Walking Alone

by Bentley Little

  She handed them back unthinkingly.

  Too shocked to move, too shocked to do anything, both of them watched as a succession of midgets and dwarves rode bareback on dirty wild men. After that, other men, these with large leather straps tied between their legs, were wrestled to the ground by teams of dwarves.

  “Where’s Joni?” Rob asked at one point, and neither said a word, though they both feared that they knew the answer.

  “Time for the roping event,” the announcer said. “We have sixteen contestants in this contest, let’s not waste any more time.”

  A chute flew open, and out ran Joni. She was naked and on all fours, and there was a look of blind wildness on her face. Behind her, another chute opened, and a small man on a miniature horse came bounding into the ring, swinging a lasso in the air. The rope came down over Joni’s head and chest, and the man pulled it tight, sending her flying onto her back.

  He tied his end of the rope to the horn on his saddle and jumped off the horse, pulling two shorter lengths from his pocket. Moving swiftly, he tied Joni’s hands together, then her feet, leaving her struggling on her back on the hard dirt of the arena floor.

  “Two minutes and one second,” the announcer said. “Tied with last year’s best time!”

  The dwarf pulled the ropes from Joni’s hands and feet, untied the lasso and watched as she ran crazily toward the exit gate.

  Teena felt Rob’s strong hand grab her upper arm. “Come on,” he said firmly. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”

  Teena held tight to him as he led the way down the stairs of the grandstand. They walked past the concession booths, out the front gate and stopped. Rob looked toward the contestants’ gate.

  “No,” Teena said, trying to pull him toward the car. “No, Rob. Come on. Let’s get out of here and call the police.”

  He pointed at a uniformed officer patrolling the area outside the gates. “There’s the police,” he said.

  The officer waved at them.

  “I mean in another town. Back in L.A. or Las Vegas. Someplace real.”

  Rob looked at her. “Stay here, then. I’m going in.” He started toward the contestants’ gate.

  Teena thought for a moment, then followed.

  Surprisingly, the policeman standing outside the gate did not question them. They did not have to show passes or tickets or proof that they were contestants. They simply walked through the gate and followed the dirt path behind the announcer’s booth.

  Sitting in two cages, on a loaded truck ready to leave, were Ken and Joni.

  Teena rushed over to Joni. She grabbed the door of the cage, trying to pull it open, but it was locked. “Joni,” she sobbed, the tears rolling down her cheeks, “What happened?” Her friend looked at her in frightened incomprehension. Her eyes were wild.

  “Joni,” Teena repeated. She wiped the tears from her eyes.

  Joni moved to the back of the cage, cowering in fear. She smelled of mud and blood and urine.

  Teena looked over at Rob, who was trying to talk rationally to Ken and having no luck either.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  They both turned around at once. Coming toward them, from the direction of the chutes, was a fat bald man wearing faded Levi’s and a blue work shirt. In his hand, he carried a bullwhip.

  Four solidly built dwarves followed close behind him.

  “Stay away from the stock,” the man said, gesturing toward the cages. His voice was threatening.

  Teena started to back away, trying to drag Rob with her, but he held his ground. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  The man stared at him. “I’m Gil Roscoe, stock supplier. Who the hell are you?”

  Rob blinked. “Stock supplier? You mean you’re the one who does this? You’re the one who—”

  The fat man smiled. His teeth were brown and rotting. “I understand,” he said. He looked at the cages containing Ken and Joni. “You know these people, huh?”

  “We’re going straight to the cops,” Rob said. “They’ll nab your ass so fast—”

  “You know these people,” the man repeated. He shook his head. “That’s too bad. For you, I mean. We can always use new stock.” He motioned toward them with his head, and the dwarves moved forward, running with graceful, practiced ease. Two of them jumped on Teena, tying her arms roughly behind her back. The other two attacked Rob, pushing him to the ground and trussing him up. The fat man opened two empty cages.

