Midnight Grinding (12 page)

Tears threatened to come, but she fought them back. She didn’t want her spectral lover to see her bawling like a baby.
You really are warped, you know that?
she scolded herself.
What happened the other day was just make- believe, just a fantasy.
But no matter how many times she told herself that, she still could not escape the feeling that the lone dust devil was exactly what she thought it was: a wandering ghost, a kindred spirit as hungry for love and companionship as she was.

The setting sun hurt Becky Mae’s eyes as she continued to survey the brilliant hues of the darkening horizon. A western breeze blew through her strawberry blond hair, a kiss blown from a thousand miles away. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the sensation of gentle hands upon her body, delivering thrills of delight. Then a harsh voice from behind her dispersed the calm, filling her with a cold dread like a heavy stone in the pit of her gut.

“Are you out here
again
, girl?” Stan asked incredulously from the rear door of the trailer. “I swear I’m beginning to think you’re retarded, Becky Mae. Now you get on in here and fix me some supper. You hear me?”

Becky Mae said nothing. She just sat there and stared across the deepening desert, praying…praying for a miracle and knowing very well that miracles did not happen in Ketchum’s Trailer Park on the outskirts of El Paso, Texas.

“Dammit, girl, don’t make me come out there and get you!”

Again she ignored him and continued to wish for the impossible.
Please! Please come and take me away from this awful place. Come and sweep me away on the wings of the wind, away from El Paso, away from Texas, away from this world if you can.
She listened for the familiar whistle of the sand spout’s approach, but heard nothing…nothing but Stan’s angry footsteps crunching across the backyard, straight for her.

“You little smart-ass bitch!” growled Stan, grabbing her roughly by the arm. “You answer your elders when spoken to, understand? Now get your sassy butt inside that trailer before…”

She startled him by turning and giving him the dirtiest, most mean-eyed look she could muster. “Let go of me, Stan,” she said, “or so help me I’ll yell ‘rape’ to the high heavens.”

Her stepfather was a little taken aback by her boldness, but not enough to relinquish his bruising hold. He stared at her for a long moment and a broad grin split his five o’clock shadow. “You know, don’t you? You’ve known of my intentions all along. Well, you oughta know me well enough to know that there’s no way out of it. You know I always get what I want, no two ways about it. And, by God, I’ll have what I’ve set out to get tonight!” He pulled her bodily off the hood of the Plymouth and began to drag her toward the open trailer door.

Knowing that she had no other choice, Becky Mae began to scream just as loud and with as much force as she possibly could. “Shut up, you hear me?” said Stan. “Shut the hell up!” He loosened his hold long enough to give her a couple of backhand slaps across the face. She continued her screaming as she dropped to the ground and curled up to ward off the raining blows of his work-hardened fists. Her nose bled freely and her eyes began to swell shut as Stan’s calloused knuckles fell time and time again.

“You can make it hard or you can make it easy,” he warned, pulling a heavy leather belt from the loops of his trousers. “It’s up to you. Shut your trap and crawl into that trailer and maybe I won’t mess you up too bad tonight. But if you keep up that hollering, you might not make it to morning alive.” When she continued her loud rebellion, Stan shook his head and, with a grin, raised the belt for the first downward stroke.

Then a howling from the west echoed over the desert like the roar of an impending doom.

“What in Sam Hill?” asked Sam in puzzlement. Becky Mae brought her head from beneath her crossed arms and, with battered, tearful eyes, stared toward the broken horizon. An imposing wall of dust the shade of burnt umber boiled toward them with a violent turbulence that obscured entire buttes and swept through the shallows of drywashes like an earthen tide.

Stan discarded his belt and, grabbing Becky Mae’s arm and a fistful of her hair, began to back toward the trailer door. “Hell of a duststorm coming up, sweetheart,” he snickered. “We’d better get on inside. Don’t worry, though. We’ll find something to keep ourselves occupied while we weather the storm.”

Angrily, she batted ineffectively at him with her clenched fists, bringing howls of laughter rather than grunts of pain. They were almost ten feet from the open door, when something totally unexpected happened. Unexpected for Stan perhaps, but not for Becky Mae. She had been hoping fervently for something to take place, something that would deliver her from the horrible fate Stan had in store for her.

