Uncollected Stories 2003 (20 page)

Bracken left town again.
He was in Palm Springs, and the phone connection was very bad.
"Mr. Bracken?"
"Yes. Talk louder, please." Bracken was dressed in sweaty tennis
whites; the girl on the bed wore only her skin. A tennis racket dangled
from one hand. She swished at the air with it idly watching Bracken
with the nearly expressionless eyes of experienced desire.
"This is Benito Torreos, Mr. Bracken.”
"Yes."
"You did a job for my Don seven months ago. You remember?"
"Yes." New sweat began to crawl down his back.
"He wants to see you. He's dying."
Bracken thought carefully, knowing his life almost certainly depended
on his next words. He did not see what he had done as a double-cross:
he had fulfilled two separate and exclusive contracts, and had been able
to vacation from then until now on his earnings. But the old man would
see it as a cross, a stain on his pride and good faith. He was a man with
a belly.
"Why does he want to see me?"
"To ask a question."
The connection was very bad, and Bracken knew that to simply
replace the instrument in its cradle would likely mean death. The family
has a long arm. It was either to go Vito or run, and the connection was
very bad.
"How is Mrs. Correzente?" he asked politely.
"Dead," Benny Torreos said flatly. "She died last month, in
childbirth."

The bedroom was gothic shades of white on white – rug, walls, ceiling,
curtains, even the sky beyond the windows. A steady drizzle was falling
outside the Graymoor. Don Vito, shrunken to the size of a jockey
twisted from the back of his horse, lay immured in his deathbed, which
was also white.

He lifted one hand to Bracken. It shook briefly in the air, then dropped
to the snowy coverlet again. There was a soft click as Torreos left them,
closing the door to rejoin the relatives in the front room. The women out
there were dressed in black, and shawled. Even the business suits of
their men seemed old fashioned, as if death had dragged Sicily back into
the fabric of the clothes and of the wearers by force.

Bracken went to the bed. The old man's face had fallen away to a
skull. There was a sour smell that seemed to come from the folds of his
flesh. His mouth had been twisted down cruelly on the left side, and the
left hand was claw-fingered and frozen.

"Bracken," Correzente said. His voice was blurred and cottony. The
operative side of his face lifted in a grotesque smile while the other side
remained impassive. "I must tell you. I...”

"Benny said you had a question."
"Yes." The word came out yeth. "But I must...tell you."
"Tell me what?"
"They told me you did a good job. You do. You have killed my wife and me."
"I did my job.”
"Pride", the old man said, and smiled apologetically. "Pride ...”

He seemed to gather himself. "She promised to be a good wife, a dutiful
wife. She said she had been taking pills but these pills were no more.
She said she would bear me a son.

"We made love together. But I am old. She asked if it was too much
for me." The skull smile again. "Should I tell my chastened wife that I
am no more a man? No, I say no too much...

"We make love more. And I, I have a stroke. A little blood vessel up
here" – he tapped his head gravely – "goes pop, like a balloon. The
doctor comes and says, No more, Vito. You will kill yourself. And I
say, yes, more. Until I have put a child in her.

"Pride.  

"Then the doctor say, You have done this. You have made a baby at
seventy-eight. He say, I would give you a cigar, Vito, but you must
smoke no more cigars. "

Bracken shifted his legs. The whiteness of the room was oppressive,
creeping.
"I am overjoyed. I am a man, much man. I have a belly. The house is
filled with my family. We have, oh, the word is for much food – "
"Banquet," Bracken said.
"Yes. And I sit at the head of the table, then rise. My wife, she rises. I
toast her with wine and tell them. I say, I have given my belly to my
wife!" "I am the happiness of the world. I am beyond laughings and
dirty jokes. I give her money for the wheels and tables. I give her what
she wants. Then one night, we argue. Much hard words pass. And then
...I have this. Pain. One eye goes blind. She saw it and screamed. She
runs for the telephone in the living room with her belly before her. I try
to call but am down a dark hole. When I wake up, they tell me she has
fallen on the steps going down to the living room. They tell me she is in
the hospital. Then they tell me..." The hand rose again. "Fut." Don Vito
said. The dreadful smile came and went.
Correzente was visibly tired now. His eyes closed, then opened
slowly, as if weighted.
"You see?" he whispered. "The irony?"
"Benny said you had a question," Bracken said.
The dead face looked up at him steadily. "The baby lives," he said.
"They tell me this. In a glass house."
"Incubator."
"They say the baby has pretty blue eyes.”
Bracken said nothing.
"You made one of Norma's eyes black. But they were brown. And
there is no blue-eyed Sicilian."
"Benny said you had a question," Bracken said.
"I have ask my question. My doctor say, it's genes. I do not know
genes. I only know what a dying man lies in bed and thinks. How she
was prideful and how she could wait."
Bracken looked down at him, his mind a thousand miles away. He
thought of the blonde, how she served, the brown flesh of her legs
below the blinding white of her skirt, the flickering glimpse of her
panties, the fan of her hair on the pillow, her trained tennis muscles.
"How stupid you are," he said to the old man, softly. He leaned
forward, breathing in the scent of Correzente's doom. "Death has made
you senile. I have my own belly. Do you think I would take my own
leavings?"
A line of spittle was making a slow trek down from the corner of the
old man's mouth to his chin.
"The baby's eyes will go brown. Too bad you won't see it. Goodbye,
stupid old man." He got up. The room was white and full of death. He
left and went back to Palm Springs.