  “You’ll never get away with this!” Rob screamed.

  One of the dwarves shoved a sock in his mouth, and the stock supplier laughed. “A feisty one.”

  “They’re hard to break,” one dwarf said.

  “It’s a year until the next rodeo. We did those two in a week. We’ll have plenty of time to work on him.” He held open the cage door as the dwarves threw Rob in.

  The two dwarves who had tied up Teena tossed her into the other open cage. The fat man reached through the wire bars and grabbed her hair. She screamed. He felt her breasts.

  “Healthy,” he said. “Maybe we’ll breed ’em. Or cross-breed ’em. It’s been awhile since we’ve had this many at once. Hell, maybe we’ll start a whole herd!”

  Teena looked toward Rob, screaming his name. Both of them heard the roar of the crowd inside the arena as another event ended.

  “Yeah,” the fat man said. “I think we’ll breed ’em.”

  He slammed a lock on each of their cages, wiped the sweat from his bald head and walked back toward the announcer’s booth to watch the rest of the show.

  THE CAR WASH

  (1987)

  Timmy picked up a rock and turned it over in his hands, examining it, before lobbing it over the low brick wall that surrounded the abandoned car wash. The rock clattered against a cluster of small pebbles on the faded blacktop.

  “Hey!” his grandpa said. “Don’t do that!”

  Timmy turned to look behind him, then glanced away, an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was a horrible thing to admit, but he did not like to look at his grandpa. The old man was really frail, much worse than he had been the last time they’d come to visit. His formerly healthy cheeks now sagged tiredly, as if his face had lost a lot of weight, and his too-large smile seemed almost skeletal. His entire frame looked stooped and brittle, and when he walked it was with the hesitant shuffling of a man in pain.

  Timmy stared down at the ground. He neither knew nor liked this new grandpa, this tired old man who had taken the place of the alert and fun-loving person he had grown up with. He had succeeded for most of this visit in staying with his parents and his grandma, not wanting to be alone with his grandpa, but he had felt guilty about this emotional betrayal, and today he had agreed to walk with him to the store.

  The walk was just as painful as he’d known it would be. He was ten now, too old to fall for his grandpa’s simplistic attempts at conversation, and he could tell that the old man was really working hard to make him happy. He could see the mechanics behind the magic, and he didn’t want to see. He had stepped outside the special bond that had existed between the two of them, and now, try as he might, he could not get back in. Though neither of them acknowledged this change in their relationship, both were aware of it, and that made Timmy feel even more depressed.

  He looked toward the abandoned car wash. He had spent many happy hours in that long narrow building, sitting in the air-conditioned lobby with his grandpa, drinking a Coke and looking through the plate glass as a steady stream of cars passed through the cleaning assembly line. It had been fun. He had followed each car’s progress from a dusty, dirty, old-looking vehicle, through the pre-rinse, through the wash, through the rinse, then back into the open air where it was dried until the chrome and paint shone.

  Now the car wash was empty, its once busy interior dark, its windows broken, obscene graffiti on its brown brick walls. A victim of the times.

  “It’s haunted,” his grandpa said, moving next to him. “You know th
at?”

  Timmy looked up into the old man’s face, and the excited gleam in his eye made Timmy’s gloom abate somewhat. He found himself smiling, ready again to resume the comfortable role of adoring grandson. “Really?” he said.

  His grandpa nodded. “That’s what they say.” He pointed toward the black open square where vehicles had once come out of the car wash. “A few months ago, a kid about your age was found dead in there. His hair and clothes were all gone, and his skin was rubbed raw and bloody. It looked like he’d been through the wash. They even found his lungs filled with soapy water, but the car wash floor was dry and all the machines were covered with dust.” He cleared his throat. “Ever since then, the place has been haunted.”

  Timmy stared at the car wash and tried to imagine the body of a kid lying dead over the track, surrounded by dark and silent machines. He felt a pleasant shiver of fear pass through him.

