Cicada Spring

by Christian Galacar

  Carol spun around in her chair, her golden curls sweeping across her shoulders as she turned her head. That night and always, she was beauty’s finest hour, and Sam Hodges couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was he had done to land a girl like her. It was, perhaps, one of those instances where one didn’t question good fortune, only accepted it. All he really knew for certain was that he wanted her to be his forever. In sickness and in health.

  “No, what do you think?” she asked, returning the smile.

  They were young love, still wet behind the ears and all wrapped up in the honeymoon phase of their relationship. There was still so much to discover. There was so much excitement. There was magic.

  “Well, I’m glad you asked,” Sam said. “What I think, my dear, is that I should take us to the drive-in in Agawam and catch a late show tonight. We’re both outta here in an hour, so whadya say, beautiful?”

  “I wish I could. But remember I told you my Nana’s been staying with me while my parents are in Florida.” Carol pouted playfully. “I’m sorry, Sam. It’s only for a few more days.”

  “The more the merrier,” Sam joked, smiling mischievously. Nervous humor. “All three of us can hop in my backseat. It’s pretty spacious. I’m sure we’d all fit.”

  “Gross.” Carol shook her head and laughed. “You know, I wouldn’t put that past you, horndog.”

  “I don’t know if I’d put it past your Nana. I saw the way she looked at me when I met her.”

  “Fresh.” Carol reached up and pretended to slap Sam’s face.

  “Okay, okay, sorry.” Sam surrendered. “Why don’t you come over to my place, then? Just for a little bit? I’ll drive you home later.”

  “I can’t. Her nurse only stays until ten, and I can’t leave her alone. She needs help with things.”

  Sam hung his head in an exaggerated way—a man accepting defeat. “Fiiine. I give up. Next week, though. Next week you’re all mine.” He released the ring in his pocket and pulled his hand out. It would have to wait. And in a way, it was a relief. Not because he was unsure but because the anxious knot in his gut disappeared. It would return, he knew, but for now it was gone, and he could breathe normally again.

  “I promise,” Carol said.

  “I guess I need to find something else to do, then. A date with my television, a six-pack, and my couch, I suppose.” Sam laughed.

  “Hey, that doesn’t sound all that bad,” Carol said.

  “Well it depends on what I’m comparing—”

  The phone rang and Carol held up a finger. “One sec.” She picked up the receiver. “Heartsridge Sheriff’s Department, how can I help you?”

  Sam pushed back out of the window, turned his back, and pulled the ring out of his pocket. He looked at it and sighed, undoing the button of his breast pocket. He dropped it in and patted the pocket thoughtfully. Weren’t the best things worth waiting for? And while he did believe that old adage to be true, he still felt the sting of disappointment.

  There was a tap on his shoulder, and he turned around. Carol was holding the receiver to her chest.

  “It’s Calvin,” she said. “Wants to talk to you. Something about a necklace.”

  Sam wrinkled his face in confusion. “A necklace?”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said. I don’t know.”

  “Oh, ah, okay, put him through to my desk. I’ll grab it there.”

  “Okay,” she said. Then Carol reached out, grabbed his uniform, pulled him toward her, and kissed him. “I swear next week I’m all yours, handsome,” she whispered, then winked at him. She put the phone back to her ear. “I’m putting you through now, Calvin,” she said, and smiled devilishly at Sam.

  He stumbled backwards, reeling from the kiss, grinning stupidly, and banged his shin on a chair. “Next week,” he said. “Okay.”

  The phone on his desk started to ring.

  CHAPTER 26

  Joanna was in the kitchen locking the back door of the diner when the flash startled her.

  Her immediate thought was born out of instinct from years of working in an old building with bad wiring: One of the overhead bulbs in the kitchen must’ve blown again. It happened all the time. But that on-hand idea crumbled when she turned around.