T
here were twelve of us when we went in that night, but only two of us
came out – my friend Kirby and me. And Kirby was insane. All of the
things I'm going to tell you about happened twelve years ago. I was
eleven then, in the sixth grade. Kirby was ten and in the fifth. In those
days, before gas shot up to $1.40 a gallon or more (as I recall the best
deal in town was at Dewey's Sunoco, where you could get hi-test for
31.9 cents, plus double S&H Green stamps), Skybar Amusement Park
was still a growing concern; its great double Ferris wheel turned
endlessly against a summer sky, and you could hear the great, grinding
mechanical laugh of the fun-house clown even at my house, five miles
inland, when the wind was right. Yeah, Skybar was the place to go, all
right – you could blast away with the .22 of your choice at Pop Dupree's
Dead Eye Shootin' Gallery, you could ride the Whip until you puked,
wander into the Mirror Labyrinth, or look at the Adults Only freak tent
and wonder what was in there...you especially wondered when the
people came out, white-faced, some of the women crying, or hysterical.
Brant Callahan said it was all just a fake, whatever it was, but
sometimes I saw the doubt even in Brant's tough gray eyes.

Then, of course, the murders started, and eventually Skybar was shut
down. The double Ferris stood frozen against the sky, and the only
sound the mechanical clown's mouth produced was the lunatic hooting
of the sea breeze. We went in, the twelve of us, and...but I'm getting
ahead of myself. It began just after school let out that June; it began
when Randy Stayner, a seventh-grader from the junior high school, was
thrown from the highest point of the SkyCoaster. I was there that day –
Kirby was with me, in fact – and we both heard his scream as he came
down.

It was one of the strangest ways for a person to die – the shadowed
Ferris wheel turned in the sunlight, the bumper cars honked and sparked
the roof and walls of Spunky's Dodge 'Em, the carousel spun wildly to
the rise and fall of horses and lions, and the steady beat of its repeating
tune echoed throughout the park. A man balancing his screaming son in
one hand, ice cream cones in the other, little kids with cotton candy
racing to see who's first to get on Sandee's Spinning Sombrero, and in
the midst of all the peaceful confusion, Randy Stayner performing a
one-time solo swan dive 100 feet into the solid steel tracks of the
SkyCoaster.

For a while, I wasn't all too sure the people around me weren't
thinking it was just an act – a Saturday afternoon performance by a
skilled diver. When blood and bone hit, however, it was clear the act
was over. And then, as if to clear the whole thing up with a final attempt
to achieve his original goal, he rolled lazily over the bottom rails of the
SkyCoaster into the brown murky water of Skybar Pond, swirls of red
and grey following him. The SkyCoaster was shut down the day of
Randy's dive, and despite weeks of dragging the pond's bottom, his
body was never found. Authorities concluded that his remains had
drifted under a sandbar or some unmarked passageway, and all search
ceased after four weeks.

Skybar lost a lot of customers after that. Most people were afraid to go
there, and other businesses in the town began to boom because of it. In
fact, Starboard Cinema, which showed horror movies to an audience of
four or five during the parks better days now showed repeats of "I was a
Teen Age Werewolf" to sell-out crowds. More and more, people drifted
away from Skybar until it was shut down for good.

It was during those last few weeks that the worst accidents started
happening. A morning worker, reaching under a car on the Whip for a
paper cup, caught his arm on the supporting bar between two clamps
just as a faulty circuit started the machine. He was crushed between two
cars. Another worker was fixing a bottom rail on the Ferris wheel when
a 500 pound car dropped off the top and smeared him onto the asphalt
below. These and several other rides were shut down, and when the only
thing left open was Pop Dupree's .22 gallery and the Adults Only freak
tent, the spark ran out of Skybar's amusement, and it was forced to shut
down after its third year in operation.

