The Listener

by Robert McCammon

  It was a bad injury. He kept spitting up blood. He had no illusions that he didn’t need a hospital, and probably the emergency room, but at least he had avoided being swung. And…Nilla and Little Jack were still out there, and they needed him. How on God’s green earth could he help them? It had gratified him that he’d been able to hear her and speak back to her, as hurt and messed-up as he was, but what good did that do if he didn’t know exactly where they were? A swamp at the lake, she’d said, but he’d lost some of what she was sending because he’d been hearing her only in fragments.

  It was a big lake and likely a big swamp, he thought as he kept walking. His hands were pressed against his ribs because it felt like one or more of them was jabbing his insides like a sharp blade. He remembered speaking to Nilla when all this had started and thinking according to her impressions that the cabin the kidnappers had taken the children to was likely past town, on the lake side. For sure they’d been on the lake side, but on the other side of town? The swamp must be past the town, so that made sense…but how far it was, he had no idea.

  He needed clothes and shoes. He had stepped on half-a-dozen beer bottle caps and a dead possum. At least he was not dead himself and as long as that was true he held hope he could get Nilla and Little Jack away from the kidnappers.

  But…in the real world again and not the fantasy world of faithful knights in shining armor, which Curtis thought might be getting mixed up in his head due to the beating he’d taken…how?

  He reached the two-block town. It was completely silent until a dog started barking at him, and then a second one joined in. He ignored them and leaned against a wall for support; he wanted to slide down to the ground and rest awhile, just a few minutes to ease his legs and clear from his head the haze that came and went, but he realized that time was his enemy. What was he going to do, from this point? What could he do?

  He made out a sign on a storefront: Evie’s ‘Everything’ Shoppe.

  Everything? Clothes, maybe? Shoes?

  He pushed himself away from the wall and approached the store. The two dogs were still barking furiously at him, but they had come no closer. He peered through the store’s front window.

  Without lights, he couldn’t make out what was in there except right in the window was a mannequin dressed in dungarees and a straw hat, and there were three pairs of women’s shoes and a couple of pocket watches on a display shelf.

  Miss Evie wasn’t going to like what he needed to do, but it had to be done. He looked around for something to use. Just beyond the Everything Shoppe was a structure being built, and somebody had left a wheelbarrow full of bricks sitting in the rain. He walked to the wheelbarrow, picked up two bricks, walked back to the Everything Shoppe’s front window, and without further hesitation threw one brick into the glass. It made a crash that silenced the dogs. Curtis threw the second brick into part of the window that had not completely shattered, and as the dogs started their barking again he pulled jagged shards of glass out of the windowframe and crawled in over the fallen mannequin and the shelf of shoes.

  Once inside, he had to pause to get a few small pieces of glass out of his feet. He had a moment where his head swam and he felt near passing out again, but he steadied himself and then took stock of where he was, as he left bloody footprints on the gray linoleum tiles.

  In the gloom he could tell the Everything Shoppe was probably a place where people either brought their castoffs to be sold or where the belongings of dead folks wound up. For sale with yellow price tags were rickety-looking old chairs and tables, some bigger pieces of furniture, a roller lawnmower, a display of pots and pans, dishes and glasses, a shelf of towels and bedsheets and…there, over by the wall and deeper into the store…a shelf of what looked to be folded-up blue jeans and some other articles of clothing.

  He went through the jeans and found they were all big enough to put three Curtis Mayhews into, but there were two pairs of khaki trousers and the one with green plaid patches on the knees looked like it might fit. He got into that and found the waist snug but the length was way short of his ankles. No matter; it covered him up. A rack of men’s and women’s shoes stood just past the jeans shelf. A pair of worn brown workboots went on his feet; they were tight, even open without laces, but he could not be a choosy beggar. There were some colorful shirts on hangers but he found a pack of three white cotton tshirts bound up with a rubber band. He took one of the tshirts and shrugged painfully into it, and though it flagged around him he was satisfied with it.

