Rot (7 page)

Jesse Gerstner dug his fingernails into the bony buttocks of the woman under him and pumped hard, stabbing his smallish penis into her again and again.

“Take it honey, take it honey, take it honey!”

Pauline Stebbins lay passively on the bed, her slip hiked up under her small breasts, her panties on the floor. She gazed idly around the room, not wanting to look at Jesse. Her jaws worked without enthusiasm on the wad of Juicy Fruit.

Jesse pulled one hand away from Pauline’s ass and slapped her hard across the face. “Come on, you slut, put something into it. Move your ass.”

Pauline’s face reddened and her pale eyes grew watery, but the rhythm of her gum chewing did not change. It was not the first time she had been hit by a man. And it surely would not be the last.

She let her mind wander while Jesse huffed his way toward orgasm. He wasn’t nearly the athlete in bed he thought he was. Most men weren’t. Pauline’s recent husband had been better than any of them. Teague Stebbins was another man who liked to hit. Only he used his closed fist. Bruised her up so bad sometimes she had to cake on the makeup so she’d look halfway presentable at work.

Aside from the hitting, Teague wasn’t a bad man. He let her keep the tips she made at the Elkhorn Steak House and paid the rent out of his own earnings at the sawmill. But he was gone now, run off three months ago to Milwaukee. Maybe he’d come back one day. Maybe not. Pauline had been on her own before. One way or another, she’d make it.

Reluctantly, she returned her attention to the present. Jesse Gerstner was not her idea of a Prince Charming, not by a long shot. But he was always good for a few bucks, and he never hung around her trailer afterward. Pauline liked to be left alone to clean up as soon as she could. To speed things along now she jerked her pelvis up to meet Jesse’s thrusts and made little whimpering sounds she hoped he would take for pleasure.

“Aah, that’s more like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do it, honey!”

Jesse’s climax came suddenly, and was over in seconds. Disappointing, as always. Dumb bitch didn’t know how to fuck. None of them did. He rolled off of her and wiped his cock on the sheet.

“You ought to learn to give head,” he said.

“I can’t do that, Jesse. It makes me throw up.”

“You’re a fuckin’ prude.”

“No, I’m not. I just don’t like to suck that thing.”

He pulled on his red nylon briefs, his tight black pants, and the Packers T-shirt. He shoved his feet into a new pair of Adidas and knotted the laces.

“At least you got your jollies tonight,” he said.

“I didn’t think I’d be seein’ you for a while, what with your brother gettin’ killed and all.”

“Yeah, well, life goes on,” he said. From a pants pocket he pulled a wad of crumpled bills, separated two of them, and tossed them onto the bed. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

He went out without looking back at her. The trailer Pauline lived in was cleaner and larger than the Gerstners’, but not good enough to be parked with the mobile homes at the front of the lot.

She wasn’t much good in the sack, Jesse reflected, but she was handy.

He trudged back toward the yellow trailer he had shared with his younger brother, and which was now his alone. At least that much good had come from Fabian’s death. Then there was the Kawasaki. Jesse would get that too, providing Lloyd didn’t give him an argument. That wasn’t likely. The eldest Gerstner brother didn’t like motorcycles. Jesse didn’t care much about them either, but he figured he could sell it for a nice piece of change.

It was time he got something out of life, Jesse figured. As the middle brother, he was always the one nobody noticed. Lloyd was eight years older, and had beat the shit out of him since he was big enough to stand up. And Fabian, ugly as he became in his teens, was one of those cute little kids everybody fussed over. All Jesse ever got was shit.

One thing he knew, he was the smartest of the three brothers. Lloyd was 30 years old, working as a grease monkey at Zale’s Auto Repair. Fabian could barely write his own name, and would never have amounted to cow-flop. Jesse was the only one of the three who had finished high school. Now, with the money he would get from selling the trailer and the cycle he could get the hell out of Elkhorn City. No opportunities here for somebody with Jesse’s smarts. He had plans. He would go to Milwaukee, Chicago. Down to Florida, maybe. There were a lot of ways a smart dude could score there. He whistled merrily as he walked along the back fence of the lot.

He paused to frown at the ugly yellow trailer. He wouldn’t have to live like this much longer. Get the cash and haul ass. Elkhorn City would soon see the last of Jesse Gerstner.

He pulled open the door to the trailer and stepped inside.

