The Lipless Gods

by Brian Stillman

  Chapter 2

  Sipe had thought the road trip would be easy. Straight shots, south and then north on I-5 with the only hardship his ears popping on Snoqualmie Pass. And it had been. Easy. Until all the texting.

  South of Salem, Connie started texting almost nonstop. And just before Portland, he told Sipe there was a change of plans. A detour. Sipe didn’t question, didn’t complain. His job was to drive.

  Later, just shy of 11 p.m., 250-some miles east of I-5, on a two-lane highway, Connie pointed, and Sipe signaled and decelerated, turning at the stop sign, off 395, accelerating away from the sole evidence of life on earth - a Zippy Mart gas station, complete with the 50 foot tall roadside sign, displaying the Zippy mascot in all his goony, squirrelly, snacks-gathering glory. The Lexus taillights vanished on 244, the point where the highway curved and sliced through a low hill.

  Fifteen miles north of the intersection with the squirrel, the highway had started to curve through wind towers, the big blades still in the summer night. The wind towers resembled rockets ready to launch or a long-slumbered invasion force, one ancient signal shy of waking and incinerating the countryside.

  Coming out of the punch through the hill the road straightened. The Lexus front beams lit roadside signs. Speed limit, 30. ‘Welcome to Little Creek’. Population, 250.

  “Two-fifty,” said Connie. Whistled. Sipe slowed down.

  Some big building on the left, parking lot lights painting the exterior amber. The night lights overly bright inside. An office.

  “Forest Service. Huh. What is it, Smokey the Bear? Yeah. Smokey the Bear. He’s the fire prevention bear.”

  You didn’t tell the Old Man’s kid to shut up. Sipe reminded himself of that fact.

  Streetlamps glowed further down the throat of Main Street, beyond the sleeping houses. Until then intermittent porch light illustrated the lack of sidewalks. The shoulder a dark unbroken strip of gravel on both sides of the asphalt.

  "It's just up here," said Connie. "Yeah. Auntie's. See the sign? We want to turn right up there."

  This was where the married woman wanted to meet Connie. In St. Helena they’d had a fling. Connie at cooking school, the woman at some business retreat.

  The kid had told Sipe, she didn't live here. Little Creek was just close to her residence. Convenient. Out of the way. The husband wouldn't think to tail her to someplace like this. Completely in the dark his faithful spouse had christened a student at the Culinary Institute of America her boy toy. Connie had guaranteed Sipe it wouldn't get messy. In and out. Like that.

  On the left a garage, Don’s Automotive. Orange lamppost light supplied the gravel lot an industrial sheen like fast food fries under a heat lamp. Further up, part of the same lot, were propane tanks and a profusion of signs. Lamps at their base lighting up a series of messages. Illustrations. The flag. Uncle Sam. What looked like a mannequin dressed in pirate gear.

  Further back, looming behind a street running parallel to the main route, dark houses, and a hill, a big white building perched at the hilltop. A school. Maybe an asylum.

  Sipe hit the signal, slowed the car down.

  “You sure this is it?” asked Sipe.

  “Yeah.”

  “No street signs.”

  “No. Auntie’s. Look. Auntie’s. And that’s a park, right there. Turn between Auntie’s and the park. It’s all good.”

  They made the turn. Sipe registered two human forms inside the park. One slumped on a merry go round. Limp in the manner of teenagers everywhere.

  They drove between more dark houses. Up ahead the houses thinned, fields took over, and darkness loomed, a definite border with the sleeping little town.

  "She said there's a bridge. And then just make the first left after we're over it."

  Driving past the last lampposts in town Connie asked, “What are those?”

  “Houses.”

  “They don’t look like houses.”

  Sipe took another look.

  “Railcars maybe.”

  A good half-dozen, on the right, revealed just a little by the front beams glow, the railcars old, exteriors the dulled gray of an abandoned hornet’s nest. Swamped in graffiti. Open doorways providing view to interiors even darker than the night enshrouded landscape.

  Ahead of them, the forest border. In the foreground a cement bridge glowed under the headlights like exposed bone.

  Sipe fought the impulse to release the steering wheel and brush the shoulder holster. Just make sure it was still there. Years ago Zeke had told Sipe the reason most guys in their line of work wore black slacks was to hide the buckets of palm sweat rubbed off into the fabric over the course of a normal day. Sipe tried to picture Zeke, driving off course at Connie's say-so. He could imagine Zeke's shrug, the resignation. Some orders you followed and hoped for the best. Some orders you followed letter perfect and still the cops found you stuffed into a car trunk in Aberdeen outside a Laundromat.

