Thunder Road

by Thorne, Tamara

  “Then came the tragedy.” Tom waited a beat, enjoying the kids’ wide eyes. Then he shook his head and said sadly, “It was a terrible thing. A horrible accident.” At that, some of the adults moved closer together.

  “It was early May, and the Strawberry Festival was coming up, just like it is now. Olive wanted to go to the dance with a young man named Caleb Gardner, who had a reputation for being a little wild. He wasn’t really a bad boy, you understand, but Caleb’s favorite thing to do was to race against his friends out on Thunder Road, just like some of the kids now do, only now they use cars instead of horses.

  “The sheriff had run him in a couple times for scaring other people on the road, making their horses bolt and so forth, so naturally, Ephram wasn’t too crazy about Olive going to the dance with the fella, and he told her so.

  “Well, Olive was heartbroken, so Ephram, he finally had a talk with Caleb, and told him he could escort Olive to the dance as long as he hitched his horse to a carriage and they traveled in a sedate fashion. The boy promised, and off they went.

  “They got there just fine and Ephram, who’d come with a widow lady from town, he was glad to see his little girl so happy. Well, he’d planned on taking Olive home himself, but she begged him to let young Caleb Gardner see her home. Since Caleb had proven himself a gentlemen and Ephram really wanted to see that widow lady home, he said yes.”

  Tom paused dramatically. “That was the last time anybody ever saw Olive or her beau alive.

  “To this day, nobody knows exactly what happened, whether Caleb simply had the one-horse wagon going too fast or if there was a race.” Tom let his voice drop a fraction deeper. “Maybe a mountain lion spooked the horse. Or there could’ve been some ruffians hiding out on Dead Man’s Hill. But most people figure Caleb couldn’t resist a race, though whoever he was racing never admitted to it.”

  “What happened?” whispered a youthful voice.

  “Well, a while later, Ephram came riding home and his heart about stopped beating when he found the wreck. The wagon had crashed and overturned. First he saw only Caleb Gardner, half under the wagon, his neck broke. Snapped like a twig. And for a few minutes Ephram thought maybe Olive was okay and walking home, because there was no sign of her.

  “Then he found her, and Lord, it was an awful sight!”

  “What?” breathed one of the kids. “What’d he see?”

  Tom hesitated, looking hard at the kid. “Well, it was so awful that I don’t know that I should say—”

  “You gotta!” screeched one.

  “Please!” begged several others.

  “Well, okay. It was a freak thing that happened to Olive. She got thrown quite a ways from the road and landed in a little gully. Thing was, there was this rusty old saw laying there, blade up.” Another pause. “When she landed, she got her head cut clean off.”

  “Really?” they asked.

  “Really. And her daddy about went crazy. In the morning they found him wandering around in the desert, carrying her poor head tucked underneath his arm. She had the purtiest blond curls,” he added wistfully.

  Clearing his throat, Tom put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Every now and then, about this time of year, people hear and sometimes even see a runaway horse pulling a wagon with a young man in it. Folks hereabout believe it’s the ghost of young Caleb Gardner. All I know is, it’s a spooky sound if you’re up there by yourself.”

  “You heard it?”

  Tom raised his eyebrows and drawled, “Many times.” Then he added, “But that ghost is nothing compared to the other haunt. Lots of people have seen a girl hitchhiking up on Thunder Road. Why, I even know one man who picked her up in his truck. She was a pretty thing, standing out there all alone, dressed in a long, old-fashioned pink dress. My friend figured she worked at Madelyn Park and was dressed in a costume, so he pulled over, and sweet as you please, she asked him to take her home. He asked where that would be, and she pointed toward Olive Mesa.

  “The only thing out there nowadays is that church compound, and he thought she meant she lived there, but when he pulled up, she said, ‘No. Up there,’ and she pointed up the old trail to Olive Mesa. My friend had his eyes on the road and he told her he couldn’t take his truck up that trail. But she didn’t answer, so he turned to look at her, and she wasn’t there.” He paused. “She’d just vanished into thin air.”

  Tom scratched his chin and added nonchalantly, “Wasn’t the first time Olive hitched a ride home. Won’t be the last.”

