The Revenant: A Horror in Dodsville

by Brian L. Blank

  He looked down at his shoelaces, as if embarrassed by this behavior, and wiped away the tears before they dropped silently off his cheeks. Then he met my eyes and asked me the last question he would ever say to me in person: "Are we ever going to see each other again, Stephen?"

  I placed my right hand on his shoulder, as close to a hug as I dared to attempt. "You actually don't think I'd manage through life without picking fun at that ugly face of yours, do you?"

  And he laughed through the tears.

  Now I was headed back to Dodsville for the first time in over a dozen years to see him buried. He never did see me again, like I had promised on that last day. Of course, we kept in touch for a few years after my departure to Milwaukee, but even the letters and the long-distant phone calls stopped after a while. I couldn't recall who wrote the last letter, or who made the last phone call, but that hardly mattered anymore.

  After receiving the telegram from Reed's sister, Julie, yesterday evening, I almost decided not to come. Maybe if I never saw him in his casket, or viewed his headstone, Reed would continue to live on in my mind. I could still vividly picture both my mother and my father in their open caskets, and it hadn't been until that very moment that I realized both my parents were dead. Their expressions, made up by the mortician, showed just how spent they were. Mom was never going to make breakfast for me again, bandage a wound, nor wipe away my tears of distress. Dad would never take me fishing or to a ball game, nor answer my barrage of silly questions about life.

  Yet I would have to face Reed, I knew deep down, and pay the respects he deserved from me. I owed him that much.

  He drowned while swimming in Brunner's Pond, Julie had stated quite bluntly in her telegram. And my initial response to that news was, it just couldn't be true. And for a couple of reasons. One was the fact that, as a sixth grader, Reed could out swim most of the high school kids. But the foremost reason I was skeptical was because I knew how deathly afraid Reed was of swimming in Brunner's Pond. A couple of times when fishing there had gotten boring, which was more times than we actually caught anything, we had dared each other to go swimming. Neither of us was swayed by the dare. The pond was infested with bloodsuckers, and both Reed and I couldn't fathom the idea of having to peel them off our flesh after getting out of the water. Once, Reed slipped off the edge of the pier while we were messing around one rainy Sunday afternoon, and he panicked. He couldn't pull himself out of that water fast enough. I stood mutely on the pier, staring at him as he thrashed about in the water as though he were actually in acid. It was the first, and only, time I could remember him losing his cool like that. Reed was one to always hold on to his dignity; he claimed it was the only thing he could control in his life.

  Julie, on the other hand, would know how Reed died. Wouldn't she?

  Another drop of water slithered down the inside of the window next to me, and I snapped out of my reverie. The clouds were beginning to darken in the east, and I would probably not reach Dodsville before the fall of night.

  Seated next to me on my left, an old lady that looked to be pushing eighty knitted a sweater she had told me earlier was for her grandson in Park Falls. She held it up and asked me how I thought it was coming along.

  "Coming along just fine," I replied, glad of her interruption. "Your grandson is going to love it. I know I would."

  She smiled at my comment and reverted her energy back to her knitting.

  I turned my attention back to staring vacuously out my side window.

  "You seemed preoccupied." The old lady had put down the sweater-in-progress, and shot me a look of concern. "Going to see a loved one?"

  I nodded, and it was true. One may forget about an old girlfriend once thought loved, but one never really quits loving his best childhood friend.

  "That's nice," she said, the look of concern gone, and went back to her tenacious knitting.

  * * *

  I felt someone shaking my shoulder, and realized that somewhere along the line I managed to fall asleep. Again, an occurrence happening all too often, I dreamt of Darla, my past girlfriend who had left me under unexpected circumstances. I was glad to have been awakened from those images of her. When would I forget? I opened one eye to see who it was disrupting my dreams.

  The old lady smiled when she saw me awaken. "We’re coming up to Dodsville in about fifteen minutes," she said. “Thought you might want to be awake for the ride in."

  "Thanks." I yawned and sat upright. Hard to believe that after thirteen years I was finally coming home. I rubbed my eyes and shook my head, trying to chase sleep--and weary images-- away.

  Night had completely fallen, and I felt a little nervous about wandering around Dodsville alone. Not because of any fear of the crime rate, as Dodsville didn't really have that problem, but I sure would have felt a lot better if the sun was warming my face when I stepped off the train. Nights were gloomy enough by themselves; now drizzle had entered the scene to make the evening even more dispiriting, and, at the same time, I was here for a funeral. Yes, sunlight overhead would have been more agreeable, but, then, what control did I have?

  My window was still pretty much fogged over, so I knew the temperature outside must not have risen much since my departure from Milwaukee. I pulled my jacket out from under the seat in front of me and placed it on my lap. This definitely was the Dodsville I remembered--weather never quite what it should be for the season. Middle of June, and I still needed a barrier against the elements of nature.

  Dodsville had a population of a little over twelve thousand when I had left thirteen years ago. Driving through the city, however, one would have thought the town was much smaller. Dodsville was mostly scattered along the Black River, but by now I expected the population to have at least doubled, bunching everything together. The train slowed, and although I couldn't see clearly out the window next to me, I knew just by the way I felt we were entering Dodsville’s city limits. I grabbed my travel bag from above and stepped out into the aisle.

