Just North of Nowhere (25 page)

A chill breath blew from the north. The year was getting cold.

“Bastard's gone,” Esther said, sniffing phlegm. “And good riddance.” She filled Vinnie's cup, then Bunch's and cleared the counter next to them. The lunch crowd was drifting in. “Stole fifty bucks and busted my back window.” She piled dishes across her arm and waddled to the kitchen.

“You might spare another chop,” Bunch yelled, “Fixing up after that Goddamn kid's a three-chop job,” he said more to Vinnie than Esther.

“Right,” Vinnie said.

Esther was back. “Yeah,” she said and slapped another sizzling chop on Vinnie's plate leaving Bunch looking two ways once.

Slouching in the prowler on the curve by the drive-in, all Vinnie wanted in all the world was to catch Karl Dorbler doing a little bit, just a mile, over the limit was all! Goddamn, Vinnie wanted to boot that son a bitch off the Goddamned road.

“Language, language...” Vinnie said to the car, “all the time cussing.”

He wondered where on earth the kid was, what he was doing. Three a.m. and Vinnie wasn't too far from wondering just what was the point of it all.

For the best, he reckoned. What the hey would he do with a kid? Take care, clothe, educate the son of a gun? Teach right and wrong and football and shit?

He and daddy were sufficient! The kid – THAT kid – would be okay! But cripes, what about the law? Law says kids had to be tended to and cared for until they're able to tend themselves and “Goddamn it,” Vinnie said aloud, “that makes sense.”

The black air above the trees was only every now and then streaky bright with meteors.
The last of the shower, maybe? Still pretty.
A couple of the things split with what he reckoned was far off thunder, sprayed like a spread of white buckshot over the ridge before fading. His cop-eye clocked the dying star doing a flat-out billion.

He stepped from the prowler; stood in cop mode, eyes on the sky; looking mean and helpless.
What're you doing
, he asked himself?
Gonna pull one over, make it I.D. its damn self or what? Big doofus hick country bonehead cop.

He thought about the book. He thought about Gram. About that ninth kid. He tried to remember what he knew about meteors from high school. Meteors. He kept thinking, but, no, it was just a memory of a memory. Vinnie had never been much in school. Oh, yeah, he remembered! It was a big one of them that killed the dinosaurs. End of the world for them, those huge dinosaurs. Just a meteor or something.

In a few minutes he was stiff at the knees and neck and then was bawling like a Goddamn baby, thinking about his mom, long gone from dad and him, and now dead, he'd heard. Dead somewhere.

Vinnie blushed thinking it, but there it was: these shooting stars were maybe something like tears, her tears for what a waste and disappointment he'd been all the years, since.

The long straight light trails went wiggly and thick with his damn snuffles, the exploding ones became fans of wrinkling brightness through his wet eyes. The earth smelled of damp forest, of earth fumes, and gunpowder and he wondered if that's what those last great dinosaurs had smelled the last day of their world.

Next day, he was over it. Christ, blubbering like a damn sissy!

Bunch woke up. He was at his place, under the bridge, down where Papoose Crick fed the Rolling River. Snow was falling.

Okay.

He sat up and yesterday oozed into his head.

Oh
Cripes!
He was pretty sure the Eelmans, the fat lady, that stuff – whatever it was – from last night – whenever it had been – hadn't been a dream.

Bunch sniffed. Okay. The air didn't stink anymore. He sniffed himself. He didn't stink anymore. The mud under the bridge where he lived had frozen. Yesterday, it was soft beneath the crust. Today it took his weight. The river dribbled by like always, early winter. Morning air was pearly, color of the streak in Cristobel Chiaravino's hair when she combed it just right.

The ashy bole, the one had come blasting off the tree across the Rolling last night, lay snow dusted at the foot of his sack.

Nope. No dream. The cold white ash of the pinewood bole, showed that, all right. Damned thing had come right for him, shot from the tree across the river. Damn tree had always been there, now it was gone; tree had stood forever across the Rolling from where Bunch lived, and there it was: gone, and the bole, laying there at his feet! Putting a couple things together to make another one he was pretty sure the dry thunderstorm part of yesterday hadn't been a dream. Nope.

Darkness had started rumbling early, before he'd put his head down. By and by, a full-out dry thunderstorm was coming through the valley, a real son-of-a-bitch.

Bunch was used to odd. This time of year, lightning was a little odd. Thunder without rain was odd, anytime. A full-blown all-out bang down rip-roar flash-crash and explode-a-tree kind of storm – dry as a bone, no rain, no snow AND this time of year – that was Goddamned peculiar! Anytime. Time to time it happened. It must, or it wouldn't have happened last night. And last night it happened – there was the bole!

In bluff country, thunders mostly stayed in the flatlands, above, like people say. Night before, though, the storm must have gotten itself stuck down in the valley of the Rolling. Goddamned thing had come bouncing like a dam-busted creek along the rocky walls of the valley, a flood-front of thunder rushing, gathering, rising like a wave until it flat-out rammed him stupid with noise and light.

