Dimitri stiffened.
“Hey.” Casey reached out to touch his shoulder, but the boy shied away. “It’s all right, son. Reed doesn’t keep secrets very well, but I do.”
Sonya smiled.
Dimitri didn’t.
Casey waited patiently, feeling the others watching.
“It scared me,” the boy said at last, so low Casey barely heard it.
“Me, too.”
Dimitri cocked his head.
“I’ve heard it, son. Didn’t see it, but I heard it. A couple of times.”
“What is it? A ghost?”
The swing creaked.
Dimitri waited.
And Sonya said, “I’m hungry. I haven’t had anything to eat all day, and I’m hungry.”
“Well.” Casey straightened, the moment gone when Dimitri looked away. “As a matter of fact, young lady, you’re just in time. Helen here was just telling me she had to get back to work before Todd gave her the boot, and I was kind of looking for a gorgeous lady to have dinner with.” He made a show of checking his wallet, counting his money, figuring in his head. “You have a date, Sonya?”
She blushed and shook her head.
“Me neither,” Reed said, standing so quickly Helen nearly slipped off the swing. “Are you buying, Reverend Chisholm?”
“Yes, he is,” Helen said. “He’s buying, I’m cooking.”
Dimitri said nothing.
But he stayed close to Casey as they walked up the road, bumping into him now and then, as if making sure he was still there.
The temperature was still high, and a mottled dusk had taken over as the clouds sailed and thickened, softening the shadows and blending them with the dark that began to expand through the woods.
They reached the Moonglow, were about to go in when Reed said, “Hey, guys, look.”
At the point where Black Oak took its dive onto the flat, an automobile idled in the middle of the road. Its headlamps were on, too bright, too large.
They could only see the outline of hood and windshield.
“Stupid tourists can’t even see the white line,” Helen said, and herded the children inside. Reed followed.
Casey stayed.
The car didn’t move, and no one got out. If its engine was running, it didn’t make a sound.
He took a step toward it without knowing why, and another before he changed his mind. Helen was right. Tourists lost again.
But as soon as he stepped inside, the car began to move.
* * * *
5
S
tan Hogan reached down between his legs to be sure his backpack was still there on the floor. He didn’t know why needed to know; he just knew it was a comfort.
Right now, though, it seemed kind of silly.
There was nothing in this place that should make him feel the way he did. In all his travels, here and there, over hills and mountains, humming, hitching, singing a song, he was pretty damn sure he had seen single estates bigger than this. A lot prettier, too. This reminded him of cornfields after the harvest, all those husks and stalks dried out and waiting for someone to come along and knock them down.
“I don’t know,” he said, mostly to himself. “I don’t know.”
Susan had parked in front of a bar that didn’t seem to have a name. Without a word, not a look, she had gotten out without shutting off the engine, walked around the hood and walked straight inside. It was the first time he had seen her do anything like that. Leave the car when they were in a town. Go into a building. Leave them alone.
He didn’t like it.
He didn’t like this place.
He didn’t like the fact that there was nobody on the street, just a dog on a bench, and the streetlamps were dim, barely holding back the night.
He didn’t like the people over there in that diner place with the neon trim, staring out the window. They couldn’t see him, he knew that, but they watched him just the same. He could see their mouths moving, heads bobbing, eyes and brains trying to figure it out, this big old car parked with the engine running in the middle of their town.
Lupé said, very quietly in his ear, “I don’t get it, I don’t feel it.”
He knew exactly what she meant. This wasn’t like the other times. This wasn’t the way it was done. Susan hadn’t told them to stretch their legs, visit, talk, smile, laugh, and wait for the blood. The other places, they had a feel.
This place felt like nothing, like it had nothing inside it, like the sun had taken it away with all the water.
He pulled at his cheek.
No, that was wrong.
Lupé was wrong.
There was something here, it wasn’t empty, it was just different. Very different. He wished he knew why, maybe he wouldn’t be so nervous.
“Try again,” he said without turning around.
She shifted, but said nothing.
His gaze drifted from the bar’s recessed doorway to the Moonglow’s large windows.
Back and forth.
One foot tapping.
Bar. Moonglow.
“What’s she doing in there?” Lupé wanted to know, on the verge of whining.
“Maybe she’s thirsty.”
Lupé snorted a laugh. “Sure.”
“Why not?”
“Come on, amigo, you ever see her eat? You ever see her drink anything?’’
“I sleep a lot.”
She snorted again.
