Accidental Evil

by Ike Hamill

  She saw a boy crouching near the stone wall that divided the parking area from the short stretch of lawn in front of the bait store. He was trying to flick the wheel on a rusty lighter. It looked like trash he had picked up from the road.

  “Peter?”

  He barely glanced at her before he ran.

  “Peter!” she yelled. “Peter Jankovic, you stop right there.”

  She caught him with the order just before he rounded the corner of the building. She strode fast—her mom-in-charge walk—to reach him. He turned to face her. His hands were empty—he had probably chucked the lighter in the tall grass next to the building.

  “Heaven’s sake, Peter, I just wanted to ask you if you’d seen George,” she said. She swallowed as her breath came back to her.

  He shook his head but his eyes darted towards the back of the bait store. Roger’s store had a deck cantilevered off the back that extended over the stream. The kids would sometimes sit in the shade there and cast their lures into the deep part of the channel. Roger’s wife, Lois, hated when they did that. At least once a week a kid would hook a duck by the leg. The result was a hysterical cloud of quacking feathers. It was bad for business.

  “Go home, Pete, I’m sure your grandma is looking for you,” she said.

  “She is?”

  Mary frowned at the boy. He glanced at where he had thrown the lighter and then ran off. He was probably reminding himself to come back for the thing, but he would forget.

  Mary took her time walking down the grass towards the stream. The kids down there were like cockroaches. They could sense an adult coming and they would scatter if she made too much noise.

  She stopped.

  Mary turned around and looked back up the slope. Once she walked back to where Pete had stood, the thing was easy to find. She picked up the orange lighter and held it up to the sun. It was still half full of fluid. Pete had been smart to try to scavenge it. Fireworks were everywhere since the ban had been lifted, but parents had been pretty good at keeping matches and lighters out of the hands of the kids. If Peter did remember to come back for the lighter, there was no telling what he would have blown up later that day—probably his own fingers.

  Mary put the lighter in her pocket and turned back for the stream. She poked her head around the corner of the building and saw her son there. He wasn’t fishing. He didn’t even have his pole. He was just sitting there on a rock, elbows propped on knees, face propped on hands, and staring down at the water.

  “George?”

  He glanced at her and then looked back to the running water.

  “Are you okay?”

  He nodded. His face looked funny with his cheeks all pressed up by his hands. The whole thing would have been adorable if it wasn’t so troubling. George was an exuberant kid. When he was mellow it meant that something was really wrong.

  She ducked under the deck and found a spot to sit down next to him. The structure overhead concentrated the sound of the running water and filled her head with it. It was cool and isolated.

  “Nice under here,” she said.

  He didn’t reply.

  “You want to ride over to Ballard’s with me? The whole car smells like a Christmas tree.”

  He looked at her.

  “Jeremy told me and Pete about Big Jack,” he said.

  Mary blinked and glanced away. Her son had never shown any real attachment to the giant horse. Some kids fawned over him. George had seen him drop a big dump on the road one year as the horse led the parade. Ever since then, her son had always wrinkled his nose when the horse went by. It was the way that everyone else in the parade walked right through the manure. By the time a person darted out to clean it up, lots of people had tromped right through the pile. Mary didn’t blame George for being a little put off. It was kinda strange—George wasn’t at all a squeamish kid—but she didn’t blame him for being put off.

  “Are you afraid they’ll have nobody to lead the parade?” Mary asked. It was her best guess at why the horse’s death had put him into such a funk.

  He shook his head.

  “What is it then?” she asked. It was a funny question—strange to ask someone why death was upsetting—but it seemed reasonable given the circumstance.

  “What about Dad?” George asked.

  “What about him?” Mary asked. It took her a second, but before he could answer, she knew. “Oh.”

  It wasn’t the horse that bothered George. It was what his father always said. The horse had led the parade as long as Mary could remember. The horse farm itself had been through three sets of owners, but Big Jack, the giant white Percheron stallion, had endured as the town’s mascot. He was a fixture. During the parade, someone inevitably asked, “How old is that horse, anyway?”

  Her husband, Vernon, always said the same thing. “Doesn’t matter how old that giant lummox is. He’s gonna outlive me, easy.”

  “George, just because Big Jack died, it doesn’t mean that anything is going to happen to your father.”

  Her son Ricky was just getting to the age where he was starting to critically evaluate things that his parents told him. He was developing his own identity and seeing the world with his own eyes. George was doing that at half his brother’s age. He did it now. He narrowed his eyes and looked at her, deciding if she was right or wrong.

  She wanted to repeat her statement, but held it to herself. She had to let George come to the conclusion on his own.

  “Why do you pray for stuff?” George asked.

  “Because I want it to happen,” she answered.

  “But you said there is no God who will help people out just because they ask for it. You said that people have to make their own luck,” George said. That kid remembered everything when it suited him. He couldn’t close the cap on the toothpaste, but he could quote something she had said years before.

  “Then I suppose that when I pray I’m reminding myself to work for what I want.”

  “Dad prayed that Big Jack would outlive him,” George said.

  “Honey, that wasn’t prayer. He was making a stupid joke.”

