by Ed Gorman
“So, how have you been?” Jake said.
Then he bent forward, trying to catch a closer look at something in the light.
“Richard ... your throat.”
Richard nodded, put his head down.
He did not want to remember the things that had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours.
“What happened?” Jake asked.
Richard shrugged.
... did not want to remember ...
“C’mon Richard, I’m your friend, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Richard said shyly.
“Well, don’t friends tell other friends things?”
Richard nodded. Embarrassed.
“Well, won’t you tell me what happened to your throat?”
Richard looked longingly at the empty cookie plate.
Jake smiled. “If I give you more cookies, will you tell me what happened?”
Richard thought for a moment. Then he smiled. “Yes.”
“That’s a deal, my friend. That’s a deal.”
With that, Jake went back to the stove and took more cookies off the sheet with a spatula. He brought a half-dozen more steaming chocolate chip cookies to Richard and laid them in front of him like so much gold.
Richard ate.
And after he ate, with great prying on Jake’s part, Richard told Jake about what had happened.
About finding the bloody blouse in the woods near the motel. About getting his hands bloody. About going to see Beth. About the tall man coming into his room this morning and starting to cut him with the knife. Threatening Richard.
Jake watched and listened without apparent emotion. Mostly he just tried to get clarifications from Richard, so that he could understand the story better.
After Richard finished, exhausted, Jake got up and brought him more cookies.
Richard seemed to have one of those metabolisms that can digest several pounds of food a day without putting on any weight.
Watching his friend eat again, Jake said, “They shouldn’t pick on you, Richard.”
But Richard was more interested in finishing his cookies than in receiving sympathy.
Jake looked at his friend for a long time, then stood up and changed the channels.
Instead of cartoons there was now The Three Stooges.
Richard laughed like a small boy.
Jake smiled, but then the smile ended abruptly.
An image of the bloody apron had invaded his mind again.
3
“Shit,” Bobby Coughlin said.
“Hey, tiger, too much for you?”
“Fuck yourself,” Bobby said.
He was on the bench. With one hundred and twenty-five pounds of free weights suspended above him.
His arms had yet to lock.
He had yet to raise the weights all the way up above him.
He was obviously doing too much.
“You might give yourself a hernia that way, kid,” Herb Dutton laughed. “But I guess, in your case, it wouldn’t matter all that much, anyway.”
With that insult flaying him, Bobby let the weights drop back in their brace.
They landed so hard that several people in the Happy Health Spa weight room turned to look.
The spa was where all the young swingers and their girls came to work out and (word had it) screw like bunnies in various steamy rooms of the place.
Fortunately for Bobby, the spa was pretty much deserted after school, so he could come here and—in return for sweeping up the place, taking out the garbage and (yech) scrubbing out the toilets—he got a free membership.
Bobby was trying to increase his status as his own man—and less of Dave’s man—by coming here and pumping iron.
Some iron.
Maybe eighty pounds.
At most.
Today, humiliated with the way he’d gotten all uptight during the confrontation between Dave and the teacher in the boys’ lavatory, Bobby had come here and decided to try to exceed his best lift.
Herb Dutton’s reaction was evidence of how miserably he’d failed.
Herb was a kind of freak.
Maybe thirty. Maybe a little older. Drove a very cherry 1969 Chevy Impala that had been channeled and was shown at many cool car contests. Worked in a department store as a men’s clothing salesman. But spent many of his off hours here in the spa, working out.
The guy made Hercules look like a male hairdresser.
Herb surprised him by helping him from the bench.
“What the hell you trying to do?” Herb asked.
“Huh?”
“What’s with the hundred and twenty-five pounds?”
“I can do it. I’ve done it before.”
Herb looked at him steadily, his wide face framed by black curly hair. He had brown dog eyes. “Bullshit.”
“I have. Ask Menort.” Menort was the guy who owned the place.
Herb turned, to yell at Menort, who was on the opposite side of the gym.
“Hey, shit,” Bobby said.
“What? You said to ask Menort.”
“Well.” Bobby felt himself flush. “You know.”
“No, I don’t. Tell me.”
“I was exaggerating a little bit is all.”
“A little bit.”
“Well, maybe ten pounds.”
“Bullshit.”
“Well, twenty pounds then.”
“More like forty.”
Bobby shrugged. “Yeah, maybe, I guess.”
“What the hell you tryin’ to do?”
Bobby sighed. He muttered, so as to be as inaudible as possible. “Get tougher.”
Herb surprised Bobby by not smiling. “That’s what I figured.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you know?”
“’Cause I used to be like you.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. A wimp.”
“Thanks a fucking lot.”
“Sorry, kid, but that’s what you are.”
“I ain’t that bad.”
