Part 18 (1/2)

Markie shrugged.

”You want me to give it to somebody else?” Smith persisted. ”Okay? What if I give it to the first guy I meet when I go home tonight, huh, kid? Can I do that?”

”Okay,” Markie agreed.

”Well, okay then! Now go deliver my message. tell him I'll get him his murderer. Go on, kid, make tracks!”

Markie turned and limped out. He went slowly down the stairs to the beach, holding on to the sticky metal handrail. It was late afternoon now and a chilly wind had come up; all along the beach families were beginning to pack up to go home, closing their striped umbrellas and collecting buckets and sand spades.

Mothers were forcing hooded sweats.h.i.+rts on protesting toddlers and fathers were carrying towels and beach chairs back to station wagons. The tide was out; as Markie trudged along s.h.i.+vering he saw the keyholes in the sand that meant big clams were under there. Ordinarily he'd stop and dig up a few, groping in the sand with his toes; he was too tired this afternoon.

The sun was red and low over the water when he got to the dead trees, and the dunes were all pink.

The old man was pacing beside the water, in slow strides like the white bird. He turned his bright glare on Markie.

”He says okay” Markie told him without prompting. ”He'll get a murderer.”

The old man just nodded. Markie thought about asking the old man for payment of some kind, but one look into the chilly eves was enough to silence him.

”Now, boy,” said the old man briskly ”Another task. Go home and open the topmost drawer of your mother's dresser. You'll find a gun in there. Take it into the bathroom and drop it into the water of the tank behind the toilet. Go now, and let no one see what you've done.”

”But I'm not supposed to go in that drawer, ever,” Markie protested.

”Do it, boy!” The old man looked so scary Markie turned and ran, stumbling up the face of the dune and back into the thicket. He straggled home, weary and cold.

Mama was sitting on the front steps with two of the other mothers in the courtyard, and they were drinking beers and smoking. Mama was laughing uproariously at something as he approached.

”Hey! Here's my little explorer. Where you been, boyfriend?” she greeted him, carefully tipping her cigarette ash down the neck of an empty beer bottle.

”Hanging around,” he replied, stopping and swatting at a mosquito.

”You seen Ronnie?” Mama inquired casually, and the other two mothers gave her a look, with little hard smiles.

”Uh-uh.” He threaded his way through them up the steps.

”Well, that's funny, because he was going to give you a ride home if he saw you,” Mama replied loudly, with an edge coming into her voice. Markie didn't know what he was supposed to say so he just shrugged as he opened the screen door.

”He's probably out driving around looking for you,” Mama stated. She raised her voice to follow him as he retreated into the dark house. ”I don't want to start dinner until he gets back. Whyn't you start your bath? Don't forget you've got school tomorrow.”

”Okay.” Markie went into the bathroom and switched on the light. When he saw the toilet, he remembered what he was supposed to do. He crept into Mama's bedroom.

Karen was asleep in the middle of the bed, sprawled with her thumb in her mouth. She did not wake up when he slid the dresser drawer open and stood on tiptoe to feel around for the gun. It was at the back, under a fistful of Ronnie's socks. He took it gingerly into the bathroom and lifted the lid of the toilet tank enough to slip it in. It fell with a splash and a clunk, but to his great relief did not shoot a hole in the tank. He turned on the water in the big old claw-footed tub and shook in some bubble flakes. As the tub was filling, he slipped out of his clothes and climbed into the water. All through his bath he half-expected a sudden explosion from the toilet, but none ever came.

When he got out and dressed himself again, the house was still dark. Mama was still outside on the steps, talking with the other ladies. He was hungry, so he padded into the kitchen and made himself a peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly sandwich and ate it, sitting alone at the kitchen table in the dark. Then he went into his little room and switched on the alcove light. He pulled out the box of comic books from under his bed and lay there a while, looking at the pictures and reading as much as he knew vet of the words.

Later he heard Mama sobbing loudly, and begging the two other mothers to stay with her, and their gentle excuses about having to get home. Heart thudding, he got up and scrambled into his cowboy pajamas, and got under the covers and turned out the light. He lay in a tense knot, listening to her come weeping through the house, b.u.mping into the walls. Was she going to come in and sit on his bed and cry again? No; the noise woke up Karen, who started to scream in the darkness. He heard Mama stumbling into the bedroom, hus.h.i.+ng her, heard the creaking springs as she stretched out on the bed beside the baby. Markie relaxed; he was going to be left in peace. Just before he fell asleep, he wondered where Ronnie was.

Ronnie had played badly in the back room of the Red Rooster, all afternoon. He'd come out at last and lingered on the streetcorner, not wanting to have to go home and explain why he wasn't going in to work the next day. As he'd stood there, an old man had come up and pressed a bottle of beer into his hand and walked quickly on, chuckling. Ronnie was too surprised to thank him for the gift, but he was grateful; so he went off and sat on the wall Two Old Men 749 behind the C-Air Motel, sipping his beer and watching the sun go down. From there he went straight into Harry's Bar and had more, and life was good for a while.

