Things Beyond Midnight (15 page)

Now comes the part Sheriff Meade says is looney talk—but as the Lord A’ mighty is my witness it happened jes like I tole him it did. ’Bout Lafe Pritchard I mean, ’bout how the rain—God’s Tears some call it—come peltin’ down into that cold split-open wood box an’ woke ole Lafe till he rose up to sit straight as a soldier there in his fine black suit...

I was no more’n ten feet away—huggin’ the side’a the hill the way I was to shelter me some agin the storm—with my shiny rain slicker curled ’round me like a tent there in the blowin’ dark—watchin’ that dead man blinker his dead eye an’ move his dead mouth like he was testin’ ’em to see if they still worked proper.

I was down wind’a him—an’ even past the smell’a the rain I caught his scent, strong as sin on Sunday. I could nose him plain, all sour an’ gone to rot, the kinda smell a crushed rat gives off inside a barn after the wagon wheel has run him over an’ him bein’ there on the barn floor a while.

For sure, I was scart. Never seen me no livin’ dead men afore, but I’d heard tell of ’em a’plenty an’ knew it could happen, that the dead could raise up if they had a mind to do so. An a
reason.
Theys a reason behind everythin men do, livin’ an dead. An’ Lafe, he sure
had
hisself a reason. The rain was the thing that woke him from his uneasy rest, gave him the chance to do what he had to do. It jes happened I was there to see it.

I tole myself Jace, you calm on down now, boy, ’cuz Lafe was yer friend an’ it don’t figger he means to harm ya none. Jes speak up to him kindly.

Lafe, I say... standin’ close to him an’ lookin’ down at him sittin’ there in that cold wet box with his rain-slicked hair all plastered along the dead white of his face. His one eye rolls up to look me over. There’s jes a hole where the other was. Worms got it likely. His face is half gone. Parts of him have fell off, parts’a his nose is miss in’ an’ his upper lip is been most et away till the teeth shine out at me like he’s smilin’ even when he’s not.

He’s a plain fright, Lafe Pritchard is—but I say to him, Lafe, oh sweet Jesus, Lafe, you’re the first livin’ dead I ever come across. What brung ya back?

He don’t answer right off. First, he stands up slow, looks around with that one eye at the dark on Calder’s Hill an’ up at the other graves on Cemetery Ridge an’ at the wind-shook trees an’ he stretches like a long-asleep cat, his arms up above his head, stretchin’ those dead muscles an’ I stand there aside him wonderin’ if there’s still any blood in him. For sure not. But
somethin
keeps him there, tall in the dark. Somethin’ fires his dead flesh an’ moves those long arms a’his.

Lon. He says that name to me, soft an’ raspy, deep as a well. It’s Lon I want to see. Where’s Lon?

To home, most likely, on a night like this I say back to him.

Lon. I must see my brother Lon, he says. Can’t sleep proper till I do. That voice a’his was somethin’to remember. Like no voice I ever heard a’fore or since or ever will agin’ I’d guarantee.

Can the dead walk? Can they move through hollers an’gullies an’ through deep woods? Oh yes they can!

Lafe did, that night, walkin’ his dead legs along steady as you please past drippin’ oak and evergreen, through tangle-weeds an’ waist-high grass, his shoes suckin’ at yella clay or lost in leaf loam an’ me with him an’ the black rain peltin’ down like buckshot on us both an’ neither of us sayin’ nary a word as it final gave way to a smoky-burnt sun which come up slow over the trees.

Sure enough, the storm was over. Over an’ spent. Jes like it had stayed long enough to wake ole Lafe an’ havin’ done that job took off for other woods. A bird, kingfisher most likely, sang high an’ sweet for us, an’ frogs moved morning-soft in the marsh.

We’re almost into town I say to Lafe.

He nods an’ I step back a mite from the scent of him. The sun makes him smell worse as it heats him up. Already our wet clothes is steamin’ like smoke.

I ask him do you aim to walk right down the main street? Somehow it don’t seem proper to me.

I aim to, he tells me in that raspy voice that sounds like it comes from inside a holla log.

What’ll folks say, seem as how you look an all? Seein’ as how they know you belong dead an buried on Cemetery Ridge?

They’ll be none up to say, he tells me. They’ll most be abed.

You intendin’ to go straight through town to Lon’s?

Straight through. That’s my proper intent.

Now he stops at the edge of the wood, lookin’ toward the town with that one spit-shiny eye, with his teeth gapin’ an’ his dead white skin all flaked half away to raw bone.

I coulda cut an’ run, right then. I didn’t hafta go in an’ see what I saw, witness what I witnessed, an’ sure as Gods grace I’d be safe off this minute in the deep woods if I’d done jes that ’stead’a bein’ here inside this jailhouse talkin’ at this machine an’ not bein’ believed by nobody. But I never run.

I went in with Lafe.

The town was dawn-silent ’cept for a big splotchy dog that came snuffin’ an’ barkin’ outa Red’s Café toward us, till he got a whiff’a Lafe an’ down-tailed it quick back inside. Lafe paid him no mind.

We walked the length’a that street to Lon’s house at the far side where the road turns back to deep wood. Lon he’s lived there alone since Lafe died. Nice, with climbin’ vines along one side an’ big sunny windas.

I had no fear in me then, jes a burnin’ curiosity to see what Lafe would do when he found Lon, an’ what Lon would do when he laid sight’a him seein’ his own dead brother standin’ there fresh from the grave.