What the fuck was that smell?

His first thought was:
Fabian’s back
. But that was crazy. All the same, it sure as hell smelled like something dead in here. With an overlay of cheap perfume.

Jesse reached for the light switch. His peripheral vision barely registered a shadow of movement behind him, then something scraped down over his face and cinched tight around his neck.

“What the fu — ” His words were squeezed back down into his chest. He raked at the thing around his neck and recognized by the feel it was a thin leather belt. His own. The one with the fake alligator grain.

The belt tightened a notch, and a horrible thought blazed into Jesse’s mind:
Somebody’s trying to kill me!

He reached back behind his head, clawing the air, searching for something solid to fight. He found hands and pulled at them, but the grip was too strong for him to budge. He raked the clenched fists with his fingernails and felt little gobbets of flesh come loose. The stench in his nostrils was like a physical blow.

Jesse’s lungs heaved, fighting for the tiny hiss of air he managed to pull in. Slowly, very slowly, the belt tightened. To yell for help was impossible. With every heartbeat the blood pounded like a pair of rocks hitting him in the temples. In the darkness of the trailer bright lights flashed on and off behind his eyes. A blacker darkness began to close in from the edges of his vision.

His bowels let go. He could feel the watery feces sliding down his legs, and he could smell his own stink over the other. The trailer floor slammed painfully into his knees, then his face. A pressure in the middle of his back kept him prone. Notch by notch the strangling belt tightened.

There was a rushing in his ears like he was standing under the Menomonee Falls. Then everything started to drift away. He was going now, and he didn’t care. At least there would be no more pain.

The belt loosened a fraction.

Air whistled through the bruised throat into his lungs. He tasted the gritty floor of the trailer on his lolling tongue. He tasted blood. He dragged in another labored breath and all the pain returned — his neck, his head, his back. Each heartbeat slammed him like a hammer blow. He tried to move, but whoever, whatever, held him down was much too strong. He fought for another tiny breath. Then another.

And the belt tightened again.

Once more the red flashes, the encroaching blackness, the roaring rushing noise in his ears. Sinking again into soft oblivion.

The belt loosened.

Jesse Gerstner’s poor blasted brain was incapable of counting the times he was choked to the brink of death, then brought back. He was only dimly aware that it happened again, and again, and again. In the stink of his assailant and of his own excrement, his mouth filled with blood and vomit, his head feeling swollen to bursting, Jesse would have prayed for death if he knew how to pray. With a last explosion as blood vessels burst in his brain, death finally came.

• • •

The residents of the Zenith Mobile Home Park were not one big happy family. The fifty or so people who lived there were divided rigidly into their own groups. There were the older retired people who lived in the large, comfortable mobile homes near the front. Then the young couples just starting out together who were only here until they could afford a real house. Finally the riffraff who occupied the shabby travel trailers set well in the back to screen them from the road. There were also a few like Pauline Stebbins and her departed husband who fit no category. They were considered transients. Not troublemakers, but loners who came and went with no one taking much notice.

Thus, when sudden violence befell one of the residents, as it did Fabian Gerstner, the act was viewed from quite different perspectives. The backlotters professed no great surprise at the murder of one of the odious Gerstner brothers. They had no known friends outside, and an excess of enemies. No one cared to name names when the police came around, and the investigation languished.

The young strivers preferred not to talk about it, renewing their resolve to get out of Zenith at the earliest opportunity.

The retired people, being more aware of their own mortality, began locking their trailers at night and spending less time sitting outside after sundown. None of them was personally acquainted with the Gerstner brothers, but they knew vaguely that it was an unsavory family. They sought to shut out that aspect of life in Zenith by staying inside at night with the windows blinded.

So it was that after the second Gerstner died soaked in his own body wastes, no one in the park was watching as the female figure left the rusting trailer and walked with an uneven gait out to the road. No one caught the foul odor that was carried from the girl on the evening breeze.

• • •

Driving back from Appleton, where he had failed to get into the pants of his girlfriend, Harry Muhlbach muttered darkly to himself, figuring he must be the last 20-year-old virgin in Marathon County, if not in the entire state of Wisconsin. His friends in Elderon would, of course, never hear the real story. For them he was already concocting a scenario where he flings Laurie Imhoff on the bed and “turns her every way but loose.”