“Sure you are. Look at all the shit you take off Dave. Dave’s a frigging punk, and someday you’re going to realize it.”
“Dave’s a cool guy.”
“Yeah, if you like the type who stands around and combs his hair in a mirror all day.”
“He’s tough.”
Herb smiled. “Sure, to guys like you. You ever seen him fight anybody his own speed?”
“Sure. Lots.”
“Like who?”
“Well.”
“C’mon, like who?”
“Fuck, I don’t remember, man. I mean, not offhand.”
“Right. I give you a couple of weeks and you could probably come up with dozens of names, right?”
Bobby flushed again.
“You should tell him to piss off.”
“He takes care of me,” Bobby said.
“Bobby, you want to be a wimp all your life?”
Bobby shook his head. Muttered again. “No.”
“Then look at Dave for what he is and tell him to flake off.”
“Couldn’t do that.” This time he’d muttered so low that even he could barely understand what he’d said.
“What’d you say?”
“I said I couldn’t do that.”
“Sure you could.”
“How?”
“You just stand up for yourself. You wait for exactly the right moment and then you all of a sudden show him that you’re not a slave anymore.”
“He’d kill me.”
“He’s killing you this way. The only difference is, he’s doing it slowly.”
Bobby thought of the hallway incident that afternoon—of how both Dave and Angie had laughed at him—
“Shit,” Bobby said.
“What.”
“You’re right.”
“If I’m right, how come you look so down, man?”
“Because I’m scared.”
“You going to do a number on him?�
�� Herb asked.
A peculiar smile flashed across Bobby’s face. “Yeah. That’s it, man. I’m going to do a number on him.”
4
Dave Evans’s father had given him—at age eight—a sterling silver piggy bank. True, it was not a very big piggy. But it was sterling silver and a testament to Mr. Evans’s success in the town.
Now, a young man, Dave found the piggy bank an ideal place to store things.
Reefers.
Condoms.
And the roll of film he had of his old man.
Now, sitting on his bed, having spent the last twenty minutes fantasizing what Angie was going to be like tonight, he spent some time thinking about the film.
Wouldn’t his old man crap.
Absolutely crap.
One day, while visiting nearby Toddville, Dave happened to see a familiar car.
His father’s.
Dave, for reasons he wasn’t sure of, just some perverse curiosity, got on his motorcycle and followed his father.
Followed him to a little frame house on the edge of town.
Followed him to the reason the old man missed so many dinners at home.
So many Saturdays.
Even a few weekends.
There in the door of the small house stood the blond woman responsible for his father’s mysterious absences the past few years.
She was a voluptuous woman with a cheap look to her. Dave had to smile when he imagined the prim, respectable old man coming on to her.
God, it was hard enough to imagine your father with a hard-on, let alone the old bastard putting it into a slatternly piece like this woman.
From his sterling silver piggy bank, Dave took a joint, jumped back on his bed, and lit it.
Good grass, this. The trouble was, after buying a nickel bag of the stuff, he was nearly flat busted.
He was waiting for the old man to make noise in the driveway of their big house, to put the bite on him.
He’d bitch, of course, the old man.
He had taken to giving Dave lectures on “responsibility.”
Complaining that Dave didn’t work.
That Dave had a bad attitude.
That Dave did not pay either of his parents proper respect.
Blah fucking blah.
The bastard sounded like Joe Friday on a cable rerun of Dragnet.
Carried a sermon instead of a pistol.
Toking deeply, Dave lay back and recreated the photos he’d taken of the old man and the woman.
He’d waited till night.
Snuck up close.
Very close.
And there she was in the bedroom window. All peroxide hair and humongo jugs.
And there was the old man.
Ludicrous in boxer shorts and long black socks with garters.
Fucking garters.
If you could believe it.
Then they’d set about to thrashing like bears on the bed, both of them thirty pounds overweight, both of them grunting like in some kind of death throes.
The only thing Dave could think of all the time—except for being embarrassed for both of them—was that his mother was one hell of a lot better-looking than this woman.
Why would his father put in into this woman when he could put it into his own wife?—though Dave couldn’t exactly imagine his parents making love either.
Anyway, he had the roll of film.
Someday it would come in handy.
Very handy.
After finishing the joint, Dave dozed off, thoughts of Angie getting him hard on his way into never-never land.
He was awakened half an hour later by somebody swearing.
He woke up—disoriented from the dope—to see his old man (dressed as usual in a brown business suit) jabbing an angry finger at the air and swearing at him.
Dave had no idea what was going on.
What terminal fucking offense had he committed this time?
“—smoked that crap again, haven’t you?”
Even though he’d gotten only the last part of the sentence, Dave recognized what had been said.
The subject was marijuana.
And Dave’s use of it.