It had only been closed for two months when Brant Callahan came up
with his plan that night. We were in a group of five camping in back of
John Wilkenson's dad's workshop, in a single five-man Sportsman pup
tent illuminated by four flashlights shining on back issues of
Famous
Detective Stories
, when he stood up (or rather scuffled on his knees, due
to the height of the tent) and proposed we all do something to separate
the pussies from the men. I tossed aside my
Mystery of the Haunted
Hearse
, leaned in the glow of Dewey Howardson's light, and squinted
halfway at the hulking shadow crouching by the double-flap zipper
door. No one else appeared to pay any attention to him.

"Come on, lard-asses!" he shouted. "Are ya all just going to sit around
playing Dick-fucking-Tracy all night?"
Kirby slapped at the bugs attacking his glowing arm and looked from
Brant, to me, to the rest of the guys still gazing with mild interest at
their Alfred Hitchcock tales of suspense, unaware of any other activities
going on in their presence. I gazed at my watch. It was 11:30.
"What the hell are you raving about, Brant?" His face came to life
now that he was being noticed, and he looked at me with great
excitement, like some dumb little kid who was about to tell some
terrible secret and was getting the great flood of details together to form
a top-confidential plan.
"The SkyCoaster."
Dewey looked over the top of his magazine and shot Brant a look of
mild interest.
"Skybar's SkyCoaster?"
"'Course, ya damn idiot. What other roller coaster ya gonna find in
Starboard? Now the way I figger it, we could make it over the barbed
wire and inside to the SkyCoaster easy enough."
"What the fuck for?" I asked. Brant was always pulling stunts like
this, and it was no telling what the crazy bastard was up to this time. I
remember one year when we were out smashing coins on the BY&W
tracks by Harrow's Point; Brant got tired of watching trains run over his
pennies and dimes and dared us to take on a real challenge. Whenever
Brant came up with a real challenge, you could almost always count on
calling up the You Asked For It or Ripleys Believe It or Not crews for
live coverage. Not that the challenge was anything like that man from
Brazil who swallowed strips of razor blades, or that fat lady from Ohio
who balanced fire sticks on her forehead – Brant's dares were far more
challenging than those. And, as young volunteers from his reluctant
audience, we were obligated to take part in them or kiss our reputation
for bravery goodbye. Brant reached into his pants pocket that day and
pulled out a small cardboard box wrapped tightly with a red rubber
band. Unwrapping it, he revealed four or five shiny copper bullets, the
kind I used to see on reruns of
Mannix
when Mike Conners would stop
blasting away at crime rings long enough to load up his revolver again.
They were different from T.V., though. On the tube they appeared to be
no more than tiny pieces of dull plastic jammed into a Whamco Cap
Pistol.
In front of me then, they sat mystically in Brant's hand, the shells
glittering bright rays of light in the late afternoon sun, the tip of greyish
lead heavily refusing to reflect any light at all. Then Brant clapped them
all together in a fist and headed up the bank toward the tracks. I started
after him, half expecting him to wheel out a gun for them at any minute,
hoping he was just going to relieve himself rather than starting to open
fire on something, or trying some other dangerous stunt. It was
dangerous, as it turned out, but I didn't say anything. I just stood there
by the rails, taking a plug off the chewing tobacco Dewey brought
along, my mind watching from some faraway place as he set them up
single file on the left rail.
"The train wheels should set 'em off the second they hit," he smiled
smugly, eagerly forming his plan. "All we have to do is stand here by
the rails until they do. How's that for a challenge, huh? Oh, and the first
one to jump is pussy of the year.
I didn't say anything. but I thought a lot about it. About how stupid it
was, how dangerous it was, and how weird a person’s brain had to be to
think things like that up. I thought about how I should bug out right
then, just yell "Screw you, Brant!" and take off for home. But that
would have made me green. And if it was one thing we all had to show
each other back then, it was that we were no cowards.
So there we were, Brant, John, Dewey, me, and Kirby, although Kirby
wouldn't set foot near the tracks, bullets or no bullets, with a train
coming (he began to conveniently get sick on the tobacco and had to lie
down). We lined up next to the rails, determination in our eyes as the
bullets gleamed in front of us. John was the first one to hear the train,
and as we stepped closer to Brant's orders, I could hear him softly
muttering a short prayer over and over to himself. Dewey stood on the
far right side of me, the last person in our Fearless Freddy Fan Club.
Then the first heavy rumbling of the cars came, John reeled as it got
louder, and I thought surely he was going to collapse over the tracks, but
he didn't, and we all stood still as the train came on. The churning
