Thirty Miles South Of Dry County (7 page)

He barked only once after I lost sight of him, and, because I wanted to, I took it as an expression of farewell.

A temporary farewell, I hoped.

* * *

At the top of the hill, the ruins of the tavern proved the fire had been a bad one. Little more than the foundation and some blackened, splintered walls remained. The roof were gone, and inside I saw some of the heavy, charred beams lyin’ on the floor in the debris. The wooden floor had been burned away, leaving a ragged hole down into a dark cellar. Rains had tamped down the soot, but the place smelled strongly of it. I noticed the bar were still standin’ at the far end of the room, but it weren’t goin’ be much use to anyone anymore. Nothing but burned and busted up wood crowded it now. Behind it, I noticed the frame where a mirror must once have hung.

I were still takin’ this in, when a voice that sounded like somethin’ out of a science fiction movie broke the silence and damn near scared me to death.

“Help you?”

Startled, I looked to my right and saw a figure dressed in a black plastic raincoat sittin’ at the remains of a table that looked like it shouldn’t have been standin’ – it were burned to near nothin’—but somehow, whether by means natural or supernatural, still were. Not only were its splintered legs supportin’ the man’s weight (though he didn’t look like he weighed much more than a bag of dry sticks), but also rows of what looked like pennies, which he went back to countin’ as soon as he were done with his question, and a half full bottle of whiskey. There were two equally wrecked chairs at the table. He sat in one while indicatin’ the other. An invitation that after a moment of hesitation, I accepted.

“You must be Cadaver?” I asked, curious that a man who looked like his name wouldn’t somehow be offended by the constant reminder.

He nodded, raised one hand and touched a slim silver tube to a rusty metal box that had been jammed into his throat. Cancer, I guessed, which made his appearance somewhat sadder but still hideous. I’ve seen dead men look healthier. “I am.”

His silver hair were flat against his skull, his hooked nose dividin’ milky eyes that looked sightless, and yet I could tell he were seein’ me. A nasty pink scar ran from the middle of his brow right down to the dimple in his chin, makin’ it look like someone had once tried to cleave the man’s face wide open.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, touchin’ the wand to his throat, but not removin’ his gaze from the five rows of pennies set out before him on the scorched table.

“I’m lookin’ for my friends,” I told him. “Came here yesterday, one of them with a head of steam on him, lookin’ to square off against your mayor here. They ain’t been seen since.”

He nodded his understandin’. “I can tell you where they are, but it’ll come with a price.”

“So Iris told me. If it’s money…”

“It ain’t,” he said, and indicated the pennies with a sweet of his hand. “This is all the money I need.”

“Don’t look like much,” I said, in what I guess were an attempt to be funny, as I’d never met a man who not only didn’t smile, but looked like he’d never learned how to.

“It’s more than you think,” he replied.

“So what’s knowin’ goin’ to cost me then?”

“Pretty much everythin’.”

“Well I ain’t got much to begin with, so—”

“It’ll mean acceptance of why you’re here and the things that brought you here.”

I still didn’t get his meanin’, but after hours spent dealin’ with people who seemed to only know how to speak in riddles, I waved him on. “Just tell me.”

He said nothin’ for a time, but plucked a penny from one of the towers and set it gently down on the table. We both stared at it. It looked out of place on its own among the stacks. Then Cadaver looked up at me, those pale eyes searchin’ mine.

“Your friends are dead.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut, but at the sight of my jaw droppin’ open and workin’ without makin’ a damn sound, Cadaver raised on of those withered hands, indicatin’ he weren’t done just yet.

“Have been,” he said in that awful voice, “For quite a while.”

“What? The hell is that supposed to—” I started to rise and his hand lashed out and grabbed my wrist. His grip were like someone had slapped a manacle on me and nailed it to the table. I gawped at it and started to say somethin’ else, but he forced me, with a painful squeeze that made my bones grind together, to sit back down. Unhappy, more than a little afraid now, but unwilling to put my body through any more physical pain than it had already managed to endure, I obeyed, heart hammering, scalp prickling with confusion.

