At the End of the Road

by Grant Jerkins

  He watched Melodie fumble with the can of Coca-Cola. Even if she had fingernails to pry up the pull-ring, she clearly didn’t have the strength. “Reach it back up to me.” The monster wedged the can between his body and the crutch, removed the pull-ring, and dropped it on the floor. “Scooch back.” Melodie complied, and the monster poured the soda into the bowl, the precious dark liquid sloshing and fizzing and spilling over the rim onto the wood plank floor. Melodie rolled onto her stomach and lapped from the bowl. The effect to her body was like a shot of amphetamine—an instantaneous jolt. When she looked up, the paralyzed man was already gone. She realized now that he wasn’t a monster at all. He was just a man, paralyzed and broken.

  A monster could not be beaten, but a man could.

  Melodie used her teeth to tear open the package of crackers. The smell hit her like an electric current. She devoured one, then two, then three. She decided to save the remaining three crackers, to ration them, but then she ate a fourth one. Then she ate the fifth. The last cracker she wrapped back up in the cellophane package and saved it for thirty minutes before she went back to it and ate it and licked the cellophane clean. Melodie saved the wrapper; hid it out of sight under one of the black plastic trash bags that she had torn from the window.

  Off to the side, just within her range of reach, Melodie spotted the pull-ring from the can of Coca-Cola on the floor where the paralyzed man had dropped it. She retrieved it and hid it under the plastic bag too. The night vision goggles were beyond her reach.

  It turned out that there was no reason to ration the crackers, because the paralyzed man returned once a day. He always brought the same thing—a can of Coke and a pack of peanut butter crackers. He said it was all he could fit in his pockets. She could tell that the paralyzed man was getting stronger. It took him less and less time to get up the stairs, and his speech was growing clearer. And he was looking at her again, in that way. And Melodie understood that before long the hurting would start again. But she was growing stronger as well. And every day he dropped the pull-ring on the floor, and every day, Melodie retrieved it. She had ten now. She discovered that she could crimp the metal ring around the end of her finger so that it held tight, and the curved metal tab would extend from her fingertip in a sharp claw. The metal was weak and flimsy, but the edges were sharp. With a set of ten, she would have opportunity for one good cutting swipe before they broke or bent. If she got his eyes, once would be enough.

  Melodie heard the familiar strike/squeak/rustle sound on the step. She was ready. She was wearing her pull-ring claws. She held her hands out to look at her creation one last time. To her, her hands looked like an Indian goddess. She didn’t know which one, but she remembered seeing a picture in a book of a Hindu woman with elongated metal fingertips.

  The aluminum rings were cutting into her skin where she had crimped them tight, but they had to be good and secure if she was going to use them as a weapon. The oval tabs curled out and under, like talons. She could do some real damage. She put her hands behind her back and waited. But something happened. She heard the sound of the boot strike and squeak countered with the dragging of the dead part only twice more. Then there was faint muffled noise. Then nothing. The paralyzed man never came.

  She waited a long, long time. Hours it seemed. She was ready to do this now. She had about given up and was going to take off her metal claws when she heard footsteps on the stairs. They were light, and made soft little squeaks instead of heavy strikes. Whatever it was (maybe the monster had a helper), something was coming up. Melodie hid her hands behind her back and relished the musical sound of her metal talons clicking together.

  KYLE OPENED THE DOOR AT THE TOP OF

  the stairs.

  His mouth was still slimy from the cornstarch. He felt like he was a zombie. He had seen a movie on channel 17 called White Zombie with Bela Lugosi. A man and a woman go down to Haiti and down there a shaman can bring back the dead. Once you’re brought back from the dead, you can’t think for yourself anymore, and you’re under the control of the one that brought you back. That’s how he felt. Like he wasn’t thinking for himself anymore. The paralyzed man had him under his control. It was easier to be under someone else’s control, to not have to think for yourself. If he was thinking for himself, he sure as hell would not have knowingly taken a swallow of Drano, not knowing full well what it had done to Joel. And if the paralyzed man could control Joel like that, then why wouldn’t he be able to make Kyle do any damn thing he pleased?