  “Is all that really true?” one of the adults asked.

  “Why, sure it is,” he answered, smiling to show it was really a wagonload of manure. It amazed him how seriously some people took a windy. In a way, Tom envied them their naivete, because if he really believed he might meet up with Olive’s ghost on Thunder Road, why, life would be even more interesting.

  “Time to head for the bunkhouse.” Tom stood up and stretched. It was quarter of eleven now, so his half-baked plan to go into Rattlesnake Canyon to visit Marie was out—it would be at least midnight before he’d arrive, and she didn’t take kindly to having her sleep interrupted. Still, he felt like taking a ride, and thought maybe he’d go around the back way through Spirit Canyon, then down Thunder Road and home. He smiled to himself: Maybe Olive would be looking to hitch a ride.

  “Mister, um . . .”

  “Tom, ma’am,” he said, turning toward the short woman who had tapped his arm. “What can I do for you?” A thinner, equally short woman with a baby on her arm stood with her, and their husbands waited behind them, clearly interested and trying to look bored.

  “Well, we were just wondering . . .”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “About the UFOs.”

  “I see,” Tom said slowly. At the word “UFO,” several more people moved closer. Although he didn’t especially mind the UFO business, it drove him a little nuts because it just didn’t go with cowboys and horses any more than whisky went with a dish of ice cream. “What about them?”

  “Have you seen any?”

  “Oh, well, I couldn’t really say,” he began. “I’ve seen some lights in the sky, but I’m more of a mind to think they’re the spirit lights the local Indians used to tell stories about.”

  “What are spirit lights?” the thin woman asked.

  “I’ll tell you about them Friday night, ma’am. Right now I have to hit the trail.”

  He tipped his Stetson and walked toward his horse, leaving them wanting more. It occurred to him as he petted Belle’s silver muzzle that he’d have to come up with a story about “spirit lights,” but that didn’t worry him. Truth was, he probably wouldn’t know what spirit lights were until he sat down to tell the tale.

  Belle whinnied softly, then snorted as he got into the saddle, his tan duster flapping in the wind. He held her still, realizing that most of his audience had followed along. He looked down at them and spoke in his most serious tone. “When horses snort at night, it means they’re seeing a ghost.” A couple of the kids looked around themselves, scared spitless, and Tom realized he’d spread it on too thick tonight. “Don’t worry, son,” he said to a five-year-old who looked on the verge of tears. “It’s a well-known fact that a little singing makes ghosts happy. Then they go away and won’t bother you the rest of the night. A few verses of ‘Home on the Range’ will do the trick.”

  “Are you sure?” the boy asked.

  “I guarantee it.”

  The boy looked happier. “Will you sing?”

  Tom preferred dying to singing in public. “Young fella, I’ve got a voice that’d scare the hair off a coyote.” The boy giggled. “And I’ll bet that cowboy there”—he pointed at a young father who’d been wearing a guitar and looking hopeful all evening—“would be just the fella to lead you folks in a song or two. Night, all.”

  He rode out of the campground, smiling at the sound of a guitar’s twang, followed by a bunch of voices singing about the antelope and deer playing on the rang
e. He knew he shouldn’t saw off whoppers about ghosts when little bitty kids were listening, but it took a heck of a lot of willpower to control himself. A little more than he possessed.

  Exiting the campground, he pointed Belle toward the far end of the tall but narrow Spirit Canyon east of the main range of the Madelyns, where Marie was spending the night. Invigorated by the wind, he let the animal have her head and Belle took off at a trot, only slowing when they closed in on the skinny dirt road into the canyon.

  There wasn’t enough moonlight to see up here, but Belle knew the road. She loved their midnight rides as much as he did, and wanted to go faster. He had to keep holding her back.

  They took the two winding miles at a fairly leisurely pace. The night was clear and dark except for the glittering stars and the crescent moon overhead. Not a UFO in the sky, Tom was glad to see.

