The Blob (4 page)

The teenagers poured in, sweaty and wide eyed, whooping and waving, turning the whole diner into instant chaos.

Herb shook his head at the sight. He pulled out his wallet to pay, took out one of his cards, and handed it to Fran along with a five-dollar bill. “If you ever get a little time to yourself, here’s my number down at the station,” he said. “Oh, and keep the change.”

Hardly acknowledging this, Fran just grabbed the money and the card. Stuffing both into her pocket, she went off to deal with the babbling teenagers at the counter. “Okay! One at a time!” she yelled.

Bemused, Herb looked down at the receipt she had handed him.

Below the addition, words were jotted:
I’m off at 11:00,
they read.

A rush of relief and happiness flooded Herb Geller. Not a rejection after all! He had a date! A real, genuine, maybe-this-might-lead-to-something date!

He stuffed the check behind his ticket book, squared his shoulders, straightened his gun and holster, and sauntered off to his cruiser, feeling proud and happy.

The teenagers ignored him.

T
he old pickup truck grumbled and squeaked to a halt right next to the Tick Tock Diner. Brian Flagg jumped out of the back, slapping the battered blue side of the cab.

“Thanks for the ride!” he said to the man in the baseball cap behind the wheel.

“No problem, fella. Stay good!”

Brian winked, and the pickup truck roared away, leaving behind a rooster tail of dust.

Gotta see Moss Woolsey, thought Brian, he’ll help me out! I gotta get my bike fixed before dark, and Moss is my only hope.

Brian Flagg started up the road toward Moss’s place, past the Tick Tock. Too bad he didn’t have time for a Coke or something. He could use one. Still, with that hoard of his classmates inside there, the Tick Tock scene was not exactly one that he cared to make today.

Just then Sheriff Geller walked out of the diner, easily the last man that Brian Flagg wanted to see right now. Or forever, for that matter!

Luckily Geller didn’t seem to notice him, but just slid into his bubble-top and gunned the engine.

Flagg picked up a little speed, skipped over to the sidewalk, and faded into the shadows of a hardware store’s awning. He turned his back, pretending to admire the hammers and chisels on display in the front window. Sheriff Geller was the guy who’d put Flagg on ice twice, and he was not the sort that Brian Flagg cared to make idle chitchat with!

The black-and-white Lincoln eased along the road behind him, and Flagg could almost sense it stopping.

Oh, shit.

“Flagg! Congratulations!” cried that too-familiar voice.

Brian Flagged turned. “Congratulations for what?” he asked in a surly tone.

“Hear you got a birthday comin’ up. No more juvie hall, right?”

“You got that right, Sheriff!” Brian said.

“You bet,” said the sheriff, stabbing a finger at him. “Next time you fuck up, you’re in the majors.” Herb Geller grinned. “See you around, Flagg.”

The bubble-top cruised on.

Flagg sighed. Geller would like that. Geller was the guy who’d pegged him early as a juvie and had made damned sure that Brian Flagg didn’t get an inch to spare. That was why, when Brian Flagg had first been caught at something even slightly unlawful—in this case, fooling around in the brewery with some guys, guzzling some free beer in the middle of the night—the proverbial book had been thrown at him.

And it was in the Websterville Juvenile Detention Hall—for four long weekends of “reform”—that he had met the guys that had gotten him into trouble the second time—Vinnie Marshall and Ted Clinco. Once “sprung” themselves, they’d bring their motorbikes over to Brian in Morgan City for minor repairs. Brian had palled around with them for a while, attracting Sheriff Geller’s attention. Then, when Vinnie and Ted were seen hauling loot through the broken door of someone’s apartment, the sheriff immediately showed up at Brian Flagg’s house, with a search warrant. Unfortunately for Brian the guys had stashed a few stolen articles in the shed in his backyard. Equally unfortunate, the shed was the place where he kept a small bag of marijuana as well. They never caught Marshall and Clinco—at least not around these parts—but they did put Brian back in juvie hall for his summer vacation.

It wasn’t like he didn’t expected it, though. Maintaining his hard veneer, Flagg had always cultivated the rougher crowd. If there ever had been a gang in Morgan City, Flagg had belonged to it. That it had been a play gang consisting only of a bunch of kids who liked to pretend to be tough meant nothing to the local authorities. Brian Flagg looked like a hood, therefore he was a hood, and like any potential troublemaker, he should be squashed—the earlier, the better.

