Tuesday night, watching Ellie rush around packing her things, I got to feeling peculiar, like she was leaving forever, and she must have noticed, because she came over and sat in my lap and hugged me. “You just tell me not to go, and I won’t,” she said.
Well, I’m no fool, so of course I said I hoped she had a good time. But I got up real early Wednesday morning and drove off in the van before Dad or Ellie stirred. I just didn’t fancy all the excitement.
Around noon, I was drinking a glass of ice tea with an old woman who said she was originally from Albany, New York and might go back there any second. “I might go down to the bus station this very night and leave,” she told me. “The phone might be ringing, and I might walk right by it and go down to the bus station.”
“You should,” I said.
“What’s that?”
I didn’t repeat it. I didn’t care what she did, really. I’d been working at a fast pace all morning, racing from one service call to the next, and suddenly, sitting down, I couldn’t tell you why I was bothering.
“Well, I better be going,” I said. “I’m driving up to Bay-port to that amusement park.”
“Barney Baker’s. My husband and I went there once. It was great fun.”
MALCOLM
I suppose I should have gone to the police. But I am familiar with a certain official mindset, and any interview with the police would, I feared, be an interrogation. “What brings you to Florida?” they would ask.
I would be hard pressed to give them a satisfactory explanation. In these cynical times, concern for a fellow human being lacks the self-interest required to make it a plausible motive for doing anything.
I did not want to be misinterpreted.
Besides, although I was convinced that Lou Willis had intended to kill me, I knew that my certainty wasn’t enough to get any real action. All the police might do is scare Willis off, and he would take Eleanor with him.
As I lay there in my hotel room, recovering from my ordeal—and thanking God and man for the invention of love bugs and love bug solvent—I realized that I was Eleanor’s only hope. Lou Willis had demonstrated that he was a killer, and I was the only one who could separate Ellie from him. Who else knew? Who else cared?
I am not a courageous man. As I lay there in bed, I shook. I am not a drinker, but I called room service and availed myself of several stiff gin and tonics.
I grabbed the remote from the end table and turned the television on. I pushed the mute button and watched the images. Silent television has a calming affect. A foppish boy-man smirked at me from behind a desk. “David,” I said to the silent late night host, “You can believe it or not, but I am going to rescue Eleanor Greer.” No doubt the alcohol contributed to the effect; I felt a rush of righteous invulnerability.
In the morning, I felt somewhat less invulnerable, but my resolve was unshaken.
This time I would move with more caution. I would not take Lou Willis for granted. He possessed a low cunning and intelligence that I had underestimated. I wouldn’t underestimate him again.
I rented a car. If I were going to follow him, I obviously couldn’t do it in the Honda. He would recognize it. I felt a sharp pang of embarrassment when I thought of how glibly I had parked across the street from his house—with Texas plates! Did I think Lou Willis was blind?
A look at my street map showed that there was only one route Willis could take from his father’s house to the main street, and so, hunkered down in a large, nondescript rental car—the sort of faded luxury car that St. Pete’s large population of oldsters drove—I was able to pick Willis up as he left the house without watching the house itself. Indeed, I was parked a good quarter of a mile from it, in the parking lot of a supermarket, and could see Willis coming, the old, maroon Impala seeming to exude evil as it came out of the shady, oak-lined street and into the bustling sunlight.
I wasn’t going to jump the gun this time. I wasn’t going to try to contact Eleanor until I knew I could do it without fear of interruption.
Then Lou Willis got a job, and it looked like I’d be able to make my move. He was away all day—going to work in a company van with the words “Eskimo Air” on the side and a cartoon of an Eskimo outside an igloo. The van was a less ominous vehicle than the Impala, but knowing Willis was inside that van colored the Eskimo’s smile, made it seem cruel and calculating.
I waited a week. Not once did Willis come home during the day. I called my office on Friday and said I was going to have to stay out another week.
Mrs. Hamilton got on the phone—my supervisor was out—and said, “You only go around once, Malcolm. Don’t worry about hurrying back. You’re only young once!”
