Phantom Nights (4 page)

His arms and his shirt were streaked with black. He was bleeding from his mouth and nose, but only trickles. When he tried to stand, he wobbled and wheeled a little and his eyes slid up in his head. Then he pitched forward across the outside rail, only half-conscious but, as far as Mally could tell, in one piece.

M
ally always had a first aid kit handy. The one in the Dodge contained smelling salts. When she brought the kit, the boy was on his hands and knees. She held him up in a sitting position on the rock ballast and passed the little bottle of ammonium carbonate under his nose. She felt strength returning to his body and he jerked his head sharply aside, wincing. Mally had a strong grip; also she was angry with him and not about to let him go until he came up with some kind of explanation for what she now considered to be a terrifying, crazy stunt. Her own heartbeat had just begun to settle down.

She'd had a look at the place where the boy had stretched out and flattened himself between the rails to await the train, more or less tucked himself in, and she had seen that a sharp tool of some kind, probably an adze, had been used recently to gouge a couple of inches from three of the six-inch-square creosote-dipped ties. A dangerous, deranged thing to do, because if the weakened ties broke under the weight of the train, a rail could come loose, sending the dozen cars of the
Dixie Traveler
slewing off the right-of-way and into the Yella Dog. With, count on it, tragic loss of life.

"Look at me," Mally said, putting the cap on the bottle of smelling salts. The haze was nearly gone from the boy's green eyes.

Head drooping, breathing through his mouth, he looked up with a youthful hothead's whiplash impertinence, perhaps just realizing it was a colored woman talking to him in that tone.

Mally wasn't having any. "I don't know who you are, but I saw what you did to those railroad ties. Was you, wasn't it?" A downward shift in his gaze confirmed that. Her grip on him tightened. "God would show you no mercy if you'd wrecked that train tonight, which I suppose you never gave a thought to while you were presuming to play daredevil."

At least he hadn't been trying to kill himself, as she had first suspected. But Mally wasn't in a merciful mood either.

He brushed the dirty forefinger of his free hand against his cut lower lip. More blood welled. Chest still heaving, given to a chill, molten memory of an eyelash escape. His blond mop needed washing. His bright, sharp skin bathed in boy-sweat, smelling of diesel, of tobacco. Already a smoker; there was a mangled cigarette behind his right ear. In spite of appearances, Mally didn't think he was from a rag-tag family. He wore a gold ring with a small diamond in it—of course it might be stolen—and an ID bracelet. Those were a big fad with kids nowadays.

He tried to squirm away from Mally, run for it. But she could deal with what strength had returned to his body, which was neither childlike nor with the full breadth of maturity, more bone than muscle yet. His body hair was soft and sunburnt silver.

"Just you sit still. I'm a nurse, and you need tending to."

There had been no traffic on the road for a good fifteen minutes, but now a pickup truck came by, stopped at the grade crossing. Two overalled men in the front seat, a barking dog in the truck bed. Mally recognized one of the men who leaned out through the window space of the cab to ask if they could be of any help. He was married to a childhood friend of Mally's.

"He fell off his bike, but I think he'll be all right, Cuffy. Either of you recognize this boy? Can't seem to get his tongue working yet."

They didn't know him, and drove on. Mally said to the boy, who couldn't stop squirming, "Need to do something about that bloody nose now. Tilt your head back like this"—showing him—"pinch either side of the bridge with your thumb and forefinger 'til it stops. That's it. Lord, I never seen anyone foolish as you in my born days! Please tell me that was the first and last time you'll ever act that stupid."

He looked at her with one eye, pinching his nose, quiet while Mally poured a little alcohol onto a cotton ball and began to clean around his nostrils and upper lip. Before she was half done he got antsy again and tried to get to his feet. He was looking at his bike, which he had seen was half under the front end of Mally's car. She hadn't noticed in time where the bike was in her anxiety to reach him before the
Traveler
got there first. Lost that race, and the bicycle probably was damaged. Nonetheless she yanked him down again on his butt.

"Give me any more aggravation and I will flat turn you over to the sheriff! I'm tired, and if you'd like to know, I had a pitiful day, not to mention the scare you handed me. My name is Mally Shaw if I didn't say so before, and if there's any courtesy in you, you'll be telling me who
you
are."

She waited. He was mum. With a stillness that conveyed a hint of grievance. Mally sighed.

"Be that way. I can find out if I want to, and I've a mind. Got to let the railroad know what happened here, 'less their trackwalkers don't come across those damaged ties in time to prevent an accident."

That warning seemed to bother him more than being run over by a passenger train.

Mally looked over the ring, which struck her as an odd thing for a boy his age to be wearing, and the steel-link identification bracelet. "And I was serious about the sheriff."

Maybe she ought to have been more cautious, invited the two men in the truck to stick around until she was through with her ministrations. But she didn't believe this boy was bad and a threat to her. He was just reckless and a danger to himself. Nothing about him suggested a violent disposition. Mally was confident of her instinct there. And he did have nice looks beneath the grime.

She changed her grip on him to his left wrist and turned it so she could read the engraving on the bar of the ID bracelet in the lights of the old Dodge.

"So you're Alex. Too much trouble just to open your mouth and tell me that?"

His lips compressed; he shook his head, and a couple of drops of blood from his nose spattered her.

"Look out now, look at what you did!" She let go of him. "You don't want my help anymore, fine with me."

