Currency of Souls

by Kealan Patrick Burke

  The kid frowns. “What?”

  “I want to turn on the radio.”

  “For what? You’re getting out.”

  “That’s the thing. I’m not getting out. I can’t, so I’d appreciate you letting me have the radio on. That way I don’t have to hear you breathing when you do what you have to do.”

  Brody scowls at me. “Are you out of your fucking tree completely, or what?”

  “No, but it looks like we’ve reached an impasse here, and you’re the one with the knife. All I want now is some music.”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  “Just like that.”

  He holds the knife away from my throat, just enough for me to see that it’s a big son of a bitch, thick-handled, with a curved blade on one side, a serrated one on the other. The kind of knife my father used for skinning bucks.

  He’s breathing quickly, sweating more. “You and Carla and the goddamn music. I don’t have this kind of time to waste.”

  “So don’t.”

  I reach for the stereo, leaning into the blade. Flip the switch, and sit back.

  A moment passes. Wintry is a helpless shadow beyond the window.

  I start to tremble all over. My guts squeeze bile into my mouth. Brody’s going to assume it’s because of him, because of what we both know he’s about to do. But it isn’t that at all. I’m not afraid of him.

  It’s the goddamned stereo.

  I’m afraid of the radio and what’s going to happen because I’ve turned it on, something I promised myself I’d never do again. Not in this truck. Not after the last time.

  Brody curses, brings the knife back to my throat, positions the serrated side beneath my Adam’s apple but doesn’t start cutting. Cold metal teeth nip the skin. I figure maybe out of respect he’s waiting for the music to start. So we watch the stereo.

  The green CD light blinks on. The disk begins to spin with a faint whirring sound.

  Then at last, after what seems like years of silence, the music starts. Patsy Cline. “Crazy”.

  And with a sigh that might be regret, anger, or relief, Brody begins to cut my throat.

  * * *

  “We’re closed.”

  Confused and struggling to accept that somehow his mind has been playing tricks on him, Vess lingers in the doorway of a tavern memory tells him burned to the ground last night but his eyes swear is still here, untouched by fire on the outside, only slightly blackened on the inside. Near the far end of the room, by the bar, a svelte woman clad in gray tempers a carpet of soot and ash with short sharp smacks from a ragged looking broom. The air smells faintly of smoke.

  “Of course you’re closed, but she’s looking for him,” Vess explains, but moves no further into the long narrow room. A single hurricane lamp has been set up on the counter, creating a murky twilight through which the woman moves like a delicate ghost. Thin shadows twitch spasmodically around the rows of bottles behind the bar. “The Sheriff I mean, of course. That might not have been clear. I don’t always say what I mean the way I mean to say it. Means I usually have to elaborate. I don’t—Hassak!” Annoyed with himself, he wrenches the hat from his head and tugs at it, forgetting its contents until the bones hit the floor like pebbles and skitter away from him. “Oh.” He drops to his haunches, stretches his upper body as far as he can over the threshold to avoid stepping foot into the room and therefore risking the woman’s ire. A single phalange remains maddeningly out of reach.

  “Not here,” whispers the finger.

  “What are you doin’?” the woman asks, and he jerks back. She has approached without his hearing her. He looks from the kernel of bone at her feet to her face and smiles involuntarily. She is without a doubt one of the most beautiful creatures he has ever seen, with her auburn hair and light green eyes. Often, on the endlessly lonely nights beneath the stars, he has dreamed—not of this woman—but of women like her. Maybe in his imaginings they were less severe looking, not so hard of eye or tight of mouth, but the basic model is the same. He finds his already muddled thoughts scrambling, his mind exploring fantasies he will never live to see made real, even if the same stars he sleeps under were to align and the woman decided to court a pauper.

  “I asked what you were doin’?”

  “Sorry,” he splutters, attempting a half-bow despite his posture already being an approximation of one. It’s an awkward feat that almost sends him sprawling, so he quickly steadies himself and rises, the last fragment of finger forgotten.

  “I’m Kirk Vess.”

