“Anyway,” Pete continues. “Wasn’t it sometime years after, after Our Blessed Martha was stabbed by a, what you try to tell us? A robot?” The whole bar laughs, except for Kyle, who is still glaring at the TV or Kemper, or Pete or George. It’s hard to tell the angle of Kyle’s sightline, given the shadows of his exile.
George rolls his eyes. “Here we go. Go on then, get it over with. Go on with what you got to say, Pete.” These muggers are never going to believe George’s amazing true tales. And a robot did stab Martha. But whatever. “Whatever, Pete, whatever. Go on then.”
Pete, chuckling, says, “Hold on, hold on,” and takes a massive gulp of his rum and coke. It might be his tenth of the night. “Oh boy, George, you and your tales. So was after Blessed Martha, I know, but you come in a night after a blizzard just like this. And ho boy, did you lay one fresh pile of shit on us. I’ll never forget. You ever gonna forget it, Kemper?”
“Hell no,” Kemper yells, while setting down George’s extra-cheese slider.
“You ever gonna forget, Sue?” Pete says, swiveling to see a woman, sitting at the end of the bar, her designated townie seat. She has the frown lines of a lifelong smoker, and, incongruously to this deep dark forest of a troll bar, wears a shiny green sequined tank top.
“I ain’t ever gonna forget it, Pete. Neva,” Sue says. She tips her own rum and coke at George in salute. George tips back, even while he rolls his eyes, annoyed they don’t believe his true tales, but also willing to take a ribbing. He is, after all, a lover in his hot-furnace lumberjack core. And what none of these muggers knows is, he can, when he tries, be an actual poet. But whatever. Whatever. Let them roast him. He can take it. Because tonight is the night for telling Karen, no matter what. Ten years he’s been lonely, without his blessed Martha. It’s time for love again.
“Hey, I know this tale, Pete. Let me tell it,” annoying mountain staffer Bob interjects. Bob is sitting in one of the green booths. Kyle is still glaring at the news, or at Pete or at George or at Kemper, it is so hard to tell. George doesn’t want to call Kyle out because that would only escalate whatever it was it seemed Kyle wanted to previously escalate. George thinks it’s best to let the regulars roast him, finish his night breakfast, and get to the mountain.
In the background, the news has shifted from dystopia-level storm reports to the dominating news story of the last few weeks, the one George was listening to in his truck. All about some sick human-body filet artist that the authorities can’t seem to identify or catch. “The Spine Ripper is believed responsible for an alarming eight unsolved murders this winter thus far,” the newscaster says.
But the regulars are well into a communal story, and the news has to rise to the level of Mount Washington blowing and revealing herself to be a secret volcano for these muggers to quit a communal story.
“Go for it, Bob,” Pete blesses, ignoring the news. “Go on, tell that wild George tale.”
“Right, right. So, was a blizzard just like this,” Bob says, picking up the thread. “George here, he had the cold side of the mountain that night. I had Front Face. Anyway, we all worked all night. The next night, we’re back in here rearing up for another long night shift. George comes in. This George right here, you, George,” Bob says, pointing at George.
“No shit, Bob. I’m George,” George says, shaking his head to Townie Pete to indicate his opinion that co-worker Bob is daft.
“So, you, George, you’re a friggin’ kick. You pop in here, all big guy chest out, blustering about how on the cold side of the mountain, come 2:00 a.m. the night a’fore, a pack of coyotes comes up and surrounds your snowcat. Yipping and barking at you mad. And they’re threatening and jumping up and snipping away at the door and all, so you’re holding it tight.” Bob stands from his green booth and reenacts George’s first reenactment. Bob is pulling and pulling on air as if holding closed the door to a snowcat. “So, then, you say. Then, you notice that the alpha was standing directly in front of the point part of your plow blade, and under a full moon, which was blurry white, what with the snow. I remember you gave that detail, George. You’re good, a good storyteller, yeah. Anyway, that alpha bitch coyote stared at you as if a snorting bull, getting ready to charge one of them there marionettes with the red cape.”
