The Best American Noir of the Century

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  “My name’s Iris,” she said, wrapping her arms across her chest, shifting her weight from foot to foot, shivering in the autumn chill.

  “Mine’s Marsh.”

  “You look tired.” Her concern seemed genuine, his common symptoms for some reason alarming to her.

  “I am,” he admitted.

  “Been on the road long?”

  “From Seattle.”

  “How far is that about?” The question came immediately, as though she habitually erased her ignorance.

  “Four hundred miles. Maybe a little more.”

  She nodded as though the numbers made him wise. “I’ve been to Seattle.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ve been lots of places.”

  “Good.”

  She unwrapped her arms and placed them on the door and leaned toward him. Her musk was unadulterated. Her blouse dropped open to reveal breasts sharpened to twin points by the mountain air. “Where you headed, Marsh?”

  “South.”

  “L.A.?”

  He shook his head. “San Francisco.”

  “Good. Perfect.”

  He expected it right then, the flirting pitch for a lift, but her request was slightly different. “Could you take something down there for me?”

  He frowned and thought of the package on the picnic table. Drugs? “What?” he asked.

  “I’ll show you in a sec. Do you think you could, though?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, I’m kind of on a tight schedule, and ...”

  She wasn’t listening. “It goes to ...” She pulled a scrap of paper from the pocket of her skirt and uncrumpled it. “It goes to 95 Albosa Drive, in Hurley City. That’s near Frisco, isn’t it? Marvin said it was.”

  He nodded. “But I don’t...”

  She put up a hand. “Hold still. I’ll be right back.”

  She skipped twice, her long skirt hopping high above her boots to show a shaft of gypsum thigh, then trotted to the picnic table and picked up the bundle. Halfway back to the car she proffered it like a prize soufflé.

  “Is this what you want me to take?” he asked as she approached.

  She nodded, then looked down at the package and frowned. “I don’t like this one,” she said, her voice dropping to a dismissive rasp.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it isn’t happy. It’s from the B Box, so it can’t help it, I guess, but all the same it should go back, I don’t care what Marvin says.”

  “What is it? A puppy?”

  She thrust the package through the window. He grasped it reflexively, to keep it from dropping to his lap. As he secured his grip the girl ran off. “Hey! Wait a minute,” he called after her. “I can’t take this thing. You’ll have to ...”

  He thought the package moved. He slid one hand beneath it and with the other peeled back the cotton strips that swaddled it. A baby—not canine but human — glared at him and screamed. He looked frantically for the girl and saw her climbing into a gray Volkswagen bug that was soon scooting out of the rest area and climbing toward the freeway.

  He swore, then rocked the baby awkwardly for an instant, trying to quiet the screams it formed with every muscle. When that didn’t work, he placed the child on the seat beside him, started the car, and backed out. As he started forward he had to stop to avoid another car, and then to reach out wildly to keep the child from rolling off the seat.

  He moved the gear to park and gathered the seat belt on the passenger side and tried to wrap it around the baby in a way that would be more safe than throttling. The result was not reassuring. He unhooked the belt and put the baby on the floor beneath his legs, put the car in gear, and set out after the little gray VW that had disappeared with the child’s presumptive mother. He caught it only after several frantic miles, when he reached the final slope that descended to the grassy plain that separated the Siskiyou range from the lordly aspect of Mount Shasta.

  The VW buzzed toward the mammoth mountain like a mad mouse assaulting an elephant. He considered overtaking the car, forcing Iris to stop, returning the baby, then getting the hell away from her as fast as the Buick would take him. But something in his memory of her look and words made him keep his distance, made him keep Iris in sight while he waited for her to make a turn toward home.

  The highway flattened, then crossed the high meadow that nurtured sheep and cattle and horses below the lumps of the southern Cascades and the Trinity Alps. Traffic was light, the sun low above the western peaks, the air a steady splash of autumn. He checked his gas gauge. If Iris didn’t turn off in the next fifty miles he would either have to force her to stop or let her go. The piercing baby sounds that rose from beneath his knees made the latter choice impossible.

  They reached Yreka, and he closed to within a hundred yards of the bug, but Iris ignored his plea that the little city be her goal. Thirty minutes later, after he had decided she was nowhere near her destination, Iris abruptly left the interstate, at the first exit to a village that was handmaiden to the mountain, a town reputed to house an odd collection of spiritual seekers and religious zealots.

  The mountain itself, volcanic, abrupt, spectacular, had been held by the Indians to be holy, and the area surrounding it was replete with hot springs and mud baths and other prehistoric marvels. Modern mystics had accepted the mantle of the mountain, and the crazy girl and her silly bug fit with what he knew about the place and those who gathered there. What didn’t fit was the baby she had foisted on him.