  Kyle was lost.

  He smelled that something was very wrong before he even opened the door. He figured the cat must have died up here. It smelled foul—like feces and urine and blood and sour sweat. Inside the attic was covered from floor to ceiling with black plastic. There was a pole in the middle. And there was a naked woman chained by one ankle to the pole. Kyle knew right away it was Soap Sally. She looked just like he imagined Soap Sally would look like. Wild, her eyes vacant. No soul. Then he saw this woman was young, way too young to be Soap Sally. It was the woman from the wrecked car. She was alive. When Kyle looked in her eyes, he saw that she wasn’t really seeing him at all.

  Her hair was matted up real bad, and there was blood caked and dried on her legs. Kyle dropped to his knees and sat down the soda pop and crackers. “Ma’am? Are you alright?” She opened her mouth to talk, but the only sound that came out was a coarse grunt—air mostly. Kyle saw that something was wrong with her throat. She had some bubbles of wet-looking scar tissue around her neck. It reminded him of Joel, but not nearly as bad. “Ma’am, are you hungry?” He pushed the food toward her, and when he did her hands came out from behind her back and she jumped at him. They weren’t needles like Soap Sally, but the woman had metal claws on her fingertips. She slashed him across the face with them, and Kyle was marked. He felt blood pool up on his cheek, under his eye. She reared back to swipe him again, and he lunged backward. She came right after him, and she would have had him easy except the chain around her ankle stopped her cold. She lay on the floor, flailing and swiping in the air with those metal talons.

  Kyle ran. He fell down the stairs, and picked himself up at the bottom. The paralyzed man was watching him from the kitchen, and when Kyle stood up, he started laughing. Kyle ran past him and out the door. He could still hear him laughing.

  MAMA WANTED TO K NOW WHAT HAD HAP-

  pened to his face. Kyle told her that Mr. Ahearn was paying him to help him around his house, and that Kyle was digging up his rosebushes for him. Kyle said the thorns had got him. She went to the bathroom and came back with the Mercurochrome. The smell of it stung his nose just as soon as she had the cap off it. She blew a stream of cool air over the cuts, then tilted his head back so that his face was in good light and she started to daub it on. Kyle braced himself against the pain, but it never came. Not to say that it didn’t hurt, because it did. It burned and stung like a hundred yellow jackets, but for some reason the pain was just another part of him, neither bad nor good, just there. Maybe being a zombie wasn’t all bad.

  She kissed him on the forehead and said he was a good boy to help out Mr. Ahearn, but Kyle didn’t think she thought twice about it, about whether it was okay for a ten-year-old boy to spend his time alone with a grown man—even if he was in a wheelchair.

  DANA TURPIN FOUND THE BOY BACK AT

  the green pond. He was alone this time. She wanted to talk to him. The way he had looked away from her that Sunday afternoon still bothered her. She just needed to talk to him and satisfy herself that nothing was there.

  She had parked her car at a high spot along Eden Road. It gave her a good view of everything that went on. It was mostly quiet. About ten in the morning she saw the older brothers head off toward the reservoir through the scorched void that used to be woods. A little while after that, she saw the youngest boy emerge from the house by himself. He disappeared into the corn. About five minutes later, he emerged from the corn directly onto Eden Road. If he had looked to his right, he would h
ave seen Dana sitting in her little green Chevette. Since she was off duty, she didn’t have her patrol car, of which she was glad, because she knew the sight of a patrol car would likely have spooked the boy. But he never saw her. He stepped into the road and crossed it without ever looking either way. Good way to get yourself killed, Dana thought, and hoped her own daughter would have more sense than that. The boy crossed into the yard of the house directly across the street. It was the house with the ramp and the green-shingled roof. The boy walked up the wheelchair ramp, onto the front porch, and entered the house without knocking.