  His grandpa put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “It’s getting late. We’d better head back.”

  They walked to the house silent but in sync. His parents and grandma were sitting on the porch talking, and Timmy ran up the porch steps excitedly. “Remember that car wash?” he said. “The one around the corner?”

  His father looked at him, puzzled.

  “It’s haunted!”

  His parents laughed, and his grandma shook her head at her husband, just coming up the steps. “Don’t listen to him, Timmy. He’s been on about that for weeks now.”

  The old man stood leaning against the porch railing. “It’s haunted.” He was tired and almost out of breath, but the look on his face was defiant. “I’ve heard the noises myself.”

  Timmy’s eyes widened. “You heard noises?”

  “James,” his grandma said warningly.

  The old man nodded. “It was about a month ago, a few weeks after the boy was found. I couldn’t sleep, and I was standing by the window, breathing the night air. All of a sudden, I heard it. There was a whirr of machinery, the sound of the car wash starting up—”

  “You heard no such thing!” His wife glared at him.

  “I was here when that car wash was built. I know what it sounds like.”

  Timmy’s father stood up. “Dad,” he began, “It could have been—”

  “Don’t patronize me. I’m not a child, and I’m not yet senile. I know what I heard.”

  Timmy stared at his grandpa, proud of the way the fire flared in his features, feeling a strange elation course through him. He had never seen this side of his grandfather before, this willful adult determination, but it was a side he liked.

  “The car wash was working. In the middle of the night. But in the morning, everything was exactly the way it had been the day before.” He looked at his wife. “And you know I’m not the only one who heard it.”

  She shook her head. “You’re impossible.”

  He looked at Timmy. “It’s haunted,” he said.

  ****

  Timmy stood at the open window, listening. Around him, the old house was silent, his parents and grandparents fast asleep. Outside, a half-moon shone down on the empty street, its bluish light comingling with the fluorescence of the streetlamps to create a surrealistic series of double shadows. It was warm out, a typical July night, but his arms were covered with goosebumps.

  He thought of the car wash and shivered.

  Was it really haunted? he wondered. Or was his grandpa just pulling his leg? It would not be the first time his grandpa had not told him the truth. When he was smaller, the old man had told him that rain was God’s pee, that steak sauce was made from squished bugs, that the flu was caused by lying. And he had believed it all.

  But his grandpa had been serious about the car wash. He had even argued with his grandma over it, and Timmy could not remember the two of them arguing over anything before.

  He tried to imagine the car wash in the moonlight. He could see in his mind the shadowed indentations of the long low building, the crumbling bricks and the scraps of twisted metal. He could see the square black holes that had once been windows and the gaping mouthlike entryway.

  And then he heard it.

  He held his breath, not identifying the sounds his ears were registering, yet knowing those sounds could be caused by only one thing. There was a clacking of metal on metal, the voice of an old machine coming to life. Electrical engines whined and keened, gears grinding. Through the still night air came the unmistakable sound of the car wash’s big brush spinning quickly.

  It was true!

  Timmy stood there listening, unmoving, staring at nothing, his mind drifting with the white noise of the working car wash. The cadences were rhythmic, almost soothing, and he did not know how long the sounds continued.

  As suddenly as they had started, they stopped. And it was a minute or so before his brain registered the fact that the car wash had quit for the night. He was about to go back to bed, when a quick movement down the street caught the corner of his eye. He turned to look again out the window and saw his grandpa coming toward the house from the direction of the car wash.

  He was running.

  ****

  Timmy awoke late, long after everyone else was already up. The events in his mind were jumbled, unclear, and he could not remember if he had dreamed them or if they had actually happened. He slipped on a bathrobe, tied it shut and walked down the hall to the kitchen.

  His grandpa shuffled slowly from the sink to the counter, where he turned up the radio.

  “—has not yet been identified,” the announcer said.