  Bill stood there with his camera clutched chest-high in his hands. Joanna recognized him immediately. The dark beard scruff. The strands of copper hair tucked beneath that tired old Red Sox cap. The ratty, olive-green army jacket. In the past she had thought him to be a rugged but handsome enough man, attributing his unkempt appearance to his being a photographer. Because, well, artists were like that—so caught up in their craft that sometimes they forgot to take care of themselves. It was a novel idea, and one she could relate to quite well when she thought of the rare occasions when she had a day off to work on her jewelry. How sometimes she could wake up before the sun, throw on a pot of coffee, and spend all day soldering stained-glass pendants on her living room floor, never changing out of her pajamas and sometimes never even brushing her teeth. But there was something very different about Bill now. No artist, just a stranger with a camera. She saw it right away. He was there, but he was a different person. There was a dark, shallow look in his eyes. If what her mother had always said—Eyes are the windows to the soul—was true, then the windows she peered into now sat nestled in a vacant structure.

  “Oh… hey, Bill. You startled me,” Joanna said with hesitation, sliding the keys to the diner into her apron pocket. “I didn’t hear you come in. Hope you didn’t come for a late dinner ’cause I’m closing up for the night.”

  What she aimed to say was: Did you just take a picture of me? And what are you doing in my kitchen? Those were more important questions, the questions she really wanted to ask. However, a part of her already knew the answers. Maybe not fully, or clearly, but she saw their shape, the same way you could make out a hand in front of your face in a dark room. And maybe that was why she already felt a cold sweat prickling at her palms and heard a tremor in her voice as she spoke.

  “Hi, Joanna… Jo. Can I call you Jo? I think I really do like that better,” Bill said, then immediately brought the camera up, wielding it almost like a weapon. He took another picture before she could respond.

  The bulb flashed and Joanna was blinded by the blue-white light. “Ah! What the heck? Knock it off. What are you doing?” She bent her neck down and rubbed her eyes with her fists. Her back pressed against the cool steel of the back door. When she lifted her head again, all she could see were two silver spots floating where her vision should’ve been. She looked toward where she’d last seen Bill, blinking hard and narrowing her eyes. She could hardly make out his silhouette, but in the bottom of her periphery, she could see his old, scuffed, leather boots starting to walk closer.

  “You’re perfect, you know that?” Bill said. His voice was low and flat, completely different from the voice he had spoken with in the past.

  Attempting to restore her sight, Joanna continued to blink desperately as she reached out her hands, feeling for the wall, and then trying to move along it. “What’s the matter with you, you fucking psycho?” she cried out. Her shoulder banged into a shelf, and a rain of pots and pans clattered to the floor. For a brief time, the noise blinded her completely, two senses temporarily erased by overexposure. She was completely vulnerable, swinging her arms around wildly. “Stay away from me. Just leave me alone.”

  Then another flash.

  But this time, her head was turned away. She continued around the perimeter of the kitchen, trying to listen for the shuffling of his footsteps. After a few feet, she kicked something, and it slid with a thin scrape across the floor—a long butcher’s knife. She traced the sound and saw it come to rest underneath the sink, spinning lazily on its hasp. The shimmering spots temporarily etched into her corneas from the flash still floated like metal ghosts in the center of her vision… but her vision was restoring.

  “Please hold still, Jo. When you keep moving like that, it’s hard to g
et you in focus,” Bill said calmly. There was an eerie playfulness in his voice, like a cat toying with a cornered mouse.

  How quickly her world had changed. A minute ago she was locking up the restaurant, preparing to head home and curl up on her couch with a glass of wine and her new limited-edition copy of To Kill a Mockingbird (her favorite book). Now she was trapped in the back of the diner with some guy she barely knew—if she knew him at all (in this moment it occurred to her that Bill the photographer from New Hampshire could just as easily have been Bill the rapist from Florida or Steve the murderer from Des Moines)—who was stalking her with a camera.

  Another flash.

  Joanna kept her head pointed away, down at the floor. “Stay away from me. This isn’t funny, asshole. You want me to call the sheriff?” But her threat was so obviously empty. The phone was in the front of the restaurant, through Bill… or Steve… whoever he was. The man with the camera.

