Mr. Shivers

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Connelly returned to the others with no news. Pike looked back at the people in the field. The lights from the torches caught in his eyes, making them flicker in the depths of his sockets like lanterns in caves, burning low. “I have heard before that certain truths are written on men’s bones,” he said. “That may be so. If it is true then I believe they are written in a language not known to men, and even if they were translated I doubt they would be of much comfort.” Then he snorted, spat, rubbed dirt over the spittle with his shoe, and walked down the hill to the road.

  They walked all day, stopping only briefly for lunch at noon. There were no trees to shelter them from the sun so they sat on the edge of a ditch, sweat dripping down their necks as they tore at the salted pork the Hopkinses had given them. Then they rose and continued on.

  Everything looked the same. They seemed not to travel at all. Always the thread of brown road stretched ahead, cutting through the fields. Always the same spindly fence, leaning awkwardly by the road. The same fragile yellow grass, so dry it seemed to crumble merely by breathing on it. And the sun never moved, content to sit upon their backs.

  When they came to a small stream Pike decided they should stop, more to break the monotony than anything. Hammond and Connelly kept a lookout as the others lowered themselves down to the waters to fill their canteens. The two of them stayed by the road, then crossed and leaned on the fence, watching all the nothing.

  “Sometimes I wonder if we’re going anywhere,” said Hammond.

  “Think someone mentioned something like that a while back,” Connelly said.

  “Yeah. I hate that feeling, though. The feeling of not moving. I always have.” He looked out at the fields, watched the wind tousle the brittle grass. “I remember this place back home,” he said. “It was this bar. This underground bar that was below a fabric store. You know what I mean, a bar in the basement?”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “It was one of those. I loved that place when I was a kid. I thought it was like some kind of secret. I’d walk by it in the evening and see all these little windows just poking up above the sidewalk. All lit up. People talking and laughing and playing music. You’d feel the music in your feet when you’d walk by. I wanted to get in there so bad, to see what they were doing. To be part of the fun. But I was just a kid, so they wouldn’t let me know.

  “It was the girls that did it. Me and the other boys, we’d climb a fire escape and look down on them as they walked into the bar. We’d never seen girls dress like that. Not our moms, not our sisters. Wearing dresses that shone, shining in that nice light coming up from the ground from those little windows. And there were girls with blonde hair, real bright blonde hair, which I never seemed to see. What’s the word? Tawny? Is it tawny?”

  “I don’t know,” said Connelly.

  “Well. I think it is,” said Hammond. “Still. Those girls. They were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. I couldn’t wait to get older so I could get in there and see what they were doing.

  “Then one day I dressed up real nice so I looked older and I put on a good suit so I’d blend in and I went down there and knocked on the door. A man looked out at me, from this little peephole. And he looked at me a while and then he let me in. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “It was just a bar. Just a little room that stank of beer, full of drunks, with real loud music. Everyone was drunk out of their minds, sad and sloppy and ugly. And the women. They were tired old things. Tired old things wearing dresses they had no business wearing. Too much makeup, everywhere,” he said, and gestured to his face. “They were different. Different from what I’d seen. Maybe it was the way I’d been looking at them.” He shook his head. “There’s never… There never is anything. You go somewhere so hard and so fast and then when you get there you’re in the same place. Feels like there’s no reward. Nothing to go for. I hate that feeling. That feeling that you’re not getting anywhere. That you’re not getting anywhere good. I wonder if it’s that way for everyone.”

  “Not everyone. Some people are getting places.”

  “Well. I haven’t met any of those people in the past few years.”

  “Someone has to be going somewhere good,” said Connelly. “Someone has to be doing okay.”

  “Just not us right now.”

  “No. Just not us.”

  “Do you think we ever will?”

  Connelly thought about it. “I don’t know.”

  Hammond nodded. “I don’t,” he said.

  Then Pike and the others climbed back up from the stream. They handed out the canteens and rubbed their feet and then continued on.

  The better part of the day passed before their walking was compensated. They were carefully making their way down into a valley when they heard a train far to the west. They stopped and Roosevelt judged the sound.

  “Two miles off,” he said. “Maybe three.”

  “We’ll come close enough to see it,” Pike said. “Then we’ll follow. But we’ll keep a half a mile between us and it. I don’t want anyone to notice us until we get to its next stop. Wherever that may be.”

  It was not long before they sighted not the track itself but the gray remains of smoke in the air, a dull haze where the train had just passed. They followed its curve up through the land. Signs of civilization began to appear. More roads, a ditch. The odd road sign. More fences. Then homes appeared, squatting far away, and then they saw the first person they’d seen in hours, a young man carrying a shovel. He took no notice of them but they did not relax.

  “Be alert,” said Pike under his breath.

  The tracks led up to what had once been a jerkwater town, nothing more than a few buildings clinging to an intersection of tracks and roads. Roonie spied it from far off and Pike dropped to his knees and scoped it out as best he could.

  “What do you think?” asked Hammond.

  “I think that’s where the train we were once on stopped,” he said. “That’s what I think.”

  “And?”

  “And we’re going to play this very, very carefully,” he said.

