The Return of Count Electric & Other Stories

by William Browning Spencer

  Your true investigator, your professional, no doubt has more patience than I do. It was a mistake, I know, to approach Eleanor when I did, and I’m sure a certain furtive quality was apparent when I whispered to her: “Miss Greer!”

  She gave a little squeak of surprise, and then turned. “Golly, it’s Dr. Blair!” I am not, of course, a doctor, but it is a title Eleanor persists in using, I suppose because she is used to people in authority who do, in fact, possess such titles.

  Before I could say a word, before I could ask if she required my help—and ask it in a tactful and generous fashion that would put her completely at ease and so obtain her utter confidence—Lou Willis came out of the store.

  Eleanor, a girl of natural exuberance, was hugging me when he came out, and the general coolness of his demeanor suggested how unhappy he was with this show of innocent affection.

  No, I had no time to ask Eleanor anything regarding her circumstances. But I am a professional. Noticing the nuances of personal interaction is my job. How often have I seen couples in my office who were at cross-purposes? A thousand times. Ten thousand times. The tension between Eleanor Greer and Lou Willis was palpable. If he were not actually holding her against her will, he was certainly exerting psychological pressures which young Eleanor, a child emotionally and mentally, would have no resources for combating. I was sure, instantly, that I had done the right thing in coming.

  And I didn’t like Lou Willis’s looks, quite frankly. His appearance hadn’t improved since that high school photo. The years had hollowed his cheeks and pushed his eyes back under a knobby ridge of bone. His eyes still had that surprised look, that feigned innocence, but now they held a kind of crazy, unblinking outrage that said: I’m not about to let you get away with whatever you are getting away with.

  I didn’t like the way he moved, either, always shifting his weight from one foot to the other with a nervous, brawler’s air, leaning forward a little, a sly, am-I-crowding-you smile and his chin angled up. He had rope-like, hard muscles that gave no sense of physical well-being but simply seemed like flesh pushed to the limits, and although I was several inches taller, I knew I was no match for the man in any sort of physical encounter.

  I don’t think he believed that I just happened to be in St. Petersburg and just happened to run into Eleanor. The story did lack credibility, and in my defense I can only say that I had never intended to tell it, hoped never to meet Lou Willis.

  Obviously, I would have to be more circumspect in the future. I returned to shadowing Eleanor and Lou, waiting for that moment when I could have more time to gracefully interrogate Eleanor to say, “Eleanor, do you want me to take you back home?”

  I thought I was exerting great caution in this matter, but when my car door was yanked open and I tumbled onto the street, only to be yanked erect by Lou Willis—who smelled of some pungent cologne—I realized that I had been taking a number of things for granted.

  “Hey hoss,” Willis said, “This is sure a coincidence, ain’t it.”

  Willis pushed me back against the hood of my car and released me. My sunglasses had fallen off. I watched Willis crush them under his boot and then pick them up.

  “Here you go,” he said.

  I took them and slipped them in the pocket of my shirt.

  “Go on and put them back on,” he said. “It’s still right sunny.”

  I put the glasses back on. The plastic lenses were still in place, but now I was looking through a spider web, sun flaring in the cracks. This broken vision brought it all home. I was in big trouble.

  “Look,” I said, “I just need to talk to Miss Greer about vocational training. It’s unclear, for instance, if she intends to establish new residency or—”

  Willis laughed. “Mr. Case Worker, you came all the way to Florida on my tax money? I’m delighted to see a dollar goes so far. Makes me feel good about giving it.”

  “Well—” I said. I was beginning to realize the advantage of fabricating lies in advance. I was at a loss for words. Lou Willis, however, would probably not have been interested in anything I had to say.

  “Just get in the car,” he said. “We are going for a drive.”

  “No,” I said, “really. No.”

  He pulled a gun out then; I don’t know where it came from, unless he’d had it stuck in his belt. Casually, rubbing my neck a little with his other hand, he put that gun against my forehead and said, “I won’t say it again. I will just shoot you dead and walk away and drive out of here before you have slid all the way to the ground, and that will be it. I don’t care much, and if you got any ear for the truth, you’ll know you are hearing it now.”

