Stories (2011) (85 page)

Leaving channel wide open. Repeat. Mayday. Mayday. Set fix
on this signal."

I left the switch on and the channel open like I had been
told. Fixed it so it would record my message minute after minute. I would have
liked to hang around till the base responded, but I didn't have the time for
that. I started back to the storage area for a lifeline.

I tried the storage hatch. Jammed. I had a sudden queasy
feeling, but I braced myself and tried again.

No go. It was lodged shut. I tried it till I was breathing
hard, and that reminded me of something else: a limited oxygen supply. Things
looked exceptionally bad for the home team.

I went back to the Control Room and checked out the view
glass. I'm not sure why. Maybe just to convince myself that our spaceship was
still there.

It was, but somehow it looked miles away. This wasn't doing
any good.

I made my way back to the central cabin, up the wall and
into the air-conditioning duct. By the time I started crawling toward the hole
I was feeling very cold and numb. My hands felt like stumps and my breathing
was coming in uneven gasps. I was losing not only the pressure in my suit but
the temperature regulator as well.

When I got to the opening I had to stop, take some real hard
breaths and hold them in.

I could see our ship,
The Bova,
 so close, yet so far
away. I didn't like the idea, but my oxygen wouldn't last forever. I braced my
feet and pushed out into the deep blackness of space.

Using the belt blaster, I gave myself enough power to reach
The
Bova,
 but it was moving away fast. If it should get away, that was the
end. It, as well as
The Fortune,
 would fall away, and away, and away.
And when it made this position again in orbit, it would be much to late.

There was cold sweat on my face and against the facemask. I
gave the belt blaster another jolt and saw I was going to make the ship. That
was when a horrible thought struck me.

The side of
The Bova
 was slick, nothing to hang
onto. Without a lifeline to guide me into port I didn't have a chance. I would
merely hit and bounce off into space. Like a rubber ball—off and out forever.

The Bova
 was in range and I was closing. There was
one possibility, I thought.
The Bova
 was almost within my reach. Six
feet away. Five. Four.

Three. I switched the magnetized gloves back on and palmed
them both against the side of the ship. I stuck like a fly in syrup.

It was time to take some breaths again. I was sapped. My
oxygen was going fast and my head was starting to swim. The blackness of space
seemed to be closing in on me, smothering me, draining me.

Right hand then left, I started moving toward the escape
hatch. The dizziness continued. I suddenly felt like I'd taken a plunge into
the pool back home and had been under too long, needed to come up for air. But
there was nowhere to come up and no air. My fingers felt like ice, and even
though the magnetized gloves were holding me, as my grip weakened, so would the
pressure I was applying with my palms. The gloves worked fine as long as I put
out a little effort, a little tension. But if I should pass out, drifting and
my body grow slack, then my drifting weight just might conceivably pull me
loose from
The Bova.

I moved on. Right hand then left. Slower and slower yet. My
chest hurt. I felt as if I were drowning. Then my hands grew limp and I felt as
if I was falling, falling into the depths of a bottomless well.

"You're all right," Dad said.

I took a breath to make sure I wasn't dreaming. It felt
good. I was warm. I lifted up on my elbows. Dad, Mom, the captain, the first
mate, even my little brother and sister were there.

"You were very brave," Mom said and she pushed
back my hair with her hand.

"I don't remember anything after getting back to
The
Bova,"
 I said, and I was surprised to find my voice so weak.

"That's because you were unconscious, David," Dad
said.

The captain smiled. "We saw you drift off from
The
Fortune
 without your lifeline and guessed your problem."

"To tell the truth," the first mate interrupted,
"we thought you were a goner."

"That's right," the captain said. "When you
came in contact with the ship we were unaware of it. No radar to pick you up.
We figured. . . Well, we were pretty sure that you hit and bounced off into
space. Except your Dad here. He knew you better than that. He dressed out and
went outside, took a lifeline and got you. It's a good thing you remembered the
gloves. That was fast thinking."