  On the heels of this thought, as Joanna continued slowly along the perimeter of the kitchen, trying to make her way to the swinging doors that led to the counter, she acted in desperation, falling to the ground on purpose, and landing with her hand near the butcher’s knife. For a moment she was out of view from Bill, kneeling behind a prep table on the greasy kitchen floor. Seizing the opportunity, she slid the knife into the front of her apron.

  “Jo, where’d you go? I don’t want to hurt you. I only want some pictures.”

  Joanna held a beat longer, staying out of sight behind the table. Her vision was almost completely restored now.

  “Jo… Jo, are you there? Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Bill said. He started to move toward her, no more than fifteen feet away.

  Still she stayed, not ready to face what might be next.

  What if he really was just a weirdo and didn’t mean any harm? What if he just wanted some pictures? Maybe if she obliged, he would leave on his own. Maybe he was just a pervert and wanted something to jerk-off to later. Whackos like that existed, didn’t they? Not as bad as murderers but worse than thieves, somewhere right in the middle, in a place without violence. If she were in better spirits, she might’ve laughed out loud at the naïveté of her thoughts. This guy didn’t want anything short of blood.

  A loud crash startled Joanna, and a stack of plates scattered across the floor. She flinched, holding a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream.

  “Jo! Get the fuck out here! I mean it! Or I’ll gut you right in your own kitchen like a goddamn pig!” Bill shrieked, and then there was another loud crash as he threw a tray of flatware toward her. A few loose spoons and forks came to a rest around her. She rose to a crouch, resting on her toes. Then she slid a hand into her apron and felt the knife.

  “Okay,” Joanna said, and rose to her feet, her hands up at her sides. “What do you want? Just tell me and maybe I can help you.”

  Bill was standing no more than ten feet from her now. “There you are,” he said. “Now hold still.” He brought the camera to his eye, winking the other closed.

  Joanna clamped her eyes shut in anticipation of the flash. She wouldn’t be blinded again. There would be no hope if she couldn’t see. A warm red flash blinked behind her lids. When she opened them, Bill had the camera hanging idly around his neck on a strap, resting against his diaphragm. One hand was dropped to his side, the other tucked in the pocket of his jacket.

  Bill removed his hand.

  It took Joanna a moment to process what she was seeing. Her first thought was that Bill was holding some tool or attachment for his camera. Whatever it was looked metal and hard-angled. Something old but with a purpose. But it didn’t take long—fractions of a second that played like thick, slow minutes—for her to realize, especially when he pointed it at her, that what she was seeing was a gun.

  And its cold dark eye was staring her straight in the face.

  Sam may have been sans a fiancée—for now, anyway—but at least he was finally off work for the night, and that was still something. Better than nothing, he reasoned.

  His shift had ended at nine thirty. By ten thirty, Sam Hodges planned to be halfway through a six-pack of Miller, his feet up on his coffee table and, with any luck, drinking away the dull disappointment he felt over having to delay his marriage proposal. It wasn’t like he’d planned any grand spectacular surprise for Carol that had fallen through. But it also wasn’t just a spur of the moment thing, either. He’d planned, on some level. He’d taken important steps beforehand: obtained a ring, asked her father’s permission (he’d said yes), picked a place to ask her. Sure, the drive-in wasn’t the most romantic place, but it was where they had their first date, and Sam couldn’t help but think that that meant more than nothing. He knew she’d see that, too. So while it may not have been him down on bended knee atop the Empire State building with balloons falling and champagne flowing, it had still stung a bit when it hadn’t happened. But the drive-in wasn’t going anywhere. It would be there the following week. So would he, and so would she. He only hoped his courage would be, too.

  It was safe to say that the first beer couldn’t come fast enough for Sam. The only reason he was making a pit-stop now at the diner and not beelining it to his apartment was because Gaines had called and asked him to stop at the diner to pick up a necklace for his daughter and drop it off at his house on the way by.

