out right now.”

  “Your husband,” said John Partner, “placed an order last month with my company for a Golden Edition Bible. He sent one dollar pre-payment, as I specified. The inscription was done, as he asked, and I responded that I would personally deliver the item.” He pushed back the brim of his fedora, brought a white handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead because the heat was truly fierce even here at just after nine o’clock. “I…suppose he didn’t tell you any of this?”

  “A Golden Edition Bible,” she said. Her eyes had reddened. “No. No, he didn’t say a thing. You mean…he sent you a whole dollar? By mail?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He must’ve seen my advertisements in the county newspaper.” His gut tightened. If Toby Edson was also unable to read, the game might well be up. But the woman remained silent though her stricken expression spoke volumes, and John Partner plowed ahead on the fertile field of human suffering. “My guess, Mrs. Edson…is that your husband meant it to be a surprise. Maybe a gift for a birthday, or an anniversary?” She didn’t respond, so he used another tool from his well-used box of sentiments and softened his voice to deliver it.

  “Or possibly…he had a premonition that his time was short. Many people do. It is the voice of God speakin’ to them. Or at least that is what I believe. But it all comes down to love, Mrs. Edson. The love of God to let someone gently know that their days are numbered, and the love of a husband—and father—for his wife and children. Would you like to see the inscription he asked me to make?”

  “I don’t…” She had to stop and take a long breath, as if she’d been stunned by a belly-punch from the blue. “I don’t read so well, sir. Would you read it for me?”

  “Surely.” He was aware that the dog had stopped baying from the barn, content that her puppies had been returned, but Jess evidently had decided to stay in there for awhile. The little girl’s solid, no-nonsense stare made John Partner a shade uneasy, and he wished she too had gone to the barn but it was part of his craft and gift to show no crack in his calm demeanor. He withdrew the Bible from its box, turned to the inscription page where the receipt was folded, and began to read with appropriate gravity: “To my dear family, my wife Edith, my children Jody and Jess, your loving husband and father.” He offered her the bit of paper. “This is the receipt, one dollar paid by Toby Edson of Freehold, Texas. You will note the date was the 12th of June, but I believe my secretary made a mistake and that date is incorrect by a few days, give or take.”