by Ed Gorman
Could I get up? Drag myself over to Jane in time to help her? Somehow get my hands on Kenny?
I wasn't out long, just long enough for him to carry Jane over to the trapdoor.
She fought him constantly, even using the arm of her wounded shoulder to drive the heel of her hand into his jaw.
But I had recognized the look in his eyes; he was as eager for death as his friends, the rats.
He dropped her hard on the floor, so that her shoulder lay directly over the hole.
The response was instant. A kind of chant, a keening cry unlike anything I'd ever heard before in my life, went up in the old barn, louder even than wind and rain combined, the cry and chant of rats as they are teased with just a few drops of blood falling from above, the same cry and chant of the rats that overran medieval European villages, and that ate infants in the dark impoverished streets of eighteenth-century London.
Kenny smiled at me. "She's really working them up. They love that blood of hers."
He watched, amused, as I drew myself to my feet again. But this time I was so wobbly, I thought I was going to pitch back down again.
Jane, who was obviously losing consciousness, tried to push herself away from the trapdoor, but she had almost no strength left.
Kenny dropped to one knee, jerked her around and shoved one of her legs down the hole.
The cries of the rats came up again as did the scent of their carrion.
They were eager for her, waiting.
And then Jane screamed. She looked at me frantically and shouted, "One of them is on my leg!"
I lunged at Kenny, but he sidestepped me and brought the gun down across my head again.
But this time I didn't drop and I didn't let go. I held onto him as if I'd tackled him. He kept pounding and pounding me with the handle of his weapon but I wouldn't let go, wouldn't let him be free to push Jane down the hole.
Jane screamed again. I turned my head briefly away from Kenny's midsection and glanced down the hole.
Three fat black rats were ripping her leg with almost-desperate joy. More rats were scurrying up the ladder, dozens of them.
The gunshot came out of the darkness with no warning. Jane, Kenny and I had been too preoccupied to hear him come in, too preoccupied to watch him stand on the edge of the flashlight beam, lower his Remington shotgun and take the top off Kenny's left shoulder.
All I knew to do was dive for Jane, pull her leg up from the hole and then grab the furry slimy rats in my hand and hurl them back down into the fetid darkness.
I carried Jane over to the wall, got her propped up and then had a look at her leg. They'd torn the flesh severely, and in a couple of places, you could see where their teeth had literally chewed off chunks of her flesh.
"No!" she was looking over my shoulder when she shouted.
I turned around to see what was going on.
Tolliver, looking curiously composed and wearing, as always, his blue blazer and white shirt and gray slacks and black penny loafers, was lifting his son up in his arms and carrying him over to the trapdoor.
Kenny was sobbing and pleading incoherently, seeming to know exactly what his father was going to do.
Jane cried out again to stop Tolliver, but it was too late. Many years too late.
Tolliver dropped his son to the floor, then knelt down next to him and started pushing him headfirst into the hole.
Despite the fact that Kenny's shoulder had been torn away, he was still conscious enough to know what was happening.
And then he vanished, tumbled into the hole.
Tolliver stood up and quickly closed the trapdoor.
Kenny's pleas and cries filled the barn.
Jane covered her ears as the keening of the rats overwhelmed Kenny's screams.
At least they made fast work of him, Kenny falling silent no more than a few minutes after his father had slammed the door on him.
And then the rats fell silent, too.
And then there was just the sound of the rain, the incessant rain, and the soft whispers of midnight on the cold wind.
Jane was crying, holding onto me as if she were drowning.
Tolliver came over, looked at us a moment, and stooped to pick up his shotgun. "It's over now. And I hold myself greatly responsible. I should have dealt with him long ago." You could hear the tears in his voice suddenly.
"Thanks for saving us," I said.
But there in the darkness, he didn't seem to hear. There was just the sound of the soughing wind and his whisper. "It's over."
He turned, without saying anything more, and walked out of the barn, the shotgun cradled in his arms.
It took me a moment to figure out what he was going to do, but when I did I ran out of the barn, too, out into the rain and the darkness and the wind.
He stood facing the barn, angling the barrel of the shotgun just under his chin.
"Don't do it, Mr. Tolliver!" I shouted, wind making my voice faint and ragged. "Don't do it!"
I ran as hard as I could but I slipped in the mud and just as I was getting to my feet, I saw, through the lashing rain, his fingers tense on the trigger.
The roar of the gun, the kick of it in his hands, the explosion of the back of his head—all happened in moments.
And then he fell forward into the mud, fell on the gun that had served its purpose.
I went over and knelt next to him. The only sound was the rain now. I touched his shoulder and said something like a silent prayer. Maybe he'd been right. Maybe he should have dealt with his son a long time ago, before the boy had killed all those people. But that was easy for somebody to say, and much more difficult to do.
I stayed there with him a little while longer and then I got up and walked back down the hill to the barn.
Jane had managed to pull herself to her feet and was leaning against the wall. She had the flashlight in her hand." God," she said, "I feel so sorry for him."
I nodded. "Poor bastard. But maybe it was the right thing for him to do."
