I went over to see if Sharon might be alive, not that I thought she might be, but I had to know. I touched her neck. No pulse. She was still warm. She must have been the last, and that meant they hadn’t been gone long. A few minutes, I reckoned.
I picked up the book. It was open to the last page. The top two pictures were of Doc’s wife. They were like all the others you’ve seen. One of her alive, one of her dead. I knew then that the scream we’d heard when we were standing outside of Doc’s house had been her.
Below that, same way, pictures of the Disaster Club, ending with Sharon. But why? And why had they left the camera and the book on the bed? And why had they brought the Disaster Club back here to do them in? What was the deal?
I closed the photo album and put it in my jacket pocket. I don’t know why exactly, but I did.
I looked at Sharon again and got sick.
I left out of there and went out on the back porch for some air. I heard something then, turned and looked through the screen, across the living room and down the hall, out the open front door.
A police car, not using its cherries or siren, pulled off the little street and up against my front yard curbing. I saw another come from the opposite direction and park across the street. A door slammed and I saw a cop coming around his car, heading for my walk.
I began to get the picture. Fat Boy and Cobra Man had talked to my compadres, used some persuasive techniques to find out about me, find out where I lived. They’d brought the Disaster Club back here to do their business and they’d left plenty of business around to make it look like this had all been my work. The frame was so good and tight I could feel it fastening around my neck.
I threw the butcher knife away from me and bolted for the fence and grabbed the top of it and pulled myself over. The dog the cat startled wasn’t there. I guess he was still chasing the cat. I ran across my neighbor’s yard, through another, and on out to the highway.
I went across the highway and walked down to a convenience store and called a taxi. Can you believe that? A fucking taxi? I wasn’t exactly thinking right then.
While I waited for the taxi, I pulled up my pants legs and tried to pick window glass out of my knees.
The taxi came and I got in, hoped in t Sn, div>he dark the driver wouldn’t see how bloody I was. I figured, with my dark clothes, and the blood dried on me, it wouldn’t be too noticeable. I had the driver take me here. I had seen this place before and thought it was the kind of place you might come to if you didn’t want anyone to ask questions.
I had enough money to pay the taxi and two nights rooming. After I paid the taxi, I took off my jacket and wiped as much blood off of me as I could with that, left it by the corner of the motel and went inside and gave the name Jack Frame, paid up, and didn’t get asked any questions. I got the room key and came back for the jacket.
I came in here and tried to go to bed, but couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and went out to the vending machines and got an orange drink, and later a Coke. Then I got some cigarettes and newspapers, like I really wanted to catch up on the fucking sports. I thought about calling the police. But the more I thought about it, less I liked it. Fat Boy and Cobra Man had me by the balls, and I didn’t even know who they were or how to explain what me and the Disaster Club were doing at the Doc’s house.
While I sat and smoked and thought, another truth came to me. Something I always knew deep down and wouldn’t accept.
Dave had planned to kill the Doc, his wife too. I’m convinced everyone knew the certainty of it, but me. It was like the night they took me out to the tracks and pulled the trick with the train. I was the patsy then, and they had plans for me again. This time, I was to have been the patsy to murder. They