by Dean H Wild
Will said nothing, just struck a thoughtful pose, hand to mouth. At last he said, “One thing we can do is show up for the vote tomorrow and do our damnedest to make sure Mellar’s Mercantile is voted to stay, because for whatever reason, it’s part of the whole ‘Let It Not Return’ plan which makes it something we need. Am I right?”
“The mercantile,” Mick said, nodding, “and good air.”
CHAPTER NINE
Mick found Judy in the living room. The TV was on and there was a half-finished beer on the coffee table. Uncharacteristic of her, especially before dinner. She got up when he walked in.
“Harley wants you to call him,” she said. “How severe is this, Mick? How deep does it go?”
“Deep,” he said and took her in his arms.” How is Beth Ann?”
She relayed Harley’s information. A dose of medication—the heavy stuff, as he worded it—put Beth Ann in a restful state. “I’ve never seen a migraine affect someone in such a way,” she explained with controlled anguish, a Judy-type of anguish if ever there was one. “And her breathing was so labored, like she couldn’t get enough air.”
He took some of her beer. It was cool and rewarding. Almost gracious, but he said nothing. Judy’s words, part of them or perhaps all, set off a deep-running correlation he was unable to pin down. It slipped by him and was gone in a blink.
“Are you zoning out on me?” Judy finally said.
“Sorry. Bells going off for no reason.”
“I’ve told you what I know. It’s your turn.” She tapped his hurt lip which was now an angry scab. “Tell me everything.”
Before he was done they moved to the kitchen. There was a casserole in the oven and the sun painted the wall with the color of polished brass. He took his shirt off as he talked. A good sized knot had formed on the elbow struck by Thekan’s pavement hail and he held an ice pack to it. After an officious inspection of his back, Judy informed him his shoulder blade was badly bruised. He felt no pain there, only a dull ache when she pressed on it.
“We should turn him in, press charges,” Judy said.
He walked around and began to set the table. “Turn him in to whom? Last time I checked, Knoll was fresh out of exorcists.”
Another alarm bell went off in his head. Source: unclear.
Judy leaned back, arms crossed, lips pressed together. “I can’t believe we’re alone in this, the few of us.”
“Others have got to be noticing. I think if we try, we can get some neighbors on board. They should be people we trust, however.”
“Those with an open mind, you mean. That’s going to be a tough one.”
His phone rang. It was Cy Vandergalien. His voice was defeated, somewhat ghostly. “Did you see it?”
“The line you painted in honor of Knoll’s secret tunnel? Yes, we saw it.”
“The line that was painted, you mean. It’s been rubbed out like it never happened. And it’s not really a tunnel. It’s a shaft.”
Mick felt a new coldness drift over him. “A shaft for good air?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“We’ve got to talk, Cy. I mean it.”
“If you want to talk anytime other than now, you’ll have to do it long distance because tomorrow I will be across the Illinois border. I’ve got family in Itasca, you know.”
“Please, don’t abandon Knoll now. You know too much. At least give us some guidance before you go.”
“We can meet up, but not for you or Knoll or anybody else’s sake. I want to see that shaft, I guess,” Cy said with a hint of his old determination. “For real, not just a line on an old map.”
Mick gripped the phone tight enough to make his knuckles ache. “We can go down there right now if you want. Will Adelmeyer will let us in through the bar basement, and I know Harley will want to come.”
“Not now,” Cy said as if such impromptu planning was unheard of in these matters. “I’ll put my trip off a few hours more. I’ll go with you and whatever band of monkeys you want to bring. Tomorrow, after the vote. Then I’m in my Ram and down the road.”
“We’ll be glad to have you. Until then, be careful. Got it? Cy?”
He’d hung up.
***
They ate in silence and afterward Judy brought beer onto the back porch for the both of them. “How did we end up in the middle of this? Why us?”
He wanted to say it was inevitable, they were marked as beings who were not allowed enduring rest. There were stretches of peace, like long lulling railroad rides, but harsh places waited down the line. Dark stations. You stepped off when your stop came up, clutched what little baggage you owned and hoped to find your way through the fog and the night.