Mally turned away to close her first-aid box and was startled when he put a hand on her. But he released her quickly, and there was a look of pleading in his eyes. Pleading what? It was then she realized maybe he wasn't being plain stubborn not talking to her. Could be he had no power of speech, couldn't answer for or explain himself. If he was a mute, what a hard thing that could be for an adolescent boy.

Looking down at him, Mally nodded.

"
Can't
talk?"

Alex nodding too.

"Always been that way?"

This time he shook his head.

"Been to school though; you can write?"
Yes
. "Something you want to tell me, then, write it down for me?"
Yes
. "I'll be right back, Alex."

Mally noticed how feeble the car headlights were, battery running down, must have stalled the engine when she skidded to a stop. On her way to start it up again and keep the battery charged, she looked under the bumper to see how much damage there was to his bike. Looked like an almost-new blue-and-white Schwinn, run over by the right-side tire. A pedal pushed up, chain off, and the front fender bent out of shape. He wouldn't be riding it anywhere else tonight.

She took a pocket spiral notebook from her purse on the front seat and went back to where Alex was sitting, arms around his knees, nose elevated again. His lower lip was swelling, bitten, she supposed, during his fifteen seconds of extreme terror beneath the
Dixie Traveler
. A wonder he hadn't loaded up his jean shorts too.

Mally handed him the pad and pencil.

"Write down anything you want me to know. Where you live, who your folks are."

He took the pad, hesitated; then slashed two words across the page and thrust pad and pencil back to Mally. Licked his cut lip, hunched himself tighter in a mime of misery.

THEY'RE DEAD!!!

Mally stared at the words he had scrawled, then stared at him, her perspective forever changed.

"But that's no reason for you to throw your life away, is it?" she said to Alex. "What is it you need to be provin' to yourself?"

"The Situation"

Wyatt Sexton and Silver Ghost

Unconfessed Demons

B
obby Gambier arrived home a little past ten p.m. from Memphis, where he studied law three nights a week at Memphis State College. Cecily was still up and so was ten-month-old Brendan, fretful from feverish gums where a couple of teeth were erupting in front. Cecily walked him up and down the front porch in her robe and pajamas, crooning a made-up song in Brendan's ear.

Bobby dumped his law books on a wicker table, batted away a hardshell beetle winging too close to his face, kissed his humid wife and took the sleepy, irritable baby from her. He looked in Brendan's mouth by porchlight, then gave Brendan his little finger to teeth on.

"Should wash your hands first," Cecily reminded him. "You had anything to eat?"

"Mars bar?"

"
Bobby
."

"Let's get Brendan quieted down first, then I'll eat some eggs. Where did we hide the brandy Uncle Pete gave us last Christmas?"

"Bottom drawer of our dresser. But you're not thinking?"

"Works like a charm, doesn't it?"

"We'll be raising ourselves a little alcoholic," Cecily said, smoothing the fine golden hair of their child across the crown of his head. She opened the screen door and Bobby carried Brendan inside.

"I'll get the brandy," Cecily said, "but easy does it or he'll be sporting a pip of a hangover." She paused on the stairs going up.
"Bobby?"

"Yeah, hon?"

"Alex has been gone since I guess middle of the day, and doesn't he have a curfew after he was caught going through other people's mailboxes?"

"He thought his
Boy's Life
might have been misdelivered but, yeah, he has a curfew."

"We need to talk," Cecily said, that little lump of muscle showing at the corner of her jaw; it looked as if she were double-jointed there.

"Couldn't we—"

"No, tonight. Let's get this settled about Alex, once and for all."

"Cecily, I'm dog-tired and I've got studying to do."

She shook her head tautly, and he saw a shine of tears in her eyes just before she went on upstairs to their bedroom to fetch what had become an illicit object in their household. Cecily's mom had been married to a convivial guy—not Cecily's dad, but Bernice's third husband—who had turned heavy social drinking into a string of lost weekends before kicking off with a liver hard as a meteorite. Bernice subsequently became wrathful in the cause of temperance, particularly in Robert G. and Cicely's house, where she was a frequent drop-in presence.
Snoop
said it better, Bobby thought. Cecily was her only child, and Bernice, like a lot of women getting along in age and with nothing in particular to occupy their time, had an overprotective streak. Bobby liked his beer after his shift with the Evening Shade Sheriff's Department, something harder on occasion when his hours caught up with him and he needed a stiff snort to put himself to sleep. But that was just how
it
got started, Bernice, the expert on alcoholic husbands, told Cecily at every opportunity, drumming her theme home with a marching-band tempo.

And, Bobby knew, Bernice was relentless in her condemnation of what she called "The Situation"—not Bobby's fondness for Budweiser but his obligation to his little brother Alex, whom "Bernie" had no regard for and mistrusted and constantly had Cecily on the ropes about, to the point where she might be imagining things . . .

He walked Brendan back to the kitchen, little finger still in the baby's mouth, as always a little awed by the snug bundle against his shoulder, not minding the crankiness and poop diapers, feeling a quiet kind of joy about the whole business of fatherhood when, only a year ago, the tumulus of Cece's glazed belly and popped navel like a skin balloon had unnerved him badly. So that he found himself unable, in her last months, to provide her with a decent hard-on although Cecily, too shy during the first couple of years of their marriage, had developed a real liking and lusty facility for oral sex.