  The unpaved road was on the left just past the bridge. Gravel ticked off the under frame and Sipe imagined loose teeth rattling inside a label-stripped soup can. Zeke had known this one guy, looked like Vince Lombardi, and the guy liked to play dentist. Liked trophies. Some slender semblance of a creek curled parallel to the dirt road, on the left, the moon glittering here and there on the water surface like reflected angel contrail.

  "I think I see her," said Connie. "Right up ahead. It's that ball park."

  Diamond, thought Sipe, but didn't correct Connie, like the Old Man was in the back seat, listening, and would hiss and spit at any little indication the boy wasn't perfect in every way.

  The SUV was parked nose in towards the diamond backstop. The Lexus headlights illuminated the driver side of the rig, someone in the driver seat, raising an arm, squinting, hooding their view. Sipe pulled in beside the SUV and groaned, realizing he hadn't signaled. Hand on the keys he looked back towards the bridge, anticipating the sudden flare of some shit kicker cop's dome light.

  Connie had his seat belt off, the door open, was getting out of the passenger seat before Sipe even had the engine off.

  "Millie. Baby," said Connie.

  "Hey." Some wet noises. Some giggling. The woman got out from the SUV driver side. The door slammed. She swore. Connie laughed. She asked why and he said because she swore like that. Whatever. Connie grabbed her, performed an even more elaborate greeting.

  Sipe listened to the engine tick. The baseball diamond was enclosed inside a track. There were two dugouts, but they weren't dugouts, not cut into the earth, but just built on the turf like little wooden forearms extended off the backdrop at angles. Sipe scanned the diamond, the track. Little Creek glowed beyond it all like some low-key, top-secret government project.

  "Just give us a minute, huh?" Connie glanced in at Sipe, not even waiting for the response, gravel crunching under the couple, the noise thinning as they walked to the middle of the unpaved road. Sipe thought they'd make for shadows, some spot far enough out of the way the two-backed beast wouldn't be too obvious.

  No one drove over the bridge. Nothing moved. A sliver of tiredness crept in. Stay frosty. Sipe concentrated. He thought of orphaned teeth clicking in a can.

  The gravel crunched. His hand on the gun when Connie peered back inside the car. In the rearview mirror Sipe could see Millie, a big girl under moon glow. Staring right in at him like a robot armed with specific, lethal programming.

  "You know anything about cars, Sipe?"

  "Little."

  "We might have a problem. She got here all right, but she said she tried the engine a little while ago, to check the time and all, and couldn't get it to turn over."

  Millie popped the rig hood. First, she handed Connie a flashlight and Sipe took it from Connie. Connie swore, trying to find the secret latch that actually freed the hood from the engine compartment. Millie sighed,
playfully shoved Connie out of the way, and once the magic trick was pulled off, Sipe told the two of them to watch the road.

  "Why?" Millie asked.

  "Cops. Kids. Your husband."

  A long pause before she said, "Oh. Right."

  The flashlight beam aimed at the ground plus the blue toned night provided enough illumination Sipe could see her look at Connie. Later on Sipe would remember what she did with her mouth - that smile like a parent keeping something secret from a kid. He caught it, but he read it wrong.

  Sipe swept the flashlight beam over the black and metal and plastic cityscape. Engines not his specialty. He didn't see anything wrong. He didn't know what he should be seeing, but he was wasting time. There were jumper cables in his trunk, and he knew he'd feel like a jerk, having to consult the owner's manual for the right place to put the tiger clips, but it beat pretending an area of expertise. It would get them back on the road.

  "I don't know," he admitted.

  Sipe stepped back, thumbing the flashlight beam light switch off, and at the same time a hand bunched up his suit jacket, and something jabbed him in the ribs.

  Electricity shot out his head, his fingertips, coiled and wormed all the interstices of his teeth, soldered pubic hair to skin, and murdered the moisture in whatever turds were due to be dropped during his morning routine.

  When he fell, he crumpled, like some tree long bare of green, something ancient the termites had hollowed long before even the Indians claimed the continent home.

  The flashlight had crunched in his hand. Spasming, he'd gone Hulk. Squeezed it skinny. Or not. He couldn't feel. Anything.

  Staring into the sky, aware, but not doing anything resembling thinking. Hearing Connie, not seeing him. The eyes looking down upon him from above belonged to the bared teeth. Miss SUV. No husband would willingly stay with rage so electric, so obvious in the night. A face like that didn't need people except to eat them, often and raw.

  Gravel scattered each time a foot planted firmly into the side of his head. What was in Sipe's head? How much was in it? How hard did you have to kick it to get it out of there?

  She had a long thick ponytail. It swung on each kick. Once, twice, and many more times, maybe a dozen more before Connie dragged her away.

  When the SUV hood closed it slammed shut. A thousand such reveries wouldn't have stirred the man bleeding onto the gravel, 250-some miles east of Portland.