squeak of the wheels hit our ears, and I stared blankly at the bullets in
front of us, thinking how small they seemed under the wheels of the
4:40. But the more I looked, the larger they began to appear, until it
seemed they were almost the size of cannonballs. I shut my eyes and
prayed with John. In the distance. the whistle rang out a terrifyingly
loud
Hooooo-HOO Hoooo
, and I was sure it was on top of us, sure that
I would feel the cracks of lead pounding in my ears any second, feel the
hot metal in my legs. Then the steady thud-thud-thud of its wheels
grinding closer bit into my ears, and I screamed, turned, and fell down
the slope to where the black gravel ended and the high meadowy grass
began. I ran and didn't stop or look back until I was what felt like at
least a mile away, and then collapsed in the stickery high grass, my
hands and knees filling with sharp pain.
Behind me, five or six bullets roared into the air consecutively, and I
wondered vaguely how Mike Conners could stand such a loud sound
every time he squeezed the trigger. My ears filled up with a steady
EEEEEEEEEEE
, and I lay back in the grass, my hair full of stickers, my
pride full of shame. Then Kirby was in front of me, telling me I was all
right. I sat up in the grass, and down the rim about ten or fifteen feet
from me, Brant, Dewey, and John sat puffing loudly, laughing, out of
breath. The air filled with smoke and I collapsed again into the high sea
of shrub and stickers, feeling fine. Brant admitted time after time that
we were all brave for going along with him that day, but he never
brought up the fact that we all had run away, he and Dewey in the lead.
Somewhere in my mind, the fact appeared to me that somewhere in
Brant, his ego ended and his brains began. That's why I listened along
with the others, and why we all wound up going with him that night
when he began scheming up another mastermind stunt.
"First we make it over the fence. When we do, we head for the
SkyCoaster. Here's the trick: we'll all meet in the station and start up the
tracks - not the wooden beams – the tracks, and, in single file, climb to
the King drop, then back down."
"You're fuckin nuts, Brant."
"Maybe. But at least I'm not fuckin' pussy."
"Who's pussy?" I asked, pulling my Converse All-Star tennis shoes
on.
"You in?" asked Kirby, his lower jaw shaking. It was almost like that
shaking jaw and those glassy, scared deer eves of his were trying to pull
me back, to help me forget about the dare and get back to reading
another chapter in
Amazing Detective Stories
– as if that once shaking
jaw were a sonar, bouncing off waves of detection and coming up with
the same reading: Dangerous Barrier Ahead.
"Don't be ridiculous, Kirb. 'Course I'm goin’" I shot a glance at John
and Dewey, who both gave me nods of bravery and confidence, mixed
highly with regrets of Brant's ever being with us that night. We left the
flashlights on in the tent in case John's dad peeked out the back
windows of his house to check on us. It turned out he never did. Skybar
can be pretty damn dark at night with no lights on. Few people know
that like I do since most have only seen it in the daytime with sunlight
bouncing off of the metal roofs of Pop Dupree's and the Adults Only
freak tent or at night with the magical lights blazing lazily around on the
Ferris wheel and bulbs flashing crazily in single file, creating a racing
form of neon display up and down the hills of the 100 foot high
SkyCoaster.
There were no lights that night, however. No lights, no moon, no light
clouds, zilchamundo. Brant had stopped on the way to pick up a couple
of his friends from the White Dragons. The Dragons were a street gang
that held a high position in the field of respect with all wise kids back
then, and luckily they brought spare flashlights, matches for their
cigarettes, and 5-inch steel Randell switchblades (in case some maniacal
drunk or thug was claiming the park space as a home base for his
operations).
Both of the White Dragon members appeared to be gods in the eyes of
all of us that evening – their hair slicked back to their scalps James
Dean style, black leather jackets with pale, fire breathing dragons on
them, a general air of confidence and security beaming off them as if
they were more protective beacons for us than general good company
joining us in the daredevil fun. Five more members of the Dragons were
to meet us after a field party they were having up on Grange's Point.
Brant hadn't let us in on that fact at first, but when I found out they were
supposed to meet us at the front gate at 12:30. more confidence rose in
me, and it began to feel more like we were heading toward a late game
of craps or penny ante poker instead of a 100 foot climb on slick poles.
What we didn't know was that they were practically carrying the party
with them, each with a bottle of Jack Daniel's Black label, or Southern
Comfort, or Everclear, and each was singing in rackety unison the
agonizing 75th stanza to "99 Bottles of Beer."
Excitement heaved up my chest to my throat as we approached the
outer gate, and I can still remember how mystic and strange the park