Mrs. Hamilton confided that she had had a few drinks at lunch that day and was thinking of leaving the office early herself. “I’d like to see them try to fire me for leaving early!” she bellowed. I told her I would see her Monday a week and hung up, feeling a little unsettled. Perhaps my presence had exerted some calming effect on Mrs. Hamilton, had compelled her to practice some restraint. No telling what shape things would be in by the time I got back. Well, it couldn’t be helped.
The next week, I resumed my vigil. Monday and Tuesday, Willis left for work at seven and returned home at six-thirty. On Wednesday, I had just pulled into the parking lot with a cup of coffee when I spied the van coming down the street. It was just six in the morning. I watched the van rattle by and waited another two hours and drove to Roy Willis’ house.
I parked across the street, took some deep breaths, and prepared to get out of the car. My heart was pounding. I had thought the scene through several times, but it never had sufficient clarity in my imagination.
Eleanor trusted me, and that, I hoped, would be all I needed. “You’ve got to come with me immediately,” I would say. Nothing more.
But what about Roy Willis? He might want something more in the way of an explanation. I had seen him several times during my first ill-fated surveillance, and he looked like a tough customer. Lou Willis was, after all, the man’s son.
I decided I would just have to hope for the best, and I started to open the car door.
The door of the Willis house opened, and Roy Willis stepped out, Eleanor following on his heels. They were both carrying suitcases. I watched them toss the luggage into the trunk of the Impala, watched Roy Willis flick a cigarette into the driveway, and watched them get into the car and pull out of the driveway.
I followed, of course.
What was going on here? Were they running away?
Roy Willis drove recklessly, changing lanes frequently, and it was all I could do to keep up with him. They got on 19 and headed north.
They stayed on 19 for an hour or so and then swooped into the right lane and shot down the exit ramp. The sign read: BAYPORT. The Impala slowed abruptly, and I was right up behind them and worried that Eleanor might turn and see me. I got in the left lane and passed, keeping an eye on them in the rearview mirror. We went along for fifteen minutes or so, down a highway flanked with billboards and souvenir shops, and suddenly the car turned left into a pink-stucco motel. I pulled into a gas station and looked back.
The motel had a big faded sign cut in the shape of a seagull. GULL’S REST MOTEL, it read. I filled the tank of my car, got some pretzels to munch on, and drove back to take a look.
I saw the Impala immediately, and before I could consider my next move, a door opened and Eleanor and Roy Willis came out and jumped back into the car. Eleanor had changed into shorts and a green, sleeveless blouse, and Roy Willis had donned a Hawaiian shirt that didn’t suit him, that made him look like some Mafia kingpin hiding out in Acapulco.
An hour later, I was eating cotton candy while three large skunks wearing sombreros played guitars and sang a song whose message was that all men—and skunks, I suppose—were brothers. This was the entertainment while waiting for the next haunted train ride up Monster Mountain. I could see Eleanor up ahead in the crowd, and I didn’t think that my sunglas
ses were sufficient disguise should she look my way. The cotton candy offered some cover, although I have always been partial to cotton candy and so was rapidly destroying this source of concealment.
I was in Barney Baker’s Fabulous Funland, an amusement park on the outskirts of Bayport. The place was what Disney World might have been if it had been conceived by con men and ex-carnival hucksters. You couldn’t make a move without someone selling you a ticket to something. You had to have a ticket to walk down Jungle Alley, and you had to purchase a ticket to take the ferry across Piranha River—and it seemed to me that you had to go across that river if you wanted to get anywhere.
I confess, I enjoyed Ferret Warren, where we all crawled through tunnels that undulated and changed directions while we were in them, but the Breath-Robbing Body Bouncer was not my cup of tea, and I despised the Dogs On Ice show. And I lost five dollars trying to get a mechanical snake to devour my stuffed mouse.
And, of course, none of this was getting me any closer to achieving my goal. Roy Willis stuck close to Eleanor, and I saw no way I could approach her. The funhouse atmosphere overexcited me, and I feared I might do something reckless, so I decided to leave. I needed to find a motel and register, and now seemed as good a time as any to do that. Obviously Eleanor and Roy Willis intended to stay overnight or they would not have checked into a motel themselves. My time would be better spent resting and devising a plan for tomorrow.