It was while these imaginings brought back the ache in his scrotum that Harry’s headlights picked up the trim, unmistakably female figure thumbing at the side of the road.

Hoo-eee, maybe he was about to get lucky for once in his life. As he stomped the brakes his mind was already racing ahead with visions of wild sexy happenings in the back seat of his Taurus.

The visions vanished like smoke the instant the girl climbed in beside him. Her face was puffed and unhealthy looking. There was a pussy wound on one arm and furrows of skin gouged from the backs of her hands. Her head was cocked to one side, and where her eyes should have reflected the safety light when he opened the door, there were only shadows.

And she stank.

When she slumped into the passenger seat Harry leaned as far to the left as possible and drove like something was after him. Thank God she was only going as far as Bischoff. When the girl climbed out he peeled rubber getting out of there.

Kyle had not seen his cousin Carney since they were aged, respectively, 6 and 7. His impression back then was that Carney was a nerdy teacher’s-pet type. His fingernails were always clean, his hair always damp-combed, and he carried a respectful attitude toward adults.

In the intervening years his interest in Carney’s activities was minimal. The bits relayed by his mother from Uncle Bob’s letters seemed always to concern some prize won by Carney or some notable achievement. Although it was never mentioned, Kyle always felt that his own modest exploits were being measured against his cousin’s successes.

When his Aunt Esther died when he was 12, Kyle had been scheduled for a trip back to Wisconsin with his mother. He was spared that one by the onset of a timely case of chicken pox. Since then no mention had been made of going back. Uncle Bob, Cousin Carney, the whole state of Wisconsin receded in Kyle’s memory to unimportant childhood names. His need for a cousin was on a level with his need for boils.

However, on the day Carney was due to return home, discharged from the army, Kyle might have been preparing to welcome his dearest friend. He insisted on driving into town with Mrs. Simms to meet his cousin at the bus station. He chattered happily all the way, unfazed by Mrs. Simms’s monosyllabic response.

When Carney swung down from the Greyhound looking tanned and healthy, his light hair cropped close, military style, Kyle could have kissed him. He did bound over and give him a manly clap on the shoulder.

“Carney, hey, you look terrific. Military life must have agreed with you, right? How the hell are you?”

Carney had a moment of confusion while he placed the exuberant young man. “Kyle? Sure, it must be. Great to see you. And Mrs. Simms, thanks for coming down. How’s my dad?”

The housekeeper stepped up and gave him a hug, the most emotion Kyle had seen her display.

“Your father’s better than he was,” she said. “Not as good as he might be. Havin’ you home should perk him up considerable.”

Carney took the keys to the Plymouth from Mrs. Simms, then stopped short as he walked around to throw his bag in the trunk. He bent down and squinted along the uneven side panel.

“What happened to the car?”

“I’m afraid that’s my doing,” Kyle said. “Rolled it in the rain. It still runs after a fashion, but I owe your Dad for repairs.”

“Was anybody hurt?”

Kyle shivered, covered it with a shrug. “Luckily, we came out with just bruises.”

“It’s probably time we got a new one, anyway.”

On the drive back to the farm Carney took the wheel. Mrs. Simms filled him in on the hometown happenings while Kyle sank into the upholstery in the back seat wondering if she would pass on the gossip about Marianne. When she said nothing, he gradually relaxed in anticipation of his deliverance.

Carney turned in to the farm and had barely stepped out of the car when Fritz came bounding across the lawn to welcome him home with an explosion of tail wagging and wet kisses. Kyle felt a pang of jealousy at losing his closest friend in Wisconsin. He had enjoyed the rough-housing and the walks through the pasture land with the big dog, but it was clear that now the master was home. What the hell, he would willingly give him up as a tradeoff for his release.

Mrs. Simms took Carney upstairs to see his father while Kyle busied himself packing and straightening up the room he’d been using. He was cinching up the buckles of his roll bag when his cousin walked in.

“I really want to thank you for helping out while Dad was down,” Carney said.

“I didn’t do all that much,” Kyle said truthfully.

“Just the same, Dad and I appreciate it.” He looked down at the packed and buckled bag. “You don’t have to leave right away, do you?”

“I really should. There are things I have to attend to back home.”

“Female things?” Carney gave him a cousinly wink.

Kyle managed to chuckle. “Well, you know how it is.”

