Midnight Grinding (27 page)

Instead, he turned and left the trailer. Danny Ray climbed back into his pickup truck and started the engine. He took another swig of Wild Turkey, then backed the vehicle down the driveway to the main highway. Once the truck’s tires hit asphalt, Danny Ray shifted into gear and stamped the gas pedal. Soon, he was heading north, toward the county line and a lonely stretch of rarely-used back road that he honestly thought he would never have to travel again during his lifetime.

***

Just about everyone in Hawkshaw County knew what had happened on the Old Logging Road back in the summer of ’78.

They knew about the car crash, how Danny Ray Fulton had misjudged the sharpness of a single curve and drove smack-dab into the center of that big black oak that the road made a sudden hairpin turn around. They also knew what had happened to Danny Ray’s girlfriend, Betsy Lou Brown. How the force of the collision had propelled her head-first through the windshield and into the unyielding trunk of the tree.

The folks of Hawkshaw County also knew the old wives’ tale concerning the tree on the Old Logging Road. Several people had sworn that they had traveled the curve of the dirt road late at night and, in the glow of their headlights, witnessed a strange sight. They claimed to have seen the distinct impression of Betsy Lou’s lovely face on the western side of the big tree, forever etched there by a split-second of deadly impact. Other folks embellished the story a bit, swearing that even the color of the dead girl’s hair and eyes could be seen on the face on the tree.

That was where Danny Ray was headed that night. He wanted to see for himself whether or not the rumor about the face on the tree was true. He hadn’t been back to the curve on the Old Logging Road since the night of that awful crash, but tonight he felt the need to witness the phenomenon on his own, if it did, indeed, exist.

Danny Ray reduced his speed as he approached the fatal hairpin turn on the rural road. He squinted against the darkness. There was no moonlight to speak of that night and, even with the help of the truck’s high beams, it was difficult to see where he was going. The pitch darkness of the Tennessee woods seemed to absorb all light and instantly turn it into blacker shades of shadow.

Finally, he reached the notorious curve. Danny Ray pulled his truck to the side of the road, then cut the engine as well as the headlights. The night closed in around him, almost claustrophobically so. Danny Ray listened to the abundance of night sounds that echoed through the dense thicket: the singing of crickets, the rustle of small animals picking through the underbrush in search of food, and the occasional cooing of a lonesome dove.

I want doves
, she’d said once.
I want doves at my wedding.

Danny Ray took another swallow from the bottle of Wild Turkey. He hoped that the liquor would fortify his nerve and give him the strength to proceed. But his paranoia was at a fever pitch that night, as well as that weighty feeling of oppressive guilt, the feeling he had never quite been able to shake, even after all those years.

He was on the verge of making a U-turn in the road and hightailing it back to town, when he gathered the courage and decided to go through with it this time. He set the whiskey bottle on top of the dashboard, took a flashlight from beneath the seat, and climbed out of the truck. Then he walked slowly, but deliberately, toward the tree that had caused him so much pain and grief that summer night fifteen years ago.

He waited until he was almost to the tree before he switched on his light. When he did, he played the beam across the textured column of the ancient oak. The eastern side of the tree was unscarred. It was the opposite side that had taken the full brunt of the head-on collision.

Danny Ray stood there for a moment, breathing in the muggy night air, afraid to witness what lay on the far side of the old tree. He closed his eyes and recalled that night. He remembered the scent of Betsy Lou’s perfume, the deep thrum of his Trans-Am’s big eight-cylinder engine, even the song that blared from the car stereo…Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Gimme Three Steps.”

He took a deep breath, braced himself, and then made his way to the other side of the tree. The first thing he noticed in the glow of the flashlight was the deep scoring at the base of the trunk. It was the spot where the nose of his Trans-Am had impacted with hard wood. He then let the light play upward. He found what he was looking for midway up the trunk.

“Good God Almighty!” he whispered. “It’s true. It really is.”

Danny Ray reached out and lay his hand upon the oval indentation, then drew his fingers away and studied the pattern that had been permanently etched into the trunk of the oak. It was her face. The face of Betsy Lou.

He would have known that face anywhere. The petite nose, the wide-set eyes, the luscious lips, full and pouty. It was a face Danny Ray had fallen hopelessly in love with during his junior and senior years in high school. It was the face of the girl he had intended to marry and raise a family with, as well as share all his secret hopes and dreams for the future.