Dad agreed. "You were hanging by your hands. The rest
of you floating in space. I almost lost you when I pulled you free. Even
unconscious you were pushing those gloves against the side of the ship with all
your might.

You were quite a hero."

"Some hero," I said. "I had to be
rescued."

"But you did set off the radio message," the
captain added.

"How long ago?" I asked.

"About eight hours," Dad said.

"Eight hours! How much time do we have left?"

"All the time in the world, Son. The rescue ship made
it three hours ago.

Look around you. We're onboard."

Old Maude, who lived in alleys, combed trashcans, and picked
rags, found the false teeth in a puddle of blood back of Denny's. Obvious thing
was that there had been a mugging, and some unfortunate who'd been wandering
around out back had gotten his or her brains beaten out, and then hauled off
somewhere for who knows what.

But the teeth, which had probably hopped from the victim's
mouth like some kind of frightened animal, still remained, and the blood they
lay in was testimony to the terrible event.

Maude picked them up, looked at them. Besides the blood
there were some pretty nasty coffee stains on the rear molars and what looked
to be a smidgen of cherry pie. One thing Maude could spot and tell with an
amazing degree of accuracy was a stain or a food dollop. Cruise alleyways and
dig in trash cans most of your life, and you get skilled.

Now, Maude was a practical old girl, and, as she had about
as many teeth in her head as a pomegranate, she wiped the blood off on her
dress—high fashion circa 1920—and put those suckers right square in her gummy
little mouth.

Somehow it seemed like the proper thing to do.

Perfect fit. Couldn't have been any better than if they'd
been made for her. She got the old, blackened lettuce head out of her
carpetbag—she'd found the lettuce with a half a tomato back of Burger King—and
gave that vegetable a chomp.

Sounded like the dropping of a guillotine as those teeth
snapped into the lettuce and then ground it to smithereens.

Man that was good for a change, thought Maude, to be able to
go at your food like a pig to trough. Gumming your vittles gets old.

The teeth seemed a little tighter in her mouth than a while
ago, but Maude felt certain that after a time she'd get used to them. It was
sad about the poor soul that had lost them, but that person's bad luck was her
fortune.

Maude started toward the doorway she called home, and by the
time she'd gone a block she found that she was really hungry, which surprised
her. Not an hour back she'd eaten half a hamburger out of a Burger King
trashcan, three greasy fries, and half an apple pie. But, boy howdy, did she
want to chow down now. She felt like she could eat anything.

She got the tomato half out of her bag, along with
everything else in there that looked edible, and began to eat.

More she ate, hungrier she got. Pretty soon she was out of
goodies, and the sidewalk and the street started looking to her like the bottom
of a dinner plate that ought to be filled. God, but her belly burned. It was as
if she'd never eaten and had suddenly become aware of the need.

She ground her big teeth and walked on. Half a block later
she spotted a big alley cat hanging head down over the lip of a trash can,
pawing for something to eat, and ummm, ummm, ummm, but that cat looked tasty as
a Dunkin' Donut.

Chased that rascal for three blocks, but didn't catch it. It
pulled a fade-out on her in a dark alley.

Disgusted, but still very, very hungry, Maude left the alley
thinking:
Chow,
need me some chow
.

Beat cop O'Hara was twirling his nightstick when he saw her
nibbling the paint off a rusty old street lamp. It was an old woman with a
prune face, and when he came up she stopped nibbling and looked at him. She had
the biggest, shiniest pair of choppers he had ever seen. They stuck out from
between her lips like a gator's teeth, and in the light of the streetlamp, even
as he watched, he thought for a moment that he had seen them grow. And, by
golly, they looked pointed now.

O'Hara had walked his beat for twenty years, and he was used
to eccentrics and weird getups, but there was something particularly weird
about this one.

The old woman
smiled
 at him.

Man, there were a lot of teeth there. (More than a while
ago?) O'Hara thought:
Now that's a crazy thing to think
.

He was about six feet from her when she jumped him, teeth
gnashing, clicking together like a hundred cold Eskimo knees. They caught his
shirtsleeve and ripped it off; the cloth disappeared between those teeth fast
as a waiter's tip.