Moonglow. Bar.
Feeling the faint soothing vibration of the car, the soft breeze of the air-conditioning, the baby skin softness of the leather beneath his hand.
Moonglow, but this time he was interrupted by the dashboard glow, and he frowned a little, checked the bar door, and scooted over until he could see the instrumentation array. Big old speedometer. Lights for oil and water and this and that and little signs and a needle on the gas gauge that quivered just enough to make him stare.
And smile.
“Hey.”
He felt Lupé lean against the seat. “What?”
He pointed. “Nearly full.”
The engine whispered.
“Before you,” she said, hesitating, waiting for her thoughts to catch up. “Before you, we never stopped. Not once. Not for gas, anyway. I swear to God.”
He didn’t answer. He moved back to his place before Susan could see him, and smiled at the windshield. All his life on the open empty road he had never once believed he was anything special. Susan came along. He’s still nothing special, although he understood he was doing pretty special things. But all those years and miles on the road, almost every time he was picked up, sooner or later he was dropped off at a gas station because the driver had to fill up, take the fuel to take him on and leave Stan behind.
Susan came along.
Never stopped for gas.
He nodded, humming.
Now that was something special.
She wasn’t going to leave him behind.
“Hey,” Lupé whispered.
He started, rubbed his eyes as if waking from a nap, saw Susan leave the bar.
Oh boy, he thought eagerly; oh boy, here we go.
She stood at the corner for a moment, looking at the car, looking at the sky Stan knew was packed with clouds. She did not, not once, look across the street. Not even when she came around to the driver’s side, opened the door, slid in, and grabbed the wheel.
He didn’t ask when she closed the door, he didn’t ask when she released the brake, he didn’t ask when she let the car drift on its own, steering around the corner and past the bar, cutting across the street and pulling into the driveway of a small house, the first one past the back of a drugstore.
There was no garage.
The headlamps looked at nothing but trees behind the house, and maybe, though he wasn’t sure, another house beyond them.
She cut the ignition and opened the door again.
“We’re here, children,” she said without looking at them. “Grab your
stuff and come inside.”
Shaking with anticipation, doing his best to hold his tongue, he snatched up his backpack and fairly leapt from the car, scuttling after her to the steps of a porch so narrow there was barely room for the old ladder-back chair that sat beside the door. He heard Lupé and the other one following more slowly, whispering excitedly to each other, probably asking the same questions that filled his own mind like the urgent rustle of a dry wind.
Susan unlocked the door and pushed it in, stepped back and made a soft noise.
Stan, right behind her, shuddered when he smelled the dead air, was perplexed when he smelled the blood.
She stepped up to the threshold, reached around the jamb and flicked a switch. Somewhere in the front room a lamp went on. She turned and looked down at them.
“We’ll stay here tonight. The gentleman in the bar was kind enough to rent it to me. There’s not a lot of room, but I think you’ll be able to work things out and get the rest you need. If there’s no food in the kitchen, Lupé, you’ll have to go over to that grocery store and get some, there’s money in your pocket. Stan, when you’re ready, check the other houses on this street, tell me if anyone lives there. Little one, you stay with me, don’t go wandering off. We’re in the middle of the woods. It could be dangerous out there.”
Stan grinned, grinned more broadly when he heard Lupé’s quick laugh.
Susan smiled with them. “Nevertheless,” she cautioned. “Nevertheless.”
She stepped aside, and let them in.
Stan waited for the others—he was still a gentleman after all—and bounded into the room, smiling, looking, stopping with a silent grunt when he saw the man in the kitchen doorway, wearing nothing but a bath towel darkly stained and sagging.
“Who the hell are you?” Lupé demanded.
Susan held up a hand. “It’s all right, Lupé. I want you all to meet Diño Escobar. Señor Escobar is a special man.” She smiled. “He’s going to help us practice.”
* * * *
It took less than fifteen minutes for Stan to check the other houses. They were empty, closed up, reeking of dry heat, reminding him of the husks of dead insects he had seen curled by the roadside. When he returned to their house, he walked around the outside twice, made his way through a weedy jungle to the end of the backyard and went halfway through the stand of twisted maple before he was satisfied the house back there was empty as well.
He didn’t think about this Escobar.
The man was there, Susan obviously knew him, there was nothing he could do about it, no sense complaining.
Lupé was on the porch when he returned, smoking furiously, pacing loudly.
“Son of a bitch,” she said when she saw him. “You believe that? What the hell is so special about him?”