It was also a face that he had hated angrily, if only for a single fateful moment.

As Danny Ray stared at the death-mask of his beloved Betsy Lou, memories began to nag at him. He began to remember things…things he had fought to suppress for years and, for a while, had been successful in doing so. For a long time those memories had been kept at bay, buried deep down in the dark side of his soul. But, now, they began to resurface, swiftly and without warning, assaulting his conscience with their painful clarity.

He remembered the argument. He remembered the biting accusations, the slamming of the car door, and the swish of Betsy Lou’s plaid skirt in the glow of the headlights. He remembered the pressure of his foot on the gas pedal and the speed of the Trans-Am surging forward…as well the impact of steel against fragile flesh and bone.

A potentially hot date that night had turned terribly sour. They had been on their way to their regular make-out spot on the Old Logging Road, when Betsy Lou had confronted him about going out with another girl the previous weekend. Danny Ray had denied it, of course, but Betsy Lou hadn’t bought his innocent act. She demanded that he stop the car and let her out. He did and she immediately began her angry march back down the road toward the main highway.

And what had Danny Ray done? Had he jumped out of the car and apologized for cheating on her? No. He had sat, fuming, in his car for a long moment, then lost his temper entirely. Shifting the Trans-Am into gear, he turned the car around and roared down the road after her. They were on the far side of the hairpin turn. It loomed immediately up ahead.

An instant later, he saw her in his headlights. And, in that instant, he reacted childishly…if cold-blooded murder could be described in such simple terms.

He had caught a glimpse of her walking away from him and all the little things about Betsy Lou that grated on his nerves—her stubborn streak and petty fits of pouting—had struck him the wrong way, fueling his anger. He stamped the accelerator to the floorboard and gave the steering wheel a quick jerk to the left.

Regret and the return of rationality came only with the jarring impact of the car against her body. The force of the collision threw Betsy thirty feet forward and she landed, headlong, into the oak tree he now stood before. Danny Ray recalled the ugly sound of her lovely face smashing into the center of the tree trunk, as well as the ugly crimson splatter of blood and brains against the bark. He remembered the way her limp body had folded and sank to the ground in an unmoving heap.

The next few moments had been crucial ones. First there had been panic and overwhelming remorse. Then there had been fear of discovery and cold calculation.

Danny Ray had parked his car, climbed out, and dragged Betsy Lou’s mangled body from beneath the tree. He had set his dead girlfriend in the passenger seat with the seat belt unfastened. Then he had climbed in, buckled his own belt, and backed up a hundred feet or so. Danny Ray had taken a deep breath, then floored the gas. As he rushed toward the oak tree at forty miles per hour or so, he knew that what he was attempting might be suicide. But he knew he had no choice. If he didn’t try to cover his tracks, he would end up dying anyway…on Death Row at the state penitentiary.

The impact had been devastating…but had done the job. As the front end of the Pontiac folded inward into the engine block, the body of Betsy Lou had been thrown forward. She had crashed through the windshield and ended up, torn and crumpled, on the jagged folds of the car hood. Danny Ray had barely survived himself, despite the restraints of his seat belt. When the county police arrived, they found him unconscious. He had suffered a bad concussion, a broken arm, and a shattered left leg. Everyone said that he was one lucky bastard to have survived such a terrible wreck.

Believe it or not, it had worked. The local authorities had taken the apparent car crash at face value. The county sheriff had been too stupid to investigate further and the county coroner had been too lazy to perform a thorough autopsy on poor Betsy Lou. Danny Ray had covered his tracks well and pulled the stunt off, escaping the consequences of his deadly actions scott-free.

Or had he? Danny Ray thought about the years following the car crash. The low-paying, dead-end job, his cheating wife, the brood of troublesome kids, his constant battle with alcohol and trying to stay out of jail…hadn’t they all served as some form of punishment for him? Hadn’t they separated him from his goals and dreams, and turned him into the bitter, miserable man that he was today?

Danny Ray stared at the face on the tree again. His heart ached at the expression that was permanently tattooed there. An expression of shock and terror. And the hurt of betrayal. That most of all.