Jace boy, I tole myself, keep yer eyes wide open ’cuz it ain’t never ’afore happened that a dead man walks bold as brass beside you toward a brother he hated more than Satan himself ’afore he died.

Because see, it was
hate
that brung Lafe here, hate fer Lon that druv him up from that coffin to walk the woods here to face the brother that deviled his woman an’ ruint his life an drove him to fire that bullet into his own heart.

Hate was the blood that filled Lafe Pritchard’s body that mornin’—hate was the coal that fed the furnace of him.

What you gonna do when you find Lon to home I asked?

You’ll see, Lafe says to me an’knocks on that door as calm as you please, a dead man knockin’ to be let in an’ Lon comin’ up from sleep in his gray long-johns to open the door an’ seein his horror of a brother standin’ there—an’ screamin’ like a stuck pig as Lafe reaches out to take him by the throat.

It all happened fast.

Lon claws at those bone-white fingers an’ staggers back inside, eyes bugged, an’ Lafe, all swole up an’stinkin’ from the sun havin’ been at him, drags Lon down the hall by the neck, me follerin’ to the kitchen. Not a word betwixt ’em. Just the horror of it, the stench of it, in that dark mornin’ room with the shades down an’ the light still outside.

Now comes the part that got me sick, so I don’t rightly want to dwell on it.

Sheriff Meade says he’s certain convinced that what I’m really doin’ here is confessin’ up to killin’ Lon Pritchard an’ that this is my way’a tryin’ to slip past the law’s penalty by blamin’ a dead man for what
I
done.

He’s wrong. Lafe done in Lon, right there in front ’a me that mornin’ in that kitchen an’ it was Lafe that cut the hole in him with the carvin’ knife. I didn’t do it. I jes watched it gettin’ done, gaggin’ the while, sick with the raw sight of it all, yet with my gaze plain fixed to it.

After it was done Lafe steps back an’ says to me, we’re even now, me an’ Lon. I got what I come fer. I can sleep proper now. It’s a fair trade. He owed me an’ I collected.

So that’s all there is to it. If you don’t believe me you go out an’ see fer yourself. Out to Cemetery Ridge where he’s sleepin’ now inside that box agin with the lid nailed shut an’ a fresh hole dug an’ him at the bottom where he asked me to put him.

I done it fer a friend. I buried him proper so’s he could finally rest easy.

I don’t judge him fer what he done. Lon Pritchard was bad clean through, we all knew that. Stealin other folks wommin, an’ cheatin’ at his store business an’ gettin’ sod-drunk on God’s Sunday. Deserved what he got, if truth be tole. It’s the Lord’s own justice what Lafe done to him.

An’ the trade’s been made. You’ll find it in there, in the box with him. He’s a’holdin it fast in those bony fingers, claspin’ it to his bosom like a lost pup. I didn’t take it. Not me. Nosir. It’s down there with him —the thing that was missin’ when Sheriff Meade found the deceased. Lon Pritchards heart.

00:08
HE KILT IT WITH A STICK

A mild night in June.

Louise away, visiting her parents. The house on Gillham Avenue empty, waiting.

Warm air.

A high, yellow moon.

Stars.

Crickets thrumming the dark.

Fireflies.

A summer night.

Fred goes to the Apollo to see a war film. It depresses him. All the killing. Me leaves before it has ended, walking up the aisle and out of the deserted lobby and on past the empty glass ticket booth. Alone.

The sidewalk is bare of pedestrians.

It is late, near midnight, and traffic is very sparse. The wide street is silent. A truck grinds heavily away in the distance.

Fred begins to walk home.

He shouldn’t. It is only two blocks: a few steps to the corner of 40th, then down the long hill to Gillham, then right along to his house at the end of the block, near 41st. Not quite two blocks to walk. But too far for him. Too far.

Fred stops.

A gray cat is sleeping in the window of Rae’s Drugstore. Fred presses his hand against the glass.

I could break the window—but that would be useless. The thing would be safe by then; it would leap away and I’d never find it in the store. The police would arrive and...No. Insane. Insane to think of killing it

The gray cat, quite suddenly, opens its eyes to stare at Fred Baxter. Unblinking. Evil.

He shudders, moves quickly on.

The cat continues to stare.

Foul thing knows what I’d like to do to it.

The hill, sloping steeply, is tinted with cool moonlight. Fred walks down this hill, filled with an angry sense of frustration: he would very much have enjoyed killing the gray cat in the drugstore window.

Hard against chest wall, his heart judders. Once, twice, three times. Thud thud thud. He slows, removes a tissue-wrapped capsule from an inside pocket. Swallows the capsule. Continues to walk.

Fred reaches the bottom of the hill, crosses over.

Trees now. Big fat-trunked oaks and maples, fanning their leaves softly over the concrete sidewalk. Much darker. Thick tree-shadow midnight dark, broken by three street lamps down the long block. Lamps haloed by green night insects.

Deeper.

Into the summer dark.

When Fred Baxter was seven he wrote: “Today a kitty cat bit me at school and it hurt a lot. The kitty was bad, so I kilt it with a stick.”

When he was ten, and living in St. Louis, a boy two houses up told Fred his parents wanted to get rid of a litter. “I’ll take care of it,” Fred assured him—and the next afternoon, in Miller Lake, he drowned all six of the kittens.