Midnight Rain

by Newman,James

  My heart slammed in my chest. I swallowed a lump in my throat, but it just seemed to grow twice as large.

  After a few seconds I realized that Henry had not seen me. He appeared to be in his own little world, and his strut across the parking lot had not faltered in the least the closer he got to me. I exhaled loudly, forced myself to start walking again when I realized he had not seen me, but just to be safe I veered off toward the left side of the lot to prevent crossing into Henry’s line of sight. All around me, tires hissed on wet pavement and shopping carts creaked like ancient beasts made of steel as business continued booming at the Big Pig on into the twilight. I kept my eyes on Henry Baker the whole time, however. I watched as the sheriff’s son approached a Ford pick-up parked crookedly in a space designated HANDICAPPED PARKING ONLY. He whistled as he walked, and I recognized the tune as Deep Purple’s “Smoke On the Water.” His truck was the same make and model as the one my brother owned, but Henry’s was the color of diarrhea, and something about that made me chuckle beneath my breath as he opened the door and climbed inside.

  By the time Henry started up his vehicle, and it rumbled like something with a bad case of indigestion, I had reached Burner. I grabbed his handlebars, swung one leg over his seat, but I didn’t take off just yet.

  As thunder rumbled in the distance, somewhere beyond the foggy gray peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains, I stood there staring at Henry’s silhouette behind the wheel of his truck. His head jerked upward several times fast. Even after his tics had passed, and his head was still, Henry just kept sitting there. His truck idled noisily, but he did not back out of his handicapped parking space.

  What was he doing in there? I wondered.

  Primping. He was primping in the rear-view mirror. Licking his fingers, fixing his hair. A quick sniff at his armpits.

  Finally the truck’s headlights came on. Henry took a second to roll down his window before pulling out of his parking space. I could hear Ted Nugent singing “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” on the radio.

  Tentatively, Burner and I rolled forward, off of the sidewalk and into the Big Pig’s FIRE LANE.

  I knew it was risky. Knew I would most likely regret it…yet I had to know what he was up to.

  Henry glanced in his rear-view mirror one last time, baring his teeth as if to make sure there were no unsightly pieces of food stuck between them, and then his truck headed out of the Big Pig’s parking lot. He squealed his tires as he pulled onto Brady Boulevard, and the sound was like a woman’s high-pitched scream splitting through the dusk.

  “Let’s go, Burner,” I said, and then we were off too, following the Ford down the highway.

  I coughed as Burner and I cut through the thick blue cloud of smoke left by Henry’s display of automotive machismo. I pedaled as hard and as fast as I could, trying to catch up with his truck but at the same time making sure I kept a safe distance behind him.

  After a few minutes my heart raced and my thighs began to burn with the flames of exertion, yet nothing could have stopped me from finding out where Henry Baker was going. What he was doing, and why he looked so eager to get there.

  I had to know whom those flowers were for, if it was the last thing I ever did.

  ****

  He didn’t go far. Henry’s truck turned left at the end of Brady Boulevard, took a sharp right onto Simms Lane, and about five minutes later took another right onto a road called Bartleby Drive.

  Henry cruised slowly down the block, his brake lights flickering now and then like bright splashes of blood amidst the gathering darkness. The sound of the Ford’s tires on the rain-slick road was not unlike a lecherous whisper in the night several hundred feet ahead of me. Finally, the pick-up pulled to a smooth stop at the mouth of a cul-de-sac, before a two-story house with beige siding and brown trim. KELLOGG, said the name on the mailbox out front. A giant Winnebago the same color as the house glistened wetly in the blacktopped driveway (a vanity tag on the back of it read HWYQUEEN), and on the front porch a mobile of wind chimes tinkled in the evening’s chilly wet breeze like long metal fingers playing an invisible xylophone.

  Henry checked his hair again in the truck’s rear-view mirror before he got out and slammed his door.

  He jogged up to the beige house, the bouquet of carnations he had purchased at Betty’s Flower Shop in hand, and ascended the steps of the porch in two quick, long-legged bounds.

  He took a deep breath before knocking on the front door.

  I noticed his head jerked upward three times fast while he waited, as if in premature greeting of whoever might come to the door.