  I believed him. I got in the car.

  LOU

  We drove out of town. Whenever we came to a road that looked sorrier than the one we were on, I had him turn. Pretty soon we were on this tan stretch of nothing. The only gas station we passed was boarded up and one of the pumps lay flat on its back, its hose and nozzle next to it like a dead snake. We passed two children and a dog that was bigger than both of them. And then we just drove along, with nothing but scrub pine and some of those scruffy cabbage palms for company.

  “Mr. Case Worker,” I said, “what brings you all the way to Florida? I’d like a straight answer if you please.”

  He was leaning over the wheel like there was a pain in his stomach, and he said, quiet so I could hardly hear him: “I can’t see to drive with these sunglasses on.”

  “Well, take them off then. Goddam, don’t you have any sense? You want to get us both killed?” I laughed.

  He took the glasses off and turned and looked at me. “I came to see Miss Greer because I feared she was in trouble. My fears were obviously justified.”

  I shook my head. This fellow really was crazy. “Goddam if you ain’t something,” I said. “You feared she was in trouble! Did you now!” He didn’t say anything, just stiffened a little and looked back at the road. “What were you gonna do about her trouble? Were you gonna give her some food stamps?” I shook my head.

  “What do you know about her anyway?” I asked.

  “I suspect I know more about her than you do,” he said. He had a kind of haughty tone, there, which I had to admire. I mean, the gun was resting in my lap. He was wearing the same old suit, but he didn’t have a tie on—he was starting to let himself go, I guess.

  “I bet Juvenile told you all about her. I know what they say. I’ve heard all them words you folks have to describe anyone a little different. You can call a person any name you want and not know anything.” I was working myself up. I guess I had to, really. “No sir, you don’t know shit about Ellie Greer! You ask her brother—you ask Hank Greer—to show you that big old burn scar on his back. Hank Greer got that from his daddy when that sonofabitch laid a red-hot skillet on him. And what Hank got ain’t the half of what Ellie got.”

  “I am aware of Eleanor’s unfortunate childhood,” he said, starch in his voice. Oh, for a skinny, prissy sort of a fellow he had some backbone.

  “Turn here,” I said, pointing to a dirt road up to the left. He turned, and we rocked along in a cloud of dust.

  I kept an eye out, and when we came to a place where we could pull off the road, I had him pull off and stop. “You can leave the keys in the car,” I said; “We won’t be but a minute.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked. I marched him through a field of tall grass that was patrolled by big, low-flying dragonflies. Up ahead I saw a clump of pines and a little cow pond.

  “I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” I said. “It’s not like I have a lot of choices.” If Ma had heard me, she would have said I was feeling sorry for myself. “You got a bladder full of the poor-me’s,” she would have said.

  We walked down to the cow pond. Up close, it smelled bad.

  “You ever been fishing?” I asked him.

  “Oh course,” he said. “I did quite a bit of fishing as a boy.”

  “Well now,” I said. “You reckon there are fish
in this pond?”

  “Yes, I would think so. The dragonflies are a good sign,” he said. “They would indicate an abundant mosquito population, something for the small fry to feed on.”

  Well, I thought, this fellow thinks we are on a field trip.

  “That’s very interesting,” I said. “I wonder if you would mind stepping into the water, then. You know, taking a closer look. I might go fishing here sometime, and I wouldn’t want it to be a lot of wasted energy.”

  He just blinked at me.

  “You might take your jacket off,” I said. “You wouldn’t want it to get wet.”

  “No,” he said.

  I moved a little closer to him and said, “All right. Suit yourself.” I pointed the gun straight at his head.

  “Let me get my jacket off,” he said.

  I nodded, and watched him take his jacket off. He had an awkward time of it, like the jacket was too small.

