Just North of Nowhere (10 page)

And there's where the Italian woman goes and puts his bike!

The day had grown Injun Summer warm. What was left of the forest’s leaves, were curled, all color gone, fallen into drifts or floated in still pools along the creek. Small winds flicked the branches of the trees. They tapped and scratched the skin and shingles of the house. The noise carried across the trickle of the streams and shivered Bunch despite Injun warmth.

If she left his damn bike there, it was probably inside, now. Was inside. Bunch knew as certain he was of winter coming, spring following, the damn bike—HIS damn bike—was inside the damned place. What the hell! That bike was a plain useful thing, and it was, by God, his! Earned!

He slid down the bank, trotted to the water's edge. “Radio, too!” he said.

Morning was still bright on his side of the river. Mud squeezed between his toes as he waded. The water was not cold, having worked a slow river-mile from town through the sun in the flats.

“Hey,” he called to the place. Day was darker across the water in the shade of the bluff; it was cooler in the breath of the deep forest. “Hey,” he called again.

His voice came back from the trees in a dozen busted pieces. Big wings went flapping in the woods.

“I don't know what you think, there, but you know I ain't letting you keep that bike,” he said. “I fixed a car for it!” he added in case anything was keeping score.

A sharp quack of guitar and accordion came from the house. Far away in the forest, something called out.

The path to the porch was dry and sandy. A few smooth pebbles pressed into the sandy ground when Bunch put feet to them. Felt good under bare feet.

From its side of the river there was nothing strange about the place. Closer he got, the more like an old shack it looked, the sweeter got the radio music. Music from his radio. Warm air came off the place. Even the high sun seemed cool, the world chilly, compared to the warmth coming from the place. The light from inside got red and flickery like a good fire. No, fewer and fewer funny things there were about the place, closer he got.

Through the almost open door Bunch caught a glint of bright metal.

“Cripes,” he said aloud. “I am getting old and odd...”

Around the sides of the place the thicket of tall autumn flowers breathed such a sweetness: a little like good sweat and a little like...well, he didn't want to say what! An easy wind – one he didn't feel – made the flower heads bob: orange and russet nods, green hands waving. And they were! They were kind of lovely with their own nice smell and pretty petaled faces, green welcome waves.

Maybe, he thought, maybe he'd take some down there to Crista- what’s her name? He'd get his bike in a minute—and sure, there it was, inside, across that red, red porch and through the little open door—inside that sweet old warm house was his bike. He'd walk in and get her, nothing strange this pretty early autumn morning, and on his way back, he’d pluck a few bright flowers for the lady. And now, now he was looking close, damn, the place was showing a lot more solid than from across the creek, that other side. It did. It looked like it
could
be made up pretty good.

He squinted with thinking as he figured. This might be a good place to settle, grow some things out back. Clear the stumps – work he always liked – put in some corn, tomatoes. Some spuds. Other things. And that music! That music sounded like a good day's work in the sun, sweat rolling off him, a good smoky fire in the cool of night, after, all the good things promised by the job, waiting at the cool end of day. And good food, strange food that ate good! He could carry a lot of beauty on that pretty bike, his bike, carry fall flowers on his bike, his music streaming around him all the way down Slaughterhouse to Cristobel's stoop. Her name: Cristobel Chiaravino.

Before he knew what, Bunch was on the porch. The house wood was warm and giving under his feet. His feet, clean, now, and the skin soft from his walk across the warm cool water of Papoose creek and the cleansing pebbles of the path. The wood – the wood of the porch, the walls, the place – was from another place; not Bluffton-milled. Nope. Whiter, this stuff was, where it was white, and redder, more fragrant, where it was red.

The door widened. “Come on in, why don’t you?” it damn near said. Across the room, there, his bike shivered, its chain rattled, tires squeaked against the floor. Happy to see him, Bunch figured. The radio purred and its music danced the air between them.

Damn if it wasn't all so pretty. The world was filled with pretty, the air with sound, smell, and the flash of the thin wings of dragonflies and damsels. Bunch barely walked. The room rippled him forward. A fire crackled in the hearth. He reached to touch the bike and it shivered like a nervous mare. Good old bike.

