The Nightrunners - Joe R. Lansdale.wps

by phuc

  He turned the VW Rabbit off the blacktop and onto a narrow path of red clay that ambled its way into the forest of crowding pines.

  "You've got plenty of privacy there," Dean had said. "No one to bother you. Not a house within three miles. Swell place. Relaxing. Quiet. Becky'll love it, and you will too.

  Do you good. Pines all around, a lake out back, plenty of fresh air. Swell place."

  That phrase of Dean's hung in Montgomery's memory like barbed wire. Swell place.

  The trip had gone badly from the first. One fuckup after another. He hadn't taken it too seriously at first, but now, coupled with Becky's dreams, it all seemed earthshaking.

  Then again, one A.M. had a way of making things seem terribly traumatic.

  "Take her away for a while," the psychiatrist had said. "Let her have a change of scenery.

  Being in the apartment where it happened isn't a good idea. Make arrangements to move.

  And in the meantime, get away. She's trying to be strong about it, but the passing months haven't helped that much. It's eating her up inside. Take her on a vacation for a week or so and find plenty to do. You might be surprised at how much of a change it will make."

  So he had heeded the psychiatrist's advice. They left Galveston and stopped off in Houston to eat at a rather famous and highly recommended restaurant, and what happens but Becky gets sick. Something she ate. And the damn food hadn't been that good either.

  Thirty-five dollars for something that tasted like what the dog threw up, and an upset stomach for Becky to boot.

  Next stop had been the Alabama-Coushatta Indian reservation. But this year it had rained like hell and the water had risen out of the Big Thicket and swamped both train ride and reservation. Snakes were everywhere, and all the tours were closed down. Only the Trading Post was open, and everything sold there was twentieth-century bright and made in the Orient. About the only thing the Indians had to do with the "crafts" was unloading them from a truck.

  (Get your gen- U-ine im-I-tation Alabama-Coushatta In-dee-an trinkets rightchere, folks. Hurry and getem, won't be another boat from Japan for a month.) The government and the reservation's administrators had turned the place into a clown act.

  Take the reservation trip, pile the shitty restaurant on top of that, add Becky getting sick, and now the goddamn dreams, and what you had was October 29 whipped into one, thick, depressing shit pie.

  Red clay widened a bit, rolled into a circle drive. A long, low, ranch-style cabin projected out of the pines. The lake lay not far behind it.

  Cabin, hell. It looked like the Ritz to Montgomery, logs or not. It was easily three to four times the size of their apartment.

  Montgomery wheeled the Rabbit around the drive and stopped with the lights resting on the cabin. He looked back at Becky, reached out and touched her gently on the hip. She came quick-awake with the same wild-eyed stare that had been assaulting him every morning for the past month. It made him think of an animal that had been caged and antagonized by man.

  He smiled with effort. "What do you think?"

  Cataracts of dreadful memory fell from her eyes. Her face softened. She leaned forward, rested her arms on the front seat and looked at the house.

  "Big," she said.

  Montgomery tried not to let his feelings show, but he was devastated. Becky's face disturbed him, as it had for some time now. Something alien had moved in behind the flesh. She looked more like thirty-five than twenty-five. Her hair, normally well brushed and luster brown, hung to her sagging shoulders like a dead hope. Her once-sharp features seemed curbed by swollen flesh. But the eyes were the worst. There were times when they actually frightened him.

  Becky put her hands in her lap, left hand folded over the right. A psychiatrist would say Becky was holding her hands over her privates like that because of the rape.

  And goddamnit, they would be right.

  "Becky?"

  "Huh . . . Sorry, my mind was elsewhere."

  On your back with a rapist astride, perhaps. A cold, sharp knife at your throat?

  Was that where it was?

  God, poor baby.

  He reached over the seat and took her hand. There was a slight, reflexive pull on her part, and her fingers felt like frozen metal pipes to his touch. He let go of her and got out of the car.