  A minute or so later he knocked again, glanced back over his shoulder toward the road as he did so.

  I gasped.

  Fortunately, he had not seen me. Burner and I had darted behind a large pine tree on the opposite side of the street as soon as Henry’s truck had stopped, and I savored those next few minutes during which I was able to catch my breath. From the thick black shadows beneath that tree I stood over my bicycle, wondering what Henry Baker was up to while I gripped Burner’s handlebars so tight their hard rubber grips felt like handfuls of needles against my palms. I barely even noticed the fat drops of rain dripping from the leaves onto my head, even after my hair was plastered to my skull and the dirty water trickled down my cheeks like frigid sweat without the salty smell.

  Henry raised one pale fist to knock again when the patio light came on.

  The door opened.

  I rolled forward several feet atop Burner and squinted, trying to see whom it was Henry had come to visit. A feminine voice. Their muffled salutations drifted toward me in the night from across the road, yet I couldn’t quite make out everything they said. Something from Henry about “sorry I’m late,” maybe, an exclamation of “they’re lovely” from her when he handed over the carnations, but I couldn’t be sure.

  A few seconds later, though, I did get a good look at Henry’s friend…when she crossed the threshold and leaned into him for a deep kiss.

  She was at least a head shorter than the sheriff’s son, and probably two or three years his junior. She was very skinny, her feminine curves seemingly nonexistent beneath a baggy gray Duke University sweater and blue jeans. Her long blond hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail that dangled all the way down to her tiny butt. While I could not deny her beauty, the girl had applied her dark eye shadow, rouge, and hot pink lipstick a tad too liberally; from the way the patio light struck her face I suspected her too-thick make-up might have been a mask for an imperfect complexion.

  She reminded me, somewhat, of a slightly older, scrawnier Cassie Belle Rourke. With a few more pimples.

  I did not even blink as I watched them. As she closed the door behind her, locked it, and followed Henry Baker to his truck. From my hiding place across the road, however, I did whisper one question that foolish schoolgirl’s way. It came out like a guttural growl, from somewhere deep within my chest…

  “What are you doing?” I asked her, scowling at Henry Baker as he strutted around to her side of the Ford to open her door for her. “Don’t you know what he is…?”

  But of course, she didn’t. Judging from the expression on her face, she was impressed to no end with his chivalry. She didn’t see the way he stared at her ass as she climbed inside the pick-up. She never noticed the way Henry’s left hand balled into a fist several times fast just before he closed her door, as if he were groping for an invisible rope to keep his raging libido from pushing him right off the world.

  Seconds later, they pulled off—but not before Henry had leaned over from the driver-seat to steal another quick kiss from his date—and they headed back toward town.

  I followed them. Keeping at a safe distance once again.

  But not too safe.

  ****

  “He sure moves fast, doesn’t he?” I asked Burner as we zoomed along behind Henry’s truck down Bartleby Drive.

  I was not referring to the speed at which his pick-up cruised through the neighbor
hood, however.

  “He used her up…and he threw her away. Now he’s moved on to another one…that asshole…”

  Burner’s only reply was the steady click-whirr of his recently-oiled chain, the soft hum of his tires atop the asphalt, as I pushed my bicycle to its limit and beyond. My heart raced and fatigue threatened to overtake me as the Ford soon passed out of Midnight’s business district and kept on going toward the county line.

  But I refused to quit. I had to know…

  “Where’s he going, boy?” I asked Burner. “What’s he gonna do this time?”

  Before long we crossed beneath the graffiti-laden bridge that was the old Junction 85 overpass, and Henry took an immediate right onto a lonely back road aptly called Shortcut Drive. A few minutes later he took another right onto Highway 76, and we soon passed the sprawling rust jungle of Old Man Gash’s junkyard in our wake. Beyond its crooked chicken-wire fence the jumbled silhouettes of at least a hundred long-dead vehicles seemed to leer at me with their shattered headlight eyes. My eyes grew moist as I thought about how Deputy Linder had died just two days ago upon this very road. I didn’t know the exact spot where it had happened, of course, but I did not want to know. As I cruised along several hundred feet behind Henry’s truck, beneath that infinite cloak of starless night, I stared straight ahead, refusing to gaze upon anything but the Ford before me.