“Oh my fucking hell, it’s a matador, you idiot. Not a marionette,” George says.
The bar laughs. But Bob is not derailed. He laughs himself and continues. “So anyway, Madam Coyote Bitch is about to charge and have her pack charge when a bark from behind her made her turn her head. Up steps Blessed Martha’s hound Cope, you said. Her very dog who ran off to the woods when she was stabbed by a robot, oh my Lord in Heaven, that’s what you claim. You hadn’t seen Cope in years, until that night with the coyotes. Seeing Cope, you near passed out. You got out of your cab, threw Cope an eggs-n-bacon, because you say you always carry a “pocket snack” from the bar, and Cope, well Cope she damn well took it! Cope growled at the coyotes, who hurried up behind her and waited. Cope was always a smart hound. And then, snap, the pack fled, along with Cope. You said your Martha was looking out for you is what. Oh what wild bullshit, George. A hound and coyotes living together. What extraordinary bullshit, you blubbering romantic.”
The entire bar is roaring now. Except for Kyle, who continues glaring on at the television, or at Pete or at George. Can’t be Kemper this time; Kemper’s shuttled to a somewhat hidden corner with the fireplace to add another log.
“Oh my God, George. Oh my God. And then, then, you say, up on a crest under the blurry moonlight, Old Cope, that magnificent hound, howls at the moon.” Bob pauses to howl at a fake moon in the bar, “Awhoooo.” He sits back down in his green booth, knuckles his table, and says, “Shit, George, it’s amazing you survived. Good thing you can communicate with animals. Sure as fuck can’t talk to a human woman no more. Amiright, y’all?”
“Hell right. How long you been crushin’ on Karen, George,” Kemper asks.
“Bite me,” George says.
A log rolls in the fire and embers sizzle; the flames jump at the fresh air and lick high against the brick back of the fireplace.
George takes a moment to look around at the crowd as they break off in diminishing laughter. He notes Kyle still staring at him, or Pete or overhead to the TV. Not laughing along.
“There was that other time,” Townie Pete says, twisting around in his bar stool to face the crowd, which causes all interior noise, except the crackling fire and the TV voices, to cease. Pete continues, “It was come this last here spring, what was it? This spring, I think. When the rivers were bloated and freezing ass cold. George comes in and says how he passed a bare-naked-ass man, bathing in the river, right off the main road. Great straight out in the open. Had himself a towel wrapped ’round his head like a lady out of the shower, was that it, George? And a body brush and all, scrubbing his pits. His dangler was free out in the freezing cool air.”
Bob, the daft co-worker, rises again from his green booth, thrusts his groin forward, and wiggles his fingers over his crotch, pantomiming along to Pete’s rendition of the story.
Pete chuckles at Bob and his finger dangler and continues his roast. “Everybody knows a fool would freeze his literal balls off in such arctic water. George gives us all these crazy details about how the dangler guy looked like a snowman, with a round bald head on a round neck on a round torso with round arms, round legs. ‘He was a person made out of snowballs,’ George here told us. Can’t be true,” Pete says. “Ain’t nobody else report such an insane sighting.”
“To Tall Tale George,” Sue yells.
And the entire bar, except for Kyle, raises their beers and rums and cokes and coffees to George. “To Tall Tale George,” they yell.
Except for Kyle. Kyle glares on in the same direction he’s been glaring since he sat.
“Gruesome remains of Middle Tech college student, Christine Heilan, found this morning by Tyson’s fishing hole. Her body had been, like others, split up the middle, her spi
ne removed, and a fishing hook left in her lip,” the news says.
“Why the fuck they give us these details?” Bob yells, flinging his arm in accusation at the television.
“Because it’s after fucking midnight is why,” Kemper says. “They give more after the babies are in bed. I’m putting the Pats back on.”
And to this, the crowd cheers.
Kyle stands, throws cash on the least-favorite table, and walks out.
George waits several minutes for Kyle to leave and tilts his face to Kemper with a bemused look. “So the new guy’s a bit of a…what would you call it?” George says.
