A wasteland of strangers (24 page)

The thing to do before anything else, I decided, was to have a private talk with Trisha. I drove to her house on Redbud Street, and her father was home but she wasn't. He was angry because she was supposed to have been there when he returned from work at one o'clock. I asked him to let me know as soon as she came home. A school matter, I said, not serious but still rather important. Mr. Marx looked skeptical; I think he was afraid she might be in some kind of trouble. But he didn't question me further and he said he'd call when she showed up.

Back at my house, I taped a piece of cardboard across the broken bathroom window and cleaned up the glass shards. Then I microwaved a Stouffer's macaroni and cheese. Brian Marx hadn't called by the time I finished my belated lunch. I put the answering machine on and walked out to the dock for another look at the Chris-Craft.

Clouds, thick and dark-veined, had begun to gather to the north. There was the faint smell of ozone in the air. Rain sometime tonight, I thought. Gulls wheeled over the lake, more than a few of them—another sign of coming weather. Watching the gulls, I found myself thinking of the legend of the Huk, the mythical bird old-time Pomos believed had evil supernatural powers.

The Huk was said to be the size of a turkey buzzard, dark red in color, with long, fine feathers. A reddish liquid, like blood, filled the gills and would flow from end to end if the feathers were turned up and back down. The creature had hairy legs, an enormous head, a bill curved like that of a parrot. Its power lay in the fact that it brought death wherever it went. If it appeared and you heard its cry of "huk, huk," you or someone close to you was sure to die, immediately or within a few days.

I'm not superstitious; I believe in the old legends only as legends, campfire stories for adults and children. But I shivered just the same as I watched the gulls wheeling against the clouds, their wind-carried cries sounding more than a little like "huk, huk" in the quiet afternoon.

George Petrie

I SAT IN the car, staring out over the desert. I'd been there a long time now, on the side of Highway 50 a couple of miles east of the 361 junction. It was as far as I'd gotten after leaving the crossroads rest area. It was as far as I was going.

Over. Finished.

Beaten.

The dark-green van with the tinted windshield was long gone, miles and miles down 361 by now—the van that hadn't been driven by the gray-haired man from the Truckee motel, or by anybody else bent on stealing my stolen money, but by a fat young fellow traveling with his equally puddinglike wife and their two chubby daughters. Tourists who hadn't even glanced at me when they drove into the rest area, who didn't know or care that I existed, whose only interest was in food and toilet facilities. Long gone, but the fear hadn't gone with them. Nor had the core of paranoia. With sudden, sickening clarity I'd seen both for exactly what they were and would be if I continued on the course I'd set for myself—constant companions no matter where I went or what I did, partners in crime that would destroy me as surely as a fast-growing cancer.

It was stifling in the car. Almost December and the Nevada desert was still a furnace; I felt as though I were melting inside my clothes. Pretty soon I would have to start the engine, put on the air conditioner. But when I did that I'd have to start driving again, too, and I wasn't ready to drive yet. I sat and smoked another cigarette without inhaling and squinted out over the sun-blasted flats, the low, barren hills hazy

and shimmering in the distance. Broken earth, clumps of sage and greasewood. Dry salt sink to the north, its floor as seamed and cracked as an old man's skin. Jagged splinters of rock along the bank of an empty wash, bleached white by the sun, like crushed and discarded bones. A wasteland.

As dead as all my big plans.

As barren as my future.

I couldn't go on, because I didn't have the guts to go on. A man like John Faith could steal $209,840 without a single qualm or backward glance, but George Petrie is too anxiety-riddled, too paranoid to be a successful thief. All I'd ever had was a meager supply of courage, and now the supply had been used up. From the first I'd built this mad scheme of mine on a foundation of lies, false bravado, self-deception. It was amazing I'd gotten this far before the flimsy foundation collapsed.

The only thing I could do now was to give it all up, slink back home to Pomo. Time enough left to do that and return the money to the bank vault before Fred and Arlene show up on Monday morning. Time enough to pick up where I'd left off, go begging to Charley Home or Burt Seeley if I can't cover the $7,000 shortage any other way. Time enough to save my sorry ass, so I can start dying again, slowly, by inches.

