If I have any regrets, it’s for my grandmother. I always wished I could love her as much as she loved me. Though sometimes I felt sorry for her for being so easy to fool. She thought she knew me but she never did. Couldn’t even begin to. Why would you love somebody you don’t even know?
Anyway, back to the car. It was one of Al’s, straight off the lot the day I finished high school. Al says, Pick anything you want. On that side only.
The used side, of course. What he called Certified Pre-Owned. I asked him once, how come somebody has to certify that it’s not a new car? You can tell that just by checking the odometer. He laughed like I’d made a joke. Didn’t even get what I was saying.
I took the red Camaro. 2013. Eighty-four thousand miles on it. And Al says, Alright, you’re going straight for the pussy wagon. I can respect that.
Ha. The only thing Al ever respected was money and his own dick. I wish he’d been home when I got there. Wish I’d of caught them in a threesome. Al would probably be the one taking it up the ass.
Okay, enough reminiscing. I have to get rid of this car. That’s what I’m telling myself all the way into West Virginia. I see this sign says Point Pleasant off to the right 16 miles, and I wonder where I’ve heard that name before, and then it comes to me, the Moth Man. That’s the town the Moth Man made famous. I wouldn’t mind seeing that town but not in this car, no way. So I drive on a little longer, another hour or so, and not far into Virginia there’s this big Home Depot out along the road with a bunch of other businesses, and I figure that’s a good place to start.
The parking lot is crammed full with people coming and going. Must be having a sale on doorknobs or something. So I drive around in the last couple of rows away from the building, waiting for a slot to open up. Then I just sit there with the windows down playing with my phone until I realize shit, this phone’s a problem too. So right away I break it open and take out the battery and the sim card, and I toss them both as far as I can into the weeds out alongside the road.
It’s probably a good 20 minutes before I see this woman coming my way dragging one of those rug shampooer machines, plus a couple of gallon bottles of the stuff you put in it. She’s trying to hold onto it all and get her keys out of her pocket at the same time, but then she drops one of the bottles and my body just goes into action, like it was waiting for that sign or something. I’m going toward her and I say, You should have used a cart, and she looks up and sees me smiling at her and probably thinks I look like her brother or maybe one of her students or something, because she says I know, I wish I had. I thought the wheels on the rug cleaner would make it easy but they don’t.
Too small for the job, I told her, and took both jugs of cleaner out of her arms. Plus they aren’t made for rolling over pavement.
She says, I wish somebody had told me that inside. You’d think they’d tell you that.
Then she pulls out her keys and hits a button on the remote and the headlights blink on a silver SUV three down from mine, and I follow her to the back of it where she pops open the tailgate. I set both jugs into the corner, then pick up the machine and shove it inside and pull the tailgate down.
She says, That was so sweet of you to help. Thank you.
Have a good day, I tell her, and then I’m walking away like I’m headed to my car, but I’m timing my walk to hers so that just as she pops open her door and climbs inside, I pop open the passenger door and dive in and grab her by the back of her head and slam her face down onto the console as hard as I can.
I didn’t even think about it first, just did it. That’s what I find so interesting. It was like some part of me knew exactly what to do and just went ahead and did it. Like I had done it a hundred times before. It was amazing.
She wasn’t dead though and started moaning right away, so I just put my hands around her neck and leaned on top of her and squeezed as hard as I could. Her legs were trying to kick and her hands kept flying up and down like headless chickens but she had no room for any kind of effective movement, and in less time than I thought it would take, she was done. After that it was just a matter of moving all of my stuff into her SUV. The hardest part was getting her into the passenger side. I had to slide the seat all the way back, and after that she crumpled up into a snug little bundle on the passenger floor.
It was a nice vehicle. A lot roomier than mine. With one of those rearview cameras and a navigation screen and Sirius radio and everything. I got out onto the road and drove back to Point Pleasant and went to this little museum run by some really strange guy who said my best chance to see the Moth Man was down at the dynamite bunkers at night. But that I’d have to drive out there and hike through some woods or else wait around for a while and catch the shuttle bus, so I told him screw that, isn’t there someplace else I can maybe see the Moth Man? He said maybe you’d like to see where the bridge collapsed and 46 people died, and I said did they all drown or get killed in the fall? And he said I don’t know that that’s ever been determined, which I thought was a lame answer if ever I’d heard one.
I ended up getting a Moth Man burger to go from a place there in town, then headed west, just following that little directional signal in the rear view mirror, until I swung south again for no reason in particular. When I got tired of driving I started looking for an inconspicuous little motel, of which there is no shortage of those in Kentucky, I’ll tell you. I picked up some fries and a caramel sundae to eat back in my room while I watched the rest of Two and a Half Men on TV. It was an episode I’d already seen so I didn’t pay it a lot of attention. But it’s amazing how good food tastes when you buy it with somebody else’s money.