  His grandpa looked at his grandma with an expression of triumph. “See?”

  She reached over and turned down the radio. “See what? It was probably an accident. Knock off this foolishness.”

  Timmy sat next to his father at the breakfast table and poured himself a glass of orange juice. He watched his grandpa move painfully across the kitchen, his slippers making loud scratching sounds on the tile, and he remembered the dream he’d had of the old man running down the street. He grabbed the last two pieces of bacon from the plate in the center of the table and turned toward his mother. “What happened?”

  She shook her head, “Nothing, dear.”

  He looked at his father. “What happened?”

  “They said on the news that a little girl was found dead inside the car wash this morning.”

  “It’s haunted,” his grandpa said, and Timmy glanced away from him.

  He no longer liked the look of the old man’s face.

  ****

  After breakfast, Timmy followed his father and his grandpa down the street to the car wash. A crowd had gathered around the abandoned structure, and bright yellow police tape cordoned off the area. Two police cars and several unmarked vehicles were parked in front of the open entryway.

  Timmy’s father lifted him onto the low brick fence, and he scanned the crowd of investigators, policemen, photographers and reporters, looking for a body covered with a sheet. Then he realized that if the death had already been on the news, the girl had long since been taken away.

  His grandpa walked down the sidewalk and tapped the shoulder of a bystander who had obviously been here for some time. “Do you know what happened?” he asked.

  Timmy hopped off the fence and, grabbing his father’s hand, moved closer.

  “Little girl,” the bystander said shortly. “I didn’t see her, but apparently her face had been scraped off. They’re cleaning it off the brushes now.”

  “I always said it was haunted,” a woman in back of them said.

  Timmy recalled sitting in the lobby, watching the spinning brushes taking the dirt off a car’s roof, hood and windshield. He imagined the brushes spinning over a person’s face, the stiff bristles running through hair, cutting into skin, ripping off clothes. He felt cold, chilled, and he glanced toward his grandpa.

  The old man was smiling.

  He looked happy.

  Timmy turned back toward where the policemen were clustered ar
ound a window of the building. It wasn’t possible. He was imagining things. He was overreacting.

  But he had seen his grandpa running—running!—down the street, away from the car wash, in the middle of the night, immediately after the noises had stopped.

  Just after the girl had been killed.

  “Why do you think she was there in the first place?” he heard his father ask. “Don’t you think it’s kind of strange for a young girl to be exploring an empty car wash in the middle of the night?”

  “I don’t think it was an accident,” someone said. “I think someone killed her and left her body there.”

  His grandpa shook his head. “It wasn’t an accident. The car wash killed her.”

  “But why would she even be out that late at night?” his father said.

  Timmy focused on the policemen dusting for fingerprints around the edges of the splintered doorjamb, afraid to look at his grandpa’s face, afraid of what he might see.

  ****

  He lay in bed, the thin sheet pulled up to his chin for protection, listening to the night noises of the house. From his grandparents’ room, he could hear the sound of the bed creaking as someone turned over sleeplessly.

  His grandpa.

  Timmy listened, unmoving, waiting for the moment when his grandpa would get out of bed and walk outside.

  To the car wash.

  His mouth was suddenly dry, and he tried to will saliva back into his mouth so he could lick his lips. He felt almost like gagging. In his chest, his heart was pounding and the sound reverberated in his ears.

  His grandpa got out of bed, and in the silence of the house Timmy heard him put on his pants, shoes and a shirt. Though the old man tried to tiptoe, the sound of his shoes on the wooden floor of the hallway were clear to Timmy’s ears. He heard the front door open, then close, and he hopped out of bed, rushing to the window to see.

  His grandma, her white blouse flapping eerily in the moonlight, ran down the street toward the car wash.

  ****

  The next morning, everything was normal. His parents and grandparents were sitting around the breakfast table, trying to decide if they would go on a picnic today or go out to eat at one of the local restaurants. No mention was made of the car wash.