Nothing but the Night

by Bill Pronzini

  I hate you. I hate you, Ma.

  I’m gonna tell Dad about this, too. You better believe I am. Soon as he comes up tomorrow.

  The laughter stops. Now it’s quiet again.

  I know what they’re doing. How can she do it with Fatso, right here in our house? How can she do it with him at all? That time I saw them, her all white and sweaty, him with his belly and hairy ass, and she was … I never thought I’d see her do anything like that….

  Banging sound. Bedboard hitting the wall.

  Another laugh that turns into a kind of yell.

  He puts his hands over his ears, burrows down deep under the covers.

  After a while he pokes his head out and listens. Quiet downstairs, but now it’s raining again. Wind howling, rain smacking on the roof and against the window. Is Fatso still here?

  He gets up and goes to the window. There’s his truck in the yard. Jeez, is he going to spend the whole night here?

  I hate you, Ma. You and him both.

  He’s in bed again when he hears the voices downstairs. Loud at first, Fatso saying, When can I see you again, sweet tits? Her saying, Keep your voice down, you want to wake up the kid? Then he can’t hear what they’re saying because the door’s open and the wind is whistling in. Then the door bumps shut again. Outside, Fatso’s truck starts up, and he guns the engine the way he likes to do. Damn son of a bitch Fatso. Then the truck backs out and roars off, and it’s quiet again except for the storm.

  But not for long.

  Now there’s another car in the driveway. Not Fatso’s truck, engine sound’s different—Daddy’s car! Dad’s here!

  He jumps out of bed, rushes over to look. Dad’s car, all right, Dad getting out and running through the rain. Door slams downstairs. Hard footsteps heading for the kitchen. “Rose? I know you’re down here, I saw his truck.” Thump, thump. “Right where I knew you’d be, you bitch.” And then Dad starts yelling and swearing, real loud. Oh jeez, he’s pissed! I never heard him that pissed before.

  And she starts yelling back at him, calling him dirty names. She sounds drunk. Sure she is, her and Fatso must’ve been drinking whiskey. They did that the last time, too.

  Her: Do what I please, don’t have to answer to you, fucking bastard.

  Dad: Whore, slut, right here in our house with the boy upstairs, what kind of mother are you.

  Smack. Shriek. Wow, he must’ve hit her! Serves her right, the dirty whore.

  Her: Leave me alone damn you don’t you lay a hand on me again or you’ll be sorry.

  Dad: Had all I can stand can’t take any more.

  Her: Chrissake what’re you doing with that, put that thing away, are you crazy?

  Dad: Show you what I’m going to do with it.

  Her: You don’t have the guts you wimp you pisspoor excuse for a man.

  He’s over at the door now, opening it, looking out and listening. And then—

  Bang!

  Oh no, that sounded like a gun—

  “Rose!” Dad’s voice, different, all moany and wild like the wind. “Rose, God, I didn’t mean … Rose!”

  Little noises.

  “No!” Dad again, like he’s wailing. “No no!”

  Quiet.

  And then—

  Bang!

  Dad, Daddy, what—?

  And he’s in the hallway, at the top of the stairs. His heart is pounding like it wants to burst through his chest. He leans over the banister and stares down. Dark except for light coming from the kitchen, long pale wedge of light.

  “Dad?”

  Thud, thud, thud of his heart.

  He’s afraid, more afraid than he’s ever been. He doesn’t want to go down there, he’s so scared of what he’ll find. But he has to go, he has to find out—slow and then fast and then slow again as he reaches the bottom.

  “Dad? Daddy?”

  Thud. Thud, thud. Thud.

  Along the hall into the kitchen. It’s empty. Lights are on in the back bedroom, too, and he keeps going that way, the floor cold under his bare feet. He’s shivering as he nears the open bedroom doorway—

  Smell comes out at him and makes him stop.

  Burned smell. Gunpowder smell.

  Don’t go in there, don’t look!

  He goes in, he looks—

  Oh God oh shit!