* * *
from the blog And Sometimes the Abyss Winks at You by Mia Swain
After interviewing Mr. Murcko, I spoke briefly with several of his neighbors. Most of them told the same story: Grayson Rath was a quiet boy, they didn’t really know him very well, they never imagined he could do such a thing. Charlie Douglas, a widower and retired financial consultant who lives next door to the Murcko home, had more to share. He invited me into his living room, where he immediately went to a 5x7 photo of his wife on the mantel, took it down and handed it to me.
His wife was well-known in the area for her work in movies and community theater. “Everybody loved her,” he said. “Adored her.” In the picture she was a petite blonde beauty with her hair in ringlets. “She was barely out of her teens there,” he told me, and tapped a gnarled finger to the glass. “This was around the time she was in that movie with Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper.”
“Easy Rider?” I asked.
“Before that. One called The Trip. She played one of the waitresses. Slept with both of them.”
“In the movie? I’ll have to check it out.”
“In real life. She had sex with both of them. And not just the once, either.” His smile, as he gazed at her photo, was warm and nostalgic. “Of course I didn’t know her then. But those were wild years for all of us. Summer of love and all that.”
From there we moved the conversation to his front deck, where I inquired of his impression of Grayson Rath, whom he had watched growing up. The day was chilly, the trees bare, but he stood there coatless, gazing toward the lake, which was as still as a mirror. The late afternoon light threw the trees’ reflections onto the water, so that the lake was colored a pale orange, and seemed to have a thick tangle of long black tendrils lying just below the surface.
“The picture I have in my head is of him standing out there in the lake of a summer’s day. He used to do that quite frequently.”
“He used to stand out there doing what?” I asked.
“He used to stand out there standing. He’d be maybe 30 yards out, the water up around his chest. And he just stood there looking back at his house. He would stand there like that for I don’t know how long. Sometimes he’d sit on the dock, sometimes take the rowboat out and sit in it a while. But what stood out for me was him just standing out there like a statue, staring back at
the house.”
“And that seemed odd to you?”
“There’s water snakes and snapping turtles in that lake. Carp as long as your leg. Of course the snakes aren’t poisonous but that won’t keep them from biting. And one of those turtles could snap a finger right off.”
“What do you think he was doing out there? Just cooling off?”
“There’s cooling off and there’s cooling off,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“One way to cool off on a summer’s day is to sit in an air-conditioned house. That’s what most people do.”
“And the other way?”
“I’m only saying this because of what he ended up doing. Hindsight being 20/20, you know what I mean?”
“You think he was cooling off in a different way. Cooling off his anger?”
“You see, I take what happened in that house, and the mood he must’ve been in to do it. And I lay that on top of this picture I have of him standing out there chest-deep in the water and just staring back at the place.”
“I understand,” I told him. “How often did you see him out there like that?”
“Over the years? Dozens of times. Every summer he’d be a little taller and a little farther out into the lake.”
“He didn’t have friends over? This would be a great place for kids to party.”
“Just him. I used to feel sorry for him, being left alone so much.”
“How do you know he was alone?”
“Al never parked his car in the garage. If he was home, it was in the driveway. Most of us here have golf carts, just for tooling around the development. Al has one too. There’s also an old Harley in there he never rides. I heard the boy trying to get it started a few years back, one of those times he was alone. He even pushed it out onto the driveway and tried to roll-start it. I just stood there on my porch watching, holding the phone in my hand, ready to call Al at work if the bike started up. Boy would’ve killed himself on that big thing. Fortunately for him he couldn’t get more than a cough or two out of it. He finally gave up and pushed it back inside.”
“Did you inform Mr. Murcko about this?”
“I mentioned it one day when I caught him out at the mailbox. He thanked me for telling him. And that was the end of it. As for the boy’s mother… I have no idea what she was up to. It was a strange house, to be honest with you. Those people kept strange hours. And look where it got them.”
The neighbors in the development keep an eye on each other’s homes. It is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Gilford, and several of the families have had canoes or kayaks or garden tools or bicycles disappear overnight. Some have installed security systems, though most have not. They want to believe that they are safe in their little enclave, and that the ugliness of poverty and violence will never invade their sanctuary, just as long as they all remain vigilant.
I imagine they will have a harder time maintaining that illusion now.
* * *
Grayson Rath voice recording
As of right this minute, that Home Depot woman is balled up in the cargo area of her SUV while I catch some winks in the back seat. It’s warmer here than it was at home, so I’ve got the back windows down and the tailgate up to blow her stink outside. It’s not that bad yet but noticeable. I could just dump her out here in the woods and it might be months before anybody finds her, but I don’t know. She never did anything wrong to me.
The last couple of hours I’ve been wondering if there’s any way in hell I’ll get away with this. At first I was talking in the recorder just to keep my thoughts straight, but now I’m thinking there should be some kind of account of this adventure I’m on. It’s not every day something like this happens. And let’s say I do get away with it. There should still be a record of it. When I’m on my deathbed I could hand it over to my grandson and tell him, don’t show this to anybody until I’m in my grave. He’ll probably look at it and say, what the hell is it, Pops? And I’ll say, it’s what we used to use to record messages. He’ll probably just have a chip in his ear for recording everything he hears. Won’t even know what an iPhone or laptop was. That’ll be something, won’t it? I hope I live to see that day.
