Thirty Miles South Of Dry County (5 page)

I nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Not when the
Milestone Messenger
went out of business ten years ago, it don’t.”

“So who’s…?” I decided not to finish the question, but Iris answered it anyway.

“Was a time when the newspaper couldn’t keep up with word of mouth in Milestone. Those days are long gone. Not enough people to spread the news no more, so the town spreads the word itself. Seems we ain’t allowed to live in ignorance.” She smiled. “Who knew a town could be capable of vanity?”

I looked for a place to sit down, but found none. Besides the bed, the room were crowded with candles, sealed to the floor with hardened puddles of wax. Thin tapered candles, thick candles, tall and short, they filled the space around a narrow path meant to lead only to the bed, and, in the opposite direction, a small kitchen. Iris stood in the doorway of that kitchen, her eyes bright, face pale.

“What really brought you here, Warrick Tanner?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Like I said, Ma’am: concern for my friends.”

“What else?”

“That’s all. Don’t need to be nothin’ else.”

“But there is, even if you ain’t aware of it yet.”

I didn’t know what to make of that, so I didn’t address it. “When you expectin’ the mayor?”

“You bored of my company already?”

“No…not at all. I’m just eager to find out what happened here is all.”

“You want some coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“Beer? Whiskey?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You want a poke? First one’s free of charge.”

I rubbed a hand over my chin and looked everywhere but at Iris. “Uh, no…but thanks.”

She gave a curiously childish chuckle before turnin’ on a heel and disappearin’ into the kitchen. “You’re very uptight,” I heard her say over the rush of water as she filled the kettle. “Almost too uptight, as if you’re afraid that if you let your guard down, everyone will see what you’re hidin behind those big brown eyes of yours.”

Her words forced me to let some of the tension drain from my shoulders. Up until then, I hadn’t been aware of just how stiff and sore they were. “It’s just worry,” I said, alarmed that maybe I weren’t bein’ entirely truthful with her, or myself. “Those men are the only friends I got left.”

“Must be, for you to forget how afraid you are of this place. Are you generally a forgetful person, Warwick?”

“Yeah, I guess I can be at times,” I mumbled, embarrassed that the fear were that plain on my face. Had to be that, otherwise she couldn’t have known.

Feelin’ uncomfortable standin’ there among the candles, I made my way to the bed and set myself down on the edge, hopin’ as I did so that the woman wouldn’t make assumptions about my intent. Not that she weren’t attractive—she were, in a kind of tragic way—but I had long since stopped lookin’ at women as anythin’ but a reason to feel sorrow. Every one of them reminded me of my wife, even if they looked nothin’ like her, and the sheer idea of courtin’ someone else seemed like betrayal of her memory. Besides, I were just too goddamn old. I had nothin’ to offer anyone but apologies for my shortcomin’s, and they had little to offer me but an audience for my bitchin’ and I had Dick for that.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Iris said from the kitchen doorway, her hands cupped around a mug of coffee. “That’s what my daddy used to say. ‘Penny for your thoughts, and if it costs any more, you can keep ‘em to yourself.’”

I smiled at that. “My daddy used to say there ain’t nothin’ much worse than gettin’ old and realizin’ you ain’t no more use to folks than a crippled hound.” I looked at the back of my hands, at the raised veins running beneath the coarse brown skin. Reminded me of the vines. Turned them over and studied the palms, the saggin’ skin at my wrists. Then I closed them, and kept from my face the pain it caused my knuckles.

“Guess how old I am,” Iris said, leanin’ against the doorframe and raisin’ the mug to her lips.

“Oh, I don’t want to do that. Ain’t proper,” I said.

“Sure it is, if I say so.”

“All right.” I shrugged and mentally subtracted ten years from the age I thought she were before answerin’. “Forty?”

She smiled around the rim of the cup and lowered it. “Thirty-five.”