“I love you,” moaned Danny Ray tearfully. “I still love you.” But even as he said it, he knew that it was much too late for that. Just like it was too late to ask for forgiveness. The word “sorry” had little meaning to someone who had been dead and buried for a decade and a half.

Danny Ray placed his face close to the one on the tree. He pressed his lips against hers, recalling the soft warmth of Betsy Lou’s supple mouth. He longed for that enlivening sensation, but all he felt was the cold, coarse hardness of tree bark. He realized that the tree was no substitute for his lost love. It was only a lasting memorial to that final horrifying moment of her young life.

Violent sobs racked the husky form of Danny Ray as he turned away from the tree on the Old Logging Road and walked back to his truck. As he stumbled through the darkness, he considered going to the sheriff and confessing to the crime he had committed. But he decided not to. Conviction and incarceration could not match the sentence he was now serving. In his heart, Danny Ray Fulton knew that he deserved to suffer for what he had taken from Betsy Lou…and suffer he would.

He climbed into his truck and headed back toward town. Toward his pointless work, his dishonest wife, and the maddening draw of the liquor bottle. Toward the worst form of punishment he could imagine…a lackluster life full of broken dreams.

As Danny Ray drove away, the face on the tree remained where it had for fifteen years, and where it would be for countless years more. The lovely eyes of Betsy Lou glistened with a mixture of tree sap and the salty tears of her remorseful lover, as if she, too, were mourning what had been lost that distant night on the dark stretch of the Old Logging Road.

BOOKMARKS

When I “found religion”—as the country folk say—in 1996, I felt downright guilty about having written this story, which cast Christians in a bad light. But, with time, I’ve realized that there could be some truth and possibility to it. Fanatical religious groups possess a perverse sort of power. They can lead a nationwide boycott or protest a military funeral and the media flock to them in droves like thirsty hounds to the water bowl. Perhaps it’s farfetched that one such group might inject itself into the political mainstream and take absolute control…or perhaps not.

Maybe the good Lord inspired me to pen this cautionary tale, if only to expose “false prophets and teachers,” as the Bible calls them.

Jennifer huddled against her father’s body, seeking warmth and comfort. There was little of either there in the camp. She faintly remembered her room, bright and cheerful, filled with colorful toys and decorated with posters of Sesame Street and Disney characters. It was during periods like this—when she was hungry, exhausted, and on the verge of slumber—that the six-year-old could remember the good times the best. In the daylight hours, with the drab and dirty tents, with the men in white jumpsuits standing on the wall with guns, Jennifer had a difficult time remembering the past. All she experienced then was misery and resignation, as if she had been born there in the filthy hovel they now called home.

Drowsiness began to overcome her and, gradually, she remembered things as they had been a year ago. The big two-story house in a Memphis suburb. Her father in his study, sitting in front of his computer. Her mother baking raisin oatmeal cookies and taking care of the new baby. But that had changed abruptly in the dead of night, with rough hands dragging Jennifer from her bed and strips of tape sealing away her screams of terror. The next thing Jennifer knew, she and her family were in the compound, surrounded by people dressed in dirty pajamas and nightgowns like themselves. Some of the people cried, while others merely sat there and stared into space.

She thought that maybe their imprisonment had something to do with Daddy and his job. Daddy didn’t go to work like other daddies did. He stayed at home and wrote books. Books that had scary names and pictures on the covers that gave Jennifer nightmares if she looked at them too long.

She remembered the people that made Daddy mad: the ones who marched in front of their house, carrying signs and yelling Bible verses. They said that their book was a Good Book and that Daddy wrote Bad Books. They said Daddy worshipped the Devil and that he would burn in the Bad Place. The people had frightened Jennifer. She had cried and Daddy had told her that it wasn’t true. He told her that what he wrote was just make-believe, like Curious George or the Cat in the Hat.

Then things got worse. Daddy started crying, too, and drinking the Nasty Tasting Stuff because the stores in town didn’t sell his books anymore. He looked real sad and didn’t play with Jennifer or Baby Joey like he once did. He didn’t talk to Mommy very much, didn’t hug or kiss her like he used to. He just sat there, drinking the Nasty Tasting Stuff and watching the congressional hearings and the new President talking about “reviving moral values” and things like that.