“Robert Waits—Old Dick, I believed you called him—died of a brain tumor last summer. A month later, Sven was shot dead by the drug dealers his brother owed money to when they came to collect and he put up a fight. You outlived them both, saw them both planted in the earth. But instead of wastin’ time with grief, you sat up there every day outside that liquor store, doin’ the same thing to your friends that nature was doin’ to the buildin’—takin’ it all back.”

I chuckled at him and yanked my wrist free. “You’re full of shit, mister. Everyone in this crazy town is.”

Cadaver shrugged. “Much better to believe that than to believe it’s you who went crazy.”

I swallowed and aimed a forefinger at him. “I’d know. There would be some glimpses of the truth. Nobody is that completely insane.”

“Is it insane to not want to be lonely? To try and pull back the things that have been taken from you? That’s what grief is, Warwick. Everybody loses somethin’; everybody would do anythin’ to get it back, even if it means sacrificin’ their mind to make it happen. Or appear to happen, in your case.”

I didn’t believe him and he knew I didn’t. There weren’t no startlin’ revelations that proved he were tellin’ anythin’ but a ridiculous lie. But why? What did the people of this town stand to gain from it all? So I put that question to him.

“If what you say is true, then why now? Why all of a sudden do I wake up one mornin’ and know they’re gone? Why, after all this time?”

“Because Milestone wanted you here, and if Milestone wants you here, all it needs to do is find the cracks, the vulnerabilities that each and every one of us has in the very core of our bein’. It took away the fantasy and left you scared and alone and desperate to find your friends.”

I shook my head. “And how can you prove this is anythin’ but a game to you people?”

Cadaver lowered his head and looked again at the single penny sitting there, alone. “If they were buried, they’ll have graves.”

* * *

I don’t rightly recall much about walkin’ out of there, or my passage down the hill, only that Moses weren’t there. Through the panic, I felt a twinge of sadness at that. I realized I’d wanted the company now more than ever. The thought was followed by anger at the notion that for all I knew, maybe even the dog had been part of the madness. Maybe they’d drafted the starvin’ mutt in so I’d lower my defenses just enough for them to do as Cadaver said, find my weakness and use it against me.

But what weakness? My friends was alive. I clearly remembered the day before, the heat, the low breeze, passin’ the time with Dick, Sven’s anger at findin’ the store overtaken by the vines, him stormin’ off hell-bent on takin’ Kirkland to task, all of it. It were real, I’d felt it, everythin’ about it from gettin’ up in the mornin’ and puttin’ in my dentures, to watchin’ the Volkswagen kickin’ up dust as it headed off to Milestone. And if the store were ruined, then why had folks stopped by to get beer as if they’d expected it to be open for business? None of it made a lick of sense, so I weren’t goin’ to believe it. And although it gave me pause, I knew the fact that the Volkswagen were no longer all busted up on the border of Milestone, weren’t there at all in fact, proved nothin’ more than just how far the mad people of the town was willin’ to go to change my mind.

* * *

I drove, my mind a blur, heart a dull thump in my chest as if it were considerin’ quittin’, and stopped some time later at a crossroads. To the left and up the ways a bit stood the liquor store, and about eight miles past it, the graveyard. To my right, the way home. I sat there with the engine idlin’ for a long time, until the sun started to get as old as the blood flowin’ through my veins. The radio were quiet, the windows was down. The heat had returned. The fog, it seemed, were content to stay back in Milestone where worse things needed to be hidden.

What if?
I thought over and over again, alternatin’ between cursin’ the mere idea of believin’ anythin’ I’d been told and a naggin’, alien uncertainty. But it persisted.
What if?
What if they’re right?
The only thing that made such a nightmarish idea even simmer for more than a second was the memories of my wife and the things she’d often said to me about me spendin’ my life runnin’. But what happens when the body gets old and loses the strength to run any further? Couldn’t the mind do it instead? But dammit, I felt all right, didn’t
feel
as if my brain was busted. But then again, if the mind does somethin’ it thinks is right, just so’s it can protect you, why should it hurt? Wouldn’t that give the game away?