Flagg knew he shouldn’t complain too much. He had played the role, and at least it gave him an identity, one he liked a hell of a lot more than those white-bread sorts who were the general run of Morgan City youth. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have friends here, he thought as he headed toward the sign labeled
MOSS
’
S REPAIR SHOP
. There were some folks around who liked him. Moss Woolsey was a friend, and Brian knew he could count on Moss helping him get his wheels back on the road.

Flagg sauntered across the street and went into the grimy cinder-block garage. Ah, the smell of old tires and oil, of gasoline and elbow grease—Flagg smiled at the familiar aroma. It was in this garage that, with the help of Moss, he had fine-tuned his mechanic skills. It was there that he had learned the heavy-duty, by-the-seat-of-your-pants mechanical stuff, like how to strip an old engine, clean it, put it back together with secondhand parts, and then stick it into a car shell it wasn’t designed for. As soon as he reached the legal age, Flagg fully intended to get into serious drag-car stuff. Right now, though, a motorcycle would have to do.

As he strode in, Flagg saw Moss Woolsey bent over, wrenching away at the engine of a large Sno-Cat. On the Cat’s door was the logo
INDIAN SUMMIT SKI RESORT
.

“Yo, Moss!” said Flagg.
“Qué pasa,
buddy! I see you fooled the resort people again. Make ’em think you can fix this thing. Way to go!”

The muscular, middle-aged black man lifted his head and peered at Flagg. A thick, soggy cigar protruded from his mouth.

“Yeah. It’s a ritual, ain’t it?” Moss said, surveying his visitor and reacting with a flinch. “Whew! You look like hell, man!”

Flagg looked down at himself. He was dusty, disheveled, and still wet. He ran a hand through his usually well-cared-for hair and found that it was a mess as well. He struck a pose and said, “It’s a fashion statement.”

Moss grunted. “The only statement them clothes got to make is ‘I look like hell.’ ”

Flagg didn’t want to bother his friend while he was busy, so he made his pitch immediately. “My bike’s sitting out at Elkins Grove. Can I borrow your ratchet set?”

Moss took the cigar from his mouth. When Moss took the cigar from his mouth, that meant he had something important to say. “You kiddin’ me? The Summit’s got me overhauling six fuckin’ Ski-doos, three Cats, and two flatbed snowmakers. By Monday!”

Flagg shook his head and looked back out to the bright sunlight. “What’s the hurry? Must be ninety degrees out!”

Moss chuckled. Apparently deciding it was time for a break, he strode over to one of the flatbed snowmakers he’d alluded to. There was a six-pack sticking out of a pile of manmade snow on the lip of the thing, and Moss took one of the bottles and tossed it to Flagg. He took another for himself, opened it, and took a pull.

“Just Indian summer out there, boy.” Another pull, a shake of his cigar out toward the mountains. “Before you know it, winter’ll come tear-assin’ through this town with no apologies. Fall ain’t nothin’ but a rumor around these parts.”

Using the edge of a steel locker, Flagg knocked the cap off his beer bottle. “C’mon, it barely pissed snow the last couple of years. The whole town’s ready to fold.”

Moss looked troubled by that remark. “This year’s gonna be different.”

“Is that right?”

“Take my word. You’re gonna wish your piece-of-shit excuse for a motorcycle was one of these sweet little rigs.” He patted the side of one of the Sno-Cats. It wasn’t a brand-new Sno-Cat by any means, but it had been kept polished; its big front skis looked good, and its fuselage was shiny and ready.

“I’ll put on chains,” said Flagg. “What about the ratchets, Moss?”

Moss shook his head and went back to work on the engine. Flagg had been afraid of this. He and Moss were still pals, but it was true that it was Flagg who was always asking the favors. And there was no question that Moss had not forgotten the joyride Brian took last month in a Porsche that Moss had been fixing in his shop, a ride taken totally without permission. The car came back with no dents, but Moss had been furious. “What if the sheriff had caught you, man!” he had yelled. “My ass would have been in the same crack as yours! That’s a thirty-five-thousand-dollar piece of machinery there, Brian! I coulda gotten into a shitload of trouble with the owner if you’d even
scratched
the thing!”

