by Judy Clemens
The sound of a vehicle began as a hum and grew into a full-throated rumble. Casey’s heart raced, then calmed when she saw it was a tractor and not a familiar four-wheel-drive truck. The tractor, pulling a wagon of baled hay, drew up beside her.
The farmer yelled down to her. “Need a lift?”
“Would love one!”
He jerked his thumb toward the wagon. “Hop on.”
Casey set her bag on the back and climbed up, settling against the hay, her feet swinging freely. She gave the farmer a thumbs-up, and the tractor jerked to a start. She sucked in a breath as the movement jolted her ribs, but at least the ibuprofen was muffling the worst of the pain.
“Now this is more like it.” Death reclined next to her on a bale, wearing dusty brown pants and shirt, leather boots with holes, and a tattered hat.
Casey squinted. “Who are you this time?”
“Not even an attempt?”
“No.”
“A tiny, little smidgeon of a guess? Okay, how about a hint. Traveling across the country.”
Death waited.
“Accompanied by loved ones.”
Still nothing from Casey.
“Granted, we’re not in the Dust Bowl.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, fine. Are you Tom Joad? From Grapes of Wrath?”
“Ding, ding, ding! Toss the woman a tomato!”
“I thought the Joads traveled in an old truck.”
“Close enough. An old truck with a grandma who kicked the bucket halfway there.”
“Nice.” Casey leaned forward, hands on the back edge of the trailer, and watched the road roll slowly past. “Don’t you have a dead person somewhere to be taking care of?”
“Nah.”
“There’s got to be one. More than one. Isn’t the global death rate something like one hundred a minute?”
“A hundred and five. Two every second.”
“So why are you here?”
“Because I like you. And I can be in more than one place at once. You know that. The whole timeline thing is very complicated. Now, if there’s something huge, like when the Titanic went down, or that horrible tsunami, I might need to focus more. But on a normal day, my helpers gather souls. I don’t have to do it all myself.”
“Helpers?”
“Sure. What boss, or immortal Horseman of the Apocalypse, doesn’t have a few helpers?”
“You trust them to gather souls?”
“Of course.”
“But you are aware of everyone who dies?”
“Only if I need to be.” Death flicked a piece of fake straw off the wagon and it dissolved into thin air. “They are very well trained, my yamadutas. Very gentle. Very kind. They know how to do their job—my job—and I leave them to it. I don’t want to be one of those hovering bosses. If they come across something they can’t handle, they let me know and I take care of it. It’s only death, after all.”
“Only death?” Casey stared at her companion with a mixture of disbelief and horror.
“Oh, come now. Don’t act all holier than thou. Death is a part of everything, not something only a special few get to experience. People are born, people live, people die. It’s hard for you humans to understand until it happens, but there is a plan that spans all time. It’s beautiful, really.”
“It wasn’t beautiful when Reuben and Omar died in that car.”
“Of course it wasn’t. Tragic death is never beautiful. It is excruciating and surprising and debilitating and haunting. But what comes after all this…” Death waved a hand. “That, my child, is where you find beauty.”
Death’s feet swung like Casey’s, the boots’ shoestrings flapping, and Death’s face tipped toward the sky. “Today, nothing unusual is happening, no grand scale soul-gathering, no universal mystery, so I can hang out. Isn’t that great?”
“You know, Azrael, it kind of is.”
Death blinked. “You mean it?”
“Sometimes you’re good company.”
Death’s mouth opened slightly before spreading into a smile. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
Casey averted her eyes, gazing at the horizon. “I couldn’t see you there for a few weeks when Eric and I were…happy. And the past couple of months you’ve hardly been around.” She blinked the dust out of her eyes, because surely that was why they were watering. “I’ve missed you.”
Death leaned back on the hay and tipped the hat to shield the sun.
Ten minutes later Death slipped away, most likely to some interesting death, or a call from a yamaduta. The tractor approached an intersection close to the town. Close enough Casey knew for certain the buildings weren’t a mirage. When the tractor halted at the crossroads, Casey eased herself down and walked forward to thank the farmer. He gave her a little salute and turned west.
Casey made her way into town, which could have been a copy of most towns she’d visited. Modest homes, streets named Jefferson and Washington and High, and a small “business district,” consisting of several old brick buildings housing a post office, a hair salon, the police, and a tiny branch library. A bank. Several oddly placed doors with addresses reading “1/2” that led to apartments.
Casey meandered past one of the two churches she’d seen on her phone, crossed the street at the single blinking traffic light, and followed the smell of grilling meat to the far side of Main Street, where she found the general store.
The parking lot was filled with a variety of amenities. A locked ice chest, a hose for putting air in tires, two vending machines with pop and Gatorade, and a battered picnic table beside a large grill. The lot was also filled with men in work clothes who milled around buying burgers, eating, and hanging out in clumps of twos or threes. Casey saw lots of white faces, but also a healthy number of darker ones, which surprised her. Perhaps it was her recent travels to Midwestern towns that had her expecting a more homogenous population, but whatever the reason, it was a bit disconcerting, as everywhere she looked she saw a man who reminded her of Reuben, with his dark shiny hair and copper skin.
