Phantom Nights

by John Farris

  "Your breath. Not drunk are you?"

  "I've been worse."

  "You only drink hard liquor when something's really troubling you. Is it our money?"

  "No. I'll get a game together down at the jail in a day or two."

  "Bobby, do you ever lose at poker?"

  "Try not to." He closed his eyes, getting comfortable next to her skin. "Has to do with Mally Shaw."

  "Is there a problem about what happened to her?" Cecily said. She could be prescient lying with him late at night in that twilight of near-sleep where psychic nerve endings were adrift like jellyfish in a tame sea.

  "Shaping up to be a big problem, and I don't know how to handle it."

  Cecily breathed deeply and after a minute or so he thought she'd gone back to sleep snuggled against him, nightgown hiked above the ivory beauty of her little rump.

  "How would Luther handle it if he was here?"

  "Luther? He'd sit tight until the problem went away."

  "Will it go away eventually, Bobby?"

  "I think so."

  "Then maybe that's all you need to do. Sit tight and wait."

  EIGHT

  Fresh Magic

  A Vacant Man

  Nighttime on the Black Serpent Express

  Alex woke up in a macramé hammock in the gazebo behind the two-story brick Colonial house when Francie Swift gave the hammock a push. She was wearing jodhpurs and her second-best riding boots and a short-sleeved blue-and-white-check gingham shirt. There was a riding helmet and leather crop under her left arm.

  "Did you spend the night here?" she said, unsurprised, as if she found half-wild children around the place all the time.

  Alex yawned, then nodded. The sun had been up for half an hour, hot spots on his face and long, tanned legs from light streaming through the morning-glory-covered latticework.

  "Why? Do you have a problem at home?"

  Francie had an old dog with her, snow white muzzle and a low growl in his throat when Alex sat up and put his bare feet on the gazebo floor. He was semihard in his shorts. If Francie noticed, it wasn't a novelty: She had three brothers. At fourteen her own sexuality was awake but as still as a hiding rabbit.

  Alex looked up at her with the agreeable heartshock of the charmed. Francie had shoulder-length hair, summer-paled. Her oval face was overlaid with tiny freckles, as if she had been cola-spritzed through screenwire. He longed to tell her everything. But words that had come effortlessly to his tongue only hours ago failed to show up. Strangled sounds instead of speech; he had left the fresh magic of language behind him as well when he turned his back on

  Mally at Cole's Crossing. He slumped in disappointment and bit his sore lip, a failure again, unable to look at Francie now.

  Francie reached down to silence her dog with a couple of taps of her forefinger on the bony muzzle.

  "My folks are in Bowling Green. They won't be back until tomorrow afternoon late. You can use the shower in the tack room. I'll fix you some breakfast. You won't get so many skeeter bites if you sleep on the porch tonight. Unless you decide to go on home."

  Alex shook his head.

  "I'm schooling Tigertown this morning. If you want to watch. Probably it would be boring for you. Do you ride?"

  No.

  "We're shorthanded this week. So if you wanted to help there's stalls to muck out. Plenty pairs of boots around here; you ought to be able to find some that'll fit you."

  He looked up again. Francie gave a toss of her head. She wore her hair in two blonde wings from a center part as straight as if she'd drawn it with a ruler. Pale eyes swam with sun-motes. There was humor in her glance.

  "Don't think I'm going to give you breakfast if you're allergic to work. Now get going, son. Wash up." She pretended she was going to stamp his toes with her boot. Alex shot up from the hammock and gave Francie his sidelong disdainful look while slipping into his moccasins. She pointed businesslike to the center of his chest with her riding crop. Both of them about to smile. Alex feigned alarm and ran across the gazebo and straight down, a six-foot drop, landed gracefully on all fours and took off in a sprint. Halfway to the barn he threw in a difficult running somersault in the air, added a cartwheel to amuse Francie. He figured she would still be watching.

  Ramses Valjean was about to begin brushing his teeth when the bathroom door opened and Bernice Clauson started in, sleep still fogging her eyes, the hem of her sheer blue nightgown swirling around her ankles. She was carrying a glass of water in her left hand.