A dragonfly wisped past his nose and buzzed his ear. Bunch reached for it, gently, smiling. It backstroked from him then the pretty thing settled in the air; it hovered above a shadow by the corner. Made Bunch smile. In the shadow sat a pretty fox, a fat red fox.

The dragonfly wings went sudden and swift. Its buzz climbed into a scream that hung in the air.

The fox in the corner twitched as the soft floor lapped and licked its legs. The animal's eyes found Bunch.

“Hey,” Bunch said.

The fox screamed; yelled death at the world. It strained to stand. Its body rippled. Then it settled softly into the floor, rolled like a body sinking in still water, going down without a bubble. Like that, the pretty fox vanished a half-inch, then another and another. When the critter rolled again, Bunch saw shiny wet red stumps and white bone, cut smooth where legs and haunches should have been. From where its furry belly should have been, blue and silver guts uncurled across the floor. The floor ate and the fox became half-a-fox, then no fox at all. Then its spilled out guts, were gone too.

The hovering dragonfly settled on the mantle. Vanished like/that! From legs up, melted to sizzling nothing like an ice cube on a griddle.

A half second later, Bunch felt the tingle in his feet. Big soft needles pushed at his soles, first, like coming back from being asleep. Then the sharpness, the heat, barefoot in hot roof tar!

Bunch had plenty of scream left.

The damn radio, too. It yelled and yelled, like someone inside was torturing the orchestra slow and just for fun. And the damn bike chattered like a haunt rattling its chains!

Bunch yelled again and the dream of pretty was over. He tried to turn, to run for the door.

Nope. The floor slobbered up his ankles and took hold. Where the soft planks lapped him, his skin felt cold, felt hot, felt sharp, dull, and wet all at once.

Walking was no use. Pulling one foot up, pushed down the other. Walking wouldn't work!

Standing still didn't help, either. The longer he stood, the deeper the pain reached into the meat of him. Second on top of second, the foot-asleep feeling got more muscle to it. Pretty soon, he figured, the pins and needles were going to be big shrieking hurts. Soon both feet would be, what did they call it? Appetizers. Soon after that, the rest of him would be meal and desert. Bunch: soup to nuts. Dinner for a damn, house! He could not have that, no sir!

He tried to jump, to reach the roof beams.

The splintery joists heaved out of his reach and the floor nibbled higher on Bunch's feet.

The floor he was sinking into...

Okay, call it what the hell it was: the damn house’s tongue! The tongue he stood on and sank into lapped higher, sucked his pantsleg. It didn't hurt or even tingle where it snatched dungaree, but Bunch felt it gum the cloth, gnawing, feeling blind for skin and meat, blood and bone.

About then, the ceiling started shifting shape and color. The wooden beams and stringers he’d reached for, wetted up, thinned out, stretched and reddened until they looked like raw ribs after the flesh was gnawed. The joists dissolved into the walls. The walls bowed out like a skin balloon, a what-do-you-call-it? A bladder.

Walls, roof and tongue, the insides of the place were starting to show for what they were. Bunch knew he was in a critter: a mouth – maybe a gullet, maybe a gut!

He didn't want to go further with the maybes. He was in trouble was what he was in, and that was sure.

The house – the critter – rolled, tossed and smoothed itself. It went tight, then churned loose, wrinkled. The sun shone through the silver blue veins of the walls, the walls stretched like cow guts by firelight.

All the pretty scents the shack had breathed, luring him here, were gone too. The place stunk like a meat fart. The stench licked inside Bunch's nose and reached down his throat to his gut.

Bunch shuffled himself around. Seen from inside, the doorframe was lips. Of course it was lips! Lips wet and getting wetter. They puckered toward him like a boar hog slobbering up for a kiss. The threshold peeled into jagged teeth and rotted tusk.