As if he were taking smack or something.
The old man, blazing, stormed across the room and said, “Do you have any idea what that crap does to your brain?”
“Yeah. It makes my brain very happy.”
“And it does something else, too—it kills your brain cells, and it contains seventeen times the number of carcinogens as regular tobacco.”
There was the old man at his best.
Seventeen times.
That’s why he was so good with his business buddies.
He snowed them with stats.
Not that the stats meant shit.
But they sure were impressive.
“Get the fuck out of my room,” Dave said in his best insolent voice.
“Your room, huh?” the old man screamed. “If it’s your room then I assume you pay taxes on it and pay to have it painted and pay for the water in the pipes. You pay for all those things, Dave?”
“Like I said, get the fuck out of here.”
Dave knew instantly that something was wrong here.
Usually his insolence drove the old man away. It was something he preferred not to see.
But today the old man—chunky, moon-faced, with carefully sprayed brown-and-gray-flecked hair—just stood there staring at him with something Dave had never seen before.
Total and utter disgust.
A shudder went through Dave.
He knew enough to start moving away from the old man, but he didn’t move quickly enough.
The fist came out of nowhere and caught him squarely on the side of the head.
Just above the left temple.
He had never been hit that hard before in his life.
He didn’t even see stars—just a peculiar darkness, one the color of mud instead of night—and felt an odd rushing of coldness through his nose and mouth.
He knew he was going to pass out—and for some reason this frightened him.
Through his blindness, he heard the old man saying, in a whipped-dog voice, “God, son, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Then he felt the old man rush to him and throw his arms around him and begin blubbering.
But as his sight returned, Dave was in no mood for forgiveness.
Pushing the old man away he got to the piggy bank and slammed it open and took the roll of film from it.
“You know what this is?”
The old man was confused. Shook his head.
“A roll of film of you and your lady friend.”
He’d scored a direct hit.
No doubt about that.
All you had to do was look at the old man’s face.
It was like playing a video game and scoring several million points.
“What the hell are you talking about?” But by now the old man’s voice had a tremble in it.
“You know what I’m talking about. That fat blond bitch you’ve been fucking.”
“Don’t talk to me like that!”
Dave smirked. “With this roll of film, you asshole, I can talk to you any way I want.”
Now the old man had turned from playing dumb to justifying himself. Dave loved it. “There are things you’re not old enough to understand. Your mother isn’t fond of—well—your mother doesn’t have the same drives that—”
“You ever think it’s you?” Dave screamed. “You ever think it’s because you look like a slug and you come on like a Nazi that she might not want to have anything to do with you?”
God, he had never seen anything like it, Dave hadn’t. The way the old man looked just now.
As if somebody was beating him over the head with a two-by-four.
“She must fuck you real good.” Dave waved the film again.
Quietly, almost as if he’d lost his voice, his father said, “Please don’t say any more, Dave.”
Dave looked at him.
He almost felt pity. His old man was such a jerk.
“I want fifty dolllars.”
“For what?” his father asked.
“For what? You don’t seem to understand, old man, things have changed around here. From now on I give the orders. If I tell you I want something, I don’t want any questions. You understand me?”
His old man, beaten, just stood there. Head down. Dave thought he could hear him begin to whimper.
“You understand????” Dave screamed. “You think I won’t tell Mom, you’re crazy. I’ll not only tell her, I’ll get the film developed and show her.”
Dave snapped his fingers. “Now I want fifty bucks, you understand me?”
Dutifully, the old man counted out fifty dollars and handed them over.
Dave smiled at him. “That blond bitch—she give good head?” he asked.
5
Ruth Foster knocked on Minerva’s door, then went in without waiting to be asked.
She never did that.
The stern expression on her face said that these were different circumstances.
Minerva lay on her bed, the back of her hand flung over her face.
She started when Ruth came through the doorway.
“Is something wrong?”
“I’m afraid there is,” Ruth said.
Minerva was nervous. She couldn’t ever recall seeing Ruth Foster upset.
Especially so upset that her eyes fairly flared with rage.
“You were in the basement?” Ruth demanded.
“Yes.”
“Against my wishes.”
“Well—”
“Against my wishes, isn’t that correct?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it is, but—”
“Minerva, I thought we were friends.”
“We are, Ruth. Truth to tell, we’re the only friends we’ve got.”
“Then you should respect my wishes, if we’re such good friends.”
“But—”
“There is absolutely no reason for you to be in the basement. None whatsoever. It’s a part of the house that may as well not exist.”
“The noises—”
Ruth clucked. “Oh, the noises! I’m so darned tired of hearing about those noises! They’re wind or small animals who get in through the windows and get trapped down there. Nothing more mysterious or sinister than that!”