  Both of them—

  Dad Daddy on the floor—

  And her on the bed—

  And the gun on the floor—

  And bright red all over both of them, her nightgown, his head and face, wet, glistening, dripping—

  Daddy’s eyes are open, staring, and her eyes—

  Shut no open and staring too no shut—

  There’s a roaring in his ears, he can’t hear—

  He wants to run but instead he goes to Daddy, maybe Daddy’s not dead, and he bends down and looks close—

  Dead dead dead.

  And the gun lying there—

  Don’t touch it don’t pick it up!

  Roaring, roaring, and the fear and the cold and the blood—

  And then he—

  He looks at her again, he can’t stop himself—

  She’s on the bed with her eyes shut—

  Open.

  She opens her eyes.

  Suddenly she opens her dead eyes and she’s staring back at him, right into his face—

  And he’s running shivering running crying running back up the stairs but not into his bedroom up the attic stairs hide in the attic safe in the attic scared cold shaking all over Daddy she opened her eyes but she didn’t but she did hide hide hide!

  “SHE OPENED HER eyes,” Cam said. He was shaking the way he had that night, oiled in sweat. He felt sick and disoriented. “This time it was different… This time she opened her eyes and looked at me.”

  Hallie held his head against her breast.

  “Always before I dreamed it the way it happened. I didn’t look at her again after I bent down over my father, I just ran. But this time I looked. She was dead, but she opened her eyes and stared right into my face. As if she were—”

  “As if she were what, baby?”

  “Accusing me,” he said. “As if it really was my fault she was dead.”

  21

  Night riding again.

  Empty Sunday, Gallagher staying home with his family this weekend, and the restless need for motion prodding him back into the Mazda, the security of metal and leather and chrome, even before it got dark. Around and around Los Alegres until nightfall, then out onto the freeway. Friday night it’d been south, San Francisco, San Jose, Stockton, Oakland. Tonight it was north, up through Santa Rosa. Missile hurtling through the dark, lights blooming and dying, blooming and dying, laser-beam slices and neon flashes and little winking pinpricks like fireflies, like holes burning in black suede. Radio playing “Since I Met You, Baby,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Yesterday,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “Rocky Mountain High,” “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” “For the Good Times.” Every song reminding him of Annalisa, the life they’d had together, until Garth Brooks’s “Night Rider’s Lament” came on and made him smile a little. Thinking part of the time—Annalisa, Gallagher, half-formed ideas that weren’t ready to jell yet. Rest of the time not thinking at all, just driving, listening to the music and watching the night unfold.

  Straight up Highway 101 past some place called Cloverdale, west on a back road to Boonville, north on another one to Ukiah, north again to a junction, quick stop for gas and coffee, then east on another twolaner into Lake County, Porno County, all the way around Lake Porno. Dark water out there flashed the night at Clearwater Lake into his mind. Fourth date with Annalisa. Long drive, different roads and terrains, fast for a while, slow for a while, and he’d started wanting her more than he’d ever wanted any woman. Wanted her from the first time he saw her, but it was love and sex all mixed together this time, the long night ride and her sitting there beside him and the scent of her perfume a
nd her body like some kind of aphrodisiac. Excitement building in her, too, he could see it every time he glanced over at her. She’d moved close to him, warm hip touching his, soft breast pressing his arm, heat climbing and climbing until it gave him a hard-on. Same kind of thing for her, she’d told him later, making her wet and tingly all over, making her want him as much as he wanted her.

  Finally he’d stopped the car on the lookout above Clearwater Lake, nobody else around, moonlight splashed on the mountains and trees and water and sky. Soon as he shut off the engine, they were kissing. Couldn’t shuck out of their clothes fast enough, he couldn’t get inside her fast enough, they couldn’t come fast enough, and at the same time, too, everything just about perfect even then.

  I love you, Annalisa. His first words to her afterward.

  I love you, Nickie. Without missing a beat.

  Next day, first thing next morning, he’d gone out and bought the ring and then gone to her apartment and asked her to marry him….

