Just North of Nowhere (8 page)

The damn bike! Yes, there was Vinnie, the old house, the radio, Crista-whatever her name was-bell, the Italian woman, all that had Bunch on edge, but the damn bike got him started. Here's the way it went: summers, every year, Bunch went back to the bridge down by Papoose Creek. Come winter, he’d crawl out, walk to town and find someplace to hole up. Maybe, maybe not!

Simple.

Not that he'd have been a stranger. Everyone knew Bunch. Every day, summer, winter, whatever, he'd bee-bop down Slaughterhouse to Commonwealth; look for work, do work, keep eyes on the terrorists (throw them a little scare maybe), maybe drink a beer on the house at the Wheel or take a meal at the Eats in ‘change for whatever.

Folks treated him. In return for which, Bunch did jobs as needed. Living under his bridge, he didn't much mind being alone or sleeping the winter cold; the friggin' racket from the Indian wars out past Papoose Creek was irritating—and that got worse, winters—but the last six months, there had been that old house! Damn thing showed up across the creek—just showed—one morning after a big ass thunderstorm. Houses didn't do that. Bunch knew houses and houses didn't just show up!

Not much gave Bunch the willies. That old shack did, a one-room place on low stilts squatting at the edge of the forest. The water rippled just a little there, where Papoose Creek joined the Rolling River. The bank on the far side from Bunch's place was a flat sandy flood plain rising to a little clearing. The clearing was scattered with dark stumps. In the right light, the stumps stuck up like black, rotted teeth, so much green moss on them, it looked like a hundred years had gone since the trees had been cut for that damn shack. Hell, the stumps could have been left from the cutting and building—they sure looked it!

They weren't! They hadn't been there. Not before the house showed up. Overnight there it was: house, stumps, moss and all.

Bunch was not curious. He was that smart, at least, smart enough to avoid curiosity. What was there, was there. He was here, his side of the river and creek.

Bunch almost never crossed the creek. Not at that place. No reason to.

Since the house showed up... Well, best not to go where strange things wander. Wasn't fear, just polite good sense.

He watched.

Some days, a window might catch a flash of sun and peer across the water at him. Some days not. Same sun, maybe the window was looking somewhere else. Some days, where that window had been, a drooping shutter lazed half-shut, or sometimes just a wooden side where the window was, day before.

All summer the place hunkered down by the edge of the trees. Creepers and climbing vines wrapped it, branches from the forest bowed down to shade it. Every day, maybe, a wood cat, a squirrel or little brown bird, would land on the porch, or creep up the steps, cock its head, raise its beak, hop along the warped boards to peer in, taste the air from out the house's cracked-open door. After a bit, the critter might hop, flitter or slither inside.

Bunch might watch until he got tired of it or until something came along for him to do and he'd go do it, but he never noticed anything coming out.

If anyone had asked, Bunch would have said, “That place is full of strange.” No one asked. What the hell, it wasn't their dealy. And, Bunch? Well, Bunch knew enough not to trust a place as wanders. He figured, if anyone wanted something done about the thing, they'd ask! Some days Bunch didn't even bother looking across the creek.

Then, the damn bike showed up.

One morning, there it was: in the mud by the bridge, his side, near where he slept.

First he thought, the damn bike might have to do with the house. Both just showed, both by the river. So at first the bike gave him similar willies.

After a few days of keeping eyes on it, Bunch figured the bike probably had fallen off the bridge.

He pictured the guy who probably owned it: There the guy was, taking a leak off the rail; there his bike goes, rolling down the bank. And there's the guy, a terrorist, probably; probably too clean to come down to the river to fetch back his own damn bike. And there the out-of-towner goes, figuring, “Oh well, I'll just buy me another one back in whatever city I come from.”

Yeah, that's it
, Bunch figured.

The bike was barely broken. It straightened out nice. Bunch was good, mending.

The bike was one of the most useful damn things had come along in a pretty long while. Last couple weeks that season, Bunch rode up and down town every day. For a time, he looked over his shoulder every couple of pedal shoves, half expecting to see the owner, running, pointing fingers, flexing store-bought muscles, dragging Vinnie the cop, shouting “There it is! There's my property!”