“He’s a stalka, that one, alright. I’d watch that one,” says Sue, answering for Kemper. Sue’s the Richard’s Village townie who reads tarot cards for tourists. “He’s not right in the noggin’,” she adds, tapping her temple. Sue’s a New Englander through and through, several generations deep of Yankee blood, so thick, seven heirs more and living in Texas would still carry her accent of dropped r’s and long a’s. And like any soul stitched out of old Vermont sticks and true Vermont stones, Sue knows a thing or two or ten about witchcraft and judging who’s worth your time and who can disappear down a running river. In fact, when Sue voices her opinion on anyone it’s rare, but always right. And to her pronouncement about Kyle, several men in the bar say, “Ayup.”
George considers Sue’s words and nods a couple solemn beats at her. Her throat and chin are uplit in a tint of green from her sequined top, like she might, indeed, be a true witch.
He ticks his tongue as a way of saying he agrees with her.
“Alrighty then, I’m off. Big blizzard night. Gotta get em’ powder perfect for the morning rush,” George says, standing and extracting his Duck Hunters’ Guild wallet. He throws a twenty to cover his $12.00 worth of finished food and coffee and a takeaway breakfast sandwich, which Kemper, without having to be asked, tosses to George. George pushes his thermos for filling, and Kemper obliges. George tells Kemper to keep the change.
Everyone quiets and stares at the screen when an alert sounds the “Breaking News” alarm—which must be fucking huge if the station would go so far as to interrupt this famous Pats’ game. The newscaster narrates along to a sketch now being shown. “Just in. A woman who claims to have escaped a man who kidnapped her and her friend, and who she watched slice her friend on the bank of Poison River, in the manner we’ve previously reported on other victims, has provided this sketch.”
“Oh my gawd,” Sue says in a hush.
“What the fuck?” Bob says.
Kemper, who tends to be the most sane and most sober, and therefore generally regarded as the genius of the bar, looks to George and says, “Hold up, George,” stopping George, who’s standing now and about to push in his stool. “That your man? Your snowball man, bathing in the ice river?”
George looks up to see a sketch of a man with a round bald head, round neck, round torso, and round arms, just like he saw, the one bathing in the bloated spring river.
“Holy shit,” George says. “That sure does look like him.”
“You gotta call the Staties, George? Let ’em know?” Kemper says, but with questions littering his words.
Several people in the bar mutter, “What?” with scrunched brows, questioning whether any of George’s tales could possibly have an ounce of truth.
“No fucking way that’s George’s phony bologna bare-ass snowman,” Pete says, to which daft Bob scoffs and laughs, but with less assuredness than when he told his own George tale.
George considers their comments while looking at the screen. He takes his filled thermos as Kemper hands it to him, turns, and walks to the door. He knows he saw a bare-ass man made of a stack of circles bathing in the river this last spring, just like he said, but these muggers always make him question his own tales. I know what I saw. Right?
Anyway, whatever, whatever! He yells at his own mind. You can think more on it as you snowcat tonight, don’t listen to these muggers putting doubt in you. Focus on the plan with Karen. Tonight is the night no matter what!
As George goes through the motions of slipping back into his spikes and Richard’s Mountain coat, placing his eggs-n-bacon pocket snack and thermos in coat pockets, and walking to his truck, he sets his intention on Karen, but also on the lost love in his life. Ten years ago, George had love in his life. Ten years ago, in fact, he was with his beloved Martha, a fellow Vermont duck hunter who he’d met in the guild.
One day, after one year of dating and duck hunting together in Vermont, George bit his bottom lip, as Martha perused used copies of poetry books in New York City’s Strand Bookstore, where they liked to go on mini-weekend vacations to browse poetry, for Martha, and mysteries and thrillers and fishing and hunting guides for George, and also for Martha. And sometimes historical fiction, if it involved tales of royalty. To them, amongst the “eighteen miles of books,” as the Strand advertised, they felt they were in a “heavenly displacement.” Yes, indeed, the Strand for them was a celestial atmosphere that allowed for a feeling of floating above the otherwise green-shining, leaf-littered, snow-packed, streams-rushing, beautiful but predictable, seasonal cycles of home-base Vermont.