  A child’s battered red wagon caught his eye. Next to it was a good-sized dollhouse that somebody had spent a lot of time building. And beside a round table that sagged on one broken leg was a white bicycle. It was a girl’s bicycle, smaller than what Curtis was used to, but on closer inspection he found it had air in the tires and the chain looked all right. Attached to the handlebars was a woven-reed basket decorated with painted-on red and blue flowers.

  The dogs had given up their barking and moved on, and it was time for Curtis to get out.

  He wheeled the bicycle toward the broken window in his new used clothes and his torture chamber boots. Before he reached the window he caught sight of a water fountain off to the side. Above it on the wall was a handwritten sign This Fountain Is For Whites Only. He approached it, stepped on the pedal that operated the flow, put his face in the water that arced up and drank what he wanted. When he was done he went to work getting himself and the bicycle out of the window onto the sidewalk.

  Should he risk knocking at the doors of any of the houses around here? He was torn on that; he needed the police, but he didn’t want to be either shotgunned or beaten. Not being able to speak, he wouldn’t have a chance to explain himself unless he could get to a pencil and paper, and how long would that take?

  He decided he would ride out past Kenner and go along every road that led to the lake, in hopes of finding a cabin where Ludenmere’s car was parked. He didn’t know the car’s make but he figured it would be obvious it belonged to a rich man. That would at least give him a starting point. What he would do from there, he didn’t know, and maybe it wasn’t much of a plan but it was all he had. He got up on the bicycle and found he was almost hitting himself in the chin with his knees, though it was going to be faster than walking. He spat onto the sidewalk the blood that kept rising into his mouth, and then he started pedalling west.

  Ironheaded, he remembered his mama saying. Just like your daddy.

  And proud of it, he thought.

  His long legs worked the pedals, and like a tarnished knight on a white charger he moved on in his quest.

  ****

  Nilla and Little Jack waded out of the grassy swamp onto a muddy beach. The lantern showed to the left a field of knee-high brush dappled with clumps of palmettos and twisted pines, and to the right was the unbroken surface of the lake. Nilla looked back at the two oncoming lights. She had the thought that they ought to head across the field; that would be more to the south, and they might find a road in that direction. “This way,” she told her brother, who was starting to limp badly on his injured ankle. Again, with her hands still bound she could do nothing to help him.

  They had just started toward the field, which looked to be rougher and more uneven ground than it had first appeared, when a gunshot rang out. Nilla heard the bullet sing past her, dangerously close, and she froze in her tracks.

  “Nope!” the woman called out. “Not goin’ that way, darlin’! Just stand right where you are!”

  “Can you run?” Nilla asked Little Jack.

  “I can try.”

  “We’ll stay on the beach,” she said. “Easier going on your leg, but we’ve got to run and I’m going to throw the lantern away so they can’t follow us by the light anymore. All right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” She said, “Let’s go!” and she tossed the lantern’s wire handle from her wrists into the air to her left. Then she began to run through the mud as Little Jack hobbled behind her, trying hi
s best to keep up.

  “Damn!” Ginger said through gritted teeth as she watched the lantern fly up and then crash down into the brush. Smoke was still curling from the barrel of the .45 revolver in her right hand. “I thought that would do the trick. Well, at least they’re stayin’ along the lake. Let’s keep at ’em.” She started wading through the last of the swampgrass toward the shore.

  Pearly followed her. “Kinda risky shootin’ at our insurance policies,” he said.

  “I want to keep ’em right out here ’til they wear out. They think they’re bein’ smart, but without that light they’re not goin’ much further and they won’t try to go inland. Mark it, they’ll be givin’ up soon.”

  “Didn’t you say that half-an-hour ago?”

  “Maybe.” She looked up at the wide expanse of stars. “Still got more’n three hours before first light. We’ll run ’em to ground and be on the road in another hour.”

  “Unless we miss ’em in the dark,” he said. “We could go right past ’em and not know it.”