  Dana knew that the house belonged to Kenny Ahearn. That Mr. Ahearn was a church deacon who had recently had a stroke. But she had yet to talk to him directly. He had been back from the hospital a good while now, so she should go by and talk with him, but from what she had learned indirectly, he seemed like a good man. The kind of man who would step forward and volunteer information if he had any. She figured the boy must be doing some chores for Mr. Ahearn. (And Dana knew full well that the boy’s name was Kyle Edwards, but for some reason, when she thought of him, she thought of him as “the boy.”)

  About thirty minutes had passed when Dana heard the front door bang open and looked up to see the boy jump off the porch and race across the road into the cornfield. She could see the tops of the cornstalks moving and could tell that he was going back to his house.

  About forty-five minutes after that, he came back out again. And again, he crossed through the cornfield, but this time he emerged on the far side where the field bordered the cow pasture. Dana got out of her car and followed him.

  She was more careful crossing over the barbed wire fence this time, and as she approached the dense weeping willows that surrounded the pond, she cleared her throat to announce her presence and not startle the boy.

  He was throwing rocks into the pond, but stopped and looked at Dana as she emerged through the hanging branches. The first thing she noticed was the stark change in the boy. His complexion was an unhealthy yellow, and the skin under his eyes was darkly bruised. The boy looked haunted.

  “Hey, how you doing?”

  “Fine, I reckon.”

  “You remember me?”

  “Sure. You’re the police lady that was looking for that woman.”

  “You’ve got a pretty good memory. What’s your name?”

  “Kyle. Kyle Edwards.”

  “I’m Dana. Dana Turpin. Pleased to meet you.” Kyle met her extended hand with his own, and Dana noted that the boy’s flesh was cool and damp. Dana motioned to the boy’s face. “How’d you cut yourself?”

  The boy touched the fresh cuts lightly with his fingertips, as if just now remembering they were there. “Oh, that was nothing. I was digging up some rosebushes and got cut on the thorns.”

  “You’ve got to be careful.” Dana studied the boy a moment longer, not liking what she was seeing. “Her name is Melodie,” Dana said. “The woman who went missing, her name is Melodie Godwin.” Kyle went back to throwing rocks in the pond. “Her folks are mighty worried. They still hope she might show back up.”

  “Maybe she will,” Kyle said.

  “You don’t know anything about it, do you Kyle?”

  Kyle threw two more rocks into the green pond before he answered. “No, ma’am, I sure don’t.”

  Dana nodded and said, “’Cause, if you did, you would need to tell me so that I can find her and her mama can stop worrying. Can you imagine what her mama must be feeling?” Dana pulled the Polaroid of Melodie out of her pocket and handed it to Kyle. “This is what she looks like.” Kyle studied the picture for a long time before handing it back.

  “I sure am sorry she got hurt.”

  “Hurt? Do you think she got hurt?”

  “Well I just reckon something bad must of happened to her.”

  “Kyle, do you ever remember any car getting in a wreck on Eden Road?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I want to show you something, Kyle.” She handed Kyle the plastic evidence bag that she still carried with her like a memento. Or a charm. “That’s auto glass. I found it in the ditch right up from the end of your driveway. Somebody banged up their car. I thought there was a good chance you might have seen it.”

  Kyle stood up and brushed off the backside of his jeans. “I have to get on back home. My mama will be worried.”

  “I understand. I want to give you something, Kyle.” Dana reached into her pocket for her pen and notepad, wrote, and tore off the sheet. “This is my name and my telephone number. I want you to promise to call me if you remember anything. Will you promise me that, Kyle?”

  Kyle pocketed the paper, said, “Yes, ma’am. I promise,” and ducked his way through the willow branches.

  Dana scooped up a handful of pebbles and began tossing them into the green pond. The scummy surface was so clogged with algae that the water didn’t even ripple. Kyle knew something. She was certain that Kyle was concealing something. And as certain as she was that Kyle would be the key to finding out at least something about Melodie, she was equally certain that if she pushed him, that key would be lost. He was a fearful child, a haunted child. Something was eating at Kyle’s conscience. Kyle would have to come around on his own. Dana would try to think of subtle ways to get him moving in the right direction, but if she pushed too hard, the fear would overtake him and Kyle would shut down.