But just so you know, whoever might be listening to this 60 or 70 years from now, I didn’t touch that woman’s body sexually. Never once thought about doing so. I like sex the same as everybody else, but not that kind. I just want everybody to know that. I know the way people think.
So what else before I close my eyes?
Ha. Now I’ve got myself thinking about sex. People are probably going to want to know if I had a girlfriend. Well, I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve been dipping my wick since I was 15 years old. You’d be surprised how many girls go for the bad boys. I’ve had girls walk right up to me and start a conversation, and ten minutes later we’ve got our jeans down around our ankles. This is not an exaggeration. Girls are aggressive these days. Their mothers would be horrified to know what their daughters are up to after school. And once those girls go off to college and are living in dorms where their parents can’t see them? All bets are off.
So I never had just one girlfriend, no. Pretty soon they start acting like you’re their property. Like you can’t even look in the direction of another girl. I have no idea what makes them that way.
I remember this one class I had in sociology. The professor was a woman, and she wasn’t all that bad looking either. Maybe a little bit scrawny, but who am I to complain about that? Anyway, she was talking about how women could rule the world if they’d just wise up about it. She claimed there was this place in Tibet or somewhere that was run entirely by women. They would let men from other villages visit, but only because some woman was horny and wanted to get laid. Afterward the man had to go home again. Then my professor talked about a kind of monkey, bobo something or other, where the females are in charge there too. And if two or three of the males start fighting over a piece of food or something, the female just has sex with all of them. Quiets them down in no time flat. And me, I’m sitting in the back of the room, and I spoke up and said, Sign me up for that place. Which got a good laugh out of everybody. And had a couple of girls following me down the hall after class.
It’s not hard getting laid, that’s all I’m saying. What’s hard is dealing with the aftermath of it. Girls think sex means something. Maybe it does for them, but not for me. It feels good, there’s no denying that. But so does a healthy sneeze when your head’s all clogged up.
* * *
from the blog And Sometimes the Abyss Winks at You, by Mia Swain
Grayson’s biological father, Rodney Rath, had a stunned look on his face when I called upon him at his place of employment, the Gilford Forge. His foreman allowed him a 10-minute hiatus to speak with me in the break room. We sat across from each other at a small round table; the metal chairs had blue vinyl seats and backs. The room, unlike the work space, was air-conditioned and chilly. At the end of our conversation, Mr. Rath was wearing the same slightly dazed expression on his face as when I had met him, so I can only assume that this is his normal countenance, or else the constant clamor of machine concussion and vibration, plus the low roar of the huge ventilation fans, has had a dulling effect on his thought processes. His speech was slow, and the pauses between each of my questions and his responses were long, sometimes of half a minute or more.
I said, “It must be at least 20 degrees cooler in here than out on the floor.”
“You should come in summer,” he said.
“It’s really hot then?”
He nodded.
“Do you mind if we talk about Grayson a bit?”
He shook his head. “I never thought he’d do such a thing.”
“What was he like as a child?”
He thought for a while. “Normal kid, seemed to me.”
“Did you have a good relationship with him?”
Here a corner of his mouth turned up, and he waggled his head back and forth. “We was doing
a lot of drinking back then. Weed too. Cocaine when somebody would share with us.”
“You and Mrs. Rath?”
He chuckled. “It’s funny to hear her called that. Mrs. Rath.”
“You never divorced—is that correct?”
“Never got around to it. She had me sign those papers, though. Saying he wasn’t my son anymore.”
“You relinquished your parental rights.”
Another nod. “I wasn’t working then. Wasn’t doing him any good. Him or anybody else.”
“Have you seen much of him since then?”
“What for?”
“I don’t know, just…to be sure he was getting along all right, handling things well?”
“You know,” he said, and stared at the soft drink machine. “People want to blame me for what he done to his mother and that other guy.”
“Do you blame yourself?”
He shrugged. “I could’ve done better.” He turned his gaze to the wall. “But it wasn’t me getting drunk and doing drugs while I was pregnant. She’s the one should’ve known better.”
“So are you saying that you share the blame with your wife?”
Here he turned to look at me. His eyes were blank. He pushed back his chair and said, “I need to get back to work.”
“I think we have a few minutes yet. Can I get you a soda?”
He stood. “Naw, that’s enough.”
“Oh, by the way,” I said. “I was wondering about your son’s name. Grayson. It’s an unusual name. Did you name him after someone you knew?”
“Tarzan,” he said. “Lord Grayson. Because he screamed like Tarzan when he was born. But who’d name their kid Tarzan?”
“I believe that Tarzan was the Earl of Greystoke. Not Grayson.”
Incident on Ten-Right Road Page 20