  “City kids,” she answered as they reached the shore. “Without that lantern, they’ll stay near the lake where the goin’s easier. Trust me, Pearly. They’re gonna give out and we’ll find ’em sittin’ on the ground waitin’ for us real soon.”

  He was starting to doubt that, but he said nothing. He thought that when they got the kids he was going to beat the blood out of them for this, and in his mind he saw their faces struck with terror and plastered with the handfuls of lake mud he was going to shove into their mouths. Time was being wasted when he and Ginger should be on their way to Mexico with all that money, but she was right…they needed the brats to keep from ending up shot to pieces at a highway roadblock, because if the kids were left to go free it wouldn’t be long before they found their way out of here and flagged down help, and soon after that every cop in Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas would be on the alert, and it was a long way from New Orleans to Brownsville. Pearly figured it could be that if Ludenmere and the nigger driver weren’t dead they had already gotten to the law, which made it even more imperative to get hold of those kids. Without the brats, it could be a Bonnie and Clyde massacre all over again.

  He followed behind Ginger along the muddy shore. Their lights searched the darkness ahead, as about seventy yards in front of them Nilla had had to slow down for Little Jack to keep up.

  “Can’t keep runnin’, Nilla,” her brother said. “My leg’s hurtin’. I’m sorry.”

  “All right,” she told him. “We’re—” She stopped, because in front of them she could make out a shape blocking their way. In another moment, as they neared it, the shape became the wreck of a small boat turned on its side with a gaping hole torn in the hull. They went around it, through a little tangle of thicket, and there was another boat—at least the front part of it—half buried in the mud. Something else stood on the shore beyond the second boat, and in the darkness it looked like the broken remnants of an ancient castle rearing up against the stars. Pieces of splintered wood littered the ground. As they got closer to the structure, Nilla almost walked into part of a sign that had been nailed up between a pair of timbers. She could make out the lettering on the part that had not been torn away, black against white but ravaged by the elements: HEAD MARINA.

  A wooden staircase with a few missing risers rose up ten feet into the ruin, which appeared to have been built upon wharf pilings. She looked back and saw the lights just coming around the first wrecked boat. It occurred to her that she and Little Jack were going to be caught before they could get past this structure, but maybe there was a place inside it that they could winnow into and hide. “Up the stairs!” she said, and she waited for Little Jack to hobble up before she came. The staircase swayed beneath them, tortured nails squealed and one of the battered risers that was rotten and as soft as butter gave way under Little Jack’s feet, but then they were up on what maybe had once been a screened-in porch, the rain-soaked planks of the floor tilted to the right and the roof torn off. The black rectangle of a doorway led back into…what? A room with no floor? One more step, and they could plunge down onto jagged pieces of boards, broken glass and nails.

  Nilla focused her mind on Curtis, and he might not hear her but she had to try.

  :Curtis!: she sent out. :We’re at a marina! It’s all broken up…something Head Marina! Can you hear me?:

  A few terrible seconds passed, and then he came back to her. :I hear you.:

  :We’re gonna try to—: She had to break off, because she could see the lights down at the bottom of the stairs and the beams swept upward.

  ****

  :Try to what?: he asked, but he got nothing back.

  He was pedalling the bicycle down the second road he’d found; the first had ended at a pier and a pair of darkened cabins, no cars around. The second road was the same, another pier and another cabin…but there looked to be a little fishing boat tied up at the pier, and beside the cabin was an old car…surely not a rich man’s car, but a car all the same. Was there a light in the cabin? Yes…he caught a glint of it, moving past a window. Then a door opened at the back and a figure emerged carrying a flashlight and something else, Curtis couldn’t tell what. The person trudged slowly down toward the pier…an early morning fisherman, Curtis thought. Going out to fish after the rain.

  Did he dare to chance this? He had to.

  He pedalled forward to get between the fisherman and the pier. As soon as the bike’s chain clattered in its sprockets the fisherman spun around and aimed the light at Curtis.