  She opened her door and he said, "Wait a minute. I'll unlock it."

  He walked to the cabin and used the key Dean had given him. Inside it was musty and warm. Quite a contrast from the cool rain on his neck.

  Feeling along the wall, he found the light switch, flicked it on.

  Redwood walls and soft, rust-colored carpets were revealed. There was very little furniture, but what was there was simple and attractive: a couch, two stuffed chairs, a coffee table, and to his right, a bar and pantries. A few stools. Beyond that, through a doorless, wide opening, was a kitchen. Porcelain winked from the darkness there.

  He walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. The kitchen was large. About half the size of their apartment, it seemed.

  He walked back through the living room and looked in the bathroom. Very nice.

  Bright blue tile with matching walls and shower curtain.

  The bedroom was cozy and well decorated too. The second bathroom was still in the process of construction. Hammers, nails and all manner of tools were strewn about.

  Sheets of paneling leaned against the wall and there were two-by-fours on the floor.

  "You'll just have to shut the door and not look in there," Eva had said. "Dean and I just work on the place summers, so it lacks some being finished."

  Montgomery went back to the door and waved Becky inside.

  Sure, he thought. Come on in. Your big protector has scoped it out.

  Well, where were you when your wife was being raped, big protector?

  Attending a nice, comfortable sociology conference in Houston, that's where.

  Subject: The Alienation of the Juvenile.

  Nice and ironic that. So ironic he wanted to cry. Again.

  And what would you have done had the cabin been occupied by a burglar, even a belligerent drunk, big protector?

  Crap your pants, maybe?

  Water your socks with urine?

  Would that be a good guess?

  Until recently, the totally nonviolent philosophy he had lived by had seemed logical. Very logical. Violence solves nothing.

  "No man ever did a designed injury to another without doing a greater to himself."

  That's what Henry Home had said. He had memorized the words in college, and made them his motto. His standard. The banner he carried before him.

  Ah, but had Henry Home's wife been raped? Had he experienced the boiling in his blood that such an act causes? Had he felt the festering of his soul? Had he dreamed of taking such molesters in his hands—suddenly made of steel, spiked all over and spring-loaded—

  and ripping, squeezing them apart like wet newspaper?

  He had. Many times.

  Before the rape, things had been simpler. During the Vietnam War he had been so certain; had known exactly where he stood and why.

  "You wish to sign as a Conscientious Objector?"

  "Yes, Sergeant, I do."

  "You are opposed to violence of any kind?"

  "I am."

  "You are not merely opposed to the Vietnam War, but to violence itself?"

  "I said as much."

  "You would not raise your hand to protect your home?"

  "I could not kill another human being."

  "Even to save your own life?"

  "No. I could not kill. "

  And the sergeant had looked at him long and hard, pitying. And he had felt so superior to that sergeant. He had thought: What a stupid, military mind. He can't stand a rational, thinking human being. All he can think is Kill! Kill! Kill! He thinks I'm a coward instead of a moralist.

  Well, old buddy, are you a coward?

  Was the sergeant right? Have you been fooling yourse
lf all these years?

  Is the truth more like the fifth grade when Billy Sylvester beat you to a nubbin and kicked you in the balls and made you like it?

  Is it more like that?

  Like when you paid Billy half your lunch money so he wouldn't beat the cowardly crap out of you every day?

  More like that?

  Or like when Billy forced you to watch while he fed your little brother, Jack, a dog turd?

  Remember Billy saying (smiling while he did, holding the dog turd with an old candy wrapper, holding your brother down with his knee), "Smile while he eats it, pussy."

  Remember that?

  Hey, hey, hey. Remember smiling?

  And remember your brother, Jack, dogshit masked on his teeth, kicking and struggling, being more of a man than you ever were?

  Remember Billy going away laughing? Can you still hear the echo of that laughter rocking around inside your head?

  Okay. You were right about the Vietnam War, Mr. Smart Guy. Time has proved you out on that one. But was part of your reason for not going more barnyard than political or intellectual? Was there really a plump chicken heart beating against your educated breast?