Still, I felt frustrated. I needed, somehow, to seize this opportunity, to take advantage of Eleanor’s separation from Lou Willis.
On the way out of the park, a large hamster asked if I had a cigarette, and I had to tell him I didn’t smoke. I know he was a hamster, because I asked. There was a querulous note in his response: “Hamlet Hamster,” he said. “I’m Hamlet Hamster, for Christ’s sakes! You been living on the moon, or what?”
I had paid money to enter this park, and I didn’t need to be abused by its employees. “If you are so famous, you can afford your own cigarettes,” I said. “Besides, studies have shown that smoking is hazardous to hamsters.”
“You are a riot,” he said. “You should get a job as a clown.” His voice seemed younger now that I’d stirred him up. I imagined a tall, surly teenager under that costume.
I spoke with dignity. “I am quite happy with my present profession, thank you.” I walked away, before he could answer.
“I am a social worker,” I said to myself as I drove back to the motel. “I am a man of action.”
And, as though saying the words unlocked the door, a plan presented itself. That boy had given me an idea. I saw a clear path to Eleanor’s rescue.
Tomorrow, Eleanor Greer and I would be on our way to Texas.
LOU
I found the Gull’s Rest Motel easy enough. It wasn’t any great shakes of a place. Dad had made it sound like his friend worked at the Ritz, but this was the sort of place that looked better if it was two in the morning and you’d been driving twelve hours.
The man at the check-in desk didn’t want to tell me anything. He looked like the kind of person my old man would have for a friend; he had a kind of jailhouse squint and kept leaning back like he had to keep as much distance between us as he could in case I tried to pull a fast one.
I convinced him that I was who I said I was, but I had to show him my driver’s license to do it—“You don’t favor your dad,” he kept saying—and then I had to listen to some stories about stuff he and the old man had done a million years ago.
“That’s interesting,” I finally said, “but I’m wore out. If you will give me a key, I will go on in the room and wait for them to come back.”
Well, he didn’t know if he could do that, because he wasn’t the owner of this establishment, and the room had been rented to two people, not three, and he might get in trouble.
I knew what he was getting at, and I didn’t want to run all around the track with him, so I just handed him a twenty and he fetched the key.
The room had two big old beds, and it was better than I would have expected, except for the wallpaper which was different kinds of fishes, realistic, like photographs. I didn’t go for the way they seemed to circle, made me feel like bait, and I would have preferred flowers or a stripe pattern.
I went and took a shower, and that perked me up. I didn’t fancy just waiting around for them to show, so I went out and found a bar.
I got pinned down in there. I don’t know just how it happened, but I couldn’t get out. It was cool and damp, with most of the light coming from an old jukebox that had lots of real country singers, folks like George Jones and Hank Williams and people who had really suffered—people who knew a thing or two about pain, and I’m not talking a trip to the dentist.
I tried to leave once (I remember) but the sunlight was like a fire that blew me back inside. I didn’t try it again until it was dark, and then I guess I wanted to be sure it was going to stay dark, so I had a few more beers, and then I forgot what was the emergency and why I had to leave right away, and then they closed the place up and I found the van and drove back to the motel.
I slipped the key in the lock, quiet so as not to wake anyone up, but, as it turned out, there wasn’t anyone sleeping.
I didn’t like what I saw, and for awhile I guess, I lost control.
I sat on the edge of the bed for what must have been an hour. I stared at Dad’s feet, which were bare and stuck out from under the sheet, but I don’t know that I thought about him, or much of anything else. I just let my brain idle in neutral.
I was aware that Ellie was talking, but I couldn’t seem to focus on her words.
Finally I heard her say, “Your daddy ain’t no gentleman, Lou.”
“Honey,” I said, “He ain’t nothing. He’s dead.”
We were both quiet, studying the old man’s feet as though they might offer up an opinion on the situation.
I felt bad about it. But Dad should have known better than to try anything with my Ellie. I guess he figured I wasn’t around so he was safe. I cursed myself for not seeing it coming. I’d felt it all along. What was that shark if it wasn’t old Dad?
