Stories (2011) (18 page)

“I know people
who know people,” she said.

“At the ice
house, I found a camera, and I figure that’s where some special pictures were
made; reels for smokers. But I also got to figure a girl like Meg, she might
have made a film for one of the owners. Someone like Johnny Ditto, a little
keepsake for him to take home and watch on lonely nights. But she decided maybe
to keep the film, take it out of the private realm. I think she may have made
other films, her and some of the other girls. Maybe not just for Johnny. But
films for big-name guys who wanted to watch themselves do the deed with some
fine-looking babe. Only the babes kept the films. Threatened blackmail. Asked
for money. Johnny might not have cared who saw him do what. But some of the
clients you and him were servicing, they might have been more worried. You
couldn’t have that. So you had to have the films and you had to get rid of any
girls in on the scheme. They had to pay. Even your sister had to pay.”

“Don’t be
silly,” Ali said. “She was my sister. I wouldn’t hurt her.”

“But you might
let someone else do it for you.”

Ali’s face
changed. She looked older. She looked tougher. It was like the devil had surfaced
under her skin.

“You’re too damn
smart for your own good,” she said. “It’s wasn’t exactly like that, but you’re
near enough you get the Kewpie doll.”

“I got to take
you in,” Coats said.

She said,
“Warren.”

Even though
Coats expected it, he was still surprised. He thought Warren would have to open
the door. But he came through it. The door blew off the hinges like it had been
hit by cannon shot and Warren came speeding through the gap. He rushed straight
at Coats. Coats brought his gun up and fired, but it didn’t stop Warren. Warren
hit him and knocked him back over the table and into the wall. It made cabinet
doors fly open and it made dishes fly out; they popped and shattered on the
floor.

Coats lay on the
floor with Warren on top of him, choking him with both hands. Coats’s vision
crawled with black dots and there was a drumbeat in his head. He tried to get
his feet stuck up in Warren’s belly to push him back, but Warren was too close.
Coats felt around for the gun, but couldn’t find it.

Then he saw Ali,
leaning over them, looking down at him. She had his gun in her hand.

“I got nothing
against you,” she said. “It isn’t personal. But business is business, and it’s
what runs the world. You finish up here, Warren. Make it look like a robbery.
Mess things up some more.”

Warren didn’t
seem to be listening. He was concentrating on choking the life out of Coats.
Ali wandered off, sat in a chair at the table, and coiled one leg over the
other.

“You are quite
the waste, baby,” she said.

Coats pushed his
shoulders up. It helped a little, lessened the choke. There were fewer black
dots. He glanced sideways, saw a broken cup from the cabinet. He snatched it up
and dragged it hard across the side of Warren’s neck. Warren yelled and sat up.
One hand flew to his neck, the other still clutched Coats’s throat. Blood crept
through Warren’s fingers, leaked onto the floor.

Coats smashed
what was left of the cup into Warren’s nose and rolled him off. There was a
shot. Coats felt a bit of a pinch in his side. He scuttled his feet underneath
him and rushed at Ali. She was coming out of the chair, pointing the gun. Coats
dropped down and the gun barked and his ears rang. He kept coming. She tried to
fire again, but he had her wrist now and was shoving her into the wall. When he
did he lost his grip on her, but she lost the gun. It went sailing across the
room. He struck her with a hard right to the side of the head. She dropped like
a brick and didn’t move.

A big hand
grabbed Coats’s shoulder and jerked him backward. He went tumbling across the
floor. When he looked up, Warren was looking at him. He had one hand to his cut
neck. His nose was flat and bloody. His teeth were bared and there was a look
in his eye that made Coats feel weak, as if from a blow. Warren trudged forward
a couple of steps. Coats lifted his fists, ready to fight. He figured he might
as well be bear hunting with a switch.