Bunch could damn-near hear!

Never happened.

And the damn thing was pure use. Bunch used it to tote tools in a back sack when he started the new roof over by the Sons of Norway Lodge. He hauled screws, tape and mud-mix, in the same sack, dry-walling out at Valley View Bed and Breakfast. A couple times that season, Bunch swapped lawn-mowing chores for the use of little Whendol Rifkin's Radio Flyer wagon. Whendol didn't use the Flyer since he'd gotten big and bold and gone to play ball over at the Consolidated School and Bunch probably could have had the kid's wagon, permanent, for the asking, but what the hell would Bunch do with a kid's wagon permanent? Besides, mowing grass was pleasurable, smelled good, and was worth doing just for its own damnself.

With Whendol's Flyer wagon tied behind his bike, Bunch dragged stuff everywhere: Paint, groceries; the widow Yeltz's cat—hauled to Doc Dog's place over to Harmony, twice that summer alone!

And the bike was a pleasure. When he got over the worry about someone coming for the damn thing, he used it to chase terrorists off the streets or from the railroad rightyway had turned into a damn State hikey-bikey trail the last dozen years.

Bunch also kept the out-of-towners from coming down his side of the river and from bothering that old house across the way. He sure as hell did at least that much, kept folks from things they didn't know better about! If anyone had asked, Bunch especially liked rolling down on city people at sunset. He'd give big-eyed hoots, scare the crap out of whole families for a second or two, then be gone, rattling around the bend, vanished like a spook.

He enjoyed it, and nobody minded too much.

“Bunch? Ah, heck, you can't mind him!” Karl Dorbler over at the Wurst Haus told the tourists as he weighed out their wienies on the scale. “Oh no, there! Bunch, he's local color, you know, ha, ha!”

For the information, Karl thumbed a couple extra ounces on the scale. “Local color! Yep.”

The damn bike gave him use all summer.

Bunch figured the thing might be a pain in the ass when the deep snows came. Wouldn’t be in the way. Not exactly. He just figured he’d feel funny looking at it every morning, it being left out to cold and weather. Figuring further, he figured to winter the thing in the Italian Woman's shed.

Then one morning, before he had a chance to ask her, the Italian Woman came to him.

He was at his stool at the Eats, and she came up, stuck her hip out and propped her hand on it. “You,” she asked, “You will help me remove my small outbuilding, yes?”

“Huh,” Bunch said.

“The small one in the upper part of my yard? You will.” Didn't so much ask as tell him, but it sounded almost like asking.

“Now that's a good shed!” Bunch said.

“I don’t want it,” she said.

“It's got that pretty good picture of carnival folk on it.” Bunch said, thinking of the wide-eyed dark woman clothed in slithering snaky monsters! He liked that poster picture.

“It disturbs my thinking,” she said.

“And that place is a pretty good place for putting things. You know? Winters.”

“It creates eddies in the lines of power,” she said. “And I want it down.”

Well, even if she was an Italian lady and strange, she was okay. She worked side-by-side with him, taking down the shed, got as sweaty and dirty as he did. They squeaked rusty nails out of the wood together, pulled boards down, tore apart the old carnie pictures. Together they banged off the rusty De Kalb Corn sign and pretty soon the damned shed was gone. Shame.

Krista—whatever her name was, even helped drag all that crap up the hill to burn it. She stood mumbling as it went into smoke. Then she made him good grub for a week of eating for his work! Funny stuff, but it ate good.

No, she was all right, the Italian lady Crista-whatever. Started off pure terrorist, her sneaking into town at the ass-end of a good lightning storm. Car stalls on the bridge, middle of the night, then – couple days later – there she is: living in the old chippy’s place on Slaughterhouse Way like real people.

There was the radio, too.

Less than a week after the bike showed up and long before he and Crista-whatever tore down the shack, Vinnie Erikson had come by asking Bunch if he could tune-up the town prowler. Which he did and for which Vinnie swapped him that pretty good bigass radio some terrorist had left behind and all it needed was some damn batteries and a little fiddling!