Bunch shuffled around again. On the back wall, the fireplace and chimney had softened to a soot-black hole. The hole opened, squeezed shut, opened again, then shut. Bunch had seen a cow’s ass do that and that's all he thought about that.

Between him and the house’s clenching butt hole, his bike shivered. The frame and handles, the plastic fringes trailing off the grips, glowed in the sunlight that filtered through the blue-white skin of the place. The bike bucked and pulled, shook and rattled on chewed up tires. The radio warbled, dying. A good country tune blared too loud and too shaky. The floor gnawed toothless on the wheel’s rims and spokes and what was left of the tire rubber. Least the damn house wasn't having any luck eating the bike.

Damn, there it was! There was the answer. Okay, Bunch said and jumped – fell forward more like; lunged as good as he could toward the damn bike. If he fell and missed, he figured, the critter would be all over him in half a breath and done. That would be it. If he fell, he'd had it.

He fell.

. . .and grabbed the bike's handlebars and frame on the way down.

Wrenched by the floor, the bike pulled back. The house tried to snatch the bike out of Bunch's hands. Bunch stretched: his feet hauled one way by the critter's tongue and his arms and body yanked the other way by the bike.

Letting go would be pretty stupid, Bunch figured, so he didn't let go. He grabbed tighter and tried walking, hand over hand, away from his own bare feet, gnawed and sucked on by the house's stomach juice. If his hands slipped, if his shoulders gave out. . .

They didn't. The house gave one last tug to snatch Bunch from the bike, he held on for life and with a soft wet suck his feet slipped from the floor’s tongue.

Bunch flipped head over ass and landed, gut-over, across the bike. From there he scrambled, keeping his feet off the floor and inched his tail onto the seat.

He was not the world’s best biker, but now he kept his balance, kept it as best he could, wiggling one way, waggling the other. Through it all the radio shouted. Now it shouted an ad for a health club in Cruxton. Bunch wasn't interested. Damn good radio, putting up with this.

In a bit, the rolling, reaching tongue eased its grip on the bike bit by bit. In a couple minutes, Bunch found himself wobbling and waggling to keep standing-still, upright, his feet off the floor. By then the tongue was looking more like pale wood floor. The ceiling had settled back to being wooden ribs and the soot black pucker hole at the tail end of the place? Well it relaxed into being a fireplace and stopped doing whatever it had tried to do before!

Bunch reached down with one foot, then the other, and touched the pedals. The bike wiggled side to side. Desperate – now kept upright less and less by the floor’s grip on the metal rims and more and more by Bunch’s bad balance – Bunch nudged the right pedal.

They moved. An inch. Another. He pushed with his left foot. They moved a foot, then another. The bike crept toward the door, waggling fearsomely.

By then the door looked more like wood and paint and only a little like pig snout, slobber and tusk.

Bunch reckoned if he pushed too fast, the damn house would grab hold and turn to pure critter again; swallow radio, bike and him altogether, spit out what it couldn't swallow, crap what it could. He was not going to end up house shit!

Bunch was not good with time, but the radio man in Cruxton kept counting it out for him: It took a good half-hour to make the twelve feet to the door, steady pedal shoving and even fiercer wiggling. By then, the place looked and smelled pretty much like a nice little shack in the woods, a place somebody might fix up pretty, a body like him, a place a woman might even. . .where he might even. . .like he ought to stop this indoor biking stuff, step down and rest a bit, consider the future!

Without thinking, Bunch sprung and tossed himself through the door. He rolled across the porch, tumbled down the step in one long leap, flop, roll and scrabble! He was onto soft sand and damp cool pebbles! Morning light washed over him where he lay. His feet felt like they’d walked a slow mile of hot rock. His body was all over one big brush burned bruise, he dripped sweat and grease but he was outside the inside of the critter house and rubbing himself happy.

From where he sat, Bunch considered.

He considered ax. He considered fire. He wished dynamite. He relished all manner of destructions onto the place.

The place shivered, sucked in, a balloon tire oozing flat, collapsing on itself. As it wheezed, it exhaled a stink breath, once live things now dead and gone to rot.