  “Who’s there?” It was a woman’s voice, tense with fright.

  Curtis got off the bicycle, let it fall, and lifted his hands up over his head. He started walking toward the woman. The light jabbed him in the eyes.

  “Stay where you are!” she ordered. “Don’t you come no closer!”

  He stopped and lowered his hands. He tried to speak, but pain wrenched his throat and what came out sounded like a groan.

  “Sweet Jesus!” the woman said. “Who’s been dancin’ on your face, boy?”

  He put a hand to his throat and shook his head.

  “What? You can’t talk?”

  Again, Curtis shook his head.

  “You need a doctor! Hospital, I’m thinkin’!” She approached him, but cautiously.

  “God A’mighty, how are you walkin’?” She stopped a few feet away and lowered the light.

  With his good eye, Curtis could make out that she was a thin but wiry-looking Negro woman maybe up in her sixties, wearing overalls and a tobacco-brown blouse with a red-checked neckerchief. White hair boiled out around a much-worn brown cap with a badge on it that displayed a red winged horse and the words Magnolia Petroleum. He noted uneasily that in addition to the flashlight she was carrying in her left hand a five-foot-long shaft of wood with a sharpened iron speartip on the end. Around her waist was a leather belt that held a bone-handled knife in its sheath.

  He pointed at her knife.

  “What? You want that?”

  He nodded.

  “You crazy, or drunk?”

  He shook his head and made a motion with the fingers of his right hand for her to hurry and comply.

  “I ain’t givin’ you my knife! You’re out of your damn mind!”

  Curtis offered his left thumb and with the index finger of his other hand made a short cutting motion across it.

  “What? You wantin’ to cut your thumb off?”

  Another shake of the head. He kept doing the cutting motion.

  “Hell, no!” she said.

  He abruptly spat blood into his left palm. It was watery, but red enough. He stretched out the tail of his t-shirt, dipped his index finger into the little bloodpool and wrote HELP ME on the white cotton.

  Then she knew what he was getting at, but she said, “You been beat near crazy, boy, but I’ll tell you…I can get you with my gator sticker faster’n you can stick me, so stamp that on your brainpot.” She lifted the knife from its sheath an
d gave it to him, handle first.

  Curtis did not hesitate. He clenched the teeth he had left and cut a groove across his left thumb. The pain wasn’t much, compared to what he’d already endured. Red blood welled out. He gave the knife back to her and, using his index finger as a pen dipped into the gory inkpot, he began to write on the tail of his t-shirt.

  HEAD MARINA?

  “Head to a marina? That’s what you mean?”

  He shook his head and pointed at the raggedly-scrawled word HEAD. Then he aimed his bloody finger toward the west.

  “Boar’s Head marina?”

  Curtis gave a vigorous nod. That must be the place Nilla and Little Jack had reached.

  “Nothin’ there but a wreck. Storm took it nearly all down couple’a summers ago.”

  He pointed at himself, at her, and toward the boat, which he could now see had a small outboard motor. Then he made a jabbing motion to the west again.

  “You want to go to Boar’s Head marina? Why?”

  He squeezed blood from his thumb and underlined the HELP ME once, twice and a third time.

  Then he wrote POLICE and he put a fist to his ear in emulation of a telephone.

  “Call the police?”

  A nod answered that question.

  “Ain’t got no telephone. The nearest p’lice station is back a ways toward Metairie. What you got y’self into?” She realized he was unable to answer that one. “Damn,” she said quietly. She looked from him to her boat and back again. “You needin’ to get there quick?”

  He tried his hardest to speak. It came out as a raspy and mangled “Kik.”

  “I know a way through the marsh, take us maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Jesus, sonny! This is some mighty strange shit right here you’re askin’, and me not knowin’…” She let it go. “Well,” she said, “you can tell ’em at the nuthouse that this was Fay Ripp’s good deed for the year. Or maybe it’s a bad deed. Come on, then, get in the boat.”