Any discomfort I might have felt at the thought that I’d offended her were eased some by the certainty that she were lyin’. No way a woman of thirty-five could look that old, no matter what kind of hell she’d gone through.

“Looks like I were way off then,” I said, wincin’. “Sorry.”

Her smile faded. “Nothin’ to be sorry for. I know how I look.”

“I think you look just fine, Ma’am.”

“Ain’t you sweet.”

She pushed away from the doorway, navigated the candle path and sat down next to me on the bed. She smelled of some exotic perfume and I felt my color rise. ‘Cept for Janice Farrier, I hadn’t been that close to a woman since…well, in a long time. And for a brief moment, the sensations the scent of her aroused in me scared me more than the idea that I’d never see my friends again. Then I shook it off and reminded myself to focus on the task at hand.

Weren’t easy.

“All I can figure,” Iris said, the mug held before her lips as she paused to blow a ghost of steam from the liquid. “Is that those damn bugs crawled up the way instead of down. The direction must have made a difference.”

I looked at her, at the youthful eyes lost in the memories of an ancient face. “I don’t understand.”

“We had us a guy in this town once, years back. Name of Kirk Vess. A hobo. Nuttier than a fat squirrel stuck in a bucket. Dressed like he were in one of those fancy old stage plays. Top hat and everythin’. Used to wander the town ravin’ about how he were out of time, that he’d been brought here from somewhere else. Said he wanted to get home and the only way he could do it were if he found somethin’ he’d lost. Never said what it were though.”

“He ever find it?”

“No. He got killed up at Eddie’s Tavern one night.”

“Probably for the best,” I said.

Iris looked at me, surprised. “What a strange thing to say, Warwick Tanner.”

“I didn’t mean it were for the best that that he got killed, just that, well…if he were as crazy as you say, then he were probably better off put out of his misery.”

She gave me a sad smile. “But that’s just the thing. He might have been a little bit addled after what happened to bring him here, but as it turns out, he weren’t that crazy at all.”

Which I guess means that you are too
, I thought, with a pang of sadness. What if everybody in this town turned out to be mad? If so, it didn’t seem likely that I were gonna find out anythin’ at all.

* * *

Twenty minutes and a whole lot of awkward small-talk later, I heard the echo of footsteps on the street outside. I rose, fear clenchin’ my heart as Iris scooted across the bed and peered through a crack in the boards nailed over the window. Around her head, the newspaper clippin’s fluttered, whisperin’ of anniversaries.

“Here he is now,” she said. There were no enthusiasm on her face, but no fear either. Whatever Kirkland turned out to be, man or monster, it were clear the whore felt no extreme emotion for him either way. No hate; certainly no love. Made me wonder what their relationship were like. I got the idea that it were probably just sex. Her lyin’ there pretendin’ to be enjoyin’ it, and Kirkland gruntin’ like an animal and sweatin’ all over the place until he were done, leavin’ her unsatisfied on sheets no amount of washin’ would rid of the stink.

“Might want to think real hard about what you’re gonna say to him,” Iris said, movin’ away from the window and off the bed. She began to fuss at her hair, tryin’ to pretty herself up some, which led me to the uncharitable thought that any man who found her appealin’ enough for a poke probably wouldn’t notice any extra effort. I moved into the center of the room, wishin’ there wasn’t so many damn candles so I could put a bit more distance between me and the door.

“No need to be afraid of him,” Iris said, pluckin’ a cobweb from her shoulder. “Chances are he’ll be more afraid of you anyway.”

This was the last thing I’d expected to hear, and I didn’t believe a word of it. “Why would he have reason to fear me?” I asked.

“Probably for the same reasons you fear yourself.”

“What does that mean?”

She moved past me to the doorway. “Strangers are bad news in this town, whether or not they’re bad men. I don’t get the sense that you have any ill will in your heart, but that don’t mean it ain’t what you brought in here with you. And if you’re a good man, then you’ll probably find all the reason you need to change right here.”