  Eric Clapton was well into the second chorus of “Lay Down Sally” when Sam pulled into the diner parking lot and put the Ford into park. He let the radio blare, leaving the ignition on and drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. He didn’t exit the car right away. Sam had a pet peeve when it came to turning off a song midway through. It was a crime on some level; he was sure of it. So he let it play and looked at the stillness of Deb’s Diner.

  The front of the diner was empty. No customers. No waitresses. All the lights were still on. Joanna was probably in the back. Sam imagined he would see her any minute, emerging from the kitchen through the two swinging doors, her arms full of plastic dish bins or some such. She was probably closing up. The sign was turned around in the front door. SORRY WE’RE CLOSED.

  Clapton crooned, and Sam tapped his foot along with the beat.

  Before long, the song faded out and the DJ returned, reminding listeners that Mr. Clapton would be playing a show in Boston in the coming month and tickets were going fast. Sam turned the dial, and the radio clicked off. As if he could afford Clapton tickets. The silence fell over the scene like thick smoke. Sam turned off the car and stepped out.

  The diner remained empty. No sign of Joanna. No sign of anyone. Maybe she’d locked up and forgotten to shut off the front lights. Sure, she’d only been doing the same job her entire adult life and had never forgotten something like that, but maybe tonight was the night she had. Sam pulled on the door handle, expecting it to be locked, but it opened. The doorbells jingled in familiar fashion above his head.

  “Hello? Jo? You here? It’s Sam,” he announced. “Calvin told me he was supposed to stop by earlier for a necklace or something. As you can see, he forgot.” As Sam spoke, he moseyed around the diner, looking at things he had seen in there a hundred times before but had never really looked at: cracks in the floor tiles, stubborn coffee rings on the table, loose grains of sugar on the counter, a water stain on the ceiling.

  But still, there was no answer from Joanna.

  “You here, Jo? Or you getting senile? You forget to lock the front door and kill the lights?” Sam asked, focusing his voice toward the swinging doors behind the counter, the doors that led to the kitchen.

  No answer, but there was a sound—a faint, dull thud and a light clattering. The sound of keys.

  Sam smiled, lifted the counter section, and walked behind to the waitress area. “You hiding back here?” He cautiously pushed one of the swinging doors open. “Can I come back here? I know it says employees only but—”

  She wasn’t there. More silence. The fluorescent bulbs flickered overhead. A slow and lonely sound of water dripping in the
sink. The fresh scent of Bleach.

  “Hell are you?” Sam said to himself, scanning the room. Then his eyes fell on the back door. There was a set of keys hanging out of the deadbolt lock. He walked over to them and went to grasp them, stopping when he noticed specks of blood on a few of the keys. To his left he spotted broken plates and scattered silverware.

  Call for backup, an internal voice urged him. That was standard operating procedure: sign of trouble, call for support.

  But was it really a sign of trouble? A few specks of blood on a set of keys? Some broken plates? She probably dropped a dish-bin and cut herself. It was a restaurant, for Christ’s sake. People hurt themselves all the time in kitchens. Joanna was probably just out back taking the trash to the dumpster.

  Sam hadn’t even realized it, but he’d moved his hand to his pistol, and his body had tensed.

  Realizing this, he unclenched. “Too many movies, Sam,” he said, shaking his head. He took his hand away from his gun and grabbed the doorknob. He twisted and pulled. The door opened into black.

  The back parking lot was a wall of darkness, especially from where Sam stood in the bright light of the kitchen doorway. “Jo, you out here?” he said, narrowing his eyes and using his hand to shield the light.

  There was another sound. Something muffled. Then a grunt and the sound of whispering.

  “Who’s out there?” Sam rested his hand back on his pistol, his heart starting to pound in his chest.

  “Jo, you out here? Is that you?” He took a step forward into the night. His eyes adjusted, but only slightly. The light from the diner poured from the back door, casting his long shadow, framed in the cockeyed canvas of light painted on the asphalt.

  Another muffled grunt, then a hollow thud. The sound of someone being struck.

  “This is Deputy Sam Hodges, come out where I can see you,” he said, lowering his voice. It made him feel a little foolish when he did this, like he was trying to be something he wasn’t.