The Last Call

by George Wier

  As I stumbled forward into the storm at the Carpin ranch, I thought about dogs. Dogs I have loved and dogs I have loathed. I hoped that Carpin didn’t have any, or on the off-chance that he did, that I’d be able to see them before they saw me. I’ve seen my share of ranch operations, and I never knew one not to have a dog.

  I didn’t relish meeting mindless teeth, blind in the dark and the storm.

  Hank had Dingo. All I had was a.38.

  I put one foot in front of the other as I penetrated the darkness between the house and the fence that held back the brush and the woods.

  Intermittent lightning revealed just how narrow the space was, and for the length of that space I’d be catching the full brunt of the runoff from the roof.

  There were strange, twisted shapes there in the dark. Revealed in snapshot-like images from the lightning, I saw that someone had taken to collecting old kiddie-train parts. Along the fence there was a string of cars, each about eight feet long and three feet high, some of them rusted through in places and starting to cave in upon themselves from decay. Just across from that oddity along the south side of the house and perfectly revealed for an instant of time in a flash of lightning there was the largest Jack-In-The-Box I’d ever seen, all of seven feet tall. Behind it was a huge plastic gorilla with bared teeth sitting cross-legged. Maybe it was King Kong practicing his Zen meditations.

  In a moment I had it figured out. Either someone had been planning a miniature golf course and never got it off the ground, or the same someone had hauled off all the props after the miniature golf course was closed down.

  I looked at King Kong’s teeth and Jack’s smile in the next thrum of lightning flashes and shuddered.

  The way became even narrower toward the rear corner of the house and I could tell that the space opened up back there. Behind all the trash on my right I could see the interminable blackness underneath the house, which was raised up on pier and beam pilings to about my chest height.

  And, all things being both equal and perfect, not ten feet from freedom I heard it above the fever pitch of the storm and the thunder: I heard the growl.

  Maybe I’ve read a few too many Dean Koontz novels, but in the first instant I got the idea that the thing was part human-some kind of mad-scientist experiment gone horribly awry. Then the thing stepped out to fill the last three feet between the house and the fence.

  It was a big animal. By its silhouette I guessed that it was a mastiff. Julie had never said anything about the dog. If ever I talked to her again, I definitely planned to mention that fact. But, then again, there were a good many things that she failed to mention.

  Lightning flashed and the dog took a step toward me.

  The chain from its neck grew taut. It was at the chain limit.

  I took out the thirty-eight. Aimed it at the dog.

  The growl grew louder.

  I didn’t want to kill the animal, but I had decided that I was coming through.

  I hoped no one was home, or that the shot would be taken for thunder if there was.

  The rain runoff from the roof poured down on top of my head, trailed down my arm and spilled off the barrel of the gun I held at hip level.

  I began to squeeze the trigger.

  “Sasha!” A voice bellowed. “Come on!”

  The chain around the dog’s neck jerked back and the growl was cut off. It reminded me of killing a lawn-mower engine.

  The dog was gone.

  I waited, shivering in the cold. I counted slowly from a hundred down to zero, then stepped around the corner of the house and into the back yard.

  I paused, waiting for another lightning flash. One came within a few seconds.

  I caught movement across the way. There was an immense horse walker in the center of the backyard space, and beyond it, a hundred yards away, were the stables. The movement was from the direction of the stables. I wasn’t certain, but what I’d seen in that hundredth of a second could have been a dog’s tail disappearing into the gloom of the stables.

  It wasn’t completely black. There was a utility pole by the parking lot at the other end of the house and it shed pale, electric blue light downward in a cone. There, in main light, were three vehicles. Two of them were trucks. There was a new pickup over there, either silver or white-it seems it’s always impossible to distinguish between the colors in limited light. But one of the trucks I recognized. It was a light-blue Ford F-150 pickup. Someone had replaced the windshield. Other than that, I would have recognized it anywhere.

  “Well well,” I said into the rain. “Old friends.”

  And down at the stables someone turned on all the lights.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I would find out much later what Hank was up to during his and Dingo’s trek through the rain.

  At the bottom of the last hill he traversed he found the south bank of the Red River. A hundred yards down, around the curve of the bank he found a floating dock and a motor boat, which was where he parted with the first of the presents he carried on his back.

  Up the bank, perpendicular to the river, he came upon the darkened exterior of the northern end of the horse stables. After a quick search he found what he was looking for and left another present.

  I wouldn’t know anything about his little Santa Claus-run for another fifteen minutes.

  Time enough for Hank to start the countdown to World War III.

  When the man and the dog were gone I stepped up onto the porch. There was little light inside, but I caught an amber glow from the central part of the house.

  The porch was long and roofed over with tin and so I enjoyed a few moments without rain coming down on my head. There were windows onto the porch. I crept from window to window, trying to see inside.

  At the third window there was a little girl. She sat up on a bed and played with what looked like two Barbie dolls. I had to restrain myself from tapping on the window and getting her attention. But no-I wasn’t ready to do anything to put her in direct danger until I knew more.