  They waited until almost nightfall. Hammond spotted a few people ambling up the road, a little less than a dozen. Pike said it would be best if they joined them and muddled their numbers. If there was a lookout at all, he reasoned, it’d be for six or seven men, not more.

  “If that,” he added. “Those boys on the train were probably going to kill anybody riding the rails. Seemed to be their orders.”

  They mixed with the other strays and moved in as the sun sank below the earth. The new people did not mind. They assumed Pike and the others had hopped some line a few miles back. When they made it into the town proper they split off. Pike turned and said quietly, “It’d be best if we split up. Two groups. Roonie, Hammond, Monk, you go around to the north end. Rosie, Connelly, you’re coming with me. We stay low, we don’t raise any attention. Don’t ask any questions, none about the shiver-man, none about nothing. You just keep your ears open. You just listen, see?”

  “We see,” said Connelly.

  They parted and Rosie and Connelly decided an inn or bar would be the likely place for talk to be heard where a hobo was acceptable. They dusted themselves off and wound through the side lanes and broken fences until they found a shanty inn, some dirt-cheap gin house with riotous clientele and no small measure of whoring. Men with skin like leather drank ale from metal tankards while women smeared in makeup swanned through their ranks. Someone somewhere pounded on a piano to the point of ruin. Everything stank of tobacco and moonshine.

  “I like it,” said Roosevelt with a smile.

  “Keep control of yourself, boy,” Pike muttered to him. “It’ll be far easier to avoid attention with your eyes in your head and your prick in your pants.”

  “Oh, these ideals, Pikey,” said Rosie. “These lofty ideals you have.”

  They sat at the bar and rustled up change and bought a few drinks. Connelly still had money sewed into th
e cuffs of his pants but he didn’t think now was the time to mention it. They sipped at their drinks and tried to keep their heads.

  There was no news of interest, almost no talk beyond bar banter. “I don’t know why you were so worried,” said Rosie to Pike. “These fellas is all just worried about the railroad lines. Who’s signed up on what engine and who’s shacked up with whose whore. This ain’t enemy territory. This ain’t even territory. Just a whole lot of nothing.”

  “Maybe so,” said Pike reluctantly.

  “Come on,” said Roosevelt. “Let’s rent a room.”

  “A room?” said Connelly.

  “When’s the last time you seen a bed, Con? It’ll be worth it, I swear. Listen to your back, not your wallet, for once.”

  “What do you say?” asked Connelly, looking at Pike.

  “Pike would say we’re living our cover,” said Rosie under his breath. “Three drunks fresh in town, getting a room? That’s no news at all.”

  Maybe it was the liquor or maybe it was the days of walking, but Pike eventually gave in. The bartender called his boy up to lead them to their room. He groused and clambered to his feet, but then stood up straight as a pole when he saw Connelly. The boy’s eyes grew wide with fear as they wandered up his towering frame.

  “You going to lead us to our room or what?” said Rosie.

  The boy blinked, then looked from Roosevelt to Pike. His glance stayed far too long for Connelly’s comfort. The boy shook himself and led them up.

  The room was no more than a closet with a bed that seemed hardly better than the ground. The three men climbed into it and shared the mattress along with a blanket. When Connelly was flat on his back he had to admit, it was slightly better sleeping arrangements than normal.

  Sleep fell on him quickly, better sleep than he had had in weeks.

  Connelly awoke in the middle of the night. Something troubled him. He could not place what it was until he realized that he could no longer hear the racket of drinking and piano from downstairs. It had halted sometime, sometime recent.

  He stood and went to the window. The streets were empty, but he saw something far down at the end of one. Two little sparks, fluttering in the night.

  Torches. Two, maybe even three.

  He went to the door and opened it as quietly as he could. He walked out and peered around the staircase. He could see and hear no one, but the lights were on downstairs. Then he heard hushed voices, whispering to one another, and the fall of a boot. He snaked into an empty room across the hall and stood there, listening. More footfalls came until there were at least four men outside the room where Roosevelt and Pike still lay. Connelly ducked his head around the doorway, just far enough to see the shining cylinder of a rifle. He pulled back into the shadows, heart pounding.

  The men kicked the door in and the inn filled with yelling. Some shouted for them to get up and some shouted for them to stay down, a confused and furious assault that soon degenerated into a flat-out beating. He heard Roosevelt and Pike crying out, their attackers shouting back to shut up, only to cause more noise. Finally one of them shouted, “Where is he? Where is that bastard?”

  “Who?” said Roosevelt’s voice. “Who the hell do you mean?”

  Another blow. Roosevelt moaned.

  “The big one! Where’s the big bastard you came in with?”

  “Who? I don’t know!”

  Someone shouted in rage. A crack, and this time it was Pike who howled and snarled.

  “You stay back! You stay back and down, old man! Now where’s the big damn bearded bastard you came in with or I swear to God, I’ll shoot every one of you men right here and now!”

  But now Roosevelt and Pike were beyond answering. “Christ,” said their attacker. “Look at these fuckers. Blake, round them up and get them out on the damn street. Boss wants to look at them.”

  “I thought there’d be more,” said a voice.

  “So did I,” answered the other.