  With her other hand on the doorknob, Bernice drew up tautly at the sight of Ramses in his undershirt and trousers with red suspenders dangling, hunched over the basin. She might not have been as surprised to find a six-foot alligator there.

  "Good morning," Ramses said. "You must be Mrs. Clauson."

  Bernie dropped the tumbler, which had her upper plate in solution, on the tile floor. Her hand flew up to cover her open mouth in its gummy vacancy, muffling a cry of horror. She backpedaled into the hall, pulling the door shut.

  Ramses looked at the pearly set of dentures in shattered glass on the blue floor. He put his toothbrush down, gripped the basin with both hands, and shook from suppressed laughter until his efforts provoked a coughing fit instead.

  On the way to Mally Shaw's house in his prowler, Bobby received a message from Dispatch.

  "Bobby, Francie Swift called and said Alex spent the night at their place, but she didn't know until she got up this morning or she would have called sooner."

  "He there now?"

  "Francie said to tell you he's had breakfast, he's doing some work around the stables and he's fine, you shouldn't worry about him."

  "Thanks, Deb."

  Ramses was looking at him. Bobby said, "Alex is being a pain in the butt. Right now we're not seeing eye to eye about him going away to a school in Louisville where they could help him. He'll be fourteen in a couple of months, but he doesn't want to grow up. Probably I spoiled him. Our folks died in a fire. I mention that last night? Anyway he's too dependent on me, and I don't know how to handle it."

  "I would be the last one to give advice about being a parent, or a surrogate parent. Mally always made it easy, forgiving me for the neglect I showed her. I wonder why?"

  "She had a good heart. Maybe she always believed you'd be around when she needed you most. You never hurt her on purpose, what you've told me."

  "Willful absence can be the most hurtful thing of all. Emotional silence. Your brother is unable to speak, but he is wild to be understood. He writes very well, by the way. Does he keep a diary?"

  "Wouldn't know. I don't poke around in his room. Sometimes he shows me stories. Shoot-'em-ups mostly. Maybe that's his way of getting some of the hurtful things out of his system."

  "I hope to meet Alex, now that I've slept in his bed and experienced through his possessions and the imprint of his soul what it must be like to be a boy. I was born into hard labor on my father's farm, a slave as surely as if I'd been dragged off a ship in chains a century ago. Born with an old man's spite and iron will. My father was subversive in black society; he had earned his portion and his mules by being a white man's nigger. I was always ashamed of him."

  The radio again. A Negro in his forties had been found dead in a ditch. Natural causes, apparently. Cocaine in his snuff box. His name was Lindell Jones.

  "Natural causes." Ramses said.

  "Around here cocaine and 'shine go down as natural causes."

  "Should it happen to be a man of color. Or a woman."

  "The tonks are full of cocaine. Lots of it coming down from the north since the war. Not much we can do."

  "Just another form of slavery." Ramses fell silent, looking out the window.

  "Look, if there's money in it for Luther, I don't know about it or want to know."

  Ramses looked at Bobby again.

  "You don't care for law enforcement, do you?"

  "What I care about is the law. That's what I bust my butt going to night school for."r />
  At the boarded-up rib shack Bobby turned right off Route 19 and was greeted by the sight of Eddie Paradise Galphin lounging against his dusty red roadster.

  "Goddamn it."

  "I do have to admire his tenacity."

  "You stepping out of the front seat of my prowler, Eddie'll think you've got a hoodoo on me."

  "Behave as if I know my place. Count on me, Boss."

  "You'll be gone from here in a couple of days."

  "Although not as far as Eternity's Gates—"

  "You can joke about the damnedest things."

  "It's a matter of keeping some perspective on the unimaginable."

  "I have to go on dealing with my people, and I can't afford to get a leery eye from any man."

  "I fully understand, Boss."

  "Why when you say 'Boss' does it sound sort of like 'shithead'."

  "Takes years of practice," Ramses acknowledged.

  Ramses smiled and Bobby smiled too, slightly, then put on a different face getting out of the prowler to deal with Eddie Paradise Galphin.

  "I'm wearing you like a bad suit, Eddie."

  "Just wanting to be of some service in Dr. Valjean's time of tribulation," Eddie said with hand-wringing sincerity.