The heat in the car was so intense now I was having trouble breathing. I threw the half-smoked cigarette out the window, rolled up the glass, started the engine, and put on the air conditioner. And then I made a careful turn across the empty highway and headed back the way I'd come.

Douglas Kent

THE ANCESTRAL KENT roscoe was a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38. After I lurched home from the Advocate offices, full of grief and Doc Beefeater's Magic Cure-all, bent and bowed under the weight of my bag of sticks, I rummaged in the closet and there it was, packed in an old shoe box. Carefully wrapped in chamois cloth (the old man's work, not mine), clean and well-oiled (not unlike its present owner), all six chambers bristling with shiny circles of oblivion. I carried it into the kitchen and laid it gently on the table. After which I poured another dose of salve and plunked myself down to contemplate the thing.

Pa Kent's piece, of course. If there is one thing Kent Junior has never been, it is a staunch supporter of the National Rifle Association. Wrote impassioned gun-control and anti-NRA articles, once upon a time. Thought about writing another when I first arrived in Pomo, but for a change prudency prevailed. There are gaggles of guns in Pomo County; half the adults and a third of the kids—or possibly, it's the other way around—have at least one tucked away within easy reach. If I had written the article for the Advocate, I would probably have been blown away at sunrise by an irate ninth-grader whose old man kept a collection of automatic weapons in the toolshed.

Still, even I had to admit that Pa Kent's rod had a certain deadly magnificence. Short and squat and ugly and cold, which, come to think of it, was an apt capsule description of the pater himself. He'd never fired it except on a pistol range, so far as I knew, but he'd always had it close at hand in case of burglars, bill collectors, and/or overly aggressive pink snakes or other figments of his pickled brain. It was one of the few, the very few, of his personal possessions that I'd appropriated after his fatal midnight plunge into the Monongahela. Wasn't sure why at the time, or why I continued to cart it with me on my various peripatetic wanderings—

Liar.

Bullshitter.

You know very well why you appropriated and kept it, Kent, my lad. Same reason you dragged it out of its nest this evening. Same reason Richard Cory kept a bang stick hidden away in his digs. Ah, Cory, that "gentleman from sole to crown, clean favored, and imperially slim," loved by one and all in his little New England town. Kent is a far seedier specimen, loved by no one, but underneath he and Mr. Cory are soul brothers.

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Yes, indeedy, Edwin A. Robinson understood the private demons that lurk behind the public facade. Likely owned a few himself, being one of that breed held in even greater contempt than whores and newspaper hacks, poets. But failure wasn't one of them. Nor, I'll wager, was he plagued with unrequited love for a woman as stormy as the late Storm.

Storm, Storm. Gone and no longer blowing—metaphorically or otherwise. "Temporal skull fracture leading to subdural hematoma of mid brain." Ding dong, the wench is dead. "Death of brain due to necrosis or mass effect." Ding dong, the wench is dead, the wicked wench is dead.

And I wish, I wish, I wish Kent was, too.

And Douglas Kent, one dark Stormless night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Or did he? Is he as willful as Richard Cory, as ready to plunge into the abyss? In the last analysis, are they soul brothers or simply two sides of the same tarnished coin?

I poured more salve.

The gun and I watched each other, like old enemies or new friends.

Lori Banner

"I TOLD YOU, Earle!" I screamed at him. "I told you there wasn't anybody but you, I never once slept with anybody else the whole time we've been married! I told you not to hit me anymore! I told you, I told you, how many times did I tell you? Why didn't you listen? Why didn't you believe me?"

I was shaking so hard I could barely stand up. I didn't sit in my chair, I fell into it. My mouth was bleeding where he'd punched me and opened up the cut he put there yesterday. Bleeding all over my sweater and jacket and dripping onto my pants. It hurt a lot and the blood tasted salty. My jaw hurt and my ear felt all swollen and my eye hurt, too. The eye was going to be black and yellow and purple, worse than the other times because it was already so puffy I couldn't see out of it. He always hit me in the face. Never cared how I looked the next day, that I had to go to work with my face all bruised and swollen, that I had to lie to people and see the pity in their faces and listen to Darlene and I don't know how many others tell me what an idiot I was for staying with a man who kept beating me up.