One of those stops for them was at a station called Robbie Vaughn, labeled in neat, tombstone lettering. It harbored shocking death, mental anguish and the grim yet satisfying news of another youth—Justin Wick—meeting his end at the Cedar Ridge Boys’ Detention Center via an overdose of smuggled-in narcotics the night of Robbie’s funeral. This new station stop was designated by a placard twice as large as any others, and painted in spider-thin letters that seemed to squirm if you stared too long. And its name was Crymost.
He wanted to say it out loud, but Judy would just tell him his poet’s soul was showing, so instead he said, “Because we’re in-the-thick-of-it types of people.”
She nodded, as if it were the perfect answer, and squeezed his hand.
CHAPTER TEN
“God, I love pussy,” Axel said and immediately found it uproariously funny.
He laughed out loud, despite the young woman splayed beneath him in the back seat, panting as he slid into her with a ravenous thrust. Funny despite, or perhaps on account of, the two primo joints he’d rolled from the Judge’s bag. The effect burned bright and hard inside of him. Hard. He laughed again, and it slipped along deliciously with the sensation engulfing his cock.
The girl, whose name was Charlotte, or Charlene, or something, gave him a puzzled upward glance that melted away beneath a soft moan. Bar sounds traveled across the parking lot like the music of dreams. Rusty’s Roadhouse, the place was called, and it was on the outskirts of Baylor. One of his favorite hangouts. The women always seemed to be hot and ready. Whatever Rusty was serving them, Axel wanted a bottle to take home.
He drove himself deep with the press of his hips and Charlotte or Charlene made an equally immersed moan. Headlights flared past. Not a problem; the regulars at Rusty’s knew what the back row of the parking lot was reserved for and steered clear. Respect among pussy-lovers, he thought and snorted more laughter in the back of his throat.
When the car door opened at his back and the cabin became flooded with interior light, he did not immediately grasp what was happening. A hand bunched his shirt collar and dragged him out, and things began to gel. This was Charlotte or Charlene’s boyfriend, and he was about to be at the receiving end of some roadhouse wrath. Goddamn it. He planted his feet and turned around. His pants were around his ankles. His dick bobbed in the air and it made him feel somehow idiotic, but it also fueled his need to defend himself. His fists clenched.
But there was no boyfriend. Thekan stood in front of him, his face hard. “We have work. It has to be now.”
“What the fuck, man?”
Thekan glanced into the back seat and his pupils flared. “You’re done here, understand?”
Charlotte/Charlene slipped into her panties and denim skirt as casually as tamping out a cigarette and let herself out of the opposite door. She walked toward the roadhouse with dreamy indifference and did not look back.
“What kind of work?” Axel groped at the clothing wreathed around his shoes and attempted to pull them up, but came away empty handed because he was standing on a majority of his jeans and underwear.
“Heavy work,” Thekan said to him. “Necessary work.”
Thekan’s hand latched onto his cock, heavy and hot. It made him jump. “What the hell?”
The hand on his organ squeezed h
ard, a single flex. The climax that flared through Axel’s body seemed to draw every muscle and tendon toward a central molten core and then release in a thousand flashpoints. His breath left him in a shuddering gust. His cum shot out in a blurt across Rusty’s Roadhouse pavement. And as he was poured out, so was he filled up. The heavy work became clear in his head. It was at once loathsome.
“Now pull yourself together,” Thekan said. He scrubbed his hand on the leg of his trousers as he spoke. “We’ll meet at the mill.”
Axel pulled up his pants, with greater success this time. His primo weed buzz was fading, soaking away as quickly as the jizz on the blacktop. “Does it have to be?” he asked.