  Poor Mike. His family. What a waste it all had been…

  I gripped Burner’s handlebars tighter than ever, banished such thoughts from my mind, and forced myself to focus on the task at hand as Henry’s pick-up took a hard curve to the left up ahead. His tires squealed like dying babies, and the thick, pungent smell of burning rubber filled the air.

  For the next few seconds the truck vanished from my sight…

  I pumped at Burner’s pedals more furiously than ever, never letting up for a second despite the agony burning within my thighs.

  “Come on, Burner,” I said, as if it were entirely up to my bicycle whether we caught up or Henry left us in his dust.

  The wind buzzed in my ears, and the sound was almost deafeningly loud. Like a swarm of invisible bees attempting to impede my progress.

  “Come on…we can’t lose him now…”

  Burner shot forward obediently.

  “Thattaboy,” I said. “Thattaboy!”

  We took the curve nearly as fast as Henry had taken it. Burner and I seemed as one, my hands melding into his handlebars and my butt merging with his seat, as we united to prevent inevitable disaster like some bizarre sci-fi hybrid of boy and Schwinn Scrambler. Burner’s tires made high-pitched whining noises and my breath came out of me in a long, slow wheeze. Time seemed to stand still. Finally, though—miraculously—we came out of the curve unscathed.

  As we straightened up, I quickly braked. A bit too hard, at first. Burner wobbled, threatened to spill over. My heart skipped a beat. I eased up on the backwards pressure I exerted upon the bike’s pedals, allowed Burner to decelerate on his own…

  Before us, Henry’s truck had slowed. It sat fifty or sixty feet away, in the middle of the road, its brake-lights glowing ominously between the sheriff’s son and me like crimson fire lighting the way to my doom.

  At some point Henry had rolled down his window, and I could hear Lynyrd Skynyrd on his radio.

  “Hey, little girl,” Ronnie Van Zant queried in his imitable redneck way, “What’s your name?”

  Burner slowed to a smooth stop. Waiting. Not making a sound.

  Had he spotted me behind him? I wondered. Did it end here, on this lonely road where Henry’s father had already cleared up one loose end forty-eight hours before?

  The night seemed to grow blacker around me. Henry’s lights seemed to dim beneath it.

  My ears played tricks on me. I imagined him opening his door, emerging out of the pick-up to confront me at last.

  I held my breath, wished I could stop the frenetic slamming of my heart. Surely he could hear it. Perhaps that was what had given me away.

  I exhaled a long sigh of relief then as the song on Henry’s radio suddenly grew faint in mid-chorus, and the pick-up turned left with a short, sharp yelp of its tires.

  It seemed to disappear directly into the forest.

  “What the—” I whispered.

  Burner rolled forward. I squinted through the darkness to figure out what the hell had just happened.

  Then I saw it.

  A thin dirt road, partially obscured by the woods. KEEP OUT, read a bullet-riddled sign at the mouth of it.

  I frowned, licked my lips nervously, and again resumed my chase.

  Burner and I took off again, entering the woods behind Henry. After a minute or two I was forced to stand atop Burner’s pedals to keep him moving forward, using all of my remaining energy to propel us up a steep incline. Ahead of me Henry’s truck bounced along the winding, rutted path, its shocks squeaking and groaning every few seconds, its tires making low chuffing noises as they fought to gain traction in the sticky red mud. Trees leaned over the road like living shadows all around us, creating the illusion that we were traveling through a long, dark tunnel illuminated only by the blood-red glow of Henry’s brake-lights.

  I didn’t know how much farther I could go. Any minute I knew I would have no choice but to hop off of Burner, walk him the rest of the way up that hill. If I did that, though, I feared I would lag behind and Henry would lose me for good.

  Several minutes later we reached Henry’s destination at last. I somehow managed a sigh of relief amidst my exhaustion as the hill leveled off, and that muddy road widened into a flat dead-end grove surrounded on three sides by a wall of pitch black forest.

  My eyes grew wide as I realized where Henry had brought his date.