But she couldn’t think about that.
An older man, taller and rounder than the others, with a complexion more like Casey’s own pale pink, wore an apron and flipped burgers on the grill. He watched her for a few moments, nodded a greeting, then returned his attention to the meat laid out in lines in front of him.
The men at the table glanced up at Casey, noted her black eye, then went back to their conversation. So either they were used to seeing bruises or they appreciated what it meant to leave other people to their own stories. Either way, she was glad they didn’t make her injury into a thing.
On the far side of the lot two gas pumps sat under a protective awning, with a large sign proclaiming the day’s prices. A big red F250 crouched at the pumps, but Casey couldn’t see the driver, except for the boots on the other side. For a split second she worried the truck was from the night before, but realized quickly that besides the fact there were a multitude of pickups in the world, she couldn’t see everything beneath the cab because the tires were normal size. She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and allowed her shoulders to relax.
The vending machine lured Casey with its promise of a cold drink, and her assessment of the scene gave her no worries for her safety, so she started across the pavement. As she grew near, the cook smiled at her, again making no obvious sign that he noticed her eye.
A flash of movement at the pumps caught Casey’s attention. The driver of the red truck stalked around the bed and stopped beside the driver’s door to look at Casey. Dressed in jeans, boots, and a flannel shirt, she was the only other woman in the lot. Casey raised a hand in greeting and took a few steps toward her. The woman frowned, looking from the man at the grill to Casey, then jumped into her truck and drove away.
Well, Casey thought. So much
for female bonding.
Chapter Eight
“Don’t worry about her,” said the old man at the grill. “The rest of us are a whole lot friendlier.”
The surrounding men, however, didn’t seem so much friendly as hungry, concentrating on their burgers and conversations. Their earlier notice had apparently been enough to satisfy whatever curiosity they might have felt. Which was fine with Casey. The less curious the townspeople, the more she liked a town.
Casey gave a carefree wave, wincing at the sharp pain it caused in her side, and watched as the red truck pulled away. “No problem. She doesn’t have to be the Welcome Wagon.” She dug some change out of her bag to buy a drink from the vending machine. The water bottle clunked down to the receptacle and Casey drank half of it at one go, surreptitiously downing some painkillers with it. As she finished the second half, she leaned against a rusting gold Chevy Impala with a For Sale sign in the window, parked in a shady corner of the lot. The men’s voices drifted on the air as they ate and talked about work, hunting, and trucks.
Vehicles shuttled in and out, dispensing passengers who either went into the store and came out with purchases, or queued up for a burger, hungry for red meat. Some stood around and ate, some joined the guys at the table, and still others bought their food and drove away. It seemed like the place to be, a hub of activity in the quiet town.
By the time Casey finished a second bottle of water, the lunch traffic had slowed and the man at the grill was packing up his leftover buns and condiments. “Got one more burger that needs a home.” He held it up with a metal spatula.
It did smell good.
Casey accepted the sandwich and enjoyed it at the table while the man cleaned up.
“I’m Vern.” He gestured at a peeling sign above the store’s front door. Vern’s Market.
“Casey.” She licked ketchup from her thumb after her last bite. “I don’t have my own sign.”
He snorted a laugh and heaved up the box of supplies. “Come on in. I’ll show you around, and you can take a load off in the AC. You look like you wouldn’t mind a few minutes out of the sun. And maybe an ice pack.” His eyes flicked to her face, then away.
The plate-glass windows by the front door were plastered with signs for lottery tickets, photos of high school athletes, and the price of a six-pack of Bud Light. A small, faded black-and-orange sign in the bottom corner read, Help Wanted.
Casey followed Vern into the store, where she saw the usual gas station fare—candy bars, a cappuccino maker, beef jerky. One wall was filled with DVDs, another with newspapers and magazines. The counter itself felt like a box office, with a small window for the cashier, fronting a small, paper-strewn office. Surrounding the cashier’s window, tacked to the plywood wall, were more photos of sports teams, people receiving awards, and hunting triumphs. If Casey were to go by hairstyles, the pictures dated from the present back several decades.
Vern pointed through the cashier’s window at another elderly man who sat on a stool behind the counter. Vern raised his voice to ear-splitting decibels. “This is Roger. He helps out when I need him.”
The man nodded, his jowls jiggling with the effort.
“Hi, Roger.” Casey spoke loudly. “I’m Casey.”
Roger blinked hard several times, but other than that didn’t respond. Casey wasn’t sure if he hadn’t heard her, didn’t understand, or didn’t speak, so she smiled awkwardly and hoped for the best.
“Looks like I might be getting to know him sometime soon.”
Casey jumped at the sound of Death’s voice in her ear. Death was dressed as a farmer this time, most likely from a movie Casey had never seen. Or maybe Death was going local. Jeans, flannel shirt, boots, like the woman at the gas pump. The old man Roger looked right through Death, as did Vern, who was preoccupied with his box of mustard and relish.