  “I know who you are,” the woman responds icily. “I barred you from here, remember?”

  He doesn’t, but nods.

  “What do you want?”

  “A woman’s finger brought me here,” he says, nodding pointedly at the phalange two inches from her shoe. “To find the Sheriff.”

  “A finger?”

  “Yes Ma’am.”

  “Whose is it?”

  “I don’t know. Just…a woman. A pretty lady, I’m guessing. She…she was in a fridge.”

  The barmaid’s gaze is penetrating. Vess feels himself growing warm from the inside out, the color rising to his cheeks.

  “A fridge?”

  “Yes, like a white coffin or… They put her in it as if it was a boat.”

  Gracie frowns. “What?”

  Vess squints, fearing his thoughts are squirming free of him and desperately tries to catch them. He runs the tips of his index fingers over his eyebrows and takes a breath. “Stuck in the mud,” he says slowly. “That’s where she was. I thought it was the box but it was only a fridge. Poor lady.” He clucks his tongue. “She wants me to find the Sheriff. I tried Doctor—”

  “Understood,” Gracie says, her expression softening just a little. “You found a body.”

  Vess nods eagerly. “Her finger brought me here.”

  “Not here,” whispers the finger. “Not here.”

  “I know he isn’t,” Vess whispers back, eager to silence the dead woman. Immediately he feels guilty for thinking her an intrusion into this unexpected scene, and grimaces. “May I…collect them?”

  Gracie nods. “The bones? Go ahead.”

  He does, stroking each segment by way of an apology before depositing them into his pocket.

  “The Sheriff ain’t here,” Gracie informs him, and heads back to the bar. “But chances are he will be before long.”

  Vess smiles. “I’ll come back. I’ll bring the finger.”

  “You could wait.”

  “Yes.”

  “Want a drink while you do?”

  Vess immediately begins to question what he thinks she said, for he has never been welcome here, or any other bar for that matter, with the exception of the kinds of places where no one with any sense would go, places where people still get killed over cheating at cards and old men in expensive suits sit in shadowy corners discussing the undoing of their enemies. Vess has never been welcome anywhere, which is why he exists to be elsewhere. With that in mind, he decides jumping at what he is not convinced was an invitation is not the wisest recourse, so he doesn’t, simply stays where he is and grins uncertainly.

  “Well?”

  “Think I heard wrong. Sorry. My hearing of things is like my speech. Trying to explain is—”

  “Come join me for a drink while you wait.”

  The smile almost splits his face, and certainly adds deep wrinkles where there were none before. He almost floats across the floor to the bar, so elated does he feel by this offering of kindness from so magnificent a lady. A drink in a place he should not be, in the company of a woman he should not know, stews his mind further, until it sends tremors of confused pleasure though his limbs.

  “Sit.” She indicates a stool, and he takes it quickly.

  Gracie produces two shot glasses from beneath the bar, and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear.

  “Thought the place burned,” Vess says. “There was a lot of light up here. Must have been imagining things. I do that sometime
s, especially when my mind gets tired.”

  “You weren’t imaginin’ things.” She fills the glasses to the top, slides one before him. “It burned all right.”

  “Oh. Wasn’t too bad then.” He sips the drink, savoring it and the moment. Accustomed as he is to cheap wine, the bourbon tastes like tears from Heaven. His mouth buzzes, tongue pleasantly scalded by the liquor. He coughs. “Bit of black and burnt, but still all right.”

  “I was bored,” Gracie says, crossing her elbows and leaning on them, her face close to his, chin hovering above their drinks. “So I started to rebuild it. I’d rather be stuck in a room, no matter how miserable it might be, than a hole full of charred wood.”

  He raises his glass in agreement and takes another sip.

  “Not that I intend to be here for much longer.” She raises her own glass, starts to drink. Vess watches her, follows the single drop of bourbon that escapes her lips, winding its way down over her chin and throat until it disappears into the opening of her blouse. A new kind of heat flourishes within him and he grins.