"You want to help me out to the car?"
"In a minute," I said. "Right now I need you to shine that light at the storage box over there."
I'd remembered the mewling sound I'd heard earlier.
There was a padlock on the door to the storage box so I went back and took Jane's service revolver.
I put a clean bullet through the hasp of the lock and moments after I did so, I heard the muffled plaintive cry again.
I opened the door, knowing exactly who I'd find.
Eight-year-old Melissa McNally was in there, bound, gagged, and tied to a chair.
She was dirty and sweaty and bloody where the rough ropes had cut her, and once I took the gag off her she started crying and laughing at the same time, as if she couldn't decide which was the most appropriate.
And then, free of her bonds, I picked her up and held her tight and told her how much her mother loved her and how happy she would be to see her, and then I carried her back to Jane and the three of us set out into the night and the rain and the wind for Jane's police cruiser.
We went on to the hospital, where it was quickly decided that Jane's shoulder wound was bloody but not nearly as serious as we'd feared, though the leg needed a lot of work.
After they'd cleaned the wound and bandaged her up, I went where she lay on the gurney and said, "You look cute lying there like that."
"Yeah, I'll bet."
"You do."
"Well, if you're so sure of that then how about giving me a kiss?"
I smiled. "I suppose that could be arranged."
An hour later, I drove her home.
14
We followed the river, blue and fast in the July sunlight, and then we followed the clay cliffs for a time, angling eastward to follow a half-dozen horses who were running some steep pasture land, their coats shiny and beautiful in the soft afternoon.
I didn't try any fancy stunts today. Three weeks after our night in the barn, Jane's arm was still in a sling, and she tir
ed very easily. Flying upside down probably wasn't such a great idea.
We stayed up two hours and then landed in Herb Carson's small field next to his aviation museum.
"You're going to be an addict by the time this guy gets done with you," Herb said to Jane as he walked us over to my car.
She looked at me and smiled. "That's what I was thinking."
I thanked Herb for the use of the plane and told him I'd probably see him again soon.
I drove us back to town.
"You still going to Washington?" Jane said after we'd been driving a few minutes.
"Next Tuesday."
"For three weeks?"
I watched her a long moment. "That's not a real long time. Not if people talk on the phone every night or so, anyway."
She laughed. "I guess that's right." Then she shook her head and frowned. "See, this is why I'm so rotten about liking somebody."
"You're not rotten."
"Sure I am. I mean, we don't have anything official between us at all, and already I'm complaining about you going on a trip. I'm just too dependent on people. I drove my husband nuts. The poor guy."
"Well, I sort of drove my wife nuts, too."
"You did?"
I nodded. "I'm the same way. Too dependent. She'd go over to Iowa City to take a class, and I'd get all bent out of shape. Feel like I was deserted."
"Hey, you really are dependent. That's just the kind of thing I'd do."
I laughed. "Hey, let's go out tonight and celebrate being dependent."
"You're on."
We had reached the city limits now, the tidy little Iowa town in the early July sunlight, everything clean and purposeful and timeless against the rolling green countryside. Home.
We were silent for a while, listening to a little rock and roll on the radio, and then she said, "Robert?"
"Yeah?"
"You think about him much?"
"About Tolliver?" I said.
"Uh-huh."
"Yeah. I do. Quite a lot, in fact."
"I wish he wouldn't have killed himself. But I guess for him it really was about honor, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," I said, "honor or something very much like it."
We found a Dairy Queen and pigged out.
Bibliography
Bach, Richard. Biplane. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.
Braly, Malcolm. False Starts. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1971.
Dunlop, Richard. Doctors of the American Frontier. New York: Doubleday, 1965.
Dwelle, Jessie Merrill. Iowa, Beautiful Land: A History of Iowa. Mason City: Klipto Loose Leaf Co., 1954.
Earley, Pete. The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.
Jakle, John A., Robert W. Bastian, and Douglas K. Meyer. Common Houses in America's Small Towns: The Atlantic Seaboard to the Mississippi Valley. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988.
Jones, Edward R. Hacksaw. New York: Donald I. Fine, Inc., 1988.
Kessler, Ronald. Inside the CIA: Revealing the Secrets of the World's Most Powerful Spy Agency. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Kessler, Ronald. FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.
Quillen, Jim. Alcatraz from Inside: The Hard Years: 1942-1952. San Francisco: Golden Gate National Park Association, 1991.
Schwieder, Dorothy, Thomas Morain and Lynn Nielson. Iowa: Past to Present: The People and the Prairie. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989.
Silverstein, Alvin and Virginia B. Rats and Mice. New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Co., 1974.
Bonus Story
BLACK SHEEP
1
A good face is important, sure, as are good breasts, nice ankles and wrists, and a tight bottom. Not to mention good breath and not wearing anything flashy or trashy. But you also have to be able to talk to them. A lot of guys forget that. Because, frankly, a lot of guys just aren't as sensitive as Bill Avery. You have to be able to talk to them and they have to be able to talk to you. Especially when your life takes a terrible turn all of a sudden. If you can't talk to the girl you're seeing on the side, you may as well just pay for it and get yourself a hooker…
Today, Bill needs to talk. God, how Bill needs to talk.