  “How is that a joke? He always says the horse would outlive him. Last year he said, ‘I’ll be damned if that horse doesn’t outlive me.’ That’s what he said. He prayed to be damned.”

  “That’s not prayer. There’s a difference. He was using an expression. In a way, he was expressing that he liked Big Jack and hoped he would have a long life. And he did. Big Jack lived a long, long life and had tons of baby horses. You remember when we saw his colt down at the show ring that time. Wasn’t that little horse a hoot?”

  George shook his head. He wasn’t disagreeing; he was rejecting her bid to change the subject. “I think Dad was praying that Big Jack would outlive him. Now there’s nothing to keep Dad alive.”

  “Your father has every reason to stay alive.” She reached out and grabbed his wrist. She didn’t grip him hard, but strong enough so that he would know it was time to move on. “Let’s go to Ballard’s and then when we get home we’ll make meatloaf. You can tell your father to pray for something else over a nice hot dinner.”

  George didn’t smile or nod. He didn’t relinquish any of his points. He did hang his head and come along willingly. She was able to exert herself enough to make him bend.

  Mary led him back to the car.

  [ Drive ]

  She was right about pulling out. She only sat there for a few seconds before some kind soul slowed and waved her forward. Once she was pulling out into the road, the car going south had few options. The man frowned, jerked his car to a stop, and gave her the nod.

  Mary looked in the mirror to gauge George’s mood. It actually seemed to improve as she drove south on 270. He was leaving his worries behind as they rolled with the summer traffic. In the winter time, 270 was their lifeline. It was how everyone got from point A to point B. It was the first plowed, best maintained, and widest road in their little town. In the summer, the locals avoided 270 like the plague. The
y had a network of side roads and driveways that they all used so they wouldn’t have to creep along at fifteen miles an hour.

  Mary glanced down at the speedometer. She was actually only going ten at the moment. To get right to the center of town, there was no choice. The downtown part of Kingston Lakes was built on a thin strip of land between two lakes. The bridge next to the dam was the ultimate pinch-point. Everyone north of the dam who had to get gas or pick up a loaf of bread had to squeeze through that narrow spot and squander a perfectly nice evening that they should have spent sitting on their dock. It was a shame those Summer People spent all that money on property tax just so they could sit in traffic to go get a decent sub down at Damon’s.

  Mary smiled at the traffic. All those out-of-state plates were what made her own taxes so low. Those high-priced camps were paying for Ricky and George’s education. Still, as soon as she got to the West Road, Mary veered off and gunned it.

  She saw him. The red shirt caught her eye and she recognized him immediately. Mary eased off the accelerator and let the car slow down so she could get a good look at Gerard Dingus. His exploits had made him famous in her circles. According to some, he was dangerous and should have been locked up years before. It was only a luck of birth that had kept him out of jail. Half the Sheriff’s Office were Prescotts, and that was a short genetic hop over to the Dingus clan.

  At the moment, the Dingus appeared to be harmless. He was sitting on the railing of the footbridge that led over to the Village Peddler. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Had it not been Gerard Dingus, his presence wouldn’t have bothered her at all. She glanced in her mirror again and saw George looking over at the Dingus too. He was young to be running around on his own, but he was hard to contain. George always seemed to have something to do. Ricky had been exactly the opposite. When Ricky was eight she could have set him down in front of the TV and left him there for the day.

  “You see that guy?” she asked.

  “Yuh,” he said.

  “What’s that mean? Yes? Can you say ‘yes’ if you mean ‘yes’?”

  “Yes,” he said. He was still looking through the window. Gerard Dingus was fading in the rearview mirror as she continued up the West Road.

  “Stay away from him. Tell your friends,” she said.

  “Kay.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Yes. Okay.”

  “Thank you.”

  Chapter 7 : Dingus

  [ Walk ]

  THE VIEW WAS NICE. By that evening, when the sun would set over the distant hills, the view would be amazing. Gerard knew he didn’t have that kind of time. Long before sunset, Trina would come looking for him, or maybe even send the police. They wouldn’t arrest him—he hadn’t yet done anything wrong—but he didn’t want to get on anyone’s bad side his first day in his new situation.

  He swung his legs back over the railing and walked along the path that paralleled the road. A soda or a candy bar would have fueled his walk home nicely. Or a hot dog! He had forgotten to bring along money. Next time.

  He hardly realized he was staring at the woman until she perked up and scowled. He had simply been looking in her direction and he had forgotten to look away. People didn’t like to be stared at. He knew that. Sometimes he forgot.

  She was sitting next to a fence that enclosed the dumpster of a little restaurant.

  He smiled. She didn’t return his friendliness.

  “Hi,” he said, smiling again. From a distance, she would have looked pretty. Her dress was pretty. Her hair was very nice—long and brown with gentle curves. She wore red lipstick that wasn’t too obvious. Closer inspection ruptured the illusion. Her lipstick was chewed away in places. Her right eye jerked with little spasms. There was a stick caught in her hair. Still, Gerard didn’t want to leave her with a bad impression. “Nice day,” he said.