“I killed old Dad,” I said. “I come all the way to Florida to visit him, and I killed him.”
Ellie hugged me then, and I was aware that she was naked under the bathrobe. “Get dressed, honey,” I said. “We can’t just sit here all night.”
Ellie and me drove to an all night supermarket, and I got some packing tape and some of those big green trash bags—and some room freshener too. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but Dad had left a powerful bad smell behind when he departed this world. We sprayed clouds of pine scent into the air. Then I pulled one of the big plastic bags over Dad’s feet and jerked another down over his head and taped them together. I went outside and opened the Impala’s trunk.
“You are going to have to help me tote him,” I said.
“Okay,” Ellie said. Ellie isn’t a girl to shirk a duty.
Together we hauled him into the trunk, and I slammed the trunk shut.
“I’m exhausted,” I said. I didn’t feel drunk anymore, not one bit, but I had that hollow weariness that seems like there’s not enough sleep in the world to feed it.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie said.
“It ain’t your fault, Ellie.”
I lay back on the pillow and I was out. I dreamed I was on a mountain, in a forest—I guess that was the pine scent working on my subconscious—and I come across this little fox in a trap. Only the fox was Ellie, and I knew that, the way you know things in a dream, and I went to get the trap off, but she bit my hand. “Ellie,” I said, “You got to stop that or I’ll never get this off.”
And then I heard something coming through the trees. It was big, whatever was coming, and I could hear the brush crackle around it, and a wind came up and shook the trees around us and I woke screaming: “It’s too much!”
“Lou Willis,” Ellie said, coming over to my bed and laying a hand on my forehead, “You h
ave the night sweats.”
“I do.” I was shivering.
“You shouldn’t drink so much,” she said, and I agreed.
It might sound cold to some, but we went to the amusement park the next day. I wasn’t gonna have another chance at it, not soon, and it sure didn’t make any difference to Dad. Besides, if we’d just bolted, Dad’s motel friend might wonder.
I got a kick out of the way Ellie took to being a tour guide. She had been the day before, so she was a big authority on everything.
“These hot dogs are too spicy,” she would say. “Don’t bother with them.” Or: “Don’t go buying any souvenirs in Cannibal Canyon; you can buy the same stuff for half price from the drugstore near our motel.”
I had a good time. I’m not really one for rides and games and all that carnival stuff, but watching Ellie laugh, watching the way her hair would fly on the roller coaster ride or the way her mouth would open in wonder when Mr. Whistlebee popped the colored balloons and white birds flew out, all that made my heart light as a dandelion seed.
I let my guard down. The laughter fooled me. It distracted me.
I had to take a leak. I couldn’t have been gone more than three minutes. That’s how things always happen: in the blink of an eye. You hitch your fly back up, turn around, and tragedy has struck. The Bible don’t have nothing to tell me on that count.
I came back out. I had left Ellie in Cowboy Courtyard where a fellow in fancy cowboy getup was doing rope tricks. He had a little tiny dog with him that would jump around and bark. It was the kind of dog that a real cowboy would be ashamed to own, but I didn’t say that to Ellie. I was glad she was happy and enjoying herself.
I panicked when I couldn’t find her right off. I calmed myself down and thought: She’s just gone off to the restroom herself. I made myself wait. But she didn’t come back.
I started to run, first one way, then another. There were too many people everywhere, and I knocked some of them over without intending to. That got the attention of a skinny security guard, who chased after me, shouting. I didn’t have time for him, though, and I raced up the steps of this big fairy castle, taking those steps two, three at a time, and I made it to the top where a lot of people were getting a bird’s-eye view of the park, and I pushed past them and leaned out over the knobby, broken-tooth stonework and tried to pick Ellie out. And maybe I’ve got radar for her, because I found her almost immediately. She was in the parking lot. She was getting into a big old blue car, maybe an old Lincoln or another one of those luxury gas-guzzlers. One of the park’s costumed animals was holding the door for her.
The Return of Count Electric & Other Stories Page 12