  "Not bad," Becky said.

  Montgomery swam out of it. "Yeah . . . nice."

  Becky set her bag inside the door and looked around, her hands once again folded in front of her, protectively.

  Would you stop that, Montgomery thought, but said, "Come on in and take a look."

  He walked over and put his arm around her shoulders.

  She wilted.

  He removed the arm slowly. No way he could even force a smile now.

  "It's not you, Monty . . . Really . . . it's not . . . You know that."

  "Yeah."

  "I love you . . . believe me ... I try every day. It's just hard right now. I'll be better

  ... it just takes time."

  "Sure," Montgomery said, wondering if things could ever be as they had been before. It all seemed rather perfect then.

  Becky smiled. There was the faintest impression of her old self there, but it was fleeting.

  "Really, Monty. I'm sorry."

  He nodded. "It's okay. I'll get the rest of the stuff out of the car."

  The rain felt good against his flushed face. He got the bags from the Rabbit, started back to the cabin.

  Becky stood just inside the doorway, looking in. But Montgomery knew she wasn't seeing the living room. She was tuned inward, examining an endless replay of her rape in Technicolor and stereophonic sound.

  He stepped around her and into the room.

  Becky turned and smiled at him. An empty smile.

  He smiled back, and still holding the bags, he hooked the door with his foot and kicked it closed.

  It slammed much harder than he expected.

  TWO

  The dreams had started immediately after the rape.

  Of course, it was normal that horrible dreams should follow such an experience, but somehow, Becky felt they were something other than dreams.

  Knew they were.

  They didn't come only in sleep. They weren't selective. Asleep. Wide awake.

  Didn't matter. They came. Flashing before her internal vision like moving pictures. It could happen anytime without notice. Washing dishes. Taking a bath. Reading. Even watching television.

  The damn things had destroyed her already confused life.

  At first she had actually considered continuing her teaching, but found she couldn't. She kept thinking that some of the students in her class— perhaps friends of Clyde Edson, her rapist—were watching her, wondering how it had been for old Clyde and if she liked it.

  The thought of it made her want to scream, "I hated it!"

  Once she had done just that. Sat upright in bed and screamed those words.

  Terrified poor Monty. But most things seemed to. He didn't like to plug in electrical appliances, or take a bath in water over a foot deep. He was afraid to light fires.

  He didn't like heights. He didn't like crowds, made him nervous.

  Skitty Monty, that was him.

  Right now he was in the kitchen boiling water for instant coffee, probably terrified that the water would leap out of the pan at him.

  God, thought Becky, I certainly come down hard on him. Monty wasn't the one who raped me (actually, there had been several, but she could only remember Clyde's face and the others seemed more like extensions of him); wasn't the one who held a knife to my throat while he grunted out his passion, slobbering on my shoulder and face as he did.

  Perhaps, she thought (as she often did), I should have forced Clyde to use the knife. At least there wouldn't be the dreams.

  Dreams? Well, that wasn't exactly right. There had been dreams all right, but these others . . . what were they?

  Visions?

  That was the only word that struck her right.

  She remembered the first visions as clearly as if they had occurred moments ago.

  It was less than a week after the rape. Monty had gone to bed early that night, and she, in need of some sort of brain drain, stayed up to watch Johnny Carson and then the flickering snow of a dead television set.

  And the images came to her. Clearer than Carson and Rickles had been an hour earlier.

  She not only saw, but she experienced the moment of Clyde's death; felt the emotional intensity of it, as if she were living inside his head.

  She could still see/feel the knotted shirt strips about his neck. Feel his sudden regret as he kicked away from the wall and let go of the window bars, allowed himself to dangle like a rope over an abyss, flapping back from time to time to slap the wall.