Vinnie gave him the car work just to piss off Einar up at the Former Amoco – Vinnie was like that and Bunch knew it – but what the hell? Bunch had done a good job and got a good radio for it, Einar got a good ass-pain he could growl about for months at the Eats, mornings, at the Wagon Wheel, nights, and Vinnie had a smooth-running prowler and the satisfaction of messing with Einar.

Everyone won.

Bunch naturally tied the radio to his bikebars and up and down town he went. Smart move, he figured later. His musical radio reminded folks they wanted stuff done; worked like those ads selling soda pop and cars between TV innings over at the Wagon Wheel. People heard music coming up the street, some thought, “Bunch is here!” Some might say, “Oh, there's that Bunch. Wonder if I can get him to root out my cellar, there?” Bunch had to congratulate himself over that one.

Then, uh-oh, one night, the damn bike vanished. Right from where he left her: there in front of the Wagon Wheel. First, Bunch thought maybe the owner had snuck back from wherever and re-claimed it.

“If so, that's okay,” Bunch said to the Rolling River, walking home at three in the damn morning. “Free rides and public relations, damn it, that's what I had, most of a summer!” Bastard could have left the radio, he figured, but what the hell, it was gone and that was it!

The year was twisting the town under night skies. Each day, morning shadows eased more toward where Papoose Creek joined the Rolling. Trees went puny without leaves. One night, the grass lay down with the dew and stayed down in next morning’s sun. Worms and grubs didn't much come up for the birds anymore, so the birds left. Those that stayed, their songs changed: songs everywhere changed, bird, bug, and wind though the bridge-boards and wires, the river's voice along by where he slept, it was all changing.

And that house across the creek stood out more and more, now the leaves were gone and the wood creepers gone brown and scrawny. Not in the woods nor quite out, the place looked like a kitten too stupid to all-the-way hide itself, hunting.
Pathetic,
Bunch reckoned. Day or night, it stood out dark. Except when it showed a little light inside, nights.

Bunch wished the place would just be gone like it had come: one night there, next day not. Like his bike—
instead
of his bike!

Then Vinnie Erikson comes down to the bridge, sunrise, yelling, “Bunch. Bunch...you there, Bunch?” Vinnie's Sam Browne cop belt creaking and all the cop stuff hanging off him clacking as he shifted his fatass down the bank and through Fall mud – even the dead Injuns down by Engine Warm probably heard him!

“Aw, cripes,” Bunch muttered, his eyes still shut.

“Shitstorm!” Vinnie said, louder.

Bunch peeked an eye. There was Vinnie, cool and comfortable, like his daddy, Sheriff Erikson, would have been: No sweat, no bother, Vinnie standing casual, half-way to his ankle in river muck.

“Vinnie,” Bunch said.

The big cop shifted, one foot to another. “Hey there, Bunch. Let me get to the point, here. Mizz Chiaravino, you know? Cristobel, the Italian lady, there? She's coming at me, yellin' about you. Says you're peepin' her. That so?”

Bunch squinted. “Huh?” he said.

“Says you been hanging out in her bushes, there. Looking in at her windows.”

“Me?” Bunch said.

Vinnie nodded. “Now, I understand. She's a kind of looker, you know.”

They both took a moment, thought about Cristobel Chiaravino.

“Yep,” Vinnie said, “she's a looker, I give you that there. But, now, I don't want her coming up to me at the Wheel, off duty or not. Least I don't want her yelling about you and, in particular, I don't want her waving her arms on the street at me, making a whatshacallit? Scene. Gives a bad name, you know? You know? The whole town, here? Tourists you know!”

Vinnie shifted and sank another inch into the mud. “AW, shitforbrains!” His bellowed then recovered. “Summer folk're about used to you making noises on the trail, you being a little off. Regulars, anyway. But if now people start figurin' they're maybe not safe in their own recreational vehicles, there, or that you'll be sticking your head in their tents and whatevers, nights, well they're gonna start takin' their tourist businesses somewhere's else. You get me?”