Night Songs (18 page)

    These days, of course, there was precious little to do what with the summer people gone and Muriel North working nights at the drug store and no one else from town bothering to come out to see her. That left her alone. All alone. Alone enough to wish sometimes she hadn't driven her third husband away five years ago because he was fooling around with a girl he'd met on the beach in July. And that's what she was. A girl. Thirty years younger than he, and there she was with her tanned little stomach and her tanned little legs and no chest to speak of and no brains, either, considering her choice.

    It was damned embarrassing.

    She'd seen him with her twice, suspected him more than that, and in a temper and snit on a Sunday afternoon she'd packed his bags and left them on the porch. Locked the door. Pulled down the shades. Listened to him bellow and plead and finally tell her what he thought of her and her westerns, while he staggered and stumbled down the flagstone walk to the street, staggered and stumbled along the pebbled verge until he was out of sight. Still yelling. Still cursing.

    Five years gone, and the son of a bitch hadn't even sent her a postcard.

    Crumb didn't even know what he was missing. Lord, she still had all her teeth, and her hair was still black without any fancy rinses, and her eyes were still bright and brown, and so what the hell if she was a little overweight.

    She sniffed, and shook her head and plunged her hands back into the dishwater. A slow job tonight, just her own plates and coffee cup. As she stood at the sink she looked out at the garden through the gap in the yellow chintz curtains on the eye-level window. Next spring, she decided, she'd have to do a little weeding. Zinnias didn't grow this year, and those fool roses looked like hell. The wall of irises on the left she didn't need to touch at all; they were like her, independent and strong and too stubborn to die. The squirrels had dug up the tulip bulbs, though, all around the birdbath. Mums and tulips, she decided with a nod that rippled her three chins, mums and tulips against the birdbath.

    She reached for a towel to dry her hands -

    She reached for a cold roll she hadn't eaten at dinner.

    She looked out the window again before heading in for the big TV in the living room, and saw the boy standing just in the trees.

    A groan of exasperation, the dishcloth splashed back into the sink. Why, she wondered, didn't they ever learn? Every year it was the same thing. They didn't even bother to think of something new-wait until she had put a tape on the machine, or was watching a regular show, then sneak up the back and make a grab for the bowl on the concrete pedestal. They thought she couldn't hear them, but they didn't know she had ears that would put a prime fox to shame. They thought she couldn't run, but she grinned when she remembered the summer Cart Naughton had made it all the way to the birdbath, and she was out the door and down the steps before he could look up. Just a little luck and she would have had him, had his neck in her hands and his life popping out his eyes. But he ducked, and all she got was his black leather jacket.

    The scream he gave when it tore off his back and dangled in her hand had her laughing for a week. She even tied it to the flagpole in front of the house and prayed he'd try to get it back. A lot of kids drove by and yelled, pointed, laughed when she beckoned with a sweet smile and a fist hidden behind her waist. But Naughton never came for it, and finally a storm ripped it free and blew it away.

    So there he was again, and she sighed. On another day she would have welcomed the fun, but not tonight. Tonight she needed to rest because today had been worse than the hottest day in August-sweat bulging on her forehead, making her hair itch, had her looking out every window in the house hunting for the thunderheads she was sure were overhead. It wearied her. It made her think about starting that diet again, maybe even cutting down on her smoking.

    She wasn't in the mood for this crap, not at all, not at all.

    So she picked up the baseball bat she kept by the stove and she pulled open the door.

    "Damn you," she shouted in her worst, fiercest voice. The boy didn't move.

    She leaned forward, peering, and the breeze took the hem of her print dress and snapped it at her legs, drew it tight across her massive chest, puffed the sleeves and gave her a chill. A brittle leaf bounced across the porch. Tentacles of ivy dropped from the gutter and wove at her, scratching the air and whispering to themselves.

    "Beat it!" she shouted.

    The boy didn't move.

    The woods behind him were encased in black, a soft and shifting black that shaded up toward dark green. She could hear a gull wheeling overhead, and the faint sound of the ocean moving in with the tide. A step forward, she grabbed a roof post, held the bat on her shoulder and decided that this might be better than TV.