  He handed me the jacket, his arm coming up, straight out, and there was something else besides that brown suit jacket in his hand. A cloud of wet ammonia-stinking spray hit me in the face, and my eyes caught on fire. I staggered backwards, and that first shock of fire exploded into something that made a kind of napalm whump in my brain.

  I fell back on the ground, screaming like a stuck pig, rolling around in the mud and the weeds. It had to be luck, cause I didn’t have two wits to rub together, but I got on my feet again and ran into the water, and plunged right under, like a nest of hornets was after me.

  Well, these hornets could swim.

  I believe some of my memories were burnt up forever. I don’t have them any more. They are gone, and they might have been important memories, info I could use in a jam, but I’ll never know what’s gone and what’s still here. Pain ate them right up.

  I kept ducking my head under water, trying to cool my eyes, and I stayed there for some time. I didn’t give any thought to Mr. Case Worker until the pain had let up a bit. Then I looked around, but he was gone. I crawled back up on the bank and squinted at the world. I wasn’t blind after all. I could see, although the world hurt to look at. The fellow’s jacket was still on the ground, and so was my gun, and so was this blue and white can with the words LOVE BUG LIQUIDIZER on the side. I flung that can out into the water and lay back on the ground, letting the sun dry me off.

  It was curious, but I didn’t feel any particular urgency to get up and run after or away from something. I guess I felt that whatever was going to come was coming, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

  I would have laid there even longer, but some ants wanted me off their property and they lit into the back of my neck. I sat up quick, smacked them, and decided it was time to move. For some reason—I don’t know why—I put that fellow’s suit jacket on and then put the gun in the pocket and walked back out to the road. The Jap car was gone, naturally, and I walked on down the dirt road.

  I figured I’d be walking all the way back to town, but a trucker picked me up.

  “You look kind of poorly,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything, but he was one of these fellows who has got to talk or he’ll bust.

  “You look like you got the grandaddy of hangovers,” he said. “I don’t believe I seen eyes that red on a human being.”

  “Well I hope I made your day,” I said.

  I still had to walk a mile from where the trucker let me off, and I was beat when I hit the door. Dad and Ellie were sitting watching television, and as I walked by, Dad shouted: “Eskimo Air Conditioning called. I think they want you to go to work for them.”

  “I’ll call them tomorrow,” I said, and I walked on upstairs, took a shower, and fell in bed. I slept right through till the next morning. When I woke, Ellie was there beside me, jay naked and on her back, her mouth open.

  I gave her a long look, ran my eyes down the whole reckless length of her. Light shot through the blinds, golden ribbons, like an angel God had unwrapped.

  I pulled the sheet up around her. She closed her mouth and rolled on her side, winding the sheets round her.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t have a clue.” I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. My eyes still didn’t look too good.

  In the kitchen, Dad had something to say about my looks too, but I didn’t have time for it.

  I called Eskimo Air and got the boss and he said he could use a fellow like me, but times were tight, and he wasn’t sure he could pay me what I was worth. I kept saying, “Uh huh,” and when he finally made me an offer, I said I wished I could take it but I had obligations that wouldn’t allow me to go so low, and he hummed a bit and made me another offer and I said, “Okay.”

  He asked if I could start right away, and I said, “Sure.”

  So I had a job. It was a load of work. I even had to fix the funky van they gave me for service calls. This place was tight with a buck, and some of the tools they gave me were a joke. I bought some tools on my own, took money out of my own pocket. There is nothing worse than trying to work with cheap or broken tools. I will gladly spend my own money to avoid that aggravation.

  And the work was good for me. I could have been staying home, waiting for the ax to fall. I kept expecting Mr. Case Worker to come banging on the door with a dozen cops at his back.

  “This fellow tried to kill me,” he’d say. He couldn’t lay anything on me that would stick, but I didn’t fancy the attention of a lot of cops.

  I put the gun in a coffee tin and buried it in the backyard, but nobody came around. I finally went back and dug the gun up. I didn’t want some kids finding it and maybe hurting themselves.

