by Ed Gorman
For a moment, Carnes almost felt sorry for the deputy.
But then he thought of how the deputy, no matter how unwittingly, was part of a conspiracy, the dimensions of which Carnes was only beginning to realize.
Shanks continued to writhe at his restraints.
To hell with him, Carnes thought, and walked back to Beth.
“You scared me a few minutes ago,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“Your temper, it’s—”
“Ugly is the word you want.”
“Yes, I guess that would be the appropriate word. I guess I’m just not used to violence.”
“Neither am I.” He thought a moment. “But then I’m not used to having my daughter kidnapped, either.”
She smiled at him. “Maybe I was a little insensitive. About your temper and all.”
“I understand.” He nodded toward his car. “Now, c’mon, let’s get going. I’ve got a feeling we’re starting to get close to each other.”
They were shadows moving against the twilight sky as they worked their way up the hill to Carnes’s car.
The only thing that worked against the idyll they seemed to be a part of was what dangled from Carnes’s hand.
He had not given the deputy his gun back.
Now it hung from his hand.
He knew that before this night was over he was going to need it.
2
Jake stood at the top of the wooded hill above the Foster meat plant staring at refrigerated trucks pulling in and out of the lighted loading area.
Meat was shipped from here at all hours of the night and day to points throughout the country.
That was something, Jake knew, that made the people of Burton proud.
How successful the plant was, how many states and nations and peoples it fed.
It was unthinkable what would happen if the plant ever up and left Burton ... heading down South as some plants did for lower wages....
Jake often came to this hill and watched the trucks load and pull away.
He liked the way the mercury vapor lights made everything alien, and how the big electric fence rolled open and shut with the passage of the trucks.
As a boy he’d liked to play factory—his father had got him a big kit with which he had been able to construct his own factory—moving people and machines around as if he were a god.
It was a little like this sitting up in the hills watching the meat plant.
You felt superior to people.
You could see them, but they couldn’t see you.
It gave you some power.
Thinking about power, or rather the lack of it, Jake’s mind turned to his friend Richard.
Richard was nothing more than a dirty joke to this town, a fact that Jake resented mightily. A part of himself was very much like Richard—an outcast.
Now, pitiful Richard seemed to be in trouble.
Finding the bloody blouse.
Then somebody coming for him with a knife.
Pitiful Richard.
Something was going on in this town, and Richard seemed to know about it....
But then Jake let his mind drift back to the plant. Heck, one night, unbeknownest to the workers, he’d snuck in behind a truck and gone inside the plant.
What he’d seen had repelled and fascinated him in equal parts.
The stripped carcasses hanging from hooks ... the vats and eyes and snouts and tongues ... the bleeding area where the cows and pigs were clubbed and then cut down the middle with knives as long as somebody’s arm ...
He heard the animals while he was in there, sitting in their pens, waiting like people on death row.
He’d wondered if the animals knew what fate had in store for them at dawn....
To be led down a long, narrow corridor to where the men with clubs and knives waited ...
After his experience in the meat packing plant—an experience that had gone completely undetected by the people who worked there—something changed in Jake.
You couldn’t have such an experience and not be altered by it in some way.
So afterwards ...
But he was suddenly getting a headache.
And a chill.
Jake was a great believer in portents ... in God warning you about things ... moving you out of a place before something terrible happened.
Jake had this sense now.
He decided it was time he’d best leave.
He stood up, taking his thermos full of cola with him, and walked right smack into the same tall man who had visited Richard that morning.
Laumer reached out and grabbed Jake and flashed a knife that seemed every bit as big as the one the men in the plant used on the animals.
The difference was, where the men in the plant were only doing their jobs and not taking any particular pleasure in it, Laumer was enjoying himself a great deal.
Jake could tell that by the smile on Laumer’s face.
Laumer, the long knife glinting in the dusk, came closer.
3
Bobby Coughlin put down his fork and stared off into nothingness.
A hand came out of nowhere and cracked him on the back of the head.
“You’re here to eat, not to stare.”
Bobby’s old man, Clarence by name, if you could actually believe a name like Clarence, was as fast with his hands as any boxer in the nation.
Clarence Coughlin, who ran a used auto parts yard on the edge of town, cracked Bobby another one.
For good measure.
“Now you eat that.”
“Clarence—his wife, Ina, started to say. But then she caught herself. Knowing better.
Clarence felt that he, as the father, should hand out all the punishment in the family.
Usually via the form of knuckle sandwiches, as he liked to call them.
“Eat.”
One of these days, Bobby was going to say what was on the tip of his tongue: Fuck yourself, old man.
But that was after he sent away for the Charles Atlas course and got himself to where he could bench-press Buicks. Because it would take that kind of strength to hold your own against Clarence.