The dust at the foot of the back steps began to boil. It rose skyward on spiraling currents of air, until a dust devil seven feet high blocked Stan’s pathway. Its color was not the soft beige that Becky Mae remembered from before, but an angry red. The twister bobbed and weaved like a boxer awaiting its opponent. Stan took a couple of steps to the side to go around it, but it shifted swiftly, stopping his progress. Then a fetid wind like the winds of Hell itself washed over the man and his captive, roaring, demanding in bellowing currents of air…
Let her go!

Stan Jessup stood there and gaped, wondering if he actually heard what he thought he had. Then he knew for certain when the dust devil barreled forward with a vengeance, firing grit with such force that it lodged in the pores of his skin.
I said… LET…HER…GO!

The mechanic’s natural bravado got the best of him. “The hell you say!” he growled, swaggering forward with Becky Mae in tow.

Before he knew it, it was upon him. A pain lanced through his wrist, as if every bone there had been shattered. Becky Mae escaped his grasp. She tumbled to the side and crouched against the gathering fury of the sandstorm. Stan, like the fool he was, swung blindly at the thing that had hold of him, but his blows flailed through open air, hitting nothing. He moaned in terror as the dust devil lifted him within its swirling cone, the tiny rocks and cactus needles in the currents ripping at his clothing and flesh, drawing blood. He spun end over end, screaming madly as the wraith manhandled him, twisting and battering him until his entire body was racked with agony.

Then, when he thought he would surely be torn asunder, he was discarded like a rag doll. He was expelled from the cyclone with such force that he sailed through the open door of the trailer, across the cramped kitchenette, and landed headfirst into the cedarwood cabinet. He was out cold the second his skull split the hardened wood and bent the steel piping of the sink beyond.

Becky Mae lay trembling for a long moment and, when she thought it safe enough to lift her head, discovered that the dust storm had passed. Only the hovering dust devil, now its regular size and color, waited nearby. Her victorious suitor, her knight in shiny armor, so to speak.

She approached it with a smile on her blood-streaked face, her hands fidgeting nervously. “Thank you,” she sobbed happily. “Oh, thank you so very much.” She giggled as soft currents caressed her face, brushing away her tears. Then Stan came back to mind and she looked toward the open doorway of the trailer. He lay slumped across the peeling linoleum floor, pretty roughed up, but still alive. That meant that she had not yet escaped.

He would wake up eventually and, madder than before, insist on having his way with her. She would never be able to escape the lustful fury of Stan Jessup.

That was
unless
…

She started forward. In turn, the dust devil approached her in its smooth, shimmying gait. They stood there for a hesitant moment, regarding each other like two, long-lost lovers. Then, closing her eyes, Becky Mae stepped into the heart of the funnel and let herself go.

***

Stan Jessup came to an hour later and found three men standing over him. One was a uniformed police officer, while the other two were plain-clothes detectives.

“Are you Stanley Jessup?” one asked him.

“Yeah. Who the hell are you?”

“El Paso Police Department, Mr. Jessup,” they said, flashing their credentials. “Will you accompany us outside, please?”

With some effort, Stan picked himself up from the floor. He was a real mess. His clothes were torn and his face and arms were lacerated and scratched. “She sure put up a hell of a fight, even if it didn’t do her any good,” the uniformed cop noted with some satisfaction. Stan couldn’t figure out what he was driving at, until he reached the open door of the battered house trailer.

Several people stood in the backyard. There was Mrs. Ketchum and her son, two Fire Department paramedics, and, lying sprawled and misshapened on the sandy earth, was Becky Mae. His stepdaughter’s clothes were nearly torn away, her slender limbs cocked at odd angles from her body. Her face was a mask of contradiction, wearing an expression torn between intense agony and blissful rapture. A light powdering of dust coated the orbs of her open eyes.

“He did it!” Connie Ketchum jagged an accusing finger at the bewildered Stan. “He killed her! Lordy Mercy, I could hear the poor child screaming her head off over here, just before the dust storm blew in.”

“Do you deny that, Mr. Jessup?” Detective Joe Harding asked, hoping for an easy confession.