  "Have a good time now," the old lady commented as I walked away. She still knitted the sweater, but appeared close to finishing. "But not too good." She smiled and winked.

  I just smiled back without replying. I was finally back home, and words at this particular moment seemed, somehow, out of place.

  The conductor slid open the door for me and reached for the portable steps. "Never mind that," I said, feeling a trifle bit like a child again. I jumped out and managed to land right in the middle of a mud puddle. The conductor only laughed and closed the door behind me. I stood quietly for a minute, staring down at my wet shoes while the drizzle fell over me.

  My first thought was, Reed would have thought this quite funny. I, on the other hand, was never one to see humor in any misfortune cast upon me. "Shit," I murmured under my breath and stepped out of the puddle. My feet were wet, it was misting, and the temperature was only in the fifties. Yessiree, it was a mighty good start so far.

  The train pulled away; I watched it until the last car disappeared down the tracks into the night blackness and slight fog. Wiping my wet hair back in place, I walked under the awning over the door of the main entrance of the old train depot. At least the building was still standing. It had already been closed for public use before I even left Dodsville. Now, it was just an old historical relic desperately in need of a paint job. Paint chips lay scattered about my feet like confetti thrown from an invisible welcoming committee.

  From my vantage point, little in Dodsville appeared to have changed over the last thirteen years. A few of the elm trees didn't survive the run of Dutch Elm Disease that struck Wisconsin about a decade ago. The houses down the block were vaguely familiar, as no mall or parking lot had taken precedence over them during my absence. The tavern across the street from the depot hadn't even gone through a change of ownership. Rosey's Place flashed off and on in neon brilliance. From what I could see, the time span from when I had left could just as well have been three years instead of the actual thirteen.

/>   The ambience of mist I stood within was slowly turning to a light rain. Not wishing to be soaked to the skin, I picked up my traveling bag, pulled my jacket collar tightly around my neck, and walked the distance across the street to Rosey's. Just as in every small-town tavern I've entered, every face in the place turned to me as I opened the door and grabbed a stool at the bar. Even though there were only six other patrons there, I still felt unusually out of place. The bartender looked up from his conversation with two women at the end of the bar, said a few last words to them I couldn't make out above the jukebox playing "Lucille" by Kenny Rogers, and headed in my direction.

  "What'll it be for ya?" he asked in a more friendly tone than I had expected--small town hospitality.

  "Pepsi," I replied and had to hold back a smile. Reed had constantly teased me about my unquenchable thirst for Pepsi, and I was sure that if he could have been at my side now I could have expected one of those notorious snide remarks of his. But, then, I hadn't heard from Reed for over a decade, and for all I knew he could have lost that sense of humor that had attracted him to me as a friend in the first place. Time had a way of changing people. Nevertheless, somehow I thought Reed would have been impervious to the cynicism that overruns the basic childhood essence within us as we age. Only a couple of times, that I could recall, had he ever lost his temper. When he did, however, he lost it with a vengeance.

  The barkeep placed an ice-filled glass on a coaster in front of me, popped the tab on a can of Pepsi, and poured as much of the contents into the glass as he could before the foam dribbled over the top. "So, what parts you from?" He took the five-dollar bill I handed him and changed it. "I don't believe I've seen you around here before."

  "Most likely not." I took a deep swallow of my Pepsi. "I'm up from Milwaukee, where I've been residing the past half of my life." A belch rose to my throat, but I fought it down. "And I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for an old friend of mine passing away. I'm here for his funeral." At those last words a wave of depression washed over me.

  "That would most likely be Reed Price." He laid my change in front of me, without bothering to tell me how much the drink was --a habit most bartenders seemed to have.

  "As a matter of fact, it would." At first I was surprised by his guess, but I almost immediately realized I was back in a small town and everybody knew pretty much everything about everybody else. A death would be big news, especially if the deceased was young and his demise untimely. "Did you know him personally?"

  "Oh, I'd say pretty much everyone around here knew Reed. Or at least of him." He smiled, as if struck by a sudden pleasant memory. "He was a good guy," he added, nodding to himself. "One hell of a good guy."

  "That I believe." And I could. As a teacher I felt I knew what a student of mine would be like in ten years. Of course I hadn't taught that long to test any of my theories, so there was no way of knowing just how accurate my predictions were. Yet, I felt fairly positive about Reed.

  "What did you say your name was?" the bartender asked. My glass was empty, and he poured the remainder of the can into it.

  "I didn't," I replied, after downing half of the Pepsi just added to my glass. "But it's Stephen O'Neal."

  He rubbed his chin in reflection for a moment, as if trying to place my name from somewhere back in the reaches of his memory. "Let's see," he said slowly. "O'Neal . . . quite a while ago an O'Neal couple died in a tragic car accident. If I remember correctly, I believe they left behind a young boy."

  I was taken aback. I doubted I could handle ever living in a small community again. No anonymity. "That boy would be me," I replied.

