The Listener

by Robert McCammon

  “For God’s sake,” Hartley growled. “Leave the boy alone! If you want to bully somebody, come bully me!”

  “Naw, that ain’t no fun. Think faster!” Smack, went the slap. It had been a harder blow, and the sound of it made Nilla’s stomach churn. She thought if she threw up on him he would leave but there was nothing in her to expel.

  “Stop it!” Little Jack said, with the first glimmers of fresh tears in his eyes. “I didn’t—”

  Smack! And that was the hardest slap yet. In the lamplight Nilla saw her brother give a stunned blink and a thread of blood broke over his lower lip.

  Hartley struggled to his feet before the next blow could be delivered. “All right,” he said. “You want to fight, let’s get to it. I’ll knock your teeth out with my hands bound up.”

  “Will you, now? Huh,” said Donnie, and as he came up off the floor Nilla saw his face turn red just before he drove a tremendous punch into Hartley’s groin. Their chauffeur doubled over, gasping. Donnie hammered him across the back of the head with a noise like an axe hitting timber and Hartley went down face-first to the floor.

  “Help!” Nilla suddenly shouted. “Help us, please!”

  At once Donnie had spun around, leaned in and gripped her chin in a hand like a crushing vise. His enraged face loomed as large as an ugly planet. She felt his fingers tighten as if he were trying to crack open a walnut. Then there was a solid-sounding thunk, Donnie released her and staggered back, and beside Nilla Little Jack was staggering too, his eyes rolling up from the force of the headbutt he’d just delivered to the side of Donnie’s skull. He fell to his knees and leaned over and Nilla saw the terrifying sight of her brother’s blood drops spattering the floorboards from his busted lip.

  “Fuck all, what’re you tryin’ to do?” came what was nearly a scream from the doorway. Nilla squinted into the beam of the flashlight the woman held, and behind her was the shape of the man who had betrayed her father.

  “Donnie!” Ginger shrieked. “You fuckin’ idiot! What have you done to ’em?”

  “Fun…havin’ some fun, that’s all,” Donnie answered. His voice sounded like he was eating a bowl of mush. “Hartley came at me, I had to put him down.” He shook his head back and forth to stop the bells ringing. “Little bastard popped me in the head, I had to lay him down too.”

  “That’s a lie!” Nilla shouted, and she felt her own face swell with the blood of anger. “All of that’s a lie! That man kept slapping Little Jack!”

  “Okay, okay!” Ginger held up a hand to silence everyone. Hartley was groaning and doubled up on the floor. “What’d you do to him?”

  “He ain’t hurt, not too bad. Hey, I’m gettin’ bored just sittin’ and countin’ my warts.”

  Ginger swung the flashlight’s beam into Donnie’s face. The glass eye gleamed on his forehead in its nest of black tape. He gave a toothy smile though his own eyes were still dazed and the silver fang in his mouth gleamed.

  “You’re makin’ me crazy,” Ginger said.

  “Well,” he answered, “that wouldn’t be too hard to do, would it?”

  Something seemed to rush into the room. Pearly felt it, like another presence that had suddenly elbowed its way in. Even though the air in the cabin was warm and damp, he felt a chill gnawing at his bones.

  Ginger kept the light aimed into Donnie’s stupidly-grinning face. Her hot anger had gone away, but the cool quiet of her voice was to Pearly somehow worse when she spoke a single word, delivered with menacing power: “Don’t.”

  Donnie shrugged. “Ain’t nothin’ to me.”

  Nilla was beside her brother, who was spitting blood. Little Jack gave a shudder but he did not cry or release a single sob; it seemed to her that he might never cry again, and that suddenly he was far older than his eight years of life. “I’m all right,” he said, and even his voice sounded more manly. She crawled over to see about Mr. Hartley, who was trying to sit up and having a tough time of it.

  She looked up at the three kidnappers who stood between her and the door. “We need some food and water,” she told them. “Can’t we have any?”