Stan stared in pale-faced shock at the heap of broken bones and damaged flesh that he had intended on sleeping with that night. The flame of desire he had been carrying for so long went cold and, in its place, lingered a sick sensation in the pit of his stomach. “Huh? What are you getting at?”

“Our abuse center has received a few complaints concerning you, Mr. Jessup,” the other detective, Terry Moore, told him. “Seems that your stepdaughter has been coming to school looking like she’s been in a dogfight. Now, it isn’t our place to go telling a man how to discipline his children, but this has gone beyond discipline, hasn’t it, Mr. Jessup? This is downright cold-blooded murder.”

A cold fear lanced through Stan Jessup’s lanky frame as he looked from the three policemen to the twisted body of Becky Mae.
Why didn’t that thing kill me?
he had been wondering since his awakening.
Why did it let me live?

Now he knew.

“Look, Mom!” piped Tony Ketchum, pointing out across the desert. “Will you look at that!”

They all looked. Not more than a hundred yards away hovered a lonely dust devil, bouncing back and forth between clumps of mesquite and prickly pear. But, no, as they continued to watch, the twister split and suddenly became
two
. The twin sand spouts separated, then joined, like two wistful lovers in union.

I love youuuuu,
the wind seemed to whisper and a fleeting, high-pitched whistle, like the voice of a teenage girl, returned the sentiment.

They stood and watched the two dust devils as they drifted slowly across the border, blending into the dusky horizon, then vanishing. Everyone beside the trailer grew strangely silent, except for Detective Moore, who finished reading Stanley Jessup his rights.

THE BOXCAR

I always thought the depiction of most vampires in literature as being wealthy and affluent was a complete fallacy. Most books have them dwelling in crumbling European castles or stately manors. But what about all the bloodsuckers who are just regular folks…the salt of the earth, so to speak? What about the ones who don’t wear tuxedos and expensive silk capes—the ones who don’t have two nickels to rub together?

That could have very well been the case during the Great Depression, when men rode the rails and wandered aimlessly across the land. But, if so, where would such creatures find refuge when the dark of night gave way to the cleansing rays of dawn?

Hello, the camp!” I yelled down into that dark, backwoods hollow beside the railroad tracks. We could see the faint glow of a campfire and shadowy structures of a few tin and tarpaper shacks, but no one answered. Only the chirping of crickets and the mournful wail of a southbound train on its way to Memphis echoed through the chill autumn night.

“Maybe there ain’t nobody down there,” said Mickey. His stomach growled ferociously and mine sang in grumbling harmony. Me and Mickey had been riding the rails together since the beginning of this Great Depression and, although there were a number of years between us
—
he being a lad of fifteen years and I on into my forties
—
we had become the best of traveling buddies.

“Well, I reckon there’s only one way to find out,” I replied. “Let’s go down and have a look-see for ourselves.”

We slung our bindles over our shoulders and descended the steep grade to the woods below. We were bone-tired and hungry, having made the long haul from Louisville to Nashville without benefit of a free ride. It was about midnight when we happened across that hobo camp. We were hoping to sack out beside a warm fire, perhaps trade some items from our few personal possessions for coffee and a plate of beans.

As we skirted a choking thicket of blackberry bramble and honeysuckle, we found that the camp was indeed occupied. Half a dozen men, most as rail-thin and down on their luck as we were, sat around a crackling fire. A couple were engaged in idle conversation, while others whittled silently, feeding the flames of the campfire with their wood shavings. They all stopped stone-still when we emerged from the briar patch and approached them.

“Howdy,” I said to them. “We called down for an invite, but maybe ya’ll didn’t hear.”

A big, bearded fellow in a battered felt fedora eyed us suspiciously. “Yeah, we heard you well enough.”

I stepped forward and offered a friendly smile. “Well, me and my partner here, we were wondering if we might
—
”

My appeal for food and shelter was interrupted when a scrubby fellow who had been whittling stood up, his eyes mean and dangerous. “Now you two just stay right where you are.” I looked down and saw that he held a length of tent stake in his hand. The end had been whittled down to a wickedly sharp point.