  The bartender raised his eyebrows a second, then dropped them. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to drag up bad memories."

  The tavern door opened and all faces, ritually, including my own, turned in unison to see who it was. An old man, unshaven and gray, staggered past me and plopped down on a stool four chairs away. The town drunk, I thought to myself and smiled while finishing the contents of my glass.

  The bartender reached under the bar and pulled out another can of Pepsi, popped the top and poured my glass full again. "On the house," he said. "So you’re an old friend of Reed Price’s?" His question must have been rhetorical as he left me for the newcomer--who had turned his attention directly to me. I could almost feel his stare cut right through the side of my face.

  The old man picked up his beer from the bar after the bartender took his order and filled it, and moved over to the stool right next to mine. He smelled like one of Milwaukee's famous breweries. "You a buddy of Reed's?" His speech came out in a slur as he leaned toward me.

  I backed away. "When we were kids," I replied, trying to avoid the rancor of his breath, but failing. "It's too bad he had to drown like that, huh?" A little meaningless conversation and I could pick up and leave without looking like too much of a snob.

  The old man shook his head so vehemently I thought he would shake himself off his stool. "He didn't drown." He tipped over his glass and the beer formed a river to the floor behind the bar. "No, sir. He was--"

  "Now, Charlie," the bartender interrupted, reaching for a towel to wipe up the spilled beer. "I think it’s high time we put you in a taxi and got you home to Marlene. She's going to be wondering about you by now anyway."

  I barely heard the bartender’s words. Charlie's own statement, finished or not, was a bit of a shock. If Reed hadn't drowned, as Julie's telegram had so bluntly stated, then how?

  Charlie got up from his stool as the bartender called him his cab, and staggered back to his original place. Probably the same one he sat in every time he came into this tavern. He glanced, almost furtively, at me a few times over his beer. He tipped the glass up to his lips, drank down the last drops and stood. "See ya, Rich," he said to the bartender with a nod and headed, precariously, for the exit.

  "Say, Charlie," the bartender, whose name I guessed was Rich, called after him. "How about if I pour you a cup of coffee, on the house? It is raining a bit out there, you know."

  Charlie waved him off without looking back. "Rain'll do me some good." He opened the door and left.

  Still curious about what Charlie had claimed about the demise of Reed, I motioned for Rich to come over to me. "Say," I said as he reached down into the sink in front of me and pulled out a glass to dry, "I was under the impression that Reed Price had drowned. What did Charlie mean when he said--"

  "Oh, don't pay too much attention to Charlie," he interrupted without looking up from the glass he polished in his hands. "He rambles on a bit about anything when he gets a little too sauced, if you know what I mean." He reached into the water and pulled out another glass. "Not that he's not smart; that's not what I'm saying. You just need to talk to him before the sun sets for the evening. He'll set you straight on any subject in the world." He set the glass down, dried, and excused himself, walking back to the two women and continuing his conversation with them.

  Four men, who barely looked old enough to be in a bar, whispered among themselves at the booth half way down the aisle from me. They appeared to be discussing me, as they shot furtive glances in my direction right before they would break out in a guffaw.

  "Yea," I murmured to myself. "I guess you're right." Anyway, I could pick up a newspaper, and then I would know for sure how Reed had died.

  Grabbing my change from the counter, I stood. "See you around, Rich," I called down to him with a slight wave goodbye. "And thanks for the drink."

  He motioned for me to stay a minute, said something to the women, and walked the length of the bar to me. "So how long you planning to stay in Dodsville?" he asked, holding out his hand for me to shake.

  "Oh, I'm not all too sure on that one," I replied, grabbing his proffered hand. "I haven't been here since I was a kid, so I thought I just might hang around for a week or so. Go over old memories and stuff like that."

  "Well, you probably won't notice a hell of a lot of changes in this hick town. The Horace Smith Company closed a few years a
fter your splitting. Not that you had anything to do with it." He chuckled. "But the town hasn't grown all too much since then."

  The Horace Smith Company, if I remembered correctly, had employed over one third of the city's working population. I supposed that when the company packed up and walked, so did a lot of the families.

  "What was Reed doing before he died?" I asked, and an immediate wave of guilt hit me for speaking of him in the past tense.

  "Oh, technically, he worked for his father at the shoe store." He smiled in reflection. "But Reed was around, helping folks whenever they needed a hand."

  I nodded, not surprised at all. "So, Mr. Price still has the old shoe shop going, huh?"

  "Main Street, where it’s always been."

  "Well, I'll just have to drop in on him tomorrow and see if he remembers me or not." The time was going on ten. I would have to find out any more information about Reed and his seemingly charmed existence from his family tomorrow. "Got to head out," I said, shaking his hand once more. "And thanks again for your hospitality. Don't get much of that in the big city."

  "Don't mention it," he replied. "And now that you know where the front door is, don't be afraid to cast your shadow upon it once in a while before you leave Dodsville."

  "Oh, you'll most likely see this ugly face again."

  "Say," he said. " Can I call you a cab?"

  "No thanks," I replied. The walk would do me good--put most everything in perspective. "Is Sandy's Motel still around?"