    "Well, if you're gonna do it, do it," she said, pretending she didn't give a damn one way or the other.

    The boy shifted, and she could finally see his freckled face, his curly brown hair, those skinny arms that could barely lift his trousers around his skinny waist.

    "Oh Lord, Frankie," she said as she moved down to the lawn, "what are you tryin' to do, anyway?" She laughed then, loudly. "You think you can really lift that thing?" She pointed at the bowl with the bat. "You lift it, boy, you can have it."

    She waited.

    Frankie began walking toward her, and she matched him step for step. She was in Dodge City now, facing down the Adams Kid, and there was no way in hell he could win because she had all the townspeople with rifles hiding in the hotel and the saloon and in the general store. Tim McCoy was on the stable roof, Ken Maynard was in the post office, and over there behind that buckboard she had Bob Steele waiting.

    She smiled.

    The goddamned Adams Kid was going to get himself blown dead away.

    When they were ten feet apart, the birdbath between them, she finally saw his eyes. They were wide. And they were white. No color. Just white.

    She frowned. "Frankie, you on something?" He reached for the bowl.

    "Frankie, damn it, you answer me, boy. I ain't so old I can't give you a lickin' to learn you your manners."

    He gripped the sculpted edges. His eyes were white.

    Her tongue brushed her lips. She didn't like the way he looked at her, no expression, no nothing. Maybe he was wearing one of them fancy contact lenses she read about in the
TV Guide,
that changes a person's eye color for the part he was playing.

    He lifted the bowl.

    Her palms were suddenly wet. The muscles in those skinny arms weren't even bulging, and he was holding the bowl as if it were paper.

    "Frankie…" she said, backing away.

    The wind snarled her hair in front of her face. She brushed at it impatiently, and when she could see again he was holding the bowl over his head.

    Jesus Lord, she thought, he's going to throw it. The little prick's gonna throw it.

    The bat dropped from her hand as she turned and started to run. Muscles or no muscles, she could outrun the little bastard any day of the week and twice on Sundays, and once she got to a phone she was going to call Garve and let him know that Frankie Adams was destroying private property. The little crumb was just like her husband-no respect for her and hers.

    At the steps she turned, to be sure he wasn't following.

    Frankie suddenly turned sideways and threw the concrete bowl like an oversized discus.

    It came slow. It came fast. It may have hummed and it may have wobbled and it might have just missed her if she had ducked in time.

    It struck her just below her breasts and smashed her through the door.

    The small TV on the sill fell into the sink and shattered.

    Frankie walked across the garden.

    The wind didn't touch him, and his eyes were solid white.

    

    

    The wind came alive just after sunset, just as twilight had turned to autumn dusk.

    Wally Sterling sat on a high, three-legged, peeling red stool in the ferry's cramped cabin jutting over the water from portside, center. Its octagonal walls were glass from waist to squared flat ceiling, the narrow panes pitted and smeared by salt spray and driven sand. The boat rocked gently, boards creaked, chains swayed. A gull pecked at a candy wrapper lying in the stern. Out of the chest-high side walls rose tall iron rods looped at the top and strung through with roping from which bleached plastic pennants hung, listless and dripping.

    He stared as the last car reached the top of the slope, flared its red taillights and sped inland across Flocks. After it was gone, he shook his head and brushed a hand down over his yellow slicker, straightened his yellow nor-easter, sniffed and coughed loudly. The spoked wheel in his left hand was slick with sweat, and he slipped his palm around it absently, turning it once to make sure it still worked.

    He was tired. That damned fool Screamer had these idiots pissin' in their pants they were so anxious to get away.

    He groaned as he slipped off the stool and opened the narrow door, sidled out and walked stiffly to the ferry's steel lip resting against its place on shore. He grabbed the hooked end of the rusted iron guard chain, drew it across the opening and snapped it back into its eye. A loud sigh just for the sound, and he pulled the slicker open, his hands reaching around to grip the small of his back. He stretched, rolling at the waist while he groaned loudly again, blinked rapidly, taking in deep breaths and blowing them out in short, sudden bursts.