  He slowed and glanced at his charge once again and failed to receive anything resembling contentment in return. Fat little arms escaped the blanket and pulled the air like taffy. Spittle dribbled down its chin. A translucent bubble appeared at a tiny nostril, then broke silently and vanished.

  The bug darted through the north end of town, left, then right, then left again, quickly, as though it sensed pursuit. He lagged behind, hoping Iris was confident she had ditched him. He looked at the baby again, marveling that it could cry so loud, could for so long expend the major portion of its strength in unrequited pleas. When he looked at the road again the bug had disappeared.

  He swore and slowed and looked at driveways, then began to plan what to do if he had lost her. Houses dwindled, the street became dirt, then flanked the log decks and lumber stacks and wigwam burners of a sawmill. A road sign declared it unlawful to sleigh, toboggan, or ski on a county road. He had gasped the first breaths of panic when he saw the VW nestled next to a ramshackle cabin on the back edge of town, empty, as though it had been there always.

  A pair of firs sheltered the cabin and the car, made the dwindling day seem night. The driveway was mud, the yard bordered by a falling wormwood fence. He drove to the next block and stopped his car, the cabin now invisible.

  He knew he couldn’t keep the baby much longer. He had no idea what to do, for it or with it, had no idea what it wanted, no idea what awaited it in Hurley City, had only a sense that the girl, Iris, was goofy, perhaps pathologically so, and that he should not abet her plan.

  Impossibly, the child cried louder. He had some snacks in the car — crackers, cookies, some cheese — but he was afraid the baby was too young for solids. He considered buying milk, and a bottle, and playing parent. The baby cried again, gasped and sputtered, then repeated its protest.

  He reached down and picked it up. The little red face inflated, contorted, mimicked a steam machine that continuously whistled. The puffy cheeks, the tiny blue eyes, the round pug nose, all were engorged in scarlet fury. He cradled the baby in his arms as best he could and rocked it. The crying dimmed momentarily, then began again.

  His mind ran the gauntlet of childhood scares — diphtheria, smallpox, measles, mumps, croup, even a pressing need to burp. God knew what ailed it. He patted its forehead and felt the sticky heat of fever.

  Shifting position, he felt something hard within the blanket, felt for it, finally drew it out. A nippled baby bottle, half-filled, body-warm. He shook it and presented t
he nipple to the baby, who sucked it as its due. Giddy at his feat, he unwrapped his package further, enough to tell him he was holding a little girl and that she seemed whole and healthy except for her rage and fever. When she was feeding steadily he put her back on the floor and got out of the car.

  The stream of smoke it emitted into the evening dusk made the cabin seem dangled from a string. Beneath the firs the ground was moist, a spongy mat of rotting twigs and needles. The air was cold and damp and smelled of burning wood. He walked slowly up the drive, courting silence, alert for the menace implied by the hand-lettered sign, nailed to the nearest tree, that ordered him to keep out.

  The cabin was dark but for the variable light at a single window. The porch was piled high with firewood, both logs and kindling. A maul and wedge leaned against a stack of fruitwood piled next to the door. He walked to the far side of the cabin and looked beyond it for signs of Marvin.

  A tool shed and a broken-down school bus filled the rear yard. Between the two a tethered nanny goat grazed beneath a line of drying clothes, silent but for her neck bell, the swollen udder oscillating easily beneath her, the teats extended like accusing fingers. Beyond the yard a thicket of berry bushes served as fence, and beyond the bushes a stand of pines blocked further vision. He felt alien, isolated, exposed, threatened, as Marvin doubtlessly hoped all strangers would.

  He thought about the baby, wondered if it was all right, wondered if babies could drink so much they got sick or even choked. A twinge of fear sent him trotting back to the car. The baby was fine, the bottle empty on the floor beside it, its noises not wails but only muffled whimpers. He returned to the cabin and went onto the porch and knocked at the door and waited.

  Iris wore the same blouse and skirt and boots, the same eyes too shallow to hold her soul. She didn’t recognize him; her face pinched only with uncertainty.

  He stepped toward her and she backed away and asked him what he wanted. The room behind her was a warren of vague shapes, the only source of light far in the back by a curtain that spanned the room.

  “I want to give you your baby back,” he said.

  She looked at him more closely, then opened her mouth in silent exclamation, then slowly smiled. “How’d you know where I lived?”

  “I followed you.”

  “Why? Did something happen to it already?”

  “No, but I don’t want to take it with me.”

  She seemed truly puzzled. “Why not? It’s on your way, isn’t it? Almost?”

  He ignored the question. “I want to know some more about the baby.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like whose is it? Yours?”