  Back on the state road now, heading toward Williams and Highway 5, letting the good memories and the music flow through him. Hardly any traffic—after midnight by then—and the night empty and black. Then there was a burst of light as he came around a curve, somebody with his brights on and driving too fast, road narrow here, and the lights veering suddenly into his lane. He swerved, the lights veered back just in time. Close. So close the two cars nearly scraped sides as they tore past each other.

  Didn’t bother Nick too much after his pulse rate slowed down. He’d had close calls before, two or three. Drunks, tired people, people in too big a hurry, damn-fool truck jockeys on speed—night rider’s hazards, you just had to accept them. Only one accident in the thousands and thousands of miles he’d logged in his life, that one nothing but a fender bender up in Idaho, not his fault, not much damage, cops hadn’t even been called and everything settled on the spot with the other driver.

  Crazy. Crazy that he burned up the highways and back roads, wore out eight or nine sets of wheels, and all he’d ever had were a few close calls and the one fender bender, and Annalisa’d gone out to the store one snowy January night, only a six-block drive, and look what’d happened to her. Wasn’t right, wasn’t fair, odds were all wrong, but there it was. Where the hell was the sense in a thing like that?

  Wasn’t much sense in anything, the way it seemed sometimes. Everything random, lot of crazy luck good and bad. Bad luck that Annalisa’s car had picked that night to break down, bad luck she was in the wrong place at the wrong time a few minutes later. Good luck that nothing had happened to him on the road, that he’d been in the right place at the right time last Thursday afternoon when Gallagher showed up to meet his girlfriend. You couldn’t do much about it either way, bad or good. Let it happen, take advantage of a situation when you could, don’t worry about it when you couldn’t.

  Williams coming up. Better head south on Highway 5, head back to Los Alegres. Be at the auto court by four, get three or four hours’ sleep. He didn’t have to be at the Goodwill until nine tomorrow.

  Funny, but he wasn’t tired. Work all day, drive half the night, and he was still wide awake. Good, keen edge hadn’t worn down much at all.

  On the radio now, Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” He’d never understood that song when he was living in Denver, back when everything was right with Annalisa and him. Now he did. Now, alone, driving, holding on to the night, he knew what every word of it meant.

  22

  Jenna called early Monday morning.

  He was on edge as it was; the sound of her voice honed it. Bad weekend. He’d had that same nightmare twice, the disturbingly altered one where the bloody Rose opened her dead eyes and stared at him, and he’d drunk too much in a futile effort to blot it out. The constant grinding ache behind his eyes had been there for days and was only partly hangover. And now Jenna.

  “Well,” she said, “you are in residence. I thought you might’ve gone on a trip somewhere.” Soft tone but without the purr; with a veiled sharpness instead. Like razor blades hidden in silk sheets.

  “I’ve been busy. It’s that time of year.”

  “Yes, Cam, I know. We’re busy up here, too.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “I almost called you at home on Saturday,” she said.

  His left hand, resting on the desk blotter, spasmed involuntarily. He lifted it, held it out; watched it shimmy slightly. “Why would you want to call me at home?”

  “Not for the reason you think. You remember that man in the Hotel Paloma bar? The one who was watching us?”

  “What about him?”

  “Have you see him again since that night?”

  “No. Why?”

  “He was in the hotel bar again Friday night. Watching me this time.”

  “… Are you sure?”

  “Sure it was the same man? Yes. Sure he was watching me? Yes. Bryan noticed him, too. I was there with Bryan and Dennis Frane and his wife.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He could feel his nerves crawling under his skin.

  “I would’ve confronted him,” Jenna said, “but he left before I could. Bryan stopped me from going after him. I wish he hadn’t.”

  “Why would you want to confront him?”

  “You know how I feel about weirdos, Cam.”

  “Maybe he just finds you attractive.”

  “It wasn’t that kind of watching. He’s up to something.”

  “Come on, Jenna.”

  “I want to know what it is,” she said. “I should think you would, too.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “It was you he was staring at hardest the first time.”

  “I don’t know about that. And I wasn’t there Friday—”

  “Don’t be an ostrich, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Jenna … what’s the point of getting worked up over some harmless guy you’ve seen twice in a bar?”