  The silhouette of a man passed by the open doorway to her bedroom and I started. Jake, or Freddie. I didn’t know which. Fortunately he hadn’t seen me.

  The house wasn’t clear yet. I needed to rendezvous with Hank before I attempted to get Julie and the kid out of the house.

  I would have to make for the stables. There was someone down there with a dog. Probably it was Archie Carpin, but I had no way of knowing.

  Facing the stables I looked back toward the dark fence line. It cut a hundred yards across the open landscape and again disappeared into blackness to the south of the stables.

  I hopped off of the porch and into the darkness.

  One end of the stables lay in inky blackness. I could smell horses but I couldn’t see any of them. I moved from one stall to the next and listened.

  No neighs or whinnies. No stamping of hoofed feet. All of the horses were gone.

  I remembered: Julie had said that all the men-even the ones who tended the still operation-were at the races. That meant the horses were there as well.

  I wondered where Hank was.

  Suddenly there was a long low growl, growing in intensity. It came from the other side of the stables.

  There was an answering bark. Dingo!

  An instant later there came the unmistakable sound of Hank’s voice: “Git ‘em!”

  I ran down to the center of the stables into the light, cut through the central corridor and out the other side.

  Splashing through water nearly a foot deep in places, I approached the dogs.

  There were strange shapes in the night. The strangest shape of all was the hill.

  It was a manure pile. Perhaps thirty feet long and in places nearly the height of a man.

  A lot of horses had created it over a long period of time.

  As I came around the southern end of the pile there was a flash of lightning, and as if newly created by the storm, a man, standing with his back to me.

  Five feet away from
him was what appeared to be an ancient concrete culvert stood on end, three quarter embedded down in the manure.

  The dark silhouette was Hank, standing there in the darkness.

  Fifteen feet in front of him was somebody else.

  Archie Carpin stood there staring at me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Where’s my money,” Archie Carpin asked me. There was a gun in his hand, pointed down at the mud.

  The two dogs were out there, growling and splashing and snapping at each other.

  “Why don’t you ask Julie,” I said.

  “She ain’t talkin’,” he said. “She must think I’m gonna kill her after I’ve got it.”

  “I wonder why she would possibly think that?”

  “Smart fellah, ain’t ya?”

  “Not so smart,” I said. “Looks like you’re holding all the cards.”

  “I’m holding most of the cards,” he said. “I’ve got the kid and I’ve got Julie. I’ve got Jacob over there covering your partner.”

  I looked. It was true. In the light of the stables I could see Hank’s hands coming up into the air. His backpack was gone. Jake stood behind him, gun raised. Also, I didn’t see Dingo.

  “I’m only missing one thing,” Carpin said.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The money.”

  “What money?” I asked.

  “Where’s the goddamned money?” Archie Carpin screamed.

  There was a sudden screech. One of the two animals fighting out there in the darkness and the mud just experienced the sensation of teeth sinking down into throat, cutting off its last howl. Either Dingo or the mastiff was dead.

  I took two steps forward.

  His gun swung up, pointed at me.

  I laughed. I laughed out loud at him as the lightning played and danced across the sky.

  “What’s so goddamned funny, asshole?” he yelled.

  “You. You and your stupid horses and your screwed-up family history and your pathetic control games. Money is nothing!”

  “If it’s nothing, then maybe you wouldn’t mind handing it over,” he said, and grinned.

  “I can’t,” I said. “You idiot. You’ve already got it.”

  He looked around, then back up at me.

  “I don’t see it,” he said. His smile had taken on the aspects of lunacy. His eyebrows were arched and I could see his teeth.

  “That’s because it’s out of sight,” I told him.

  “Where?” Carpin said. “Tell me, or your buddy there gets it.”

  I looked over at Hank, his hands in the air, a gun pointed at his head. Jake grinned at me, the dark gap where one of his incisors had been lent him the appearance of ignorant evil.

  I looked toward Hank, caught a split-second of his face in that perfectly illuminated world inside a lightning flash. He was smiling as well.

  I remembered. The nitrates!

  “Where?” Carpin shouted.

  “Right there, you stupid piece of shit,” I said, and pointed to the ground at Hank’s feet.

  “The manure pile?” Carpin laughed. “You gotta be shittin’ me.”

  “Not the manure pile,” I said. “Under it. Way under it. The old tornado shelter.”

  Back in High School I did a brief stint on the Junior Varsity football team. In those days we had coaches who weren’t afraid to rub our noses in the dirt when we screwed up, and if you happened to get on their bad side… look out.

  I got on a coach’s bad side once, right in his office. Back then my mouth was a lot faster, sort of like a pistol with a hair trigger. So when I told the coach that maybe he ought to worry a little less about my lack of team spirit and a little more about the rumors of him and Miss Puckett-the young substitute teacher who was being handed around-and about how his wife might react when she found out, the white-headed old pug came unglued.

  He stood up from his chair so quickly and violently that a lynch-pin underneath it fell out and the whole swivel seat and backrest fell over and rattled on the waxed tile floor. He never even noticed. His face was fiery purplish-red, the color of a freshly pulled beet.