Warren’s face
changed. He had a look that reminded Coats of a man who’s forgotten his money.
Warren swallowed, then coughed. Blood flew out of his mouth. He pulled his hand
away from his neck and blood squirted high and wide. Warren looked at his
bloody hand as if it had been replaced with a catcher’s mitt. Coats saw now
that the first shot he had fired had hit Warren in the side. The big galoot
hadn’t even noticed.

Warren sat down
on the floor and tried to put his hand against his neck again, but he was too
weak. It kept sliding off.

“Damn it,”
Warren said. Blood gurgled out of his mouth. He carefully stretched himself out
on the floor and made a sound like someone trying to swallow a pineapple. Then
he didn’t move again. He was as dead as last year’s Christmas.

Coats went over
and looked at Ali. She was breathing heavily, and she had a blue knot on the
side of her head, but that was the worst of it. When he stood up, he went weak.
The hole in his side was dripping big time. He leaned against a chair for a
moment, got it together.

Outside, through
the doorway, he saw lights. The shots had been heard and someone had called.
Pretty soon, cops would be coming up the stairs. He grinned, thought maybe it
would look better all-around if he could at least put on his pants.

Outside it was cold and wet and windy. The storm rattled the
shack, slid like razor blades through the window, door and wall cracks, but it
wasn't enough to make any difference to the couple. Sitting before the
crumbling fireplace in their creaking rocking chairs, shawls across their
knees, fingers entwined, they were warm.

A bucket behind them near the kitchen sink collected water
dripping from a hole in the roof. The drops had long since passed the noisy
stage of sounding like steel bolts falling on tin, and were now gentle plops.

The old couple were husband and wife; had been for over
fifty years. They were comfortable with one another and seldom spoke. Mostly
they rocked and looked at the fire as it flickered shadows across the room.

Finally Margie spoke. "Alex," she said. "I
hope I die before you."

Alex stopped rocking. "Did you say what I thought you
did?"

"I said, I hope I die before you." She wouldn't
look at him, just the fire. "It's selfish, I know, but I hope I do. I
don't want to live on with you gone. It would be like cutting out my heart and
making me walk around. Like one of them zombies."

"There are the children," he said. "If I
died, they'd take you in."

"I'd just be in the way. I love them, but I don't want
to do that. They got their own lives. I'd just as soon die before you. That
would make things simple."

"Not simple for me," Alex said. "I don't want
you to die before me. So how about that? We're both selfish, aren't we?"

She smiled thinly. "Well, it ain't a thing to talk
about before bedtime, but it's been on my mind, and I had to get it out."

"Been thinking on it too, honey. Only natural we would.
We ain't spring chickens anymore."

"You're healthy as a horse, Alex Brooks. Mechanic work
you did all your life kept you strong. Me, I got the bursitis and the miseries
and I'm tired all the time. Got the old age bad."

Alex started rocking again. They stared into the fire.
"We're going to go together, hon," he said. "I feel it. That's
the way it ought to be for folks like us."

"I wonder if I'll see him coming. Death, I mean."

"What?"

"My grandma used to tell me she seen him the night her
daddy died."

"You've never told me this."

"Ain't a subject I like. But grandma said this man in a
black buggy slowed down out front of their house, cracked his whip three times,
and her daddy was gone in instants. And she said she'd heard her grandfather
tell how he had seen Death when he was a boy. Told her it was early morning and
he was up, about to start his chores, and when he went outside he seen this man
dressed in black walk by the house and stop out front. He was carrying a stick
over his shoulder with a checkered bundle tied to it, and he looked at the
house and snapped his fingers three times. A moment later they found my
great-grandfather's brother, who had been sick with the smallpox, dead in
bed."

"Stories, hon. Stories. Don't get yourself worked up
over a bunch of old tall tales. Here, I'll heat us some milk."

Alex stood, laid the shawl in the chair, went over to put
milk in a pan and heat it. As he did, he turned to watch Margie's back. She was
still staring into the fire, only she wasn't rocking. She was just watching the
blaze, and Alex knew, thinking about dying.