On this day in the Strand with Martha, having near bit through his bottom lip, Martha pulled from a shelf a rough-leather copy of Emily Dickinson poems, which copy George knew she’d pull, for he’d planted it there. He’d previously rushed in ahead of her, saying he had to find a bathroom, and in the process and hurry he accidentally stomped another man’s foot. He was so nervous and wanting to surprise Martha so bad, he simply couldn’t stop to help or apologize. His entire attention became laser focused on his mission with Martha.
And there’s something in George’s subconscious about all of this, the rushing, the foot stomp, that has always been an unsettling undercurrent to him. For he shouldn’t remember that part at all, but he does. And today, in walking in his spikes in a blizzard back toward his company truck, that beginning part, the rushing and colliding with another in the Strand, is strangely clear as a bell.
But George shakes away strange thinking and continues on in his remembrance of Martha. Steeped now within the outside world of the blizzard, a howl of wind greets him, or some howl. Cope? Nahh, just the wind. It ain’t Old Cope. Can’t be still out in the world, no, not Cope. I miss you, Cope. I miss you, Martha.
George walks on in the onslaught of snow. He walks slow, safe, in his grip shoes.
Back in that high emotion day in the Strand, as he knew she would, when Martha flipped to the copyright page to check the copyright date in the planted leather Dickinson, for she had a collection to curate, Martha gasped. Therein, written on Richard’s Mountain letterhead, was this note:
Martha,
Live, extended
in this heavenly displacement
in this 99th way
in this run of ducks;
In our pages of,
crimes of love
tangled by, magnificent lies—
devil-tooth spies
slick guys and Queens.
I love how you love them
Hover above the tree lines
and gorge streams;
Rise beyond their laws and their lessons
Engraved for those, stuck in snows,
Hiding in grasses,
deep treads in spring mud
Float in our world of lawless reigns
on page prints with cracked spines
Our time or no time
In book aisles,
By wolf dens,
Bar stools and dog walks
I ask thee,
Please save me.
Marry me,
George
It might not have been worthy of Dickinson, but it was nature centered and spoke of the freeness that love brought. The protection. He’d wanted to throw into a magical maelstrom all the locations where they loved being together, Vermont, duck hunting, walking Cope on mountain trails, the Strand, in books about all kinds of
tales, as if some gravity-free, magical heaven in which they lived, always in love’s safety.
Anyway, this was his intention, a rather subjective inspiration he gleaned in sneaking reads of Martha’s Dickinson collection, after Martha fell asleep at night. This proposal, this very poem, was a full year, night after night, in the planning and editing and fretting he’d be able to rise to the exalted pedestal Martha deserved.
He watched while she read, her eyes widening in surprise.
He held his breath.
Martha looked up, at first in a stare, no smile.
And then, Martha smiled. Martha broke down and cried. Martha said yes, and Martha gasped, and said yes, yes, yes, a gorgeous, unending song of yesses.
“This is the best poem ever written in the history of all poems,” Martha said through yesses and tears.
They forehead-to-forehead rolled their heads together in the poetry section of the Strand; Martha clutching the proposal note to her heart, and George clutching the Dickinson to his heart. George swears that in memory of this moment, a blackness, or a presence, some something was watching them with evil eyes, in the shadows of the perpendicular stack. He swears he felt that evil presence exactly then, and not in retrospect, after what happened to Martha four hours later.
George is five feet off his truck now, and those four lines he drew on the side are all gone. The Richard’s Mountain decal has been re-covered in side-swept sticky snow. Drifts of snow lean half-up the chained tires, and the white roof of the truck has its own flat hat of snow, as does the hood. So isn’t it odd, George thinks, that his footsteps are still visible by his driver’s door?
Those aren’t my boot prints.
George quick presses the unlock button on his universal company fob, yanks open his door, and his heart fills with fire. Raging, wild, destructive fire.
Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: A Suspense Magazine Anthology Page 27