  "What happened to you last night, Doctor? I was waiting up 'til half past—"

  Bobby walked up to within one foot of Eddie, causing him to scoot up straight against the side of his car.

  "You still yearning to get to Chicago, Eddie?"

  "Well, I—"

  "I can arrange it for you. Overnight to Chicago, naked as the day you were born, in an Illinois Central reefer. Ever seen a man with eyeballs froze solid, Eddie?"

  "No sir."

  "Not to mention his dick?"

  "Oh-oh."

  "Lindell Jones is lying dead in a ditch out by Lovett Plantation. There's a story for you. No story here."

  "Yes, sir."

  When Eddie Paradise Galphin's roadster had disappeared on the highway Ramses said, "An interesting exercise in public relations."

  "They have to believe you'll do exactly what you say you'll do. The more inventive I am thinking up punishment, the quicker it turns into folklore. I never have hit a colored man with a nightstick. Just doesn't make an impression. White man, nightstick's always best."

  "And that impressive revolver you carry?"

  "It's a .44. I'm plenty good on the range, but I've never shot a man and hope I never have to."

  Inside the house they found that the electricity was off. Bobby traced the problem to its source on the highway and radioed for a utility truck.

  When he returned to the house, Ramses Valjean was standing by the windows in the front room where the light was good, reading a page from one of Alex's notebooks.

  "What have you got there?" Bobby said, although it was a familiar type of notebook, and he had a hunch.

  "A short story your brother wrote when he was in the fifth grade. I wonder how Mally happened to—"

  "If it was here then Alex gave it to her."

  Ramses closed the notebook. "They knew each other?"

  Bobby shrugged. "Not long. Mally did him a good turn when he spilled off his bike around here. Cleaned him up, put some iodine on his cuts." Ramses didn't say anything. "Alex was in some trouble at the house that turned out not to be his doing. He might have come over looking for some sympathy from Mally. She was one hell of a fine woman, always nursing somebody I guess."

  "Yes, she was like that. A sweetness in her nature that couldn't have come from either of us. But wildflowers stubbornly will appear, even on stony ground."

  "I called for a lineman; power will be back on directly. I need to go to work."

  "Of course."

  "You're kind of isolated here. I didn't notice a phone line to the house. But Mallard's store is only a short walk going back toward town. There's a pay phone. You need a ride somewhere, call and I'll come myself or send a deputy for you."

  "I only need to go by Godsong and Wundall's to make final arrangements for tomorrow."

  "Staying here tonight?"

  "I'm sure I can make myself comfortable. While I bring myself up to date on Mally's affairs. I suppose I could find this out myself, but you might be able to tell me. Did she have a lover?"

  "I wouldn't know."

  "Before you leave, why don't you have a look in the bedroom?"

  Bobby walked down the hall to Mally's bedroom, stood in the doorway for a few moments, then went inside and raised the window shade all the way to get a better look at the condition of her bed. He returned to the living room.

  "Somebody played rough with her. Or there could've been—"

  "No. I don't think it was more than one man. Judging from the condition of the soft tissues of her vulva and vagina, there can be only one conclusion: Mally was forced, perhaps repeatedly. There also were small hemorrhages of blood vessels of the inner thighs: fingertip bruises, as if he held her thighs well apart while he raped her. He has large hands, by the way. The rape, or rapes, occurred well before the dogs got hold of her."

  "You examined Mally's—"

  Ramses said harshly, "I examined a dead woman's remains for the truth she was beyond telling us."

  "So she was raped here, then taken somewhere else, where she died. Then she was moved again."

  Ramses held out his right fist and slowly opened it. He was holding crumpled cellophane.

  "I found one on the floor by the sofa, two more in the bedroom. The same wrappers that were left in Mally's Dodge. He likes hard candy."

  "Or Mally had a sweet tooth."

  "So far I haven't found any candy in the house. Nor was there any in her purse or car."

  Bobby let out a slow breath. "Better let me have those wrappers. I'll put them with the other . . . evidence that's coming over from the mortuary this morning."

  "Where in town would you be likely to find Brach's hard candies?"