She hurried down the stairs, leavin’ the questions she’d drawn up out of me to die in my throat. I waited, listenin’, movin’ back so I couldn’t be seen from the door. My palms was sweatin’, my legs tremblin’. I no longer wanted to be there, in that rundown little apartment in a dead town, waitin’ for a man that for all I knew might be the devil himself. The whore’s words hadn’t assured me none, for who could say her heart and mind hadn’t been numbed by the same misery that had blighted this town? Worse, who were to say that she weren’t in league with Kirkland? That’d make the most sense, after all. Milestone was their town.

It occurred to me that if Kirkland came up that stairs and decided then and there that he wanted to kill me, chances was that would be exactly what would happen.

Iris opened the door downstairs.

Mumbled conversation.

I held my breath.

Footsteps on the stairs.

And for me, suddenly overcome with doubt and panic, there were no way out.

* * *

He looked like an accountant.

The fear that had kept me as far back against the wall as I could manage without settin’ fire to myself lessened a little at the sight of him. I guess I’d expected somethin’ out of an old vampire picture: a tall man, thin and pale, like a mortician, with long black hair and eyes dark as coal. Maybe even a top hat to complete the picture.

But Kirkland looked no more frightenin’ than an old dog tired of runnin’.

As he stepped into the room—all five foot nothin’ of him—he looked at me with his small deep set gray eyes and sighed. He were bald except for two wings of ginger hair that stood up on both sides of his head, and he wore an old sky blue suit that looked older than the both of us put together. Beneath a thick moustache the color of rust, his thin lips worked furiously as he considered what to say to me. He didn’t look angry, exactly, just annoyed, and I guess I understood that. Man gets in a certain frame of mind when he wants to lay with a woman, and talkin’ ain’t a part of it, particularly when it involves someone who might mean you distress of one sort or another.

“Mr. Tanner,” he said, and it sounded like he were talkin’ through his nose.

“How do you know my name?”

Iris edged into the room behind him and went into the kitchen. I heard her openin’ creaky cupboard doors and saw Kirkland’s narrow shoulders drop a notch as he realized conversation were about all he were goin’ to get for a while.

“You told Iris. Iris told me. I expect I know why you’re here.”

“And you’d be right,” I said, feelin’ braver now than I had before I got to take a look at him. He were squirrelly. Nothin’ fierce about him. But I reminded myself that just because he weren’t physically strong didn’t mean he weren’t capable of pullin’ enough strings to strangle me. Hitler and Mussolini wasn’t tall neither. And if Sven were right, this man had made vines sprout up and swallow his liquor store. A fella who had that kind of a trick up his sleeve didn’t need to have no muscle up there to make him dangerous.

“Where they at?” I asked. “That’s all I want to know. I don’t want no trouble.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you.”

If that were a lie, it were a good one. His face showed nothin’ but resignation and his eyes was fixed on mine the whole time.

“And why is that?” I asked, then betrayed my bravado by almost jumpin’ out of my skin when a hand touched my shoulder. But it were only Iris, offerin’ me a mug. I almost waved it away until I realized there weren’t coffee in it this time, but a dash of amber liquid I took to be whiskey. I accepted it, and with an amused smile, she crossed the room, expertly avoidin’ the candles.

“No power?” I asked, nodding pointedly at the crowd of tiny flames on the floor around us.

“Power doesn’t like Iris,” Kirkland explained. “Her presence is enough to make it fail.”

I looked at Iris but got only a shrug.

Kirkland sighed again. He looked tired as he took the drink from Iris. Then he gestured toward the bed. “Sit.”

“I’m fine here,” I said, and then, to avoid offendin’ him, added, “Old as my bones are, if I sit much more today, I’m likely not to be able to stand by sundown.”

He nodded and sat down with a whoosh of breath like a man after a hard day at the office. He blinked and wiped a hand over his face before focusin’ on me again.

“It must feel odd, perhaps even a little bit exciting, to be here in Milestone for the first time,” he said.