In the meantime, he would just have to sit here and do as he was told.
What had distracted him away from his wonderful dinner of spinach and macaroni—yecch! was too mild a word for such fare—was the plan that had popped into his head just as he’d sat down for dinner.
How he was going to pay back both Dave Evans and Angie Fuller in one easy lesson.
The humiliation he’d felt this afternoon—first from when Angie had called him names, second from when Dave had hurled him into the lockers in front of everybody like so much garbage being discarded—such humiliation could not go unpunished.
Even if it meant paying back the most popular kid at Burton High.
Even if it meant risking your life doing it.
“What’s so funny?” Clarence wanted to know. In his tee-shirt, you could see all the fading tattoos on his arms.
“Huh?”
“You were smiling.”
“I was?”
“You tryin’ to be funny, you little bastard?”
“Huh-uh, Dad. Honest.” Bobby’s voice had risen an octave. Being around Clarence—living in that kind of fear—always did that to his voice.
“So what’s so funny?”
Clarence sounded pissed because his son wasn’t letting him in on the joke.
“Nothin’.”
But, of course, there was. Bobby was just imagining how neat it was going to be tonight when Mr. King Shit Dave Evans ate a pound or two of his own.
Along with Angie Fuller.
Bobby got up from the table, his dinner left untouched.
Clarence grabbed for him with an armful of tattoos.
“Hey,” Clarence said.
“Hey yourself, you asshole,” wimpy Bobby Coughlin said to his old man.
Bobby had sense enough to run.
Fast.
4
“What kind of nipples do you like?” Angie said.
On the other end of the line could be heard a nearly grown man slavering and drooling.
“Little ones. Brown. Tender.”
She giggled. “What if mine aren’t like that?”
“They will be. I’ll bet they are.”
But what a stupid chance Dave Evans had taken just then—describing to Angie the ideal pair of nipples.
Ideal, anyway, according to him.
But what if hers hadn’t matched his ideal? He wouldn’t have considered the possibility that he might hurt her feelings.
She smiled to herself.
There were a lot of things she was going to teach this boy before she was done with him.
The same things she’d taught all the other boys who’d thought they were getting someplace.
You didn’t get to be as beautiful at seventeen as Angie was and still be a virgin without knowing a lot more about the Facts (all the Facts, actually, not just sex) than boys did.
“I suppose you have rigid specifications for other parts of the body, too.”
Dave laughed. Husky. “Yeah. I do.”
“Well, spare me the details.”
“Later tonight we can discuss them.”
Now it was her turn to laugh. “Maybe you won’t want to discuss them later tonight.”
“I know. The scary Foster mansion. I’m really petrified.”
“I took Tim Dolan up there. He sounded just like you—beforehand. But he came running down the hill and took me right home.”
“Tim Dolan is a twink.”
She put a smile in her voice. “We’ll see.” Then, laughing, “You know, with that girl missing from the motel last night and all, maybe there’s a monster on the loose.”
“Yeah, and his name is Dave Evans.” He made a snarling noise.
The huskiness was back in his voice. That was why he’d called. Because he couldn’t wait until their date. Because he was already more involved with her than he could handle.
That was the way she liked her men.
Cowering.
She liked them even better when they were dumb enough to try her little tests.
One boy she had stay under water for a full ten minutes. When he failed long before then, she managed to sound mighty disappointed and used that as the reason why she wasn’t going to dispense any “favors” at all.
Then there was the boy who walked the railroad bridge and nearly fell to his death. Then the boy who offered to lie on a car hood while the car was going fifty miles per hour down the highway.
Fun little tests.
For fun little boys.
Tonight was another test.
One she’d never take herself. But she delighted in taking boys out there to do it.
Even the land around the Foster estate seemed weird to her, one of those places out of Edgar Allan Poe.
On the other end of the phone, Dave Evans was getting sexy again.
“Baby, you’re going to enjoy yourself tonight.”
“You promise?”
“You bet I do.”
“You sure you won’t be scared, getting out of the car and going up the hill all by your lonesome?”
“Not when I know what’s waiting for me at the bottom of the hill.”
“You make a girl blush.”
“A regular Southern Belle, aren’t you?” Dave said, with just the slightest bit of sarcasm in his voice.
“You’ll find out tonight.”
“Among other things, I hope.”
She laughed again.
“See you soon,” she said and hung up.
She had a mental picture of Dave Evans on total fire, his crotch sending shooting flames all the way to the dark night sky.
Poor dear.
Poor baby.
If he only knew there wasn’t going to be any reward tonight after all his hard work.
Angie went into the bathroom to get ready.
It was no fun letting boys down unless you looked devastating while you were doing it.