Without thinking, Bunch had sat bolt upright.

Bunch didn't sit up, middle of the night, for just anything. But this storm! It tore the fog to tatters and played across the bluffs; made the whole river smell of old cast iron. He hugged his legs and for a long time, the blind lightning and the spine-cracking thunder came one on top the other. Then the tree across the river exploded. Pinecones popped like balloons, smoke spat at the sky and the tree vanished into its pieces. Pieces rained everywhere and the bole –
that
bole – came tumbling across the still-running water of the near-frozen river and rolled up the bank like a chicken head. Stopped just shy of Bunch's sleepy sack. For a second, in the crackling glow of the knotty trunk, eyes seemed to glare at Bunch. Then not.

From then on, the sharp end of the thunder gave way to deep down boomers, dwindling, and the lightning crawled upriver, deeper into the Driftless.

Bunch relaxed. When the damn thing was a distant flicker beyond the bends of the river above the town and the thunder was just deep vibrations against his chest, when the fog thickened around him, and that bole stopped looking at him, he slept.

That had been last night, early, and he was pretty sure it had been real. The rest of the night? He didn't know, didn't want to think about. He wasn't at his best, thinking, anyway. Wasn't his suit.

One thing Bunch did know: it was morning and he was hungry. Two things!

After yesterday, he had a right being hungry, walking half-way to the bottom of the world and his stomach sucked dry.

Okay! THREE things: his stomach had been sucked dry by them ghost critters! Nope! He didn't want to think about it. Thinking got him in trouble, slowed him down just when he needed to quicken up and move
like/that
!

Bunch snapped his fingers in the morning air. Sounded good. He pulled on the decent clothes – pants, shirt, wooly jacket, everything – even shoes – and walked toward to town.

Morning snow was pretty and quiet. He liked that. Passing the stock pens, the other side of the river, slaughterhouse cows stood chewing, breath and butts steaming in the cold. Damn, he was hungry!

Down the way, smoke curled from Cristobel's chimney. Good, he figured, she's up, safe, moving around.

By her place, he slowed to consider: He ought, maybe, to go ask. Even if it was a dream – which it was not! – Cristobel Chiaravino knew the places that lived in people's heads, knew the ways magics worked when you said the words and drank down the rotten tasting stuff she made. He'd smelled the stuff coming out her windows, summers. Must've been rotten-tasting.

That was one hand.

The other had figured he ought NOT bother Miss Chiaravino.

He still hadn’t done anything she’d most likely consider ‘useful’ after giving him that bicycle. And there was that business about him doing what someone might call ‘peeping’ her, that was something else again. Bunch discussed it with himself as he walked and, as those things will, the discussion soon became an argument and the argument soon got pretty hot. As he gave consideration to these things, Bunch gave more and more of himself to the discussion and less and less to walking and, in a small while, there he was: dead in the road, staring at sky, staring at nothing, nothing at all.

He concluded with the thought that it might be a bad idea, him to come knocking now. Too bad, he calculated further, agreeing with himself, Cristobel knew stuff.

Then he remembered: he remembered falling asleep after the storm. Then he remembered morning. Early morning, still dark. And that was another think entirely. First, he'd thought the thunder had come back. A rumbling had bubbled up from the hard muddy ground his ear had lain upon and pounded his sleeping head bone. By the time he'd crawled awake, the whole world was shaking.

A couple seconds and he realized: trucks! It was trucks. Heavy stuff, bigger, he reckoned, than the trucks as hauled meat animals in and out of the stockyards Doc Mouth called, “Cowschwitz,” whatever that meant.

When the first of the Eelman Brothers' semis came bumping across Papoose Crick bridge, the bridge's half ton of sheath ice, chattered to piece. Shards of it rained over Bunch, his home and things beneath the bridge.

In a second, Bunch was not among those things. He jumped, dodging falling sliver ice, and stood barefoot and sinking in cold mud. Yes! He did remember. The muck and mud of the Banks was still squeezing between his toes then!

Big tires made wicked hums as the damn truck breezed by, organ pipes from up at the Lutheran's hitting too many notes at once! Damn thing growled along county H, down-shifting into Bluffton.

The second semi came a hundred yards later; a rush of blackness, burning eyes bouncing in the mist. Crossing the bridge, the thing howled like Injuns warring. The whole span heaved up and down like a too-fat bird on a too-thin branch.

Around then, Bunch decided this entire night was a sun-dry cocklebur up his ass-pipe. Without thinking, he hauled tail up the bank to the road.

Bunch was at his best not thinking. Hell, a thinking man wouldn't have been under the bridge in the middle of the night in the middle of winter in first place. A thinking man probably wouldn't have jumped to, all pissy, like Bunch had in the second place but he felt like he owed the town something. Don't ask him what, that was the way he felt and he didn't think about it. Barefoot, shirtless, he hit the road in three steps and a couple snatches of turf and reached the road in time for the third and fourth trucks to roar by like rolling thunder.