O'Hara struck at her with his nightstick, but she caught
that in her mouth, and those teeth of hers began to rattle and snap like a
pound full of rabid dogs. Wasn't nothing left of that stick but toothpicks.

He pulled his revolver, but she ate that too. Then she ate
O'Hara, didn't even leave a shoe.

Little later on she ate a kid on a bicycle—the bicycle
too—and hit up a black hooker for dessert. But that didn't satisfy her. She was
still hungry, and, worse yet, the pickings had gotten lean.

Long about midnight, this part of the city went dead except
for a bum or two, and she ate them. She kept thinking that if she could get
across town to Forty-second Street, she could have her fill of hookers, kids,
pimps, and heroin addicts.

It'd be a regular buffet-style dinner.

But that was such a long ways off and she was
sooooo
hungry.
 And those damn teeth were so big now she felt as if she needed a
neck brace just to hold her head up.

She started walking fast, and when she was about six blocks
away from the smorgasbord of Forty-second, her mouth started watering like
Niagara Falls.

Suddenly she had an attack. She had to eat NOW—as in "a
while ago."

Immediately.

Halfway up her arm, she tried to stop. But my, was that
tasty. Those teeth went to work, a-chomping and a-rending, and pretty soon they
were as big as a bear trap, snapping flesh like it was chewing gum.

Wasn't nothing left of Maude but a puddle of blood by the
time the teeth fell to the sidewalk, rapidly shrinking back to normal size.

Harry, high on life and high on wine, wobbled down the
sidewalk, dangling left, dangling right. It was a wonder he didn't fall down.

He saw the teeth lying in a puddle of blood, and having no
choppers of his own—the tooth fairy had them all—he decided, what the hell,
what can it hurt?

Besides, he felt driven.

Picking up the teeth, wiping them off, he placed them in his
mouth.

Perfect fit. Like they were made for him.

He wobbled off, thinking:
Man, but I'm hungry; gracious,
but I sure could eat
.

It started about three months ago.

We sat before Gardner's mammoth fireplace in his overstuffed
chairs and drank wine. Gardner always kidded that the fireplace was large
enough to roast a hog in, and it was. It was as large and ornate as the rest of
the house.

Gardner had the loot, you see. He was a paperback artist,
and a successful one. He had an agent in New York and everything. Big-time
fella. I sometimes wondered what he saw in me. I was pretty crude compared to
him. Said himself that I had primitive tastes.

An example is, I'm not really a wine man. I like beer. Any
kind of beer. Ice-cold to piss-warm. Put it in front of me, I'll drink it.

Gardner said that's because I'm a redneck and an ex-boxer.

Time after time he's said that boxing is a hooligan's way to
make a living, and maybe drinking wine will give me a little refinement.

I doubted it at this late stage. Wasn't that much of a boxer
anyway, just a payday fighter from San Antonio. I'd spent most of the time with
my ass on the canvas, so about two years back I'd given it up. Moved here to
Nacogdoches, Texas, where a lot of my relatives live, opened up a janitorial
service with my uncle. He does the books; I supervise the folks.

Anyway, Gardner has this sort of oddball Continental charm about
him, and wine suits him to a tee. So we drank that.

This particular night we'd had so much of the stuff, I was
even starting to like it. He poured us both another glass, put the bottle by
his chair, leaned back and said, "You believe in the supernatural,
Rocky?" (Rocky's my nickname, after Marciano, of course.) "That sort
of came out of left field," I said.

"Just got to thinking. Do you?"

"No," I said. "You know me, old redneck. If I
can't see it, hit it or bed it, it doesn't exist."

Gardner smiled and drank a sip from his wine. The fire sputtered
in the hearth, lent some flickering shadow to his face, made his eyes look
unnaturally bright.

Meko, his scruffy black cat, strolled out of the dark — we liked
to sit in front of the fire with the lights off — and leaped onto Gardner's
lap. He stroked her head solemnly. "I do," he said. "I believe
... in something."