The place for the conversation is Tiffany's bed in her apartment in the Windward Hills apartment complex. To Bill, who lives in a very nice new Tudor out in a very pricey new development, this place is sort of pathetic-toilets that won't flush the first time; water stains on the dining room walls; and not a single new car in the parking lot. But he's magnanimous about it. Tiffany is a small-town girl from Oskaloosa who came to Cedar Rapids and went to business school and then went to work for the law firm where Bill is about to become a full partner. He can identify with Tiffany because he came from the west side and went to all the wrong schools and instead of a degree from Yale or Princeton, which the senior partners always discuss proudly, he ended up at the U of Iowa. Nothing wrong with that, of course. A fine school. But still.
So they are in bed-this is after work and he's supposedly working late, that's the word he gave his wife anyway-and it's snowing in the dusk and in the apartment above them somebody is playing Nat "King" Cole Christmas songs and Bill Avery feels very, very sad. So sad, in fact, that he wasn't all that good in the sack tonight.
For which he apologizes for the tenth time.
"Oh, gosh, Bill, I don't expect a stud service."
"But I came and you didn't."
"Well, I remember a night when I came and you didn't."
"You do?"
"Yes. One night when you were drunk."
"Oh."
"So let's just say we're even."
"Really?"
"Sure," she says. "But you really want to talk about your brother, don't you?"
"My brother?"
"Sure. Are you surprised I remembered he was getting out?"
"Yeah. Yeah, he is. The Governor wanted to let a bunch of model prisoners out right before the year 2000. Good public relations and all that bullshit."
"You heard from him then?"
"No. But I can feel him here. You know that feeling? How you can feel somebody in the same town?"
"Oh, sure." She kisses him. She has warm, silken flesh. She is sweet in every sense.
"Who's really pissed is my wife."
"Well, gee, he served his time. And it was just a robbery. Nothing violent, I mean. He served his time and she should give him another chance."
"That's the bad part of marrying into a good family, I suppose."
"What is?"
"Oh, you have to be so concerned what everybody thinks. Sharon's afraid everybody at the firm and all her friends at the country club will find out that I have a younger brother who just got out of prison. That I have a younger brother who's been stealing stuff all his life."
"Oh, this wasn't the first time he stole stuff?"
"No, just the first time he went to prison."
"Oh."
"Kind of a career criminal, then, huh?" she says.
"No, not a career criminal. He just-takes stuff. I mean, it's not like armed robbery or anything." He thinks back. "When we were in grade school, he took twenty dollars from the desk drawer of this teacher. And when we were in high school, he stole a hundred dollars from this cash box at a school dance. And then a year later, he took a couple of real expensive watches from gym lockers at school." He sighed. "Then he took that necklace at Mrs. Parker's. And that's the one that put him in jail."
She holds him. Tightly. "God, you've had to go through so much with him. I mean, both your folks dying when you were only seventeen and you having to raise him and all. I just hope he appreciates it enough to stay out of trouble this time."
He nods. "God, so do I."
"I had a cousin who went to prison once."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh. He worked in a bank and embezzled. Over in Rock Island. It was funny."
"What was?"
"Oh, he was this real straight-arrow when he was in Iowa but as soon as he started living on the other side of the Mississippi-he changed; changed completely. That's when he embezzled, when he moved, I mean."
He smiles. "He just moved across the Mississippi and he changed?"
"I know it sounds weird but that's just what happened. Honest."
"You're nuts, you know that?"
She kisses him again. "Comes from not being very well educated." And laughs. She's much smarter than she seems to realize; and it always makes him feel bad for her, how she's always putting herself down all the time. She and Glen have the education thing in common. At least she went through high school and business college. Glen never even got through high school.
Suddenly, he feels claustrophobic. They're tangled up in covers, their body heat is searing him. He needs cool air. He needs to be alone. He disentangles himself and walks over to the window and looks down at the parking lot. All the clerks pulling in now, their cars heavy with snow on their roofs and trunks and hoods, big lumbering white bears in the cold Midwestern snow-blown darkness. That's who lives here, clerks. Shopping center folks. When Bill was growing up on the west side-God, was it really thirty years ago now?-wearing a tie to work was a big deal. You wore a tie to work you were somebody special. Today, you wear a tie to work it doesn't mean anything. Just ask of the clerks.
The lot is filling up. People are slipping cardboard windshield screens under the wipers. The swirling snow is getting heavy in the burning amber glow of the parking lot lights. All the clerks are hurrying to get inside. He isn't being very nice, thinking of them as clerks.
"You thinking about Glen?"
"Yeah."
"You nervous about seeing him?'
"Yeah."
"He loves you. Remember when you let me read those letters of his from prison that time? He really looks up to you."
"Yeah, he does, I guess."
"Talking about how your Dad would be so proud of you and all. God, I was really crying when I read that, remember?"