  “I’m movin’ on,” she announces, with obvious excitement. “After all these years in this goddamn town, I’m gettin’ out, leavin’ all these wretched people with their wretched lives behind.”

  Vess’s grin falters. He wonders if she includes him in her estimation of the townsfolk, but then reminds himself that he is an outsider, a mere visitor, and a woman as pretty and smart as the barmaid would surely know this.

  “Can I see the bones?” she asks then, slamming her glass down on the counter hard enough to make Vess jump.

  “Oh yes. She might even talk to you,” Vess enthuses, and scoops the bones from his pocket, scattering them on the bar like a voodoo woman about to tell a fortune.

  Gracie studies the bones for what seems to Vess to be a considerable amount of time, her expression unreadable until she smiles and looks up at him. The feel of her studying him is not an unpleasant one, and he is abruptly cast into those green eyes as helplessly as a man bound to an anchor tossed into the sea.

  His drink no longer seems important.

  He is a traveler, and in her eyes, he is seeing a place he has his whole life been forbidden from visiting. He will not, cannot blink.

  “That’s hers all right,” Gracie says, and though she moves back a step, she does not look away, and for that Vess is grateful. “Not that I can really tell from the bones.” She chuckles and the sound is magical, like pipe music to wounded ears. “I know because I put her there.” His smile grows. He is not really paying attention to the words, only the lush red lips that form them and the piercing eyes that hold him in place.

  “Not here, no not here!” the finger seems to wail from the surface of the bar, which is now oddly slick beneath his fingers. He ignores the cry, watches his world jar, once, twice, and believes it is his heart, which feels like it may explode.

  Somehow, it starts to rain inside the bar. The shadows thicken and reach for him, attempting to steal away this delightful interlude. He resists, struggling to hold on.

  “Can’t always ssssay it right,” he admits. “Werrdener…”

  The barmaid’s scent intoxicates him. He does not want this to end, and is saddened a great deal to realize, as crimson tears flow copiously down his face, his skull deflating under the weight of the long metal pipe Gracie is bringing down upon his head like a woodsman cleaving a rotten stump, that it already has.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Static shrieks from the radio.

  Hands follow.

  “What the fuck?” The knife is gone from my throat, tearing off a strip of my flesh as Brody propels himself away from the pale tendrils of mist that are snaking their way free of the CD slot in the car stereo. “What the fuck, man?”

  I’m no less scared. While Brody’s going to get hung up on the whole unnatural or supernatural angle here (maybe it reminds him of something from a horror flick he caught at the Drive-In with his high school sweetheart), this is a repeat of a moment I have been trying to avoid since the night Jessica died.

  Brody claws at the door. “Unlock it for God’s sake!”

  It isn’t locked. At least it wasn’t, but maybe she locked it.

  The hands spread out, push further into the car, the tips brushing against my chin, making me flinch, bringing me dangerously close to soiling myself. It’s cold in here now. I can see my breath. I can see Brody’s breath too, pluming over my shoulder.

  “Open this goddamn door!”

  The mist separates, the CD slot gapes obscenely, lit from within by white smoky light. The black plastic cradle keeping it in place begins to crack. And all the while Patsy Cline keeps singing “Crazy” at the top of her lungs, loud enough to make my eardrums vibrate with pain. I feel a hand on my shoulder and bat at it in terror, but it’s Brody, trying to pull me through the seat. “What is it? What did you do?”

  “It’s our song,” I tell him.

  He starts kicking at the door.

  She won’t let it open.

  Her face emerges sideways, slipping impossibly from the too-narrow gap, her features distorting, forming and reforming, coming apart like windblown cigarette smoke only to be whole again before the eye can track the movement. There is nothing but a rope of smoke connected to her head as it rises like a tethered balloon from the CD slot. Her face settles. The face I loved. A face I am terrified to see looming over me now.

  Brody screams at the sight of it, renews his assault on the door.