“I sure do. Dad tells me you met Marianne.”

“Well, I, uh, yeah.”

“What did you think?”

“Some girl.”

“You can say that again. I’m going over there tonight to pick up where I left off.”

“Yeah, well, that’s great.”

“Too bad you’re not going to be around for a while. Marianne has some really cute friends. We could double date.”

“Sounds like fun, but, well, you know …”

“Sure. You’re in a hurry to get back to California. You going with anybody special back there?”

“No, just taking life as it comes.”

“You’ll wear yourself out. You ought to settle on one.”

“There’s plenty of time for that.”

“Sure there is. Just kidding. Meanwhile, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

The hearty man-to-man banter was giving Kyle a stomach ache. It was a relief when Carney left to visit the cows with Fritz and Amos Deerfoot. He wished it were possible to slip out of here and be gone by the time Carney had his reunion with Marianne, but the earliest bus leaving for Milwaukee was ten o’clock tomorrow morning. One good thing: he would not have to be present when his cousin came face to face with the love of his life and saw what she had become.

• • •

After supper Carney Reuthman could barely contain his excitement as he drove the limping Plymouth out of his father’s farm and turned down the blacktop highway toward Bischoff. In the two years-plus that he had been in the army he had dreamed often about the day he would return and claim Marianne for his own. His visits home on leave had been good, but there was never time to relax. Now he was back for real, and he intended tonight to make it official between him and Marianne.

He smiled, remembering the first sweet time she had given herself to him. Marianne had been just 16, though mature for her age, he reminded himself, and Carney two years older, a sophisticated high school senior. It was, of course, her first time with anybody. Teenagers of Bischoff, Wisconsin did not go all the way as young and eagerly as the girls of, say, California where Cousin Kyle lived.

For Carney it had been the second time. His first was with a whore in Appleton where he had gone with his buddies and a carload of Stevens Point beer. He had felt like a complete dork as the girl had to gently position him for the act and pretty much show him how to do it. But it came off all right, and he felt much more a man afterwards.

After all the hours he and Marianne had spent talking about doing it, the act itself had come almost as an anticlimax. So concerned was Carney that he would hurt the girl that she finally had to grab him around the buttocks and pull him forcefully into her.

Afterward she cried, and he almost did too. They vowed undying love, and Carney tried hard to convince himself he meant it. Only after the months spent away from Marianne did he realize that by God, he
did
mean it.

Tonight he would ask her formally to marry him. Probably he should have picked up a ring, but with worrying about Dad’s stroke and all the red tape of getting the discharge, there hadn’t been an opportunity. Anyway, it would be more fun to go down to Weisfield’s and pick it out together.

In this warm glow Carney parked the battered Plymouth on the dark, tree-lined street and strode up to the door of Marianne’s house.

Mr. Avery answered his ring. He looked older, with new lines on his forehead and at the corners of his mouth.

“Carney?”

“Hello, Mr. Avery.”

“For gosh sake, why didn’t you tell us you were coming? How long are you home for?”

“For good. I’m out.”

“Well, that’s … that’s wonderful. You should have told us. We’d have planned something.”

“I wanted to surprise Marianne.”

Mr. Avery’s eyes flickered behind the bifocal lenses. “Uh, yes, I see.”

Carney looked over the man’s shoulder. “Is she home? Marianne?”

“Who is it, Frank?” Mrs. Avery’s voice preceded her down the stairs.

“It’s Carney. He’s out of the army and home for good.”

“Why, that’s wonderful. Here, let me have a look at you.” Mr. Avery stepped aside to let his wife move in and give Carney a hug. She held him maybe a little tighter and a second longer than the situation called for, then stepped back. “My, I think you’ve grown taller.”

“Must be the army food,” he said, laughing. “I was just asking if Marianne was home.”

A look flashed between the parents.

“She’s upstairs,” said Mrs. Avery. “She … hasn’t been feeling well.”

Carney’s concern was genuine. “Gee, I’m sorry to hear that. I hope it’s nothing serious.”

“So do we,” said her mother.

“We’ve been after her to see a doctor,” said Mr. Avery, “but she won’t.”

Carney searched their faces. “Maybe it’d be better if I came back tomorrow.”

“No, son,” Mr. Avery said quickly. “It might do her some good if she sees you.”

“Frank, do you think — ” Mrs. Avery began.