  “Donnie,” Ginger said, “go get the canteen.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because I’m tellin’ you to, that’s why. Pearly, watch ’em a minute.” She went out to where the grocery bag sat on the kitchen table. They’d gone through two cans of pork ’n’ beans, one of the bottles of Coca-Cola and Donnie had chomped down two of the apples. She didn’t feel like opening the ham spread for sandwiches or opening another can of the pork ’n’ beans. She plucked out one of the boxes of Cracker Jack and took that back to the room. “Here,” she said, and threw it on the floor between Nilla and Hartley. “That’ll have to do.” Donnie came in with a metal canteen and Ginger told him to unscrew the cap and give them all a drink. Pearly heard Donnie mutter something that was unintelligible and probably foul, but the young hellion obeyed the mistress of the house. Nilla got a drink first. When Little Jack turned his head away from the canteen, Nilla told him to take a drink in the strongest sisterly voice she could muster and he did. Hartley was up on his knees by now, and he also drank from the offered canteen without comment.

  “All right,” said Ginger when Donnie was done. “Daddy Ludenmere’s payin’ up about this time tomorrow mornin’, so nobody’s gonna be dyin’ from thirst or starvation. Everybody happy now?” She didn’t wait for the reply that would never come. “Go,” she told Donnie, who gave a small but infuriating chuckle as he followed Pearly out of the room.

  When the door was closed, Nilla heard the noise of the table being propped up again. After that, she could hear the muffled voice of the woman telling Donnie to go get a smoke or take a walk or go squat in the woods but to leave the kids alone. The woman used language that a whole crate of soap could not wash from a person’s mouth.

  “Help me with this,” Little Jack said.

  He was trying to get the Cracker Jack open. He wound up holding the box while Nilla’s fingers tore at the paper. At last they got it open and they were able to tilt the box into each other’s mouths to get some of the caramel-covered popcorn. “Do you want some of this, Mr. Hartley?” Nilla asked.

  “No,” he answered hollowly, and still in pain. “You kids eat up.”

  Nilla sat back, her teeth crunching the popcorn. To try to reach Curtis again? No, he needed his rest too…and the thing was, she feared that her fear was making her lose the concentration to connect, and that fear grew past fear into dread. She would try again later in the morning, and before then she would try to force herself to get some sleep if she could.

  “Gimme some more,” Little Jack said.

  With a precarious grip by the tips of her fingers, she tilted the box again into his mouth.

  “Hey, hey!” he said with his mouth full. He spat something out on the floor and when he could speak through the popcorn he said, “I got the prize!”

  “Good for you.” Nilla closed her eyes. It was no darker than it had been before.

  “I lost it. Wait…here it is.” His searching fingers had found the small paper packet next to his left knee. “What do you think it could be?”

  “Glasses to see in the dark.”

  “Oh yeah, that’d be what we need. I’ll hold it if you can tear it open.”

  “Jack,” she said, and realized it was the first time she hadn’t put the Little before it, “I’m trying to rest, okay?”

  “Just help me.”

  “Let it wait.”

  “Why?” he asked, and it was a good question.

  She sighed with resignation, opened her eyes into the darkness and reached toward him. They found each other and he guided the packet to her fingers. She then guided it to her mouth and tore it open with her teeth while her brother held it. Little Jack said, “Thanks,” and she figured he would either empty it onto the floor or try to pluck it out with his fingertips.

  About ten seconds passed, and then Little Jack said, “I think it’s a ring. Yeah, it is…
a ring…but there’s somethin’ else on it…kind of a…rocket ship or somethin’…wait, wait…oh yeah…I think it’s a tin whistle.”

  From the other side of the room came Hartley’s voice, still raspy with injury: “Don’t blow it. You say it’s tin?”

  “Yes sir, I guess. Some kind of metal. I couldn’t blow it anyway, not with my fat lip.”

  “Bring it over here. Be careful not to drop it.”

  “Yes sir.” Nilla heard her brother crawling over to Hartley. “Here it is,” Little Jack said as he put it between Hartley’s fingers. There was a long pause, and then Hartley said quietly, “I’ve got some change in my left pocket. There’s a dime in there. It’ll be the thinnest coin. Will you get that out, please?”

  “What’re you doing, Mr. Hartley?” Nilla asked.