  Connelly stayed pinned to the wall as Hammond and Pike were dragged out of the room. The men spoke and laughed to one another as they tossed their prey down the stairs. Connelly did not move until he heard their voices move outside. Then he dashed back into his room, put back on his boots and coat, and tried to find some section of the street outside that was empty.

  He darted from room to room, peering through badly built windows to the streets below. Firelight flickered from the front. There was either a lot of fire out there or a lot of people carrying fire, but he could not see, nor would he risk a glance.

  He wound his way through the second story of the inn until he found a small window that opened out onto the back. Behind the inn the land sunk down into a ditch filled with refuse and gravel. He pried the window open and shouldered his way through. Then he looked down at the ground below and thought. He turned, dug his fingers into the windowsill, and lowered himself down slowly. His right arm screamed, still tender from the train. He hung there and then dropped to the ground.

  He collapsed in a heap and tried to suppress a cough but could not. Someone shouted, “What was that?” and Connelly got to his feet and began running.

  Clouds strafed across the midnight sky but there was still light enough to see. He ducked between fences and tottering buildings that slouched on one another like ancient winesots. He checked around a corner, desperately searching for the dancing, roving torchlight that would be searching for him. He saw nothing and bolted forward and scrambled through a lumber yard, great logs leaning and seesawing against the violet sky. He vaulted himself up and over one and it was damp to the touch. As he crested shots rang out. Their hot riptide washed over him and he knew they had been close, buzzing by just over his shoulder. Splinters and chunks dotted his right side as he descended and more shots whined through the air like angry bees. He landed and checked but felt no blood on him, then lay there breathing.

  There was no noise, no shouts or calls. He turned and peered through a small gap in the logs, eyes scanning the roads and streets. Still he saw nothing. He crouched, ready to spring, when he heard the vicious snap of a rifle cocking.

  “Eh,” warned a voice, high-pitched and friendly. “No. No, no. I wouldn’t do that, I certainly think I wouldn’t.”

  Connelly froze.

  “Okay, boy. I think you’re in one piece, and it’s a big piece at that. I can see you well and good, and though it may be a tight shot I think I can wing you through them logs. You agree?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I said, you agree?”

  “Yeah,” said Connelly.

  “Okay, then. And you also don’t seem like the kind of fella to be running around with a gun. Otherwise, well, we’d have heard a shot already. So. So, how’s about you put the backs of your hands on the top of that pile so I can see there’s nothing in them? Does that sound agreeable? Does it?”

  “Sure,” said Connelly.

  “Sure,” purred the voice. “Sure it does. So do it.”

  Connelly lifted his hands, placed the backs on the top corner of wood, and slowly pushed them up.

  “There we go,” said the voice. “There it is. Okay now, son. You just pull the rest of yourself up. All the way up. Real slow.”

  Connelly stood.

  “You’re just as big as they said, ain’t you? Well-fed boy. Now turn around, big boy, turn on around.”

  He did. His attacker was standing in the lumber yard, rifle gently resting at his shoulder, not hard and alert, but not afraid, either. Connelly squinted to see him in the night. He was a small man, late middle age, with white hair and a gentle baby face and a happy, knowing smile that never left his lips. Connelly could see the man’s blue eyes even in this light, blue as chips of glacial ice, merry and gleeful as though all of this was just a small joke for everyone to enjoy.

  “Come on over here, son,” said the man chidingly. “Come on over here and say hey to me.”

  Connelly walked over with arms still in the air and stood before the small man.
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br />   The man nodded, satisfied. “You boys put on quite a show,” he said.

  Two others rounded the far corners of the yard at either end, torch in hand, and Connelly saw one of them was the boy from the inn. He trembled to see Connelly. As the Halloween-orange light washed over them Connelly saw the twinkle and shine of something at his attacker’s breast, something polished silver-bright. A metal star.

  Connelly looked at it. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  The man nodded, still smiling. “Yeah,” he said, almost wistfully, like he was reliving a fond memory. “Yeah.”

  Then his eyes hardened and the rifle butt flashed up and struck Connelly’s temple. The ground spun around him and everything faded.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Light lanced down at him through the pain. He cracked open an eye. A lone bulb hung from a dark wood ceiling. Someone was smoking a cigarette somewhere, acrid and tangy. His hands were bound behind his back and he was lying on a wood floor, wood shavings and sand worked into every crack. He tried to move his head and saw Roosevelt and Pike sitting on a bench across from him, hands cuffed and in their laps, heads bowed, their faces purple and misshapen.

  Roosevelt saw him and tried to smile. “Hey, Connie,” he said. “You got no luck with your head. Every time you turn around someone’s busting it open again.”

  Pike shushed him, but it was too late.

  “Boss,” said a voice. “Boss.”

  “Yes?” came the answer. That high-pitched voice, mild and sweet.

  “He’s awake.”

  “Oh, that so?” it crooned. “Is he?”

  Connelly rolled over. He saw the small man standing over him in jeans and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up. The figure swam in and out of focus and as Connelly thinned his eyes he saw a nasty brand on the sheriff’s inner arm, brown and pink, a circle with a lizard’s head mounted in the middle of the edge, eating itself.