    He was God-almighty and lay-me-down-to-die tired. And he was thirsty enough to empty the bay, what with all that exhaust and crap lodged in his throat. He coughed, spat, and the oily, metallic taste made him grimace and swear and think fondly of the cheap brandy he kept in his shack.

    As he stepped to the right he heard the noise.

    At first he thought it was a damned fool oil truck barreling down the highway through the state forest. That's what it sounded like, by God, and he was in no mood to tell the dumb ass driver politely there was no way in God's hell he was going to put such a rig on his poor little boat. Jesus, the old girl barely made the last crossing she was so weary of all the loads.

    He stepped over the chain and walked to shore, kicking aside gravel and spitting toward the water. Goddamned Screamer, sending all them idiots inland like they never saw one before and thought they'd be dead come morning. Fools. A little wind never hurt nobody if you was careful. Fools.

    Then the noise changed.

    Over the roaring, the rumbling, he heard a whispering and a whistling that brought to mind dreams he'd just as soon not remember; but he was curious enough at last to take the slope to the road, shaking his head and muttering to his fists and not looking up at all until he reached the flat.

    And when he did, his one eye widened, his bristled chin dropped, and he half turned to run, though he knew he wouldn't make it.

    It wasn't a truck, or a van, or a race car without mufflers. It was the wind.

    He could see it coming, though it was half a mile away. The woods closest to him didn't move at all, were dark and normal and holding shadows to their trunks. But straight down the road it was different- dust and leaves and branches and small stones were churning and spinning and dancing straight for him as if an invisible tidal wave were shoving them toward the beach. The stones he could see, and the branches and the dust, but the wind was without form. As far as he could tell it held to the road, and he could see it all coming, half a mile and closing. The trees on either side bent away, groaned away, some of the older ones nearly snapping in two, losing large boughs that bounced and pin wheeled into the woods, or slammed onto the tarmac and trapped leaves and dust and pebbles in their webs.

    Wally only had time to throw himself down below the top of the slope and cover his head with his arms.

    And it was on him.

    Whispering and whistling, stabbing him in a hundred places, raising welts across his knuckles, stinging his neck and rattling against the slicker. His face turned toward the bay, and he could see the ferry lift and draw back, the moorlines creaking and straining. The water broke into whitecaps that swept toward the island, crashing high against the boulders that marked the opposite shore, spraying the trees and turning the air gray.

    And just when he thought he was going to have to scream, just when he thought the air would be sucked clean from his lungs, it was gone.

    Just like that it was gone.

    One minute hell had been stamping hobnails and boulders all over his back, and the next it was as peaceful as it ever gets at night. Unsteadily, licking at his lips and being careful of his legs, he rose to his feet and stared at Haven's End. The wind was gone, and the only thing that let him know he hadn't dreamt it was the blood he wiped from the backs of his hands, the only way he knew he wasn't part of the Screamer was the direction.

    And if it wasn't the Screamer…

    The ferry rocked, slower, slower.

    The whitecaps vanished.

    Behind him, the forest was as quiet as dawn.

    Jesus
damn,
he thought, and raced for the pistol he'd put under the cot's mattress. Jesus God damn! He'd better get himself a gull soon, because this place wasn't healthy.

    

    

    By the time the wind reached the ocean it was spent, and the debris it had carried had been dropped in the bay; the few outside to hear it thought it was thunder over the horizon. When it rushed past them, they ducked away and yanked up their collars, thinking for sure they'd be drenched in a moment and goddamn the weatherman who can't read his own charts. And when it was quiet, no rain or lightning, they shrugged and headed home, and wondered about their neighbors. Blaming it on the Screamer was for some too easy; that wasn't due until late the next day, plenty of time to board the windows, fetch the cat, and take the ferry out. No, there was something more, they thought. Folks were unaccountably nervous, but the leaving seemed over and the night was fairly calm despite the clouds overhead. Supper, then, and the news, and a quick change of clothes. After all, it was Friday, with, half-priced beer at the Anchor Inn and quiet music at the Run, a new double feature at the theater and some TV before bed.