  Now that she was staring at him, he couldn’t look away. Her crazy stare held him. His feet stopped moving and they were in a standoff.

  She began to push up from the gravel, straightening her legs as her back slid up the pickets of the fence.

  “My name is Gerard,” he said. His lips felt weird forming the words.

  “I know who you are,” she said. “You’re one of them.”

  He felt his eyes widen and blood thunder through his veins.

  “What are you talking about?” Gerard managed to ask.

  She extended one of her long arms and pointed her finger at his chest. His eyes were drawn to her thick, yellow fingernail and the bulging knuckles. The finger trembled as her muscles tensed. She looked like she wanted to run forward and stab right through his chest.

  Gerard turned his hips and prepared to run.

  “I know who you are,” she said. Her voice rose with the end of the sentence. “You come down here from the golf course. You’ve been struck by evil lightning and you want to infect the rest of us, don’t you! I’ve seen you boys up there, swinging your clubs around and laughing as the robots take over your bodies.”

  Gerard tried to put a smile on his face. He was usually pretty good at getting along with the crazy types. He spoke their language. He dropped the smile quickly though. She wasn’t a garden-variety kook. This was one of the Grade A crazies. This one shouldn’t be out on the street. She was going to hurt someone.

  He felt pinned to his spot by her pointing finger. It occurred to him that she was advancing. That trembling digit was getting closer and closer.

  “Good day to you, ma’am,” he said. Gerard began a retreat. He started slow but picked up speed as soon as he managed to get his feet moving.

  “I know you!” she called after him. “I know who you are. I can see you. Don’t you think for a second that I can’t.”

  Gerard gathered his wits and turned south. He ran for the road that would take him back to his cousin’s little mobile home.

  Chapter 8 : Yettin

  [ Adrift ]

  APRIL YETTIN WATCHED THE bad man run away. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t disguise himself from her. She had keen vision for them. Her eye was practiced. April imagined the word and saw the final C twisting into an S. Her aunt, Stephanie, would have spelled it “practised.” She always used the S form when she was talking about a verb or adjective, and the C when the word was a noun.

  April couldn’t remember why it was so.

  She looked up and down the road. They were everywhere, and they had hidden her house again. April sighed. They did the same thing almost every day. The house was always findable if she searched hard enough, but she didn’t know why they insisted on hiding it all the time. It was probably to inconvenience her. As long as she was searching for her house, she wouldn’t spend her time uncovering their schemes.

  She looked across the road and saw Summer Folk walking with ice cream dripping down their hands. They were blind to the conspiracy around them. When the robots came down from the golf course, all those Summer Folk would be ground up and then rendered for their fat. And they had plenty of fat for the task. That’s why April kept herself so skinny. She wouldn’t be any use to them if they couldn’t find any fat on her. She strongly suspected that their vision was based purely on fat. Robots would run right into a skinny person. They couldn’t even see a skinny person.

  April shuffled out to the sidewalk and headed towards town. If she started at the dam, she could work her way south, searching for her house. With any luck, she would find it before sunset and then she would be safe while the robots took over the town for the night.

  One of the little Summer Folk waddled up to her.

  April’s eyes grew wide as she regarded the older woman. Usually that was enough to scare them off. Summer Folk didn’t like to be looked at.

  “Excuse me,” the woman asked, “do you know when the parade is?”

  April bared her teeth and then smiled as the round woman backed up a pace. The robots could probably see this little woman from space. She had enough fat for ten robots on her.

 
“The parade?” the woman asked.

  Some part of April’s brain worked independently, decoding the accent. April didn’t remember all the voices she was cross-referencing. She just let it happen automatically until an answer came back. The A in parade had a U sound to it. Her “you” had sounded like “yew.”

  “Gettysburg,” April said. That’s what the back part of her brain concluded, so that’s what she said. The round Summer Folk woman put her hand on her chest.

  “We’re from Hanover, about five miles from Gettysburg. Do I know you?”

  There was that “yew” again. April wondered if it hurt the woman’s tongue to stretch so hard around those weird vowels. New England folks mostly kept their mouths closed when they talked. It was much more efficient and dignified.

  April bared her teeth again. The Summer Folk woman finally got the point. She turned and waddled quickly away, glancing back to make sure that April wasn’t following.

  April scanned the buildings on either side of the road. She thought she spotted her house, but it wasn’t right. There should be a white staircase leading up to her door. There was something about that staircase, too—holes in the treads or something. There were holes for the robots. It was so they couldn’t climb up and infect her in the middle of the night.

  April decided to cross the street. She thought she might have more luck over there.

  She stepped off the curb.

  A bicycle skidded to a stop just before the front tire hit her.

  April looked up.

  “Hey, Ms. Yettin,” the girl said.

  April squinted. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a friendly face. The girl was definitely not a robot, and she wasn’t one of the fat Summer Folk. She was an in-between person—undeclared for the upcoming war.

  “Ms. Yettin? Do you need help?” the girl asked.

  “They moved my house,” April said, frowning. She glanced up and down the street, regarding and dismissing each of the houses she saw.