  I stopped worrying about the case worker, decided he had got the message. I liked to think he drove straight back to Texas, saying, all the while: “I got to be helping folks in Texas. That’s my true calling. Folks in Florida are out of my jurisdiction, and I’m glad Mr. Willis pointed it out.”

  Of course, I wasn’t going to let the matter of my eyes just pass. The fellow had definitely done something to them. The redness went away by mid-week, but I couldn’t see things properly anymore. Things were sharp enough, but sometimes there would be holes in what I was seeing, little whirlwinds of churning, electric air. I didn’t care for that effect. You bet I had something to settle with that boy. But I learned a long time ago that letting a little time pass is the best way to handle it. I might drive through Texas in a year or two, and that’s when I’d look him up. He might be walking out of his office or even mowing his lawn on a Saturday, and I’d come right up to him and say, “You don’t remember me?” And probably he wouldn’t, at first, but I’d watch the recollection come into his eyes. I’d enjoy that.

  With work, with any new job, you have to get into a rhythm. There’s an adjustment period, while your body gets used to the pace. I was wore out that first week, not so much with the work itself but with the way they had you keep track of your hours and call in all the time. It was a nuisance. I’d come home in the evenings, drink a couple of beers, and collapse.

  Dad started taking Ellie to clubs. I wasn’t crazy about that, and sometimes they wouldn’t get home until I was already asleep.

  “Girl’s got to have some fun,” Dad said. “She’s got to get out a little bit.”

  On the weekend, I just wanted to lay back, but Ellie insisted we go somewhere.

  “What do you have in mind?” I asked.

  What she had in mind was that goddam Disney World. I explained to her that it wasn’t a weekend trip, that it would take longer than that. “It’s all the way on the other side of the state,” I said. We had a good fight then.

  Dad surprised me. He agreed. “It’s a long way, Ellie, and that Mickey Mouse will turn your pockets inside out quicker than a Times Square whore.”

  Well, Ellie wouldn’t hear anything mean about that mouse, so she screamed and ran up the stairs to her room, the door slamming shut.

  I was worried that Ellie might do something rash, but Dad patted my shoulder and said, “I got a
plan.”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  But Dad always loved a secret, and he gave me another one of those broad winks and didn’t elaborate. He went upstairs and I heard him knock on Ellie’s door.

  An hour or so later, he came back down, and Ellie was with him. She wasn’t quite ready to give up sulking, but he had calmed her down. And half an hour later, he had her laughing with his imitation of Oprah.

  On Sunday, I took Ellie to a movie. I asked Dad if he’d like to come along, but he said, “No, you kids need some time to yourselves.” We went and saw this movie about a woman detective with a funny name. It was about how everyone thought her name was funny and made jokes about it. I fell asleep, but Ellie said the movie was good and told me the story on the way home, and it certainly sounded interesting.

  Then, on Monday at dinner, Dad sprung his surprise on me. I could see he had already talked it over with Ellie. He had got tickets for Barney Baker’s Fabulous Funland up in Bayport. The plan was to drive up to Bayport on Wednesday and stay until Saturday.

  Dad explained it. “It ain’t as crowded during the week. And I got a friend runs a motel up there. He’ll give us a cut rate.”

  Ellie piped in, like she’d been coached, I reckon. “They got animals and rides and those cartoon characters from the Barney Baker show and a house full of mirrors and Monster Mountain and …”

  “I guess you ain’t noticed that I work,” I said.

  Ellie shot right in, breathless, “You could tell them it’s an emergency.”

  It wasn’t Ellie’s fault, and I knew it. I glared at my old man. “You folks have a good time. You take a lot of pictures so it’ll be just like I was there too.”

  I tried not to think about it. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. On Tuesday after work, I went and talked to this fellow who had a garage apartment for rent. It was reasonable, and I told him I’d be back on Friday with a deposit. I would have my own surprise for Dad. “Ellie and me are moving out,” I’d say. “Surprise.”