looked in the dark night air. The chain fence stretched onward in both
directions to what seemed infinity, sealing us out from its unknown
hidden powers, and I recall that it almost seemed that it was shielding
Skybar inside, preventing it from wielding its wrath on the innocent
people living outside its domain. Once you crossed the barrier, however,
there was no turning back. Here was where the two worlds divided, and
the choice was made – pussy or man. Everybody was anxious to get
inside the park's gates to prove where he stood. With the gang you felt
cold and nervous while awaiting the wrath of whatever might be lurking
inside – but outside, the chances of surviving any lurking danger alone
made you even more nervous – jittery enough to crawl up into a ball and
piss your pants at every crack of a twig.
So, you see, it's not that we all wanted to go inside. But even if we
were scared to death of climbing the cold rails of the SkyCoaster,
staying alone while the rest of the bunch climbed over and ventured
inside was even worse than the original dare itself. Surprisingly enough,
Kirby was the first one up the fence to lay his jacket across the barbed
wire and hop to the soft asphalt of Skybar on the other side. The rest of
us followed, thud, sputt, thud sounding through the night air as we each
dropped to the ground on the other side. We were in now. Eddie
Frachers, the shorter of the two White Dragons, lit up a smoke, flicked
on the flashlight, and led the way with Brant. The station was empty
when we got to the steel rails of the coaster, and climbing the steps to
the gate station was an unusual experience in itself since there was no
waiting in line for an hour while an old man standing in front of you
blew cigarette fumes in your face in the riding hot sun as your stomach
turned putrid, your facial skin pale. Now it was home free between the
coaster and us, free space all the way.
Hurry hurry step right up!
The metal floor thundered hundreds of beats under our feet as we
made our way across the vacant station to the terminal gates, and I
looked several times over my shoulder as we walked the deserted
leading board, my senses ready for anything that might decide to go
more than "bump" in the night. I was the first one to hear it, in fact, and
my body grew limp, my bowels limp with it when I heard the direction
it was coming from – the coaster cars. They all sat in front of us, grey
and orange from rust and age, their silent features corrupting the night
with an evil air, and I recall standing there as the others began to hear it
too, my hands shaking, legs drooping, mouth hanging open stupidly as I
attempted to say something – I don't know what – and nothing would
come out.
I don't know how long we all stood there, waiting for something,
anything to happen. The cars seemed mystic in their own way as they
stood their ground and refused to let us any nearer by chanting some
evil spell among themselves to keep us back. A spell is one thing, but if
you've ever thought you heard a car (or possibly some dangerous lunatic
hiding behind a car) singing something, you'd understand how we all
felt that night. Even Brant and the two White Dragons appeared
motionless in the soft glow from the flashlight, but somehow Eddie
brought the flashlight up to meet whatever was occupying the first car.
"Hey! Turn it off damnit!"
A surge of relief at its at least being human swelled up in me, but I
still stood there, motionless and quivering, even as Eddie and the rest of
the bunch, even Kirby, started toward the coaster. I must have still been
in a daze, because I found myself wanting to stop them, to pull them
back to me, to end it all, turn around and get the hell back over the
fence. But I still stood there as fog rolled around my eyes and my sight
blurred, leaving only my ears to tell me the horrible fate of our party.
"What the hell are you..." "..are you sure that it's them..." "What are they
doing here like this..." A long, ear-piercing scream followed, the kind
women usually scream in those horror movies at Starboard Cinema
when the vampire wraps his cape around his victim and starts sucking
the living blood out of her. It rose to almost unbelievable splitting levels
then faded away with suppressed laughter followed by "59 bottles of
beer on the wall, 59 bottles of beer..."
A hand touched my shoulder and I reeled to find Kirby at my feet,
telling me that the other guys had gone ahead without me and I'd better
hurry up. I ran and caught up with them by the main track, where they
had already begun the climb. Brant was first, then the White Dragons,
and then Dewey and John, clinging tightly to the steel tracks behind
them. I ran the 20 feet to the final, highest 100 foot drop, and started up
after them. The cold steel rails clapped clammily into my skin as I
started shinnying up, looking to where Brant and the Dragons were
perched high above. I couldn't weigh the amount of energy I had left to
figure how I was gonna climb 100 fucking feet barehanded. It's kind of
like that joke about the little ant crawling up the elephant's hind leg with
rape on its mind. I probably wouldn't make it, but I had high hopes.