  Dana stood and brushed off the seat of her pants just as Kyle had done, and she realized that in her thoughts, during that brief exchange, he had gone from being “the boy” to being “Kyle.”

  KENNY SMILED UP AT THE COLORED PO-

  licewhore and said, “Yes, ma’am, that’s me, Kenny Ahearn. It’s awful hot today, why don’t you sit and rest yourself a minute?”

  “I thank you,” the colored policewhore said and sat her fat black ass in the porch swing. “I thank you very much.” Kenny could tell that she was purposefully adding a little Southern twang to her voice, trying to put him at ease: We’re all just folks here.

  “Now what can a man like me do to help Douglas County’s finest?”

  “Well, sir, first off, I’m Deputy—”

  “Ma’am,” Kenny interrupted. “Can I get you something to drink? Would you like a nice ice-cold glass of Kool-Aid?”

  “No, sir, thank you anyway.”

  “Well what about a nice cold slice of watermelon? Got some in the Frigidaire right this minute.”

  “No. Thank you all the same.”

  She’d dropped the twang, Kenny noted with satisfaction. He’d put that bitch on notice.

  “As I was saying, I’m Deputy Officer Turpin. Dana Turpin, and I’ve been trying to get by to talk to you for quite a while now. You’re a hard—”

  “Turpin?” Kenny interrupted. “Turpin, Turpin, Turpin. Your daddy Moses Turpin? Janitor up to the school?”

  “No, sir. No relation. Lots of Turpins in Douglas.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kenny said. “I do know you. Didn’t you used to clean my mama’s house?”

  “No, sir, I did not. What I wanted to talk to you about is a missing persons case we’re looking into.” She handed Kenny the Polaroid. “Melodie Godwin. Went missing between Lee Road and the reservoir. Little over four weeks ago. Does she look familiar to you?”

  “Right pretty girl,” Kenny said and grunted as he passed the Polaroid back to the policewhore. “You might want to talk to them that lives right over yonder,” he said and pointed to the house beyond the plot of pole beans. “They pose as Christians.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve spoken with the Sewells. I’ve spoken with everybody that lives on Eden Road. Except for you.”

  “I’ve been in the hospital. First it was the diabetes, then I had the stroke. I just got back home week or two back. The church built this ramp for me, bought me this electric wheelchair. I’m just a cripple now. I used to be a deacon.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand. Y
ou own Kenny’s Towing, also. Is that correct?”

  Kenny shook his finger in a mock scold. “You’ve been checking up on me.”

  “Well, sir, not really, it’s just that we checked with all the wrecker companies within a certain radius. Just in case Melodie’s car had broken down.”

  “Melodie. That’s a pretty name. Musical.”

  “Kenny’s Towing is listed in the Yellow Pages as being located right here on Eden Road. Right in the middle of Melodie’s route.”

  “Well, ma’am, as you can see for yourself, I ain’t really in the towing business no more. I’m a cripple.”

  “Ms. Godwin went missing three days before you were admitted to the hospital.”

  “Godwin,” Kenny said. “Godwin, Godwin, Godwin. God Win. God. Win. I didn’t get no calls that day. And I would have remembered getting a call from somebody who was out there winning for The Lord.”

  “Are you aware of any kind of wreck or breakdown here on Eden Road around that time?”

  “Can’t say that I am. Not much traffic on this road. Just them cutting through to the reservoir.”

  Deputy Officer Turd Pan stood up and readied herself to leave. “I see you moved your roses.”

  “The county waterline would have run right through them.”

  “You did a good job. Hard to transplant this time of year with it being so hot.” The pan of turds walked down the ramp, and wandered over to the roses.

  “Did it at night,” Kenny said. “That’s the secret. You don’t shock the roots that way. They’re taking hold just fine. Blooming even.”