5
To anybody who had lived in Burton for many years, a brief glimpse along Main Street now that twilight was becoming full night, would tell them that something peculiar was going on.
Seven members of the town council had gathered in a restaurant on the corner that overlooked the town square.
In fact the entire council was present except for its most volatile force, Carl Laumer.
Coffee was the fare for the evening. Not beer, which made the moment even odder.
These were men who liked their beer.
Another thing that was odd was the silence that seemed to have fallen over the men.
They sat at the long table with the checkered tablecloth and the swollen red glasses holding candles and said hardly a word to each other.
Friends these long years. Men who shared a terrible secret unknown to the rest of the town.
Hardly a word.
Sheriff Wayman kept looking at his wrist watch and then at the clock over the cash register.
As if there might be some discrepancy.
As if the precise time were a big thing.
Wayman glanced around the table, a sad smile on his lips.
These days he had taken to noticing how old everybody was getting.
Jowls and wrinkles, white hair and pale flesh, pot bellies and eyes that didn’t quite seem to focus.
The whole generation of people who had made Burton a nice, safe place were now getting to the age when death was truly inevitable.
A terrible melancholy came over Wayman as he surveyed his friends on the town council.
Over the years they had been forced to make a lot of decisions.
Sometimes tough decisions.
As a kind of payment for their dutifulness, they should have been exempted from the infirmities that plagued the rest of the human race....
Wayman was thankful that the waitress came over and said the phone was for him.
He did not like the mood he was getting into. It was self-destructive and dangerous.
He went to the rear of the restaurant, hoisted the receiver, put it to his ear.
“Are you all there?”
Wayman recognized the voice, of course. Conroy, one of his men.
“All here.”
“I’ve checked out the cabin.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“I didn’t know that Reeves was going to show up.”
Wayman lowered his voice. “How are they?”
“They’re still in the back of my truck.”
Wayman sighed. This was all getting out of hand.
“We should be out there in half an hour, now that you’ve checked it out.”
“All ready.”
“Good.”
“You sound depressed or something, Sheriff.”
“I guess it’s getting to me.”
“What?”
“Everything.” He sounded angry.
Conroy laughed. “I suppose after thirty years—” “Have you seen Shanks?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Supposedly he was following that Carnes man around.”
“Haven’t seen him, Sheriff. Sorry.”
“All right. See you in a bit.”
Wayman was worried about Shanks as he walked back to his table.
If there was a way to screw things up, leave it to Shanks to find it.
Wayman played several possible scenarios through his mind. Some tragic. Some comic.
Shanks could screw up anything.
No doubt about that.
The town council was still silent when he came back, and immediately his mood of melancholy returned.
On the good nights in this restaurant, when the men had their wives with them and there was beer in front of everybody and some of the old Patti Page songs playing on the jukebox, Wayman had a sense of himself as a young man—with everything ahead of him, not behind him.
&
nbsp; And with his wife at his side.
But tonight all he could think of was the way time pressed in on everybody. The way faces and voices called to you like ghosts. The way decisions you’d made ate at your own self-esteem. The way nothing ever seemed to work out quite the right—
All of it came home and settled in Wayman’s heart.
“The cabin’s clear. Conroy checked it out,” Wayman announced.
One of the men at the opposite end spoke up. “He say anything about Reeves?”
“Back of his truck.”
The man shook his head. Miserably. Reeves had been a good friend of his son’s.
Things were getting out of hand.
“Where’s Laumer?” someone else asked.
“Don’t know. But I’m sure he’ll show up.”
“We’d better get going,” one of the council members said.
Wayman shuddered, dreading the night ahead.
On the way out the door, each one of them passed a large display that read: “We’re Proud To Serve The World’s Greatest Meats ... Foster Meats.”
The irony was lost on none of them.
They pushed out into the starry night, headed for the cabin and the same kind of decision they’d had to make thirty years earlier.
Less than a mile down the road, an old Perry Como song on the radio, Sheriff Wayman’s ulcer started sending laser flashes across his abdomen.
That was always a bad sign. Wayman always said that he had one of those ulcers that told you how things were going to go. Kind of a predicting ulcer.
An image of Carnes and Beth Daye floated into his mind. If anybody was going to bring down the whole mess, it was them—
6
Vince Reeves knew better than to expect some Roy Rogers trick of himself.
Bound and gagged, rolling around in the rear of a truck, bumping into his wife Donna as the vehicle bounced and jostled over rough roads, Vince sensed that his dread of the past month—ever since learning of the terrible secret a small group in the town shared—was going to come true.
Donna’s belly was never going to get swollen with a child of theirs.
He was never going to take that fishing trip to Canadian waters.
And he was never going to achieve that inner peace he had striven for all his life.
There was just the blackness.