Mr. Avery squeezed his wife’s hand. “It’s all right.” And to Carney, “You know where her room is.”

“Yes, sir.” With a worried look back at the parents, Carney climbed the stairs to the second floor of the big house. With every step his feeling of foreboding grew heavier.

Marianne’s door was closed. Carney rapped lightly with one knuckle. When there was no response he rapped again more loudly.

“What do you want?” The voice was deep and raspy, not at all like Marianne’s animated contralto.

“Is that Marianne?”

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Carney.”

“Carney?”

“I’m home for good.”

Nothing from inside.

“Listen, are you okay? I could come back.”

“Wait a minute.” Again the strange husky voice.

A key rattled in the door from inside the room. Since when did anybody lock a bedroom door in Bischoff?

The door opened just wide enough for Carney to enter, then closed again. The room was dark and smoky, the shades pulled down, and it took a minute for Carney’s eyes to adjust. His sense of smell, however, was unimpaired.

“What’s that, incense?”

“It’s strawberry. Do you like it?”

That growly voice was giving him the creeps. “Why is it so dark in here?”

“I like it dark.”

“Can we turn on a light long enough for me to see you?”

“No,” quickly and decisively.

“What’s wrong, Marianne? Your folks said you’re not feeling well.”

“I’m feeling fine. Want to touch me?”

She was standing in front of the window with the blind pulled down, a silhouette in the dim glow from the lights in the neighbor’s house. Carney could make out her hair, which looked tangled and unusually wild for Marianne. And under the powerful incense another smell. Something bad. Something rotting.

She took a step toward him. Fingers seized his wrist. They were not like Marianne’s, soft, warm and gentle. There were hard and cold. And the strength of the grip made him wince.

“I asked if you wanted to touch me. You used to like that. Remember?”

The cold fingers carried his hand up to her breast. She wore a soft linen blouse and nothing underneath. The breast was not firm and rounded as he remembered, but pulpy and loose like a sack of oatmeal. He tried to pull his hand away, but she held him fast.

“What’s the matter, Carney? Used to be you were crazy to get your hands on my tits. Did the army turn you queer?”

With a sudden effort he wrenched his hand free. “Marianne, what’s happened to you. You don’t sound like yourself, you don’t act like yourself.”

“You’ve been away. People change.”

“You ought to see a doctor. And what’s that smell in here?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s natural. You want to come to bed with me?”

“You’re talking crazy.”

She made a grab for his crotch. He saw it coming and jumped back before she could grasp him.

“What the heck are you doing?”

“Trying to get you into bed. Don’t you want to fuck me? Plenty of other guys do.”

“Stop it, Marianne.”

“If you don’t think so, ask your cousin.”

“If this is a joke, it isn’t funny.”

“It’s no joke,” she said in the growling voice. “I promise you, this isn’t any joke.”

A step at a time Carney moved to the table beside the bed. He reached down to the small lamp there, found the switch, snapped it on.

“Holy shit!” The words were out before he could think.

She covered her face with her hands, bony fingers spidering over the lifeless gray flesh.

“God, Marianne, what’s happened to your face?”

With a sound like an animal snarl she sprang forward and swept the lamp from the table. It smashed on the floor and the room returned to darkness.

“I didn’t know you were coming or I’d have fixed myself up,” she said. “I can be pretty again.”

“Marianne, I have to go.”

“Take me to bed, Carney. Fuck me. I know you can. You were the first, remember?”

“Really, I have to go.”

Backing away, choking down a rising panic, he found the door, yanked it open, and escaped to the hallway outside.

Mr. and Mrs. Avery were waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs.

“Did … did you see her?” Mr. Avery asked.

Carney nodded. He wanted to plow between the two of them, bolt out the door, and never return.

“Did she talk to you?” asked Marianne’s mother.

“She’s, like you said, not feeling good.”

“What did she say to you,” asked Mr. Avery. His voice was pleading.

“Nothing. Nothing very much. I think you ought to get her to a doctor.”

Mrs. Avery started to cry. Her husband put an arm around her and pulled her closer.

“I’ve got to go,” Carney said. “Goodnight.”

The air outside the Avery house was fresh and cool as bubbling spring water. Carney ran to the Plymouth and drove home with the windows open wide, trying to rid his nose and his clothes of the smell of strawberry incense.

And rot.