“We’re not aiming to bother nobody, mister,” Mickey spoke up. “We’re just looking for a little nourishment, that’s all.”

One of the bums at the fire expelled a harsh peal of laughter. “Sure…I bet you are.”

“Go on and get outta here, the both of you,” growled the fellow with the pointy stick. He made a threatening move toward us, driving us back in the direction of the thicket. “Get on down the tracks to where you belong.”

“We’re a-going,” I told them, more than a little peeved by their lack of hospitality. “A damned shame, though, folks treating their own kind in such a sorry manner, what with times as hard as they are these days.”

Some of the men at the fire hung their heads in shame, while the others only stared at us with that same look of hard suspicion. “Please…just move on,” said the big fellow.

Me and Mickey made the grade in silence and continued on down the tracks. “To heck with their stupid old camp,” the boy said after a while. “Didn’t wanna stay there anyhow. The whole place stank to the high heavens.”

Thinking back, I knew he was right. There had been a rather pungent smell about that hobo camp. It was a thick, cloying odor, familiar, yet unidentifiable at the time. And, although I didn’t mention it to Mickey, I knew that the hobos’ indifferent attitude toward us hadn’t been out of pure meanness, but out of downright fear. It was almost as if they’d been expecting someone else to come visiting. Our sudden appearance had set them on edge, prompting the harsh words and unfriendliness that had let us know we were far from welcome there.

We moved on, the full moon overhead paving our way with nocturnal light. The next freight yard was some twenty or thirty miles away with nothing but woods and thicket in between. So it was a stroke of luck that we turned a bend in the tracks and discovered our shelter for the night.

It was an old, abandoned boxcar. The wheels had been removed for salvage and the long, wooden hull parked off to the side near a grove of spruce and pine. We waded through knee-high weeds to the dark structure. It was weathered by sun and rain. The only paint that remained was the faint logo of a long-extinct railroad company upon the side walls.

“Well, what do you think?” I asked young Mickey.

The freckle-faced boy wrinkled his nose and shrugged. “I reckon it’ll have to do for tonight.”

We had some trouble pushing the door back on its tracks, but soon we stepped inside, batting cobwebs from our path. The first thing that struck us was the peculiar feeling of soft earth beneath our feet, rather than the customary hardwood boards. The rich scent of freshly-turned soil hung heavily in the boxcar, like prime farmland after a drenching downpour.

We found us a spot in a far corner and settled there for the night. I lit a candle stub so as to cast a pale light upon our meager supper. It wasn’t much for two hungry travelers: just a little beef jerky I had stashed in my pack, along with a swallow or two of stale water from Mickey’s canteen. After we’d eaten, silence engulfed us
—
an awkward silence
—
and I felt the boy’s concerned gaze on my face. Finally I could ignore it no longer. “Why in tarnation are you gawking at me, boy?”

Mickey lowered his eyes in embarrassment. “I don’t know, Frank…you just seem so pale and peaked lately. And you get plumb tuckered out after just a couple hours walking. How are you feeling these days? Are you sick?”

“Don’t you go worrying your head over me, young fella. I’m doing just fine.” I lied convincingly, but the boy was observant. The truth was, I
had
been feeling rather poorly the last few weeks, tiring out at the least physical exertion and possessing half the appetite I normally had. I kept telling myself I was just getting old, but secretly knew it must be something more.

Our conversation died down and we were gradually lulled to sleep by the sound of crickets and toads in the forest beyond.

That night I had the strangest chain of dreams I’d ever had in my life.

***

I dreamt that I awoke the following day to find Mickey and myself trapped inside the old boxcar. It was morning; we could tell by the warmth of the sun against the walls and the singing of birds outside.

We started in the general direction of the sliding door, but it was pitch dark inside, sunlight finding nary a crack or crevice in the car’s sturdy boarding. We stumbled once or twice upon obstructions that hadn’t been there the night before and finally reached the door. I struggled with it, but it simply wouldn’t budge. It seemed to be fused shut. I called to Mickey to lend me a hand, but for some reason he merely laughed at me. Eventually I tired myself out and gave up.