  His face went blue. His boiled-egg eyes (reminiscent of when he had exploded his orgasm inside her) seemed about to leap from his head. The shirt strips were slicing into his throat, blood was welling around them—

  —and she came to on the floor of the living room, coated in sweat, her nightgown sticking to her as if glued.

  Just a dream, she thought. Wonderful in its own vengeful way, but still, just a dream.

  But the next morning the images came again while she was showering. Fine spray from the shower head turned to long, light-colored strands that wove into a noose, and suddenly Clyde hung from it, blue-tongued, puppetlike, the cloth biting into his neck, forming first a red welt, then a blue-bruise collar that turned to black.

  The image maintained for a moment, weakened, faded away.

  Becky sagged to her knees.

  Water beat down on her in a warm, pleasing rhythm.

  God, but it had felt good. Her best daydream ever. Clyde getting his. Wish fulfillment to the one-hundreth power.

  Or so she thought.

  A moment later, while she was toweling off, the phone rang. She threw on a bathrobe and made for it. Monty, who was enjoying his Saturday morning with a book, came up behind her, waiting to see who the caller might be. He looked the question at her and she formed the silent word "Philson."

  Both Sergeant Philson and his wife had been very kind throughout the ordeal, and Becky thanked the fates that he was the one assigned to her case. He was understanding; didn't look at her as if she had given the kids the come-on; didn't treat her like a flophouse whore. He was the kind that gave cops a good name.

  It was strange news he delivered, and his voice seemed undecided on how to tell it.

  "The Edson boy," he finally said. "He hung himself in his cell."

  Becky felt not a drop of grief. She stood there with the phone to her face, and after a moment, she realized Philson was still talking.

  She gave the phone to Monty, leaned against the wall in a daze, listened as he spoke to Philson; spoke words to match his liberal position; words about how bad it was a boy so young had wasted his life. Too bad. He was real sorry. Perhaps in time he might have rehabilitated, mumble, mumble, mumble.

  Hypocrite. She knew he hadn't meant a word of it. It went with his cowardice, his inability to go against his trained sociological thinking,
his inability to toss out his liberal crutch.

  To Monty's way of thinking no one had to be accountable for their actions. There was always the environment and parents and poor potty training to blame. The individual was never responsible. Each and every one of us was nothing more than a rudderless boat adrift on a sea of fate, constantly in search of a snug harbor and its protection against the ragings of environmental storms.

  Or so went the philosophy of Montgomery Jones.

  After he hung up the phone, she told him about the visions, and he had smiled, talked about strains and wishful thinking.

  It made her mad, but at the time she thought he might be right. But as the days passed, she recalled the vision, and became certain that it was real; knew for a fact that she had been in tune with Clyde the moment he had taken the sweet plunge. It was as if the rape had inextricably linked her with him, formed a sort of psychic umbilical cord that had been severed with his dying.

  How she would have loved to have been there— and in a way she had had the next best thing, a psychic ringside seat—when he stepped into space. She could have asked him how he liked it, how it felt. The same questions he had asked her during the rape.

  Monty interrupted her thoughts, came in with two cups of coffee, that stupid smile on his face. The same stupid smile he wore when she first told him of the dream; the patronizing, good-husband smile he tacked on while he soothed her and prepared the way for the psychiatrist.

  And the idiot psychiatrist had worn the same stupid smile. And he had a mile of jargon:

  "Mrs. Jones, there is no evidence for the existence of clairvoyant dreams. These dreams are the result of a drastic emotional and psychological trauma. Nothing more. It only seemed that you dreamed of the boy's death in the exact manner it happened.

  "It gave you a sense of revenge, and you have convinced yourself it was a vision, when in fact, your mind tricked you. Such a thing is not uncommon.

  "In time, these dreams, these visions as you call them, will go away. Forget this psychic mumbo jumbo. There's a very logical explanation for this contained within the electrical impulses of your brain. Now go home. Try and forget. Time will ease the pain, and the dreams will go away."

  But they had not. And each mention of them to Monty earned her a sympathetic nod, and that goddamn smile.