Death waved a hand in front of Roger’s face. Apparently the old guy was still clinging onto life. Casey had met a few people in the past couple of years who saw her companion, but they were the exceptions—people who for one reason or another were not afraid of dying, or, in more extreme cases, yearned for it. Casey herself had been in the latter category for most of the two years, only recently recognizing a desire to stick around a little while longer.
Eric had something to do with that.
Vern jerked his head for Casey to follow, and carried the box through the store. The farther they walked, the more different the store felt from a generic traffic stop. The space became a grocery store with shelves of off-brand vegetables and dusty cans of fruit, sweatshirts sporting the local high school’s logo, and a sparse supply of first aid remedies. From the faded and retro labels, Casey guessed some of the products had been there since she was a kid. Vern took her past a small produce section of wilted lettuce and spotted pears, a bread aisle with both prepackaged buns and homemade loaves and rolls, and a freezer aisle holding everything from meat to huge, frost-covered tubs of vanilla ice cream.
Things weren’t exactly flying off the shelves.
They crossed through a double-sized open doorway into an area with tables and chairs and red-and-white checked tablecloths. A door at the front led to the outside, and an exit in the back opened into a hallway, but Casey couldn’t see far enough back to know what was there.
Two old women sat at one of the small round tables, finishing up something that didn’t look like the hamburgers Vern had been grilling. Tuna, maybe?
“Hello, Ethel. Wilma,” Vern said. “How’s the chicken salad?”
One of them frowned. “All right, although there are too many grapes. And it could use more almonds.”
“Oh, stop,” the other one said. “You’re so picky. I think the chicken salad is delicious.” She blinked so rapidly at Vern Casey thought she had something in her eye.
Death snorted with laughter. “I believe that’s what you call ‘batting your eyelashes.’”
The woman’s expression supported Death’s claim, her eyes bright, her cheeks a blotchy pink. She looked like a teenage girl whose crush walked by in the cafeteria. Casey wasn’t sure if it was cute or creepy, and wondered what Vern thought. He didn’t seem to reciprocate her feelings, seeing how he kept on walking and didn’t blink or blush or even give her a second glance.
Once he was out of range, the women eyed Casey, who wasn’t sure whether their gazes were malevolent or curious. She would go for curious.
Both woman had obviously dyed hair that didn’t match their aging skin, bright lipstick smudged by their lunches, and dressier clothes than Casey would have imagined for a lunch at the local gas station. The idea that this was the epitome of Armstrong’s culture—or, at least, their lunchtime possibilities—made her sad, and a little eager to keep walking to the next town.
Casey stared right back at the women until they broke eye contact and leaned toward each other, whispering. Weird.
“Wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall for that conversation,” Death said. “Or, maybe not a fly, since this is an eating establishment. Sort of.”
“You don’t have to be a fly,” Casey muttered. “They can’t see you.”
Casey caught up with Vern at the far end of the little cafe, where he stepped around a glass-fronted deli counter displaying raw meats, potato salad, and already made-up sub sandwiches. He opened the door of a battered white refrigerator and transferred the condiments from the box.
“So, you’re new in town.” It wasn’t a question. He spoke what he knew to be true, his back to her.
Death swooped through the glass of the counter to check out the food, then settled back at Casey’s side with a neutral expression. “Seems fresh enough, if you like that sort of thing.”
“Just got in,” Casey answered Vern. “I’m…sightseeing.”
Vern barked a laugh and shut the refrigerator door. “In Armstrong?”
“It’s sort of a cross-c
ountry trip, stopping wherever I end up.”
“And you ended up here, of all places?”
“I don’t know. It seemed as good a place as any.” Although she was having second thoughts after the weird-old-ladies-at-the-gas-station-deli thing, as well as the unwelcoming woman at the gas pump, even though she’d told Vern that didn’t really matter. Maybe only the women were odd in this town. Vern seemed friendly enough.
“If you say so.” He tossed the empty box in the corner and wiped his hands on a towel. “Hang on a sec.”
Behind the deli counter was another door leading to the grocery side of the store, and he disappeared through it. A minute later he was back, holding an ice pack, maybe from that paltry first aid shelf. He gestured toward her face. “That looks pretty fresh. Use this.”
She accepted it, glancing at the old women, who practically got whiplash pretending they weren’t watching. The ice pack was the kind you break open to make it cold. She didn’t think they expired, but she couldn’t see a date right off. “Thanks. I’ll use it as soon as I have a chance to sit down.”
He waved toward the closest table. “Sit down now.”
Casey checked out the chair and tablecloth. They didn’t look too sticky. “Okay. Thanks.” She sat and bashed the ice pack on the edge of the table, feeling the cold rush to the surface. She placed it against her cheek, wishing she had another one for her ribs. But that would be…awkward.
Vern went back behind the deli, messing with some boxes and wiping down the glass. “So, you planning on sticking around here for a while? Or continuing on?”
“Haven’t really thought about it.”
“But you should.” Death perched on the counter’s sneeze shield, bootlaces dragging through the macaroni salad. “Think about it, I mean. You’re in no condition to be sleeping in a field tonight. Or a playground. And where are you headed, anyway? Canada? Alaska?”