Now, in the THIRD place, a man using his head most likely wouldn't have run out into the middle of the roadway to shake fists at a caravan of dusty black and streaming light-sprayed thunder that was rumbling the roads, middle of that winter night.

Bunch did. He shook his fist and cussed until he felt stupid. Then he started thinking and it’s been mentioned that Bunch was not at his best, thinking. That was when the fifth black truck snuck up, behind. It came in a whisper and a sigh, and caught him thinking. The horn shot hot diesel electric juice up his spine, a thousand steel-cutting saws tearing down a tin roof about his ears.

Before he had a chance to give it a thought, he back-peddled off the road and onto the gravel where he fell, whomp, flat on his ass and the black thing passed. Passing, it wrapped Bunch in a swift-flowing moonshadow, deeper than any black of night, darker than any of the bluff caves Bunch had ever crawled into. The damned whispery thing froze him dead-still, a Bunch-sized slab of pissed-offedness, lying like a road turtle, leg-up and spinning in the breeze.

Bunch sat up. A snowstorm of lights – red, green, orange, all these, others, colors he didn't know the names of, colors he'd never seen – surrounded the truck's black ass-end disappearing down the way. In its center was a symbol.

Bunch could read. He'd read lots of things. He just wasn't much for it. Beside, what was spread in black-green-gray (and some colors he didn't know what), across the back of the dwindling truck wasn't reading, it was a picture, a swirly thing, a spinning Fourth of July fire wheel, a grinning mouth with two curly horns.

The picture dwindled slower than the truck was leaving. Then they were both gone.

Despite what had just happened, and without thinking, Bunch arose and stepped into the roadway. All Bunch knew was he wanted more of that damned picture thing. And, the damned picture thing was gone.

A third thing he knew: the world stank like high summer at the deep end of the Elysium campground cesspool. That was one stink: all the bad wieners and curdled macaroni salads of summer! This one left a lot of itself hang, but it went to ground quick. With the stench the rumbles in the earth faded as the last trailer rounded the curve in the treelined corridor toward town. Night was still again, but like thunder’s echo, a word settled in Bunch's head. The word rolled inside along with the memory of that picture thing. The word said: “Eelman!”

“What the hell,” he said to the distance. “What the hell's an Eelman?” he yelled.

A thin layer of mist had re-gathered above the roadway after the trucks' passage; a fine mist, the surety of night’s calm stillness. Suddenly it moved. One second it hung knee-high. The next, it drew itself to Bunch's gut, then, shoved to his ankles, dissolved in a swirl. A cold downwash of air made his ears pop.

Overhead, the stars shone prettier than Bunch had ever seen. His ears popped again and something passed between him and heaven, a thing darker than space that ate the familiar stars as it swam. The darkness followed the curve of County H as it banked toward Bluffton to feed. Bunch had no idea how high the thing was, but it took a while to pass.

Then it was gone.

Bunch leaned on the bridge’s guardrail – making sure it was still there. Doggone steel was hot!

A diesel horn nearly kicked Bunch’s spine through the back of his head and out his ass. For a half-second he flashed on last night, but this was morning and there he was: a doofus in the middle of Slaughterhouse Way, thinking! Him!

At the wheel of his stock truck, a pissed-off Andre Trois-Coeur LeMais shook a hamhock-fist and hung a line of Frog-Injun cusses his way.

Bunch backpedaled and LeMais' cow truck growled by, gears grinding, brakes hissing, engine farting with effort. Even the cows – nothing better for them to do today but die – hollered at Bunch for holding things up.

Then, in morning’s swirling snowdust, Andre Trois-Coeur LeMais, life-long citizen of the driftless, gave Bunch the finger! Bunch, also a life-long citizen, fingered, like a terrorist at Elysium Field!

When the truck had passed and the little whirlywinds of snow had settled at Bunch's feet, there was Cristobel Chiaravino. She stood on her stoop staring from across the street. She had a broom in hand and was full-dressed plus a down parka, her hair tucked under the hood so Bunch couldn't see the pretty streak. Even with her eyes like a shotgun’s holes, Bunch figured he'd better go ask. A man could take just so much of this thinking.

“Morning.” he said, crossing.

She nodded. The shotgun eyes stayed trained.

“Pretty morning,” he said, looking.

She nodded.

“Funny old storm last night,” he said.

She squinted.

“Dry thunder ‘n all.”

She cocked her head.

“Thunder. No rain. No snow.”

She didn't move.

He said, “You see anything last night?”

She cocked her head another inch.

“Big trucks?”

She turned toward Cowshwitz and Andre’s rig.

“Bigger. Blacker.

Her attention returned to him.

“And maybe a big black flying thing?” He showed with his hands.

Her eyes widened.

“Lots of sparkles, like stars living down inside?”