  We almost came to blows that day.

  That’s what Carpin’s face reminded me of in the light from the stables and the intermittent lightning. His face was red, just as Coach Looney’s had been.

  “What?” he screamed. “All along? All this time? While those two idiots were chasing her all over?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Ain’t it a riot?”

  Jake started laughing, the laugh of a dullard who has stumbled across some simple yet profound truth.

  “I fucking believe you,” Carpin said. “It’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense. You know why, right? ‘Cause it makes no fucking sense, that’s why it makes sense.”

  “Good,” I said. “Your money is on your property. We can go then.”

  I took a step toward Hank and Jake.

  Carpin’s gun belched flame. A clot of mud leapt up from the ground and swatted me. He’d fired into the ground to my side.

  “Not so fast,” he said. “I can’t let you people live. You know too much. You know about the still. You know about the kid. Besides that…”

  ”What?” I asked.

  “I’ve been waiting to do this since I first talked to you on the phone.” He raised his gun, straight-armed, and pointed it at my face.

  “Good girl,” Hank yelled.

  There was a blur and belching fire. I felt hot air: a bullet whizzing past my cheek just as Carpin’s arm came down under the dark mass of some beast.

  Dingo!

  They were on the ground for a moment, rolling in the mud. Dingo’s teeth tore through wet cloth down into flesh and bone.

  Motion to my right! I snapped a glance.

  Jake moved his gun off of Hank toward Dingo and Carpin.

  “Get it off me! Kill it-KILL IT!” Carpin screamed as he flailed at Dingo with his other arm. In the night, in the mud and rain, in the orange glow from the stable lights and the blue lightning the two of them looked like one single alien thing suffering its final death throes. Like John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’.

  “I cain’t, boss. Ah might hitch’ oo!”

  Hank moved, but Jake brought the gun back to cover him.

  Hank froze.

  At that moment Freddie walked up between us, raised his gun and fired down at the earth.

  And then the heavens opened.

  Beauty can be many things. For me beauty was the mud and earth moving under my feet and an invisible hand forcing me forward headlong; it was a too-bright eruption of light around from behind me; it was objects moving around me like petals of an unfolding flower.

  Beauty was an explosion. And for that briefest of instants I completely understood something-understood it with the perfectness of crystal clarity, so thoroughly got the essence of it that it unraveled before my flight was done. I understood the soul of my friend Hank Sterling. I knew what it looked like.

  Then the back of my head encountered mud and the rest of my body flipped over. The air above my eyes was alive with particles. There were long splinters of wood from the inside of support beams and two-by-fours and they were all flying, migrating outward from the center of the blast. There were large nails and shards of glass and whole saddles, moving, drifting away into the night.

  My ears weren’t working, by my eyes saw everything, captured it all.

  And the lightning dared not strike.

  I rolled over.

  My hand came to rest on the gun in my waistband. I pulled it out. What good was a gun when the world was going ka-blooey?

  I pushed down against the mud. Got up on one knee, shakily.

  Somebody else was trying to get up as well.

  Freddie.

  He turned towards me. Half of his face was gone.

  “Freddie,” I said. “You ain’t gonna make it.”

  His eyes stared into mine for an instant in the glow of the fire that had once been so
me horse stables. I thought he was going to say something-he certainly looked for a moment like a fellow who had something on his mind-then he fell over, face first into the mud and never moved again.

  I stood up, reeling.

  A hand closed around my ankle.

  It was almost too much like the dream.

  Hank, I thought, but when I looked down, it was Archie Carpin. A long, tapering piece of wood was imbedded in his mouth. The point of it had exited well past his right ear and he was strangling on his own blood. Also, he was trying to talk.

  The fingers on my ankle thrummed out a rhythm for a moment and then went still.

  Both Hank and Jake were trying to get to their feet.

  Jake’s gun came up, pointed right at Hank.

  I was cold inside. I’d never known such cold.

  Gun up, I pulled the trigger without thinking. Just looked and then-

  Crack!

  — a spray of blood and bone in another herky-jerky lightning flash.

  Jake began to fall amid another flash

  Crack!

  — and there was fire in the rain, leaping from the muzzle of Jake’s gun, then gone.

  Hank jerked like he’d been hit by a charging bull, fell back into the water with a splash.

  The hand around my ankle thrummed again, almost as if it was trying to tap out a message in Morse.

  I lifted my leg and stomped it, once. Twice.

  There were lights, suddenly, cutting across the nightmarish landscape.

  A pickup truck. It roared to a stop, slewing mud everywhere.

  The front door of the Dodge Ram came open. A cowboy hat with a plastic rain cover emerged. Sheriff Thornton.

  I didn’t wait. I got in motion.

  Around the manure pile and the concrete chimney, the next lightning flash revealed Jake’s body. I sailed over it, my feet splashing into water.

  “Bill!” Sheriff Thornton called out. I ignored it.

  Hank was face down in the mud and the runoff. His face was underwater.

  I grabbed him by the shirt, took one shoulder and rolled him over.