  “Oh shut your trap,” Jessica commands and the door Brody is so desperately trying to break open is suddenly blown from its hinges with a tortured shriek of metal, clear into the trees on the other side of the road where it smacks against the trunk of a pine, falls, and is still. Brody doesn’t wait to see whether she intends him to be the next object thrown at high velocity from the car. He hurries out into the road, and straight into the bruised, burned and bloody knuckles of Wintry’s fist.

  The kid drops and hits the ground hard.

  “Can I turn this down?” I ask, desperately trying to avoid looking at that blue mask hovering three inches from my face.

  “Why are you shakin’?”

  “It was a close call with the kid, that’s all. I guess I’m not as tough as I used to be.”

  “Right.” Even though the expression is made up mostly of dust, smoke, and air, and, for all I know, my own memories of her, the doubt sweeping across it is all too clear. I let out a long low sigh. The kid’s down for a while, thank God, and Wintry’s holding on hard as he can. But in my frightened mind I can still hear a clock ticking, still feel those cold pennies in my pocket. I don’t have time to hang around talking to my wife’s ethereal head, no matter how sentimental that song makes me feel.

  “Looks like quite a mess you’ve made for yourself,” my wife says.

  “Looks like it, yeah.”

  “It didn’t have to be this way you know.”

  I smile, but it’s a cold one. “Yeah, I do, but please spare me the list of reasons why. I don’t have time to hear ’em.”

  The smoke coils in my vision. I’m tempted to close my eyes but that only leads to the dreadful thought of what she might do to open them, so I stare at the dashboard, at the undulating tendril that’s keeping her tied to the mangled stereo. Somehow, it’s still playing that song.

  “You’re still actin’ the fool, Tom. Still pretendin’ life will eventually work out just fine if you keep walkin’ through it with blinkers on. What you can’t see can’t affect you, right?”

  I say nothing. Have nothing to say.

  “You shouldn’t be in the least bit surprised that it’s come to this.”

  “I’m not. Just didn’t figure it would happen so soon is all.”

  “What wouldn’t happen so soon? Do you even know what this is?”

  I shrug, still can’t look at her.

  “It’s not Hell,” she says softly. “It’s not damnation other than the one you condemn yourself to. The Hell inside yo
urself. Shun love and ignore hate, hurt people and dismiss those who truly need you…that’s the best way to find yourself stopped at an intersection in Milestone lookin’ up at a traffic light that hasn’t worked in ten years, without any idea how you got there. When did you get here, Tom? Do you even remember?”

  I nod slowly. Sure I remember, but I don’t want to. Thankfully, it’s a question that requires no answer, because she already knows it. What I can remember without fear is the woman who worked in the library in its last year of service, the woman who at first sight encompassed every adolescent fantasy I’d ever had of the quiet bookish brunette, hair tied back, spectacles perched on her nose to downplay the sultry beauty you knew in your heart was there. But Jessica was so much more than that. Within ten minutes of getting up the courage to talk to her, I realized she was way out of my league, not only with her looks, but with her frightening intellect and resolve. She was witty, clever, and iron-willed. The mating ritual was of little interest to her. No let’s do dinner, then play phone tag until I trust you enough to fall into your bed. She was stuck in a small town that died a little every day. Her job was in danger. She needed a man to love her and provide for her, but railed at the slightest suggestion that it meant she would stay at home and play the good wife. No. She intended to study, paint and make enough money so she could get out of Milestone, maybe go back to school, and someday teach. A damsel in distress she certainly was not. A homemaker only under duress. Aprons would be worn not to bake cakes or apple pies, but to prevent the spatter from her paint from ruining her clothes. She was a bohemian, and if a prospective mate couldn’t understand that, or considered it something that would pass once she discovered the joys of Betty Crocker and Martha Stewart, then they would be sorely disappointed.

  She frightened me, she enthralled me, and I knew the day I left her company for the first time and stepped out into noon sunshine that looked a little brighter, a little cleaner than ever before, that I had to have her.

  She frightened me then; she frightens me now, for the same reason: She was always right.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The smoke clucks its tongue. “Too late for that, and I’m not the one you should be apologizin’ to, unless you’re goin’ to play the same game with me that you’re playin’ with Kyle.”