  “How do you know he’s harmless?”

  “I don’t know it, but I’m assuming—”

  “Yes, well, I’m assuming he isn’t.”

  “On what grounds? He hasn’t done anything to you, or to me. People look at each other, it’s not a crime.”

  “It is if he’s a stalker, a rapist. I know what I’m talking about, Cam. It happened to me once before.”

  “You were stalked, raped?”

  “Yes. Let it go at that—I’m not going to relive the details with you. You’re certain you haven’t seen that man in the past ten days?”

  “Positive.” His mouth was dry. I need a drink, he thought. Nine-thirty in the morning, and already I’m lusting after a martini. “What do you want to do about this, Jenna? What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing,” she said. Something new and unpleasant seasoned her voice, like a rancid buttering. Disgust? “I simply wanted to make you aware of a potentially dangerous situation.”

  “Okay, I’m aware of it. I don’t happen to agree, that’s all. Do you mind if we discuss something else?”

  She said, “Right now we don’t have anything else to discuss,” and broke the connection.

  He tried to get back to work, but he could no longer concentrate on the proposed new list of Oregon state regulatory requirements he’d been studying. The conversation with Jenna kept replaying in his head. Stalked and raped … a hell of a thing, an awful thing. It explained her hard-core fascist outlook, but it didn’t mean her interpretation of a stranger’s looks and actions wasn’t colored by paranoia. Rape victims were often paranoid about men, strangers, and who could blame them? Still, this man hadn’t bothered her in any way, by her own admission. And that stuff about the man staring hardest at him—

  The blue Mazda on Crackerbox Road, the one that had followed him back to Los Alegres.

  Christ, he thought, the same man? No, of course not. Somebody who happened to be going where he was, a simple coincidence. And even if it was the same man—

  Even if it was—

  Dang
erous to him? Nonsense. Dangerous how?

  Dangerous why?

  23

  Farmer’s name was Kells, Joe Kells. Old guy, past seventy, beanpole thin and spry for his age. He reminded Nick of his old man. Same body type, same stringy cords in his neck. Big difference was, Kells liked to hear himself talk, and the old man’d never said more than ten words a day to anybody if he could help it. Didn’t have any friends, didn’t even leave the farm much after Mom died. Nick never could get close to him, hadn’t felt much when the heart attack killed Pa two days after Nick turned seventeen. Only three people came to the funeral, one of them the prairie neighbor who bought their land on the cheap. Neighbor said to Nick after the service, “Good man, your father. Just didn’t fit comfortable in the world.”

  Say the same thing about Tom Hendryx’s son.

  He don’t fit comfortable in the world anymore.

  This guy Kells owned a place out in the country west of Los Alegres. Truck farm, vegetables and alfalfa. Decided to clean out his low-lying barn, he said, “before El Niño hits and floods it again like last time.” Called up Goodwill, and Nick and his helper, Eladio, went out to pick up the stuff Kells was donating—old gas range that still worked, kitchen table and chairs, swamp cooler, bunch of tools and odds and ends.

  Kells insisted on helping them load the truck. He talked the whole time, hopping from subject to subject. Seemed to have a good memory and said he’d lived in the area all his life. So Nick picked his spot and primed him about Gallagher. He’d taken to bringing up Gallagher’s name, asking questions, every chance he got to work it into a conversation. Picked up a few things here and there, most interesting a hint of something that’d happened to Gallagher’s parents a long time ago. If anybody knew the details about that, he figured maybe it was this old guy Kells. And he was right.

  “Sure, I know Cam Gallagher,” Kells said. “Not to speak to, we don’t travel in the same circles, ha ha. Just by what I hear. Family used to be important people around here. His grandfather was mayor of Los Alegres in the forties. Didn’t know him, but I knew his son, Paul. Paul was a lawyer, too. Did some legal work for me back in the sixties, land deal that got bollixed up and he straightened it out, saved me close to three thousand dollars. Poor bastard didn’t deserve his fate, but hell, how many of us do? Cam Gallagher’s the last of the clan. Well, except for his sister, and Paul’s sister, Ida—”