Jennifer opened her sleepy eyes and stared at her mother, who lay curled up on her side at the other end of the tent. Mommy hadn’t said anything for a long time. Not since Baby Joey went away. Her little brother had coughed and cried for days. Then he stopped, turning as still and cold as a rubber baby doll. The big, fat woman they called Preacher Lady came and took Joey away. She told Mommy that Joey was in the Bad Place and that God wouldn’t let him into the Good Place with the angels because of what Daddy wrote. Mommy had screamed and cried for a while, then she curled up and hadn’t said a word since.

Jennifer cuddled in Daddy’s lap, ignoring the stinky way he smelled, and hoped that she would dream of Barbie dolls, Dr. Seuss, and chocolate pudding. As she dozed off, her tiny fingers traced the picture on Daddy’s chest—a tattoo he called it. Out in the muddy yard, the speakers sang “Amazing Grace.” It almost drowned out the sound of weeping, the sound of sickness and despair…but not quite.

***

Samuel Markham waited until his daughter was asleep, then tenderly took her in his arms and carried her to the neighboring tent. Florence Delaney was awake and waiting for him. “Take good care of her,” he said, laying her on a palate of filthy newspaper.

“I will,” promised the former librarian. She ran her fingers through Jennifer’s dirty blond hair, then looked at the gaunt man dressed in tattered pajamas. “I don’t think you should go. It’s a terrible risk to take.”

“I know, but I have to,” said Sam. “For all of us. I have to see how bad it is…if it’s as widespread as I think.” He reached out and took the woman’s frail hand, a hand that had once proudly stamped library cards and sorted a million books. “Anyway, what’s the worst that could happen if I get caught? They’d just ship me back here. It’s not like they’re going to kill me or anything.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Florence. “Would you have ever thought of them pulling something like this?”

Sam’s face darkened. “No, I guess not.” Then, planting a parting kiss on Jennifer’s forehead, he slipped out of the tent and took to the shadows.

Only half of the guards were on sentry duty during the graveyard shift. Sam crouched in the darkness beside a ramshackle barn and waited until the oscillating searchlights swung the other way. Then he sprinted to the old henhouse and the wall of timber and barbed wire beyond. From what Sam could tell, the camp had once been a farm. He wondered where the owners of the property were and whether it had been bought from them or taken by force.

He found the depression that he had been working on for three nights solid and began to rake the loose earth and dead leaves away. He cast a fleeting glance at the corner towers and saw the white clad men holding their M-16s and Uzis. Fortunately, their attention was dulled by the lateness of the hour. Carefully, Sam squeezed under the fence and ducked into the thick, dark woods to the north. The singing of crickets and the peeping of water toads masked his footsteps as he headed through the dark thicket. He breathed deeply and smelled the scent of the muddy Mississippi nearby. It was a smell he had not experienced for twelve long months.

He reached the main highway a half hour later, but kept to the underbrush, reluctant to reveal himself to the headlights of passing cars. Around three o’clock in the morning, he came to a peach orchard and tried to gorge himself on the sweet fruit. But his stomach rebelled and he became violently sick. Normal food seemed much too exotic to his digestive system. He was more accustomed to a diet of rat meat and raw insects now.

***

The first gray light of dawn found Sam Markham on the outskirts of Memphis. He reached his own neighborhood around five o’clock. Except for a couple of things, his house seemed the same as it had the night of his family’s abduction. However, there was someone else’s name on the mailbox and a strange car parked in the drive.

Sam made his way inconspicuously to the back door of the house, then remembered that he had no keys. He went to Brenda’s flower garden, which was now overgrown with weeds, and then reached up into the cedar birdfeeder that had been built in his own workshop. He felt around in the gritty layer of birdseed, hoping that it was still hidden there. Soon, his fingers found the emergency key that was stashed there. A better hiding place than under the welcome mat or on top of the door sill, he remembered telling his wife, and he had been right.

Quietly, he unlocked the back door and stepped into the kitchen. The place was a mess: dirty dishes in the sink and soda cans and food wrappers littering the breakfast table. He took a cast iron skillet from where Brenda’s kitchen utensils hung and silently climbed the stairs. Once on the second floor, Sam checked the rooms. They were all unoccupied, except for the master bedroom. A man stretched out in the king-sized bed that Sam and Brenda had once slept and made love in. He was young, blond, and muscular. Sam glanced at a chair next to the bed. A snow white jumpsuit and beret were draped there, as if waiting for the ringing of the alarm clock. On the cedar chest at the foot of the bed lay an AK-47 and a gunbelt with a magnum revolver in its holster.