  "Reaves Rexall and probably the five and dime. I'll check those first, but a lot of people—"

  "Buy candy. Of course. But you're looking for a white man, blond, six feet one or two inches tall, who wears a size-ten boot and has probably purchased his candy within the last three days."

  "How in the hell—"

  "The front seat of the Dodge was pushed nearly all the way back. Mally was a small person; I doubt that she could have operated her car with the seat in that position. I'll assume that whoever drove the car to Little Grove had enough sense not to leave his fingerprints all over it."

  "Blond?"

  "During intercourse he left a few of his pubic hairs behind: three to be exact, stuck with blood or semen to Mally's pudendum and her own pubic hair, which is quite coarse compared to the Nordic—"

  "Why don't I just hand over my badge to you, Ramses, and you finish up what I didn't do much of a job of in the first place!"

  "No need to feel insulted or slighted, Bobby. I've had years of experience working with the Nashville police department on some of their difficult cases of homicide. Here I have only made a necessary beginning. The real detective work is up to you. Find him, Bobby. Or do you know who I'm talking about already?"

  Bobby couldn't answer him. His throat was tight as a fist. Ramses said quietly, "Is he untouchable, Bobby?"

  "Nobody . . . is untouchable, a thing like this."

  "I've only given you information. What you don't have is proof."

  "I know that."

  "Then you have so much at risk. If you're going to pursue this. Will you pursue it, Bobby?"

  "For God's sake, what do you expect me to say?"

  Ramses nodded, then looked around the front room of Mally's house, his scan halting at the picture wall behind the sofa. Arrested by an image of himself and a young Mally holding his hand and smiling up at him. His beardless face in this photo was stern, as if he found himself an unwilling accomplice to something.

  "I already know myself to be a vacant man," Ramses said at length. "Looking at 'L'horreur d'une profonde
nuit.' The horror of a deep night, as Racine put it. But what you must face is the rest of your life." He smiled. "Try it on right now, Bobby, have a look in the mirror of your soul. How do you like the fit? Comfortable? Or will you ever-after be wearing your life, as you said to Eddie, like a bad suit?"

  Leland Howard's man Jim Giles ate his lunch at the Hob-Nob Cafe on Courthouse Square: Monday's Special, which was overdone roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy and a side dish of stewed tomatoes and okra, eighty-five cents. He had two more cups of black coffee, which he had been drinking steadily for the last thirty-six hours while catching only a couple of hours' sleep on the road. All the caffeine had his brain abuzz like wearing-out neon, his heart jarring to the beat. Still, he didn't mind being off the campaign trail for a while. Politics amused Giles, but dourly: all of those candidates with shotgun mouths, loaded with double-aught bullshit.

  After lunch he went outside into full noon glare, a kitchen match in one tight corner of his mouth. He stood beneath a rusted tin canopy over the sidewalk shielding his eyes with a saluting hand as if there was something to single out that made this courthouse square much different from so many others in Dixie, but the only difference may have been in the quality of upkeep, desultory civic pride. Everything needed to be swept or hosed. Some begonias and zinnias were suffocating in dust in a couple of filled-in horse troughs that fronted the squat yellow brick courthouse. There were cracked store windows here and there that the merchants lacked funds to replace. He saw kids with ice cream—they looked well-scrubbed, at any rate—including a lanky blond boy pushing his blue-and-white Schwinn bike along with one hand, keeping pace with a girl blonder than he was on an idling, new-looking Cushman motor scooter. He didn't know who they were—didn't know a soul in Evening Shade—but the bicycle was familiar. He had seen one like it on Mally Shaw's porch during the rainstorm Saturday night. With a piece of the red reflector on the back fender missing.

  Giles took the match out of his mouth, walked down three steps to street level, where he spat, waited on a panel delivery truck to pass him, then strolled across the wide concrete pavement with its Medusalike snakes of asphalt patching going every which way and fell in behind the oblivious teenagers. She appeared to be doing all of the talking. Then, as if she had talked herself dry, she stopped to get a drink from the granite fountain in the shaded border of park around the courthouse—the trees growing here, true to the nondescript, down-in-the-mouth look of the town, were trash mimosas and scabby sycamores instead of oaks deeply rooted in century-old grandeur.