After the milk they went to bed, and soon Margie was asleep,
snoring like a busted chainsaw. Alex found he could not rest. It was partly due
to the storm, it had picked up in intensity. But it was mostly because of what
Margie had said about dying. It made him feel lonesome.

Like her, he wasn't so much afraid of dying, as he was of
being left alone. She had been his heartbeat for fifty years, and without her,
he would only be going through motions of life, not living.

God, he prayed silently. When we go, let us go together.

He turned to look at Margie. Her face looked unlined and
strangely young. He was glad she could turn off most anything with sleep. He,
on the other hand, could not.

Maybe I'm just hungry.

He slid out of bed, pulled on his pants, shirt and
houseshoes; those silly things with the rabbit face and ears his granddaughter
had bought him. He padded silently to the kitchen. It was not only the kitchen,
it served as den, living room and dining room. The house was only three rooms
and a closet, and one of the rooms was a small bathroom. It was times like this
that Alex thought he could have done better by Margie. Gotten her a bigger
house, for one thing. It was the same house where they had raised their kids,
the babies sleeping in a crib here in the kitchen.

He sighed. No matter how hard he had worked, he seemed to
stay in the same place. A poor place.

He went to the refrigerator and took out a half-gallon of
milk, drank directly from the carton.

He put the carton back and watched the water drip into the
bucket. It made him mad to see it. He had let the little house turn into a
shack since he retired, and there was no real excuse for it. Surely, he wasn't
that tired. It was a wonder Margie didn't complain more.

Well, there was nothing to do about it tonight. But he vowed
that when dry weather came, he wouldn't forget about it this time. He'd get up
there and fix that damn leak.

Quietly, he rummaged a pan from under the cabinet. He'd have
to empty the bucket now if he didn't want it to run over before morning. He ran
a little water into the pan before substituting it for the bucket so the drops
wouldn't sound so loud.

He opened the front door, went out on the porch, carrying
the bucket. He looked out at his mud-pie yard and his old, red wrecker, his
white logo on the side of the door faded with time: ALEX BROOKS WRECKING AND
MECHANIC SERVICE.

Tonight, looking at the old warhorse, he felt sadder than
ever. He missed using it the way it was meant to be used. For work. Now it was
nothing more than transportation. Before he retired, his tools and hands made a
living. Now nothing. Picking up a Social Security check was all that was left.

Leaning over the edge of the porch, he poured the water into
the bare and empty flower bed. When he lifted his head and looked at his yard
again, and beyond Highway 59, he saw a light. Headlights, actually, looking
fuzzy in the rain, like filmed-over amber eyes. They were way out there on the
highway, coming from the South, winding their way toward him, moving fast.

Alex thought that whoever was driving that crate was crazy.
Cruising like that on bone-dry highways with plenty of sunshine would have been
dangerous, but in this weather, they were asking for a crackup.

As the car neared, he could see it was long, black and
strangely-shaped. He'd never seen anything like it, and he knew cars fairly
well. This didn't look like something off the assembly line from Detroit. It had
to be foreign.

Miraculously, the car slowed without so much as a quiver or
a screech of brakes and tires. In fact, Alex could not even hear its motor,
just the faint whispering of rubber on wet cement.

The car came even of the house just as lightning flashed,
and in that instant, Alex got a good look at the driver, or at least the shape
of the driver outlined in the flash, and he saw that it was a man with a cigar
in his mouth and a bowler hat on his head. And the head was turning toward the
house.

The lightning flash died, and now there was only the dark
shape of the car and the red tip of the cigar jutting at the house. Alex felt
stalactites of ice dripping down from the roof of his skull, extended through
his body and out the soles of his feet.

The driver hit down on his horn; three sharp blasts that
pricked at Alex's mind.

Honk. (visions of blooming roses, withering going black)

Honk. (funerals remembered, loved ones in boxes, going down)

Honk. (worms crawling through rotten flesh)

Then came a silence louder than the horn blasts. The car
picked up speed again. Alex watched as its taillights winked away in the
blackness. The chill became less chill. The stalactites in his brain and mind
melted away.