Suddenly, a great rage overcame Sam. The bastard was one of
them!
He walked over to the bed, raised the iron skillet overhead, and with all his might, hit the sleeping stranger in the head. The man’s eyelids fluttered and he unleashed a low grunt as the edge of the frying pan cleaved his skull in half. Sam didn’t stop there. He struck again and again, until his anger had been depleted. He stared in disgust at the skillet, which was caked with blood, hair, and brain matter, then flung the makeshift weapon across the room.

He sat on the carpeted floor of his bedroom until eight o’clock, then decided that it was time to get ready. He stripped off his filthy rags, showered, shaved, and then returned to the bedroom. He studied himself in the full-length mirror on the closet door and grimaced. Even scrubbed clean, he looked terrible. He had lost nearly forty pounds since his imprisonment. He looked like a walking skeleton.

He dressed in the white jumpsuit and was zipping it up, when the tattoo on his chest drew his attention. He studied it in the mirror, recalling its origin. It had happened during the first World Horror Convention in Nashville. He had been a fledgling horror writer then, only a few short stories and a novel to his credit. He and some other writers had gotten drunk and stumbled into a tattoo parlor on lower Broadway. They had all agreed on the same design…a winged serpent entwined around a flaming cross. It had seemed pretty damned funny at the time, but now the memory pained him like a cancer. That had been nearly twenty years and twelve bestsellers ago.

After dressing, Sam took the guns and went downstairs to raid the refrigerator. He saw nothing there that he could stomach, except for a steak in the meat drawer. He ate it raw and bloody, pretending that it was fresh rat meat rather than choice sirloin. Then he walked down the hallway to his study. It was almost like he had left it. The stereo system was still there, as well as his computer and the La-Z-Boy recliner that he did his reading in. His collection of rock & roll CDs was gone, as well as every book in every bookcase that lined the four walls. He was stunned. His Dark Harvest and Ziesing hardcovers were gone, along with his limited editions of King, Barker, McCammon, and Lansdale. Even his own books, both paperbacks and hardbacks alike, had been cleaned out.

Sam went to the TV in the family room and turned it on. Most of the cable stations were scrambled. Those that weren’t showed religious programming. Tearful preachers pounded pulpits and demanded donations for the Unified Church of America, a faction of organized religion that Sam was all too familiar with. He had endured the non-stop teachings of that religious conglomerate during his time in the prison camp. It was a disturbing hybrid of several religions, distorting the belief of God into something fanatical and perverse. He turned on CNN. The anchorman reported on the President’s recent press conference. Sam shuddered as he watched. The death penalty for homosexuality and abortion. The Cold War back into full swing again. Then the bland face of the President came on the screen and Sam remembered when the Mississippi minister had been something of a joke in the media, with his sponsor boycotts and his demands for wholesome, family programming.

Feeling a little sick, Sam turned off the TV. A lot had taken place in twenty years. For one thing, no one was laughing now.

***

Sam took the car of the man he had murdered and drove toward the heart of the city. He drove north up Elvis Presley Boulevard and passed Graceland. The home of the King had been altered. The great iron gates with the musical notes and silhouette of a guitar-picking Elvis were gone. In their place were gates decorated with praying hands and crosses.

He turned onto Union Avenue and headed for downtown Memphis. He was surprised by how immaculate the place was. No litter, no unsightly billboards, half as many cars and buses as usual, and not a homeless person in sight. The extent of the city’s cleanliness was almost obscene.
Is it like this everywhere?
he wondered.
All over the country?
He noticed the people on the sidewalks. They were dressed in their best Sunday clothes, smiling unnerving, plastic grins. He wondered how they could manage to maintain such a look of complete happiness and contentment, then noticed the abundance of surveillance cameras at every street corner.

He parked his car in a lot next to an old book bindery that still seemed to be in operation. He sat there for a while and stared across the street at the great columned front of the Memphis Public Library. He hated the thought of walking into that building, but he knew he had to…for himself, and especially for Florence, who had worked there for nearly thirty years. He had to see how extreme things had actually become.