  “Quiet,” he cautioned. And then he went on, in a whisper, “This is like a miniature Buck Rogers rocket ship on a ring. It’s a whistle…made of pot metal, I think. But there’s a seam that’s got a very small crack in it. I’m gonna try to work it open with a dime. Got it, Jack?” He too, had lost the Little. “Okay, good…just hold onto it for a minute, I’m gonna need your help to do this.”

  Nilla crawled closer to the others. “Why are you going to work it open?” she whispered.

  “Gonna try,” he corrected. “If I can use that dime to widen the crack, maybe I can peel the metal back and make a sharp edge. Then if that crazy man comes in here to hurt us again I’ll have somethin’ to ward him off with until the woman can calm him down.”

  “Is that smart?” she dared to ask. “I mean…if you cut him, won’t he hurt us more?”

  “What I want to do is make him think twice if he comes in here again and starts some shi…some business,” Hartley said. “If I can peel the seam back enough, I’ll have a blade, and I think I can get the ring part on the first joint of my little finger. It won’t be much, but I’m not gonna sit and have to watch Jack take another beatin’ without fightin’ back. Okay?” he asked, and she realized he was wanting her permission to continue, because what he was proposing might be necessary but it was awfully dangerous too.

  She wished she could ask Curtis his opinion, and through him her daddy’s, but this was up to her.

  She thought about it awhile longer, remembering how terrible the sound of her brother being slapped had been, and how terrible had been the sight of Mr. Hartley being hurt and falling to the floor where he lay gasping and defenseless.

  This was up to her.

  At last she opened her mouth, and she whispered, “Okay.”

  Nineteen.

  Pearly thought he had found escape from what seemed an endless and humidly hot night by lying on the top bunk of the bunkbeds and fixing his mind upon Mexico. Ginger had stretched out on the bunk below after smoking another cigarette in the aftermath of the commotion caused by Donnie, and Pearly couldn’t help but say to her in the glow of one of the oil lamps, “I told you he was gonna be trouble. He’s a loose cannon.”

  “I needed a cannon, loose or not,” she said. “Instead of a pop-gun like you.”

  Then he’d wisely shut his mouth, Ginger had said no more, and he closed his eyes and travelled to Mexico in his mind. He saw the blue ocean waves breaking foam upon the white-sand beach, he saw the winding path that led up to his mansion perched atop the green hill, he heard the songs of the wild birds in the verdant trees and smelled…money. It had a particular perfume, a wealthy scent, a smell of freedom. With his share he would never have to go out on that damned road again and sweat out the selling of inscribed Bibles, gold mine bonds, oil well deeds, letters from attorneys and banks and investment firms, all counterfeit to snag the suckers and especially the ill-educated who had caught their own heady whiff of cash.

  Something for nothing. It was the engine that drove all confidence games. People thinking they were going to get something for free. And all he was ever selling was air. But this time…he had merchandise to sell, and by this time tomorrow the deal would be done. Hot damn! he thought. A box of cash and all the good things that came with it. Then to Mexico, and all that came with his dreams.

  He didn’t know how long he’d drifted off, but he was awakened by the sound of the door to the bunkbed room closing. The oil lamp’s wick was glowing orange on the writing desk. He leaned over and saw that Ginger had left her bunk. Gone to the outhouse? Then why didn’t she take the light? He checked his wristwatch and saw it was about twenty minutes past three. Well, whatever she was up to, she was a big girl and she could sure as hell take care of herself. So…back to sleep, if he could.

  But he could not. He mopped sweat from his face with the sheet and in another fifteen minutes checked his watch again. She still hadn’t returned. Now he was wondering what she was up to. Gone for a walk in the woods? Doubtful, not after what he’d told her about the rental agent saying they needed a snakestick. He figured the canebreak rattlers around here likely killed nine or ten people a year, probably all niggers out working the fields. So where was Miss High-And-Mighty-Loose-Cannon-Lovin’ Ginger LaFrance?

  He was unable to let it go. He thought she must be out on the back porch, probably smoking another fag and trying to find a breeze in the heavy heat that had descended since midnight but, again, why hadn’t she taken the lamp? Something smelled funny…the rotten peaches odor of wrongness in the air.