  When he’d told the campers he’d seen some lights, that had been the truth. In fact, he’d seen them several times, just like most everybody else around here. They were funny things, zipping back and forth way up in the night, flying like nothing natural, except maybe fireflies, but they didn’t get him very excited. Some folks claimed to have seen actual UFOs, big saucery things, not just distant lights, and he took them pretty much at their word, though as a certified spinner of tall tales himself, he knew how easy it was to believe your own stories, and how much better they got each time they were told. So, although he didn’t disbelieve, he had decided to withhold judgment until he saw the things with his own eyes.

  Suddenly Belle’s ears went back and her muscles tensed. She hesitated, sniffing the air.

  “What’s wrong, girl?” he whispered, thinking she smelled a coyote. An instant later, she relaxed a little, then Tom heard human sounds. “Campers, Belle. Just campers.”

  He was possessive of the place, even though he had no call to be, and he disliked sharing his canyon with strangers, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  “Come on, Belle,” he said, pushing his heels into her sides. “Let’s go say howdy.” The horse started moving again, sedately, and her ears were slightly forward now, signaling that she didn’t like strangers up here any more than he did.

  Around the next bend, he spotted a dusty red Bronco, a big tent, and a bunch of equipment set up in a large turnout. A woman holding an electric lantern came out from behind the Bronco and stared at him.

  “Howdy, ma’am,” he drawled. He found that a good drawl generally kept folks from spooking. “Nice night for a ride.”

  “Dr. Manderley?” came a young man’s voice from inside the tent. An instant later, he stepped out, his hair glinting red in the rays of the woman’s lantern. Tom had yet to get a look at her.

  “Are you the sheriff?” she asked, trying to sound sure of herself and almost succeeding. Without that faint foreign accent, it wouldn’t have worked at all.

  Tom laughed gently. “Why? Are you gunslingers on the run?”

  The woman relaxed. “Would you care for a cup of coffee?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Tom swung down from Belle and tethered her to the Bronco’s bumper. “Tom Abernathy,” he said, holding out his hand. “I own the El Dorado Ranch down off of Old Madelyn Highway.”

  “Alex Manderley.” Her handshake was nice and firm. “And this is Eric Watson. We’re here hoping to capture some of your UFOs on film.”

  “Hi,” Watson said. “Dr. Manderley is one of the most respected researchers in our field.” The poor kid, already on the defensive about their work, had a handshake that needed work.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Watson,” Tom said kindly. “You’ve come to the right place for a UFO show, though it appears a bit slow tonight.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it,” Alex said, setting the lantern on a card table next to the tent, and motioned Tom to take a seat. She sat opposite him. “We hear rumors about a location, but you never know what you’re going to find. Thanks, Eric,” she added as the young man carried a pot of coffee from the Coleman stove and proceeded to pour. “Pull up a chair,” she added when he looked unsure whether he should stay or not.

  “Lots of places have UFOs,” Tom said. “How’d you come to choose Madelyn?” By the flicker of lamplight he noticed that Alex Manderley was a breathtakingly beautiful woman. No wonder Watson was such a nervous young pup.

  “Madelyn is one of the country’s hot spots,” Alex explained. “There’ve been sightings for many years—a number of Project Blue Book’s investigations were in this region, and in the last two years, the rate of appearance here is one of the highest in the country.” She smiled. “But the most important reason we chose this place is because the military is trying to keep it a secret.”

  “From what I’ve heard,” Tom drawled, “they try to keep everything a secret.”

  Alex laughed, a pleasant throaty sound. “That’s true, Mr. Abernathy—”

  “Tom.”

  “Tom. I’m Alex. Anyway, that’s very true. But they try harder to keep us out of some places than others. Like Madelyn.”

  “What do you mean, ‘keep you out’? It’s a free country, last I heard.”

  “They withhold information and go to amazing lengths to debunk the sightings. They’re very subtle in a blundering sort of way, if you get my drift.”

  Tom laughed. “I do indeed.”

  “You wouldn’t know a Colonel Dole, by any chance?” she asked.

  “Big slab of a man, looks a little like Richard Nixon in his Watergate days?”

  “Yes! That’s him. Do you know anything about him?”

  “He was eavesdropping on us in the café,” Eric Watson explained.