Thekan backed toward his ride, the Mellar Borth bitch’s car. He dangled the keys playfully in the air and the engine turned over. “I’m afraid it does.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Chastity Mellar Borth stood up from her bedroom vanity and took a tentative step toward the door. The heels were the highest she’d worn in a long time but the pain in her feet was a mere mumble compared to the roaring agony that lived in her bones and muscles only a few short days ago. Such comparisons made it hard to think about Roderick (not the Judge anymore, not after, well, not after certain repeated intimacies) with any type of suspicion. She owed him for her well-being, and for the imminent return of the town to her hands. Even if the mercantile was (will be) voted away, the setup in her front lawn, so much like a sleeping carnival, was a final wooing to bring the village of Knoll back into the arms of a Mellar, as it should be.
But what he’d done today, to Mick Logan and those others, sullied her appreciation. Roderick’s gifts went far beyond a touch-and-heal marvel. They crossed into the territory of volatile and worrisome. Even frightening.
She stared across the hall to the room where Roderick sometimes slept. Sometimes, when he wasn’t in her bed pursuing needs which grew rougher, more ravenous with each encounter like a restless wheel picking up power and momentum at every turn. Was it madness to question him? Wasn’t there always a fine line between suspicion and curiosity, as fine as new silk?
She opened the door to Roderick’s room. Sparse and tidy. He’d brought few possessions with him, and a majority of the clothes she brought for him to wear (Gregor’s) were neatly folded and stacked on the dresser. Unremarkable. But there had to be something of interest here. Something to satisfy her curiosity.
Suspicion.
She went to the closet. The dreadful wool suit he’d worn the day they met was draped on a hanger. Almost automatically she slipped her hand into the front pocket of the jacket. Let me find, let me know.
She found something. Many somethings. Cool and loose like tiny soft seeds. Some of them seemed to stick. She pulled out her hand.
Maggots covered her palm, her fingers, her knuckles. It was like wearing an undulating glove that broke into a thousand specks and slithered over her wrist, up her arm. Her thoughts clashed with new revilement and dark fear. The mirror above the dresser goggled at her like a surprised and betrayed eye. The windows yawned like blaming mouths: he knows you’re here, knows you suspect.
A tiny white shape wriggled into the neckline of her blouse. It explored her breast with a feather-light nuzzle. She screamed and shook her swarming hand wildly as she ran back to her own bedroom.
Daddy’s rosary, draped over her mirror, clacked against the glass as she swept by. She grabbed a handkerchief from her dresser, scrubbed at her arm over and over, even though the wriggling whiteness was already gone. Perhaps never there at all. A sob escaped her. Across the hall, the door to Roderick’s room swung shut with a thump.
He knows I suspect. Oh, God, he knows.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mick decided it would be better to sit down with Harley and fill him in. Judy followed him to the car. “Not without me, you’re not.”
Harley let them in. His eyes were red and fretful. “Let’s sit in the living room,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Beth Ann is sleeping and the sound travels less from there.”
Mick went through everything quickly. Harley’s first question was directed at Judy.
“And how is all of this agreeing with you?”
“It isn’t. But I can’t deny it. Not after what I’ve seen, and not when the people I love dearly are in it up to their eyeballs. I just wish we knew what the hell we’re supposed to do.”
A thump on the stairs made them all look around. Beth Ann stuck her head around the corner, her expression shrouded in the slack remnants of drugged sleep. Her left eye glinted, an unpleasant crimson jewel.
“Oh, company,” she said.
One hand skimmed over her unruly sheaf of hair. A small gold cross glittered at her throat.
Harley glanced at his watch. “Time for another pill, isn’t it, honey pie?”
“I hate taking them,” she said with a shrug of near embarrassment.
“Do you want to sit with us?” Judy moved over to make room between her and Mick on the sofa. “What we’re talking about involves you, too.”
“Thanks, but no,” she said and fingered her cross. “I can barely see straight for the pain.”
“All right.” Judy got up to give her a gentle hug. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Beth Ann nodded and stepped away, toward the kitchen.
Mick watched it all with intensity. Far back in his head another quick slip of correlation. “Good air,” he said.