  Clad in his undershirt and trousers, he swung down from the top bunk, picked up the lamp and went out into the front room.

  She was sitting in a corner, her back to the wall, in one of the wicker chairs.

  Her champagne-colored eyes glinted in the lamp’s light, but she did not look at either the light or him. She stared straight ahead.

  She had the kitchen knife with the serrated edge clasped in a double-handed grip before her. Her cheeks and forehead were damp with sweat. As Pearly watched, she slowly lifted the knife, hung it suspended in the air for a few seconds over her head, and then brought it down so fast and hard Pearly felt the movement of air and heard the hiss of the blade.

  “No, no,” she whispered, her face slack and her eyes fixed upon nothing that Pearly could see. “No…told you…not that way…no, no…who are you…who are you…”

  “Ginger?” Pearly asked. He stepped toward her, the light offered as a solace to whatever darkness she was fighting.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” came a quiet voice, followed by the crunch of teeth into an apple.

  Pearly turned and saw Donnie sitting not in a chair but on the floor in the opposite corner. His legs were crossed beneath him and he was bare-chested. Beads of sweat glistened at the base of his throat. Thankfully he had removed the glass eye and electrical tape from his forehead. He took another bite of the last apple and said, “You probably want to step back. She’s liable to get up from that fuckin’ chair and cut your heart out.”

  Pearly retreated toward Donnie. When his own back had nearly hit the wall, he watched Ginger lift the knife up once more in the double-handed grip, hang it suspended for a few seconds and then bring it down with fearsome speed and power. This time her face contorted with a savage expression. “Told you!” she said, but it was still just a ragged whisper. “No, no…not that way…who are you…who are you…” Then her face went slack again, the sweat gleamed on her cheeks and forehead, and with the knife clasped before her she slowly began to rock herself forward and back…forward and back…forward and back…while the dead eyes stared at nothing living.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Pearly asked.

  “She gets like this sometimes,” Donnie answered, which Pearly figured was no answer at all. “I guess it’s like lettin’ go of tension or somethin’.”

  “What? She’s tense about tomorrow so she goes into a…” He didn’t even know what it ought to be called. She was whispering again but it was so low and unintelligible that it could’ve been a foreign language. “Can she hear us?” he asked.

  “Naw. I’ve sat when she’s done this, called her every name of whore a
nd laughed my ass off watchin’ her play the knife—and it’s always a knife, she can find ’em by smell I think—so I don’t believe she can hear any talkin’ when she’s this deep in.”

  “Damn,” Pearly said, more of an exhaled breath than a word.

  “Yeah. Hey…she ever pull that thing on you with the gun? The single bullet and all?”

  Pearly was about to reply in the affirmative when he remembered he was talking to Ginger’s nephew. Or, supposedly her nephew. How the hell would he know about that, unless…? “Maybe,” Pearly said.

  “Bet she did. Look at her rock herself. Got that knife ready to stab the world to death. You ain’t gettin’ me any nearer to her, that’s for damn sure.” He crunched into the apple again, enjoying the show that was being played out before him.

  “How long does this go on?”

  “Seen it go for a couple of hours. At the end of it she quiets down, gets up, puts the knife away and goes back to wherever she’s sleepin’. At light, she won’t remember a thing.”

  Pearly eased down onto the floor a few feet away from Donnie, with the oil lamp between them. He listened to the eerie singsong rhythm of Ginger’s rant, which was delivered with ferocity but still remained a whisper. “How come she doesn’t want me to know her real name?” he asked.

  “Don’t want anybody to know it. I’m family, so I do, but…it’s just the way she is, Mister Pearly. Thinks that whoever knows her real name has got some kind of power over her. Couldn’t stand that, I’m thinkin’. She can’t stay in one place too long, either.” He took another bite of the apple and watched the knife slowly go up, hang and then come down with a strength that would drive the blade into a bone. “Changes states and towns, changes her name. Got a fever to change herself, is what my ma says. Only she can’t change herself, not really, so she’s always on the move. But…she’s right proud of herself, comin’ through what she did.”