Stan shrugged.
“Son of a bitch, Stan, this is our party, right? I mean, what the hell do we have to practice for? It looks to me like we’re already pretty good.”
He shrugged again, not liking her this way. She was hard, tight, waiting for someone to light the fuse.
Angrily she flicked the cigarette into the street. “Son of a bitch.” Angrily she slipped the knife from her boot, stabbed the railing, slipped the knife back. “Son of a bitch.”
“There’s a reason,” he said at last, with a twitch of a smile. “You know there’s a reason. You know Susan.”
“Oh, yeah, sure I do.” But she stopped herself before she lit another cigarette. Inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, and blew her breath at the roof in an explosive gust. “You’re right, mi amigo. You’re right.” She took his arm. “So what do you say we go in and see what’s so special about this Senor Escobar. Then, if you can believe it, I have to go shopping.”
* * * *
An hour later Stan knew what it was that made this man special.
Escobar lay on his back on the kitchen table, the filthy towel draped modestly over his midsection. He hadn’t said a word. He only stared at the ceiling and giggled hoarsely, once in a while laughing with teeth bared like a wolf, all the while never moving a muscle.
Lupé had used her knife; the little one, teeth and nails.
Stan had only watched, dumbfounded, because the giggling man could not die.
“Oh, yes, he can,” Susan said, startling him. “And he will, Stan, he will. But only when I let him.” She gestured toward the bathroom. “The mop, please, Stan. I don’t want you slipping in the blood.”
* * * *
Later, much later, after Lupé had returned with two bags filled with groceries and the most amazing stories about the woman who ran the store, he sat on the porch railing with her, smoking one of her cigarettes, listening to the night wind sneak out of the starless sky.
There was no sense of time, although he suspected it was close to midnight; there was no sense of movement other than the wind, although he suspected the townspeople had already checked them out, one way or another.
“Practice,” Lupé whispered in disgust. “What was that all about? Nothing we haven’t already done.”
He could feel the weight of the clouds, but he couldn’t smell the rain. Other nights, other days, he could smell the coming rain, like an extra scent in a garden. He shook his head slowly, massaged his right shoulder. It was up there, the rain, but he just couldn’t smell it.
“I don’t get it,” she said around a jaw-popping yawn.
The radio played inside. Music, weather, news of the outside world falling apart. A man talking with a woman about die storm that didn’t seem to want to let loose its water, talking about heat wave records and brushfires and forest fires and, making jokes about people going half-naked in the streets. More music, more weather, more news about the world falling apart.
Suddenly Stan straightened and stared at Lupé.
“What?” she asked sleepily.
“This is the end.”
“What?”
“This.” He waved the cigarette at the street, at the darkened car, at the greylit main street. “The road. I come to a place, don’t matter how or why I got there, I always knew, for that day anyway, it was the end of the road. Even if I got there first thing in the morning.” He gestured again. “This is it.”
“You mean we’re not leaving?”
He shrugged. “All I know is what I know.”
He heard the front door open, didn’t hear Susan but felt her as she came up behind them:
“I’m right, huh?” he said.
“Yes,” Susan said.
“That man you talked about. Not the one inside, the other one.” He felt a bubble in his chest, at once chilled and warm. “He’s here, huh?”
“Yes,” Susan said.
“We’re going to do what we do, right? Do what we do?” He paused, checked the sky he couldn’t see, watched the cigarette he had tossed into the street explode into sparks that didn’t make a sound. “We’re doing, then we’re going.”
“Yes,” Susan said.
“But.... but we’re not going with you.”
A hand on his shoulder, a gentle shake, a finger trailing across the back of his hair.
“Yes,” Susan said.
And she was gone.
He couldn’t speak, didn’t want to speak, didn’t want to move, didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want to respond when Lupé touched his arm.
“You know a lot,” she said.
He swallowed. “I been on the road a long time.”
“Well, I know something you don’t know.”
He couldn’t look, didn’t want to look, didn’t want to turn his head to see her profile, see the one eye that watched him, see the way her cheek was sucked in, making her face look like a skull.
“What?” he asked, but only because he already knew, had already heard it in that one simple word.
Yes.
Lupé slid off the railing and waited for him to join her. She opened the door and stepped in, turned suddenly and kissed his cheek.
“She’s afraid, amigo. She’s afrai
d.”
* * * *
Part 5
Symphony
* * * *
Symphony - [Millennium Quartet 01] Page 24