The doorbell chimed. Harley went to answer it, said only a few words, then returned to the living room with Nancy Berns at his side. She seemed a little daunted, but her eyes were as bright as ever.
“Hi Judy, nice to see you.” Then to Mick, “Funny how I went to your house first and when I didn’t get an answer I came here, and here you all are.”
She made a nervous laugh and shifted a manila envelope from one hand to the other.
“Take a load off.” Harley motioned to a chair next to his own. There was a basket of knitting on the arm. Beth Ann’s chair.
“I can’t stay. I just came over because, you know, what we talked about this afternoon.”
Mick sat forward. “You found something?”
“Sort of stole it, actually.” She handed the envelope to Harley. “It’s Cy’s.”
Harley slipped his cheaters on and dug into the packet of papers with interest.
Nancy went on. “Cy hasn’t been himself lately. Forgetting things, daydreaming a lot. And with the spray painting business this afternoon, I’m worried about his state of mind. Anyway, that—” she aimed a stout finger at the pages in Harley’s hands “—was in his locker at the firehouse. He’s usually pretty protective over that locker. Me and Stu Rueplinger joke about how he keeps the family fortune in there. But today, it was hanging open and the only thing inside was that. I don’t know if it’s the kind of odd you’re looking for, but it raised my eyebrows, I’ll tell you.”
“What have we got?” Mick asked.
“It appears Cy was planning on buying up the mercantile property and then selling it off for a nice profit. Got a bunch of paperwork drawn up already, including a village order to begin tearing the mercantile down immediately after the vote passes. It explains his big push on the Mellar’s Out campaign. Let the village foot the bill to raze the place and pull those leaky tanks out of the ground, then buy it all up as open land.”
“But he’s for Mellar’s In now,” Judy said.
Nancy nodded. “He made us switch all the posters at the firehouse, red to green, just like that.” She held out her hand as if to receive a handshake, and then flip-flopped it in the air. “It’s a state of mind thing, I tell you.”
“Or his realization,” Harley said, “that we need the mercantile to stand because it’s a major part of our concern.”
“What concern?” Nancy eyed them, still bright but penetrating too. “If you mean the funny feeling in the air, or the run of local catastrophes, or the glow at The Crymost, you don’t have to twist my arm to convince me it’s all connect
ed.”
“We’re trying to piece it together ourselves,” Mick said. “And we’d appreciate any other help or information we can get. From anywhere.”
“I’m with you. And I think a lot of other people in town will be too. I can work the crowd at tomorrow’s vote and see what else I can drum up.”
“That’s our plan, too,” Judy said. “More or less.”
“Thank you for your help,” Mick said.
“And one other thing about Cy.” Nancy held up a finger in a lest-I-forget gesture. “Not only was his locker nearly empty, but he cleared out his desk at the firehouse. And the mill is closed down tight as a drum. None of it looks good.”
“We plan to meet with him right after the vote,” Mick said to her, but not before passing a wary glance to the rest. “He wants in on our findings too.”
“I hope something can be done,” she said. Her eyes still twinkled with a lively Nancy Berns twinkle. “Knoll is a dangerous place these days.”
“Be careful out there,” Mick said.
“You know it,” she said and made another nervous laugh on her way out.
Mick bit his lip, unaware of it until the split-open portion began to bleed. Harley came back from seeing Nancy out and let out an anxious breath. “Tomorrow,” he said.
They acknowledged it with a grim nod.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Will Adelmeyer walked from the bar to the front door and sipped a scotch. All praise the righteous and the good. The thought surfaced in the back of his mind. It was not a memory but something he found banging about in the clutter of his head one day while reflecting on the history of his bar. It evoked images of a congregation standing from their crude pews lined up where his table seating now shared space with the dart machines and a booth housing almost-legal video spin and win games in deference to an occupied altar, which was now his back bar, the shrine of piety and salvation replaced by the glitter of temptation. The phrase visited him from time to time, like the chime of an old clock, neither an annoyance nor a comfort.