Flagg didn’t blame Moss for being angry, but he really
needed
those ratchets now. The bike’s motor just needed some adjustments, some tightening—that’s all. It was an old thing that Flagg and Moss had put together themselves, and you couldn’t blame it if it konked out once in a while. Still, Flagg owed his friend. Maybe he could offer recompense.

“Maybe if I put in some hours for you over the weekend,” he said, “it would lighten things up.”

Moss sighed. “There’s twelve ratchets in that set. Twelve. They better all be there when I get it back.”

Flagg grinned. He went over to the tool bench to where he knew the ratchet set was, and he gathered it up, rolling it into its cloth sleeve and sticking it into his jacket pocket.

“Thanks, Moss,” he said. “I owe you one.”

Moss grunted. “You owe me too damn many.”

Flagg said good-bye and strode out, eager to fix his bike and wrap his legs around freedom again.

I
n the mountains, the light at dusk has a curious, otherworldly quality. It seems to bend around the slopes, filling valleys with soft shadows. It is a beautiful time of day, and tonight the sunset was especially beautiful.

The Can Man, however, didn’t give a damn about sunsets—not tonight or any night. He was too busy. He had his job to attend to, and a workingman didn’t have time to stare at the mountains and watch the sun go down.

It had been a good haul today, the Can Man thought as he picked through the batch in his canvas sack. There was a Budweiser can, a Miller draft can, and a Coors can—in fact, the very one that punk kid had tossed before he’d made the kamikaze motorcycle run into the gully. What was the guy’s name? the Can Man wondered, as he sorted the various brands. Oh, yeah, Flagg. Brian Flagg. Guy that came pokin’ around all the time when he was younger, trying to make conversation. Probably trying to learn the can trade, trying to dip into the Can Man’s business.

Well, the punk wouldn’t steal any of his tricks of the trade; not from Jimmy Nick, the Can Man.

Tricks like the one he was about to perform. The Can Man lifted his cracked work boot. Strapped to the bottom of the boot was the ancient rusty iron skillet the Can Man had imported from a junkyard in Denver when he came out here. In the waning twilight he studiously inspected the arrangement of the cans, making sure they were lined up just so.

He aimed, then pushed down hard.

Whomp!
metal against metal, the skillet mashed down on the perfectly arranged cans, flattening them.

The Can Man moved his foot and checked his handiwork. Yep, just right. Now on the old low stump, instead of three cans, there were three flat circles. They were easier to carry this way, and the boys down at the recycler center liked them this way. They liked them so much, in fact, that they gave the Can Man an extra quarter a pound! No, his skillet secret was one he wouldn’t share with anyone. After all, there were only so many cans to go around in Morgan City, and the Can Man had dibs on them all.

He chuckled as he stared down at the flattened cans. “Good un!” he said, then he looked over at Nixon, his dog. “You gotta do this right, Tricky Dickie, or they won’t pay you that extra quarter!”

Nixon looked at him with sad eyes; then he yawned and scratched.

“Huh? Dickie, don’t talk back like that to me! I fed you some good ground groundhogs today, your favorite! So don’t sass the old Can Man!” He picked up the three circles of aluminum and tossed them into a large wire basket near the ramshackle porch of his shack. Then he picked out three more from his sack and situated them on the stump in preparation for his skillet maneuver.

“Let’s talk philosophy this evening, boy. You tell me, Nixon. How many angels can dance on the head of a beer can?”

Whomp!
Three more flattened cans. He was developing into a regular machine.

In the twenty-five years since he’d first appeared in Morgan City, Jimmy Nick, aka the Can Man, had become something of a local institution. And in all those years he hadn’t really changed. Today, just as then, he was a grizzled old codger with gray hair, a stubbly beard on a wrinkled face atop a wiry frame. The truth also was that the only rights he had to this land and this shack were squatter’s rights. No one bothered him, however; he was harmless, and besides, he took care of some of Morgan City’s litter problem.

“Takes a special aptitude, doin’ what we do, having your own business,” the Can Man told Nixon as he threw more flattened cans into their storage bin. “Like I always tell you, boy. Our motto is, Can do!”

The Can Man was putting out the next three cans to be flattened when it happened.

The first hint that something was up came from Nixon. The dog let out an odd sort of whiny growl, then jumped up suddenly, his hair sticking up on end.

Startled, the Can Man knocked over one of the cans. He turned to look over at Nixon, who was now growling at the sky!