But by the time he crawled into his truck and drove out to the old highway, he was in a bad mood again. He was in a worse mood when he climbed from his truck after it ran into the ditch. As he made his way unsteadily through the darkness, a brilliantly simple solution to his problems occurred to him. It would take care of the truck, the lost job, Peggy and the baby, everything. Even the boy. All their problems over forever, with no fights and no explanations. It seemed like the best idea he'd ever had.

He crept into the house, steadying himself by sliding along the wall. Once in the bedroom he groped around in the dresser drawer for a full two minutes before he realized his gun wasn't in there. Peggy was deep unconscious on the bed, and didn't hear him. He stood swaying in the darkness, uncertain what to do next. Then he got mad. All right; he'd show them, and they'd be sorry.

So he left the house, falling noisily down the front steps, but n.o.body heard him or came to ask if he was all right. Growling to himself he got up and staggered out to the woods, and lay down on the train tracks with a certain sense of ceremony He pa.s.sed out there, listening to the wind in the leaves and the distant roar of breakers.

The freight train came through about twenty minutes later.

The Summer People.

Don't you call me a townie! I'm too big for this town. I'm too- what's that word? Too intense.

You watch me at Harry's Bar on Karaoke Night, now; I burn up that place. I got the audience in the palm of my hand. Born with talent! That's why I didn't go into the family business. What? Firewood delivery and seasonal specialties. Not how you get rich.

A loser like my cousin Verbal likes that kind of work. He's got no ambition at all. He'll just sit there in the flocking shed drinking beer through his face mask until somebody wants a Christmas tree flocked.

Now and then he'll have to get up off his a.s.s to go nail on a tree stand or something. Same thing with the pumpkin patches. He'll drive the tractor for the hayrides, he'll load pumpkins off the truck, or firewood.

That's about all he's good for.

Not like me. I like a challenge, and also I just am not made to spend my life around clowns like Verbal.

Suellen didn't understand that, though. You'd think, with me bringing home meat for the table and the deck I built for the trailer, plus keeping her satisfied which I did and enough said, you'd think she'd see it was a fair division of labor. But every time she brought home a paycheck she'd start in on me about her brother at the fish packing plant and how he'd hire me.

He'd hire me, sure; but I know how it would go after that. He wants somebody just smart enough to hold on to the right end of the gutting knife, not an idea man who can show him how to run the plant better. Somebody was telling me Einstein didn't do real good in school, and I'm the same way. Too original, you see?

The meat for the table? Well, how do you think I get it? Same way as primeval Man, before there was any Department of Fish and Game. I have been up in front of the judge a few times for poaching but that's chickens.h.i.+t stuff, and I'd a lot rather do County time for poaching deer than that poor 757 SOB who was up before me once, who got caught poaching mushrooms! Not even the psychedelic kind.

Besides, poaching was how I got my big break. Almost.

I'll tell you about that.

Everybody knows about the big newspaper man who built the castle up there where all the movie stars came, the one that's a museum or something now, right? But back then lots of rich people did that.

There's a lot of big fancy houses on this coast, sitting off private roads that ain't paved, cut with kelly ditches, and the gates and padlocks are all rusted because n.o.body ever comes up from Beverly Hills except in the summer for a couple of weeks.

My other cousin has a caretaking service, he'll go and fill the propane tanks or get the powerhouses started up, WD-40 all the locks, make sure the water's turned on and the pools are filled-me and Verbal worked for him for a month once and you should see the palaces back up in those hills! Every one of them on a hundred acres easy, sometimes more.

So the Forestry Service don't go there, Department of Fish and Game either, because it's all private property! And it's just over the county line too. See where I'm going with this? And why should anybody mind, if you don't try to break into the house or nothing? Go at night, with a night sight on your gun.

Moonlight's the best time. That part of the coast's not patrolled after dark and with a good moon you don't run the risk of falling down a mountain. Take a buck, plenty of meat for the freezer.

So I was going up to this one place one bright night in the middle of summer and got a flat tire on Highway 1, in about the worst part where you got the cliff at your back and a thousand-foot drop to the ocean on the other side. I had just room to get the F150 over so I could change the tire. I was crouched down working the jack when I heard them coming, and flattened myself against the truck, because you never know when somebody could swerve over the line and smack you right out of this world.

Around the curve they came with the moonlight sliding off them, big new s.h.i.+ny cars, gleaming like every polished thing you ever saw. I was close enough so I could look into the windows, each one as they went by so quiet, so smooth the motors weren't even purring. Only the whoosh of air and some perfume.

The people inside were just black silhouettes sharp as cut out of black paper, but elegant, you know? And in the last one, a lady had her window down and her white arm resting on the door. It shone in the moonlight like it was made of marble or something. I couldn't see her face but for a second or so, but that was enough to tell me she was from Hollywood.

So I knew then they were summer people up from there, going to some big party probably on one of those estates. I stood up slow and watched after the last one had gone by, and for a few minutes I could see the red lights winding away up the coast road, the moon sparkling on the glossy cars the way it would on bubbles, and the long beams of the headlights winking in and out.