  Iris frowned and nibbled her lower lip. “Sort of.”

  “What do you mean, ‘sort of’? Did you give birth to it?”

  “Not exactly.” Iris combed her hair with her fingers, then shook it off her face with an irritated twitch. “What are you asking all these questions for?”

  “Because you asked me to do you a favor and I think I have the right to know what I’m getting into. That’s only fair, isn’t it?”

  She paused. Her pout was dubious. “I guess.”

  “So where did you get the baby?” he asked again.

  “Marvin got it.”

  “From whom?”

  “Those people in Hurley City. So I don’t know why you won’t take it back, seeing as how it’s theirs and all.”

  “But why ...”

  His question was obliterated by a high glissando, brief and piercing. He looked at Iris, then at the shadowy interior of the cabin.

  There was no sign of life, no sign of anything but the leavings of neglect and a spartan bent. A fat gray cat hopped off a shelf and sauntered toward the back of the cabin and disappeared behind the blanket that was draped on the rope that spanned the rear of the room. The cry echoed once again. “What’s that?” he asked her.

  Iris giggled. “What does it sound like?”

  “Another baby?”

  Iris nodded.

  “Can I see it?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like babies.”

  “If you like them, why won’t you take the one I gave you down to Hurley City?”

  “Maybe I’m changing my mind. Can I see this one?”

  “I’m not supposed to let anyone in here.”

  “It’ll be OK. Really. Marvin isn’t here, is he?”

  She shook her head. “But he’ll be back any time. He just went to town.”

  He summoned reasonableness and geniality. “Just let me see your baby for a second, Iris. Please? Then I’ll go. And take the other baby with me. I promise.”

  She pursed her lips, then nodded and stepped back. “I got more than one,” she suddenly bragged. “Let me show you.” She turned and walked quickly toward the rear of the cabin and disappeared behind the blanket.

  When he followed he found himself in a space that was half kitchen and half nursery Opposite the electric stove and Frigidaire, along the wall between the wood stove and the rear door, was a row of wooden boxes, seven of them, old orange crates, dividers removed, painted different colors and labeled A to G. Faint names of orchards and renderings of fruits rose through the paint on the stub ends of the crates. Inside boxes C through G were babies, buried deep in nests of rags and scraps of blanket. One of them was crying. The others slept soundly, warm and toasty, healthy and happy from all the evidence he had.

  “My God,” he said.

  “Aren’t they beautiful? They’re just the best little things in the whole world. Yes they are. Just the best little babies in the whole wide world. And Iris loves them all a bunch. Yes, she does. Doesn’t she?”

  Beaming, Iris cooed to the babies for another moment, then her face darkened. “The one I gave you, she wasn’t happy here. That’s because she was a B Box baby. My B babies are always sad, I don’t know why. I treat them all the same, but the B babies are just contrary. That’s why the one I gave you should go back. Where is it, anyway?”

  “In the car.”

  “By itself?”

  He nodded.

  “You shouldn’t leave her there like that,” Iris chided. “She’s pouty enough already.”

  “What about these others?” he asked, looking at the boxes. “Do they stay here forever?”

  Her whole aspect solidified. “They stay till Marvin needs them. Till he does, I give them everything they want. Everything they need. No one could be nicer to my babies than me. No one.”

  The fire in the stove lit her eyes like ice in sunlight. She gazed raptly at the boxes, one by one, and received something he sensed was sexual in return. Her breaths were rapid and shallow, her fists clenched at her sides. “Where’d you get these babies?” he asked softly.

  “Marvin gets them.” She was only half-listening.

  “Where?”

  “All over. We had one from Nevada one time, and two from Idaho I think. Most are from California, though. And Oregon. I think that C Box baby’s from Spokane. That’s Oregon, isn’t it?”

  He didn’t correct her. “Have there been more besides these?”

  “Some.”

  “How many?”

  “Oh, maybe ten. No, more than that. I’ve had three of all the babies except G babies.”

  “And Marvin got them all for you?”

  She nodded and went to the stove and turned on a burner. “You want some tea? It’s herbal. Peppermint.”

  He shook his head. “What happened to the other babies? The ones that aren’t here anymore?”

  “Marvin took them.” Iris sipped her tea.

  “Where?”

  “To someone that wanted to love them.” The declaration was as close as she would come to gospel.

  The air in the cabin seemed suddenly befouled, not breathable. “Is that what this is all about, Iris? Giving babies to people that want them?”

  “That want them and will love them. See, Marvin gets these babies from people that don’t want them, and gives them to pe
ople that do. It’s his business.”

  “Does he get paid for it?”

  She shrugged absently. “A little, I think.”