I flipped on my turn signal, the little green arrow pointin’ away from the liquor store and the cemetery beyond. I reasoned that there weren’t much point in pursuin’ the madness any further, no matter who were right. If I found that my friends was buried, then there weren’t nothin’ to say that it weren’t just another trick by the people of Milestone. Would hardly be any great feat to plant some fake headstones, now would it? And what were I gonna do to prove it a trick? Dig them up? If Kirkland had the power to destroy a liquor store with vines, then he could probably conjure up some dead bodies too.

But again:
why?
Why go to so much trouble for an old man who meant nothin’ to no one? And he sure hadn’t looked like he were lyin’. Unless he were just pretty damn good at hidin’ it.

And now that doubts had started to creep in, if I found no headstones at all, how long before I began to wonder if I were just imaginin’ that too, more delusion to protect myself from the cold reality of what were happenin’ to me. The doubt alone would end up drivin’ me crazy.

Iris’s words:
Are you generally a forgetful person, Warwick?

I didn’t have to know. Knowin’ might be the worst thing of all.

So I went home, and let my exhaustion carry me past the phone and the notion of usin’ it, and straight to bed, where I slept.

And dreamed of The Bicycle Man.

* * *

The next mornin’ were almost the same as the one before. The sun rose on a scared old man sittin’ at the kitchen table, wonderin’ why he were goin’ to do what it were on his mind to do. And again the reason were the same.

I were goin’ back to Milestone because there were no other choice.

* * *

I’d doubted everythin’ I’d seen and heard in that town, but I also told you the one talent, if you can even call it that, I’ve ever laid claim to were the ability to see the truth in people’s faces. In bed the night before, I recalled Cadaver stoppin’ me as I were about to leave Eddie’s Tavern, and remindin’ me of that very thing.

“You pride yourself on bein’ able to read faces, Warwick.”

I had said nothin’, couldn’t find a word that had strength to make it through the wall of panic in my throat.

“So read mine,” he said, and looked straight at me.

It might have been that which sent me out of there like hell itself were comin’ up behind me. Because all I saw in that ruined face were sadness, as if we was all preparin’ for a funeral. And what I hadn’t seen, no matter how badly I’d needed to, were the lie.

Then came the dream, and though I weren’t fully sure yet what my part was in this strange little drama, I knew my place were no longer outside that town but right at the heart of it. And when I found myself there, in a town square that might once have been pretty, but now showed nothing but cracked asphalt pitted with potholes of various size surrounded on all sides by buildin’s suffocated by vines that kept on creakin’, it felt right. Terrifyin’ still, you understand, but right. It were as if the dream from the night before hadn’t ever really ended, but I guess now my life up until that, or at least for the year since my friends died, were really the dream after all.

The fog were gone but still the sunlight seemed to strain to warm us as I strolled into the square. There were about a half dozen people standin’ there in a rough semicircle, some of them mutterin’, it looked, to no one in particular, everybody lookin’ around as if waitin’ for somethin’. Which of course, we was. Among them I saw the hobo from the day before, bottle in hand. He looked as if he’d just woken up, though it were close to noon. A couple that looked handsome and oddly well-dressed at first didn’t hold up to further inspection. The dark-haired man had skin the color of snow, his small eyes sunken and haunted. He held hands with a long-haired woman whose eyes seemed to have no focus, her slender jaw oddly slack. Cadaver were there too, sittin’ on the edge of a fountain full of dark green water and trash. He were, of course, turned away, his attention on his coins, which were lined up along the fountain’s edge.

I stopped beside a familiar figure and offered her as good a smile as I could muster, given the circumstances. My guts felt like it were full of fish with spikes for scales.