"You never cared, you son of a bitch! How I looked or what I had to put up with! 'Poor Lori, why does she let him get away with it,' why why why! That's what I had to listen to, that's what you made me put up with, you dirty son of a bitch bastard Earle, you."

I am an idiot. I must be. I quit loving you long ago, just like you quit loving me, and now I hate you the same way you hate me. Oh Jesus, I hate you so much, Earle. You know the one thing I regret most? That I didn't cheat on you not only once or twice but a hundred times, a thousand, that I didn't have men lined up around the block waiting to screw me the way Storm Carey did instead of hanging on to the stupid idea that a woman ought to be faithful to her husband, stick by him even if he beats the crap out of her for no damn reason. For better or worse, what a joke. My word was never good enough for you, oh no. You and your jealousy, you and your drinking, you and your hitting.

"You and your hitting, Earle. Didn't I tell you the hitting had to stop?"

He sat in his chair over there, staring at me.

"And then you had to go and follow me today. Why'd you do that, huh? Why couldn't you leave me alone today of all days, let me do something worthwhile for a change, let me care for somebody and have him treat me like a human being instead of a piece of ass and a punching bag? If I'd told you about John Faith, you'd have kept on hitting me anyway and then you'd have called the cops and turned him in and tried to get some kind of reward out of it. I know you, Earle, I know you like a book. I couldn't let you do it. John Faith's everything I wish to God you were and he's had a rough time of it and he deserves a break and I couldn't let you turn him in. Or keep on hitting me after I told you the hitting had to stop."

His third eye, the red one in the middle of his forehead, was staring at me, too. I didn't mind that eye. After all, I'd put it there.

"Well, how do you like it, huh? How do you like being the one who got hurt for a change?"

I wasn't shaking so much now. In fact, I was hardly shaking at all. I felt numb, numb all over. Just had to go and get your gun, didn't you, Earle? Just had to start waving it around and threaten to shoot me like a horse. Hit me and kept hitting me, made me all bloody, and then on top of that ranting about shooting me like a horse. A horse, for God's sake! Didn't expect me to knock it out of your hand, did you? Didn't expect to trip over your big feet so I got to it first. And then you had to laugh and call me a bitch and a mare in heat and say I wouldn't shoot you like a horse. Wrong, Earle, wrong again. Just never got tired of being wrong, did you? Ran at me, grabbed for

the gun, and bang! Wrong Earle, dead Earle, three-eyed Earle. Just like that.

I was still holding the stupid gun in my hand. The three eyes, two blue and one red, watched me put it down on the end table.

"How do you like being dead, huh?"

He didn't like it, but I did. I liked it so much I laughed out loud. But my mouth hurt, so I stopped laughing and sat there trying to think what to do.

I ought to call the cops and tell them I'd shot Earle like a horse. But if I did that, then how would John Faith get away? But if I didn't call them, I'd have to stay here all night with Earle sitting dead in his chair, and I didn't think I could do that. I really didn't think I could do that.

I couldn't make up my mind. I was so tired and numb I couldn't even get up out of my chair and go pee, which I had to do very badly now. I just sat there. And looked at Earle's third eye and wondered how long it would be before it stopped dripping.

Richard Novak

THE DOORBELL JARRED me awake. I'd been half out on the couch, caught on the rim of sleep and cringing from a nightmare that I couldn't remember except for some of the things in it: blood, water, lightning, a huge phallus with an opening that kept winking like an obscene eye. I heaved to my feet, fuzzy-headed, sweaty and cold at the same time. Mack was there, up and alert; I almost tripped over him as I stumbled across to open the door.

"Audrey. What're you— Something happen?"

She shook her head. Her face seemed blurred, out of shape at the edges. Damn eyes wouldn't focus right.

"Then why'd you come?" I asked her.

"To see if you were home, feed Mack if not. The lights are on and I thought you ... but you were asleep, weren't you?"

"On the couch."

She wanted to come in and I let her do it. She said as I shut the door, "Your face ... is it any better?"

"Mostly numb now. Painkillers—codeine. Must be why I'm so groggy."I

"You should be in bed."

"Didn't want to get undressed . .."