  “Colonel Dole, huh?” Tom scratched his chin. “I’ve seen him and his flunkies driving around up here now and again. Might’ve been him I saw today on Thunder Road. Ray Vine says he spends a lot of time in his diner, and that he never tips the waitresses.”

  “We met Mr. Vine.” Alex grinned. “He made some pointed remarks about the military right in front of the colonel.”

  “Ray doesn’t much cotton to rudeness, not even in uniform. Gets his back up,” Tom explained. “Way up.”

  9

  Justin Martin

  AT ELEVEN-FORTY JUSTIN HAD RETURNED TO THUNDER ROAD and parked near the entrance to Spirit Canyon. Pissed because he hadn’t even got a good-night kiss from Christie —she thanked him for fixing her homework and slipped out of the car before he could make a move—he spent the next quarter hour sitting back with his fingers laced behind his head while he fantasized about the things he would do to the little blonde cheerleader when he finally got the chance. He’d thought about the things he’d make her do to him, too.

  Now it was one minute until midnight, and he looked to the sky, hoping to see the lights, hear the Voice, but no one was there. He revved the engine, enjoying its smooth powerful purr. He’d already queued up the Doors cassette to “Roadhouse Blues” and now he fed it to the player and drummed his fingers in time with the driving beat.

  “Put your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel,” he whispered in time with the music. He pulled silently onto the road, lights out, the black Mustang a ghost in the dark, windy night.

  The witching hour. He revved the engine and counted to thirty, then, choreographing his movements to Jim Morrison’s voice, he eased out the clutch and pressed the accelerator, hitting eighty miles per in just under ten seconds. Spelman’s GTO would be doing the same, or close, at the other end of the four-mile straightaway, with a short head start. Assuming the jock didn’t run into any unplanned traffic as he passed the Old Madelyn intersection, Justin figured they’d meet up at Dead Man’s Hill, the huge pile of boulders just this side of Old Madelyn Highway.

  Blowing dust and sand hit the windshield as he accelerated, but it didn’t matter—he would have been driving blind in the darkness anyway. Fortunately, he knew the road by heart. In the distance, Spelman’s headlights were two tiny points of light.

  They grew bigger and brighter by the
second—Spelman had his brights on to blind Justin. “Asshole,” he whispered, “you’re dead.” His fingers hovered over the car’s lamp switch, ready to startle the guy off the road at the last second.

  But with less than a hundred feet separating them, the jock’s car wavered, telling Justin that Spelman had seen the Mustang despite the blowing dust storm, the darkness. Justin continued steadily forward, now flicking his brights off and on to further fuck with Spelman’s pea-sized jock brain.

  The cars moved closer and closer, and time drew out into delicious slow motion as Justin drove. Five. Four. Three. Two.

  One. Spelman chickened and yanked his wheel hard left.

  “Yes!” Justin whispered as the GTO flew off the road and smashed into Dead Man’s Hill. Metal rent and screeched as it crushed against the boulders.

  Justin applied his brakes, then backed up to survey the damage. Pleased that the sandstorm would cover his tracks, he pulled on a pair of leather driving gloves and took a half-full bottle of Cutty Sark out from under the passenger seat.

  He carried it to the wreck.

  Rick Spelman’s body and the steering wheel had merged bloodily into one unit, but El Jocko was still breathing. “Hey, Rick, man, I’m sorry you lost,” Justin said, removing the cap from the whisky. “Here, drink this, it’ll help.”

  The jock stared at him, trying to focus. Blood bubbled from between his lips.

  As he held the bottle to Spelman’s lips, forcing him to drink, he noticed a couple empty beer cans on the backseat. “Rick, you’ve done my job for me,” he said, as the boy coughed out blood and liquor. Justin let the bottle fall on the seat. “Well, Rick, I gotta go. I have a date with your girlfriend. I’m gonna screw her brains out.”

  Spelman stared at him blearily, then mouthed the words “Fuck you.”

  “Same to you, bud.” Justin pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket, grabbed the liquor bottle again, and poured some on the backseat, out of Spelman’s reach. He dropped the bottle back in Spelman’s lap, then held the lighter over the alcohol-soaked upholstery and flicked. Flames licked the cloth once, twice, then took. “Ta ta for now,” Justin said with a grin.