We returned to our bindles, again having to step and climb over things littering the floor. I lit a candle. The flickering wick revealed what we had been traipsing over in the darkness. There had to be twelve bodies lying around the earthen floor of that boxcar. The pale and bloodless bodies of a dozen corpses.

I grew frightened and near panic, but Mickey calmed me down. “They’re only sleeping,” he assured me with a toothy grin that seemed almost ominous.

Somehow, his simple words comforted me. Utterly exhausted, I lay back down and fell asleep.

***

The next dream began with another awakening. It was night this time and the boxcar door was wide open. The cool October breeze blew in to rouse me. I found myself surrounded by those who had lain dead only hours before. They were all derelicts and hobos, mostly men, but some were women and children. They stared at me wildly, their eyes burning feverishly as if they were in the heated throes of some diseased delirium. There seemed to be an expression akin to wanton hunger in those hollow-eyed stares, but also something else. Restraint. That kept them in check, like pale statues clad in second-hand rags.

I noticed that my young pal, Mickey, stood among them. The boy looked strangely similar to the others now. His once robust complexion had been replaced with a waxy pallor like melted tallow. “You must help us, Frank,” he said. “You must do something that is not in our power…something only
you
can perform.”

I wanted to protest and demand to know exactly what the hell was going on, but I could only stand there and listen to what they had to say. After my instructions had been made clear, I simply nodded my head in agreement, no questions asked.

***

The dream shifted again.

It was still night and I was standing in the thicket on the edge of that hobo camp in the hollow. Carefully, and without noise, I crept among the make-shift shanties, performing the task that had been commanded of me. I removed the crude crosses, the cloves of garlic that hung draped above the doorways, and toted away the buckets of creek water that had been blessed by a traveling preacher-man.

I spirited away all those things, clearing the camp, leaving only sleeping men. They continued their snoring and their unsuspecting slumber, totally oblivious to the danger that now descended from the tracks above.

I stood there in the thicket and listened as the horrified screams reached their gruesome climax, then dwindled. They were replaced by awful slurping and sucking sounds. The pungent scent of raw garlic had moved southward on the breeze. In its place hung another…a nasty odor like that of hot copper.

“Much obliged for the help,” called Mickey from the door of a shanty, his eyes as bright as a cat’s, lips glistening crimson. Then, with a wink, he disappeared back into the shack. The hellish sounds continued as I curled up in the midst of that dense thicket and, once again, fell asleep.

***

That marked the end to that disturbing chain of nightmares, for a swift kick in the ribs heralded my true awakening. It was broad daylight when I opened my eyes and stared up at an overweight county sheriff.

“Wake up, buddy,” he said gruffly. “Time to get up and move on.”

I stretched and yawned. Much to my amazement, I found myself not in the old boxcar, but in the campside thicket. My bindle lay on the ground beside me. Confused, I rose to my feet and stared at the ramshackle huts and their ragged canvas overhangs. They looked to be completely deserted, as if no one had ever lived there at all.

“There were others…” I said as I tucked my pack beneath my arm.

The lawman nodded. “Someone reported a bunch of tramps down here, but it looks like they’ve all headed down the tracks. I suggest you do the same, if you don’t want to spend the next ninety days in the county workhouse.”

I took that sheriff’s advice and, bewildered, started on my way.

After a quarter-mile hike down the railroad tracks, I came to the boxcar.

“Mickey!” I called several times, but received no answer. Had the boy moved on, leaving me behind? It was hard to figure, since we’d been traveling the country together for so very long.

I tugged at the door of that abandoned boxcar, but was unable to open it. I placed my ear to the wall and heard nothing.

***

Since that night, much has taken place.

I’ve moved on down to Louisiana and back again, hopping freights when they’re going my way and when the yard bulls aren’t around to catch me in the act. Still, Mickey’s puzzling departure continues to bug me. That grisly string of dreams preys on my mind also. Sometimes it’s mighty hard to convince myself that they actually
were
dreams.

Oh, and I found out why I’ve been so pale and listless lately. A few weeks ago, I visited my brother in Birmingham. Unlike me, he is a family man who made it through hard times rather well. He suggested I go see a doctor friend of his, which I did. The sawbones’ verdict was halfway what I expected it to be.