  It all made sense now. I should have known…

  Straight ahead, where the woods abruptly ended, I could see into forever.

  Though I had never been there myself until the night in question, I had heard all about the place called Storch’s Rim from older guys like my big brother and his best friend Chris Craven. The Rim was Polk County’s own “Lover’s Lane,” its “make-out spot” where Midnight’s teenage contingent often went to park late at night, where they sneaked away to “get some” (as I’d heard Dan describe it more than once—although back then I always reacted with a puzzled “get some what?”). Every town has such a site, I believe, and the Rim was Midnight’s own rendezvous point for adolescent lovers hungry for sweaty backseat romps and clandestine samples of beer or “wacky weed.”

  Unfortunately, my very first impression of Storch’s Rim was not what I had expected at all. The stories I had heard from Dan and Chris, tales which hinted of a legendary place just outside of town that might have been heaven on earth…

  …they had all been lies, as far as I could tell.

  Frankly, I thought the Rim looked like a frigging dump.

  I scrunched up my nose as I inspected my surroundings, unable to comprehend why people would drive up here to “fool around.” While my knowledge of matters in the realm of love was admittedly quite underdeveloped—to say the least—I could not comprehend how a person attempting to impress his girlfriend could find anything the least bit “romantic” about the area before me. Here and there, strewn throughout the grove, was the detritus of folks who cared about little more than having a good time. To my left lay a crumpled Pabst Blue Ribbon can, to my right a shattered Coke bottle. Directly in my path lay something that looked like a deflated, flesh-colored balloon filled with crusty white spit. Burner and I gave that a wide berth. A few feet from the edge of the forest closest to me lay an empty cigarette pack and a blizzard of flattened butts. On the edge of the forest, sticking to the rocky ground like some off-white fungus growing there, was a pair of women’s panties.

  “Ugh,” I whispered, hopping off of Burner.

  I watched as Henry’s pick-up rolled on toward the edge of the steep drop-off that was the Rim itself, and for a second or two I wondered if the sheriff’s s
on planned to keep rolling forward until he and his date flew right out into the nothingness over Midnight. Finally, though, the truck’s brake-lights flashed one last time, and the vehicle jerked to a stop within a mere inch or two of the thin yellow picket fence which feigned to protect those who came here from certain death.

  Through Henry’s open window, I heard the blond girl giggle.

  “Silly. Stop trying to scare me,” she said, and I shivered. Her voice sounded so, so close in the quiet night air, as if she stood right next to me.

  On Henry’s radio, Blue Oyster Cult sang about how Romeo and Juliet would be together for eternity.

  Far below us, the lights of my hometown resembled a multitude of bright, unblinking eyes in the night. Only in the center of it all did darkness reign, as if God had obliterated the lights there with the single swipe of some gigantic celestial eraser where the Snake River Woods cut Midnight into two near-symmetrical halves.

  Henry killed the engine. Cut his lights. His radio grew silent.

  I froze. The quiet seemed to descend upon Storch’s Rim like a heavy blanket. The only sounds were the urgent chirping of a million crickets in the thick brown weeds upon the hillside, the lonely whisper of a soft breeze wafting through the nearby treetops. In the clouds above town a hint of bright white lightning flickered every few seconds, but no thunder rumbled behind it. As if the storm had considered beginning anew, but couldn’t quite make up its mind.

  Abruptly I changed direction, praying Henry would not see me, as I spotted a place to hide on the opposite side of the grove from which I stood. A large round boulder sat there on the edge of the forest, slightly behind and to the left of Henry’s truck. While I could tell it was only as tall as my waistline or so, if I squatted down behind the boulder I knew I should be safely out of Henry’s line of sight. I hoped. It would have to do for the time being, anyway.

  The rock was as wide as a small car, and decorated with a rainbow of sloppy graffiti (DAVEY Z’S A FAG, GREG-N-CHARMIN 4EVER, BLACK SABBATH 666) that looked as if someone had vomited all over it. I quickly ducked down beneath it, carefully laying Burner on his side next to me instead of propping him up by his kickstand. Just in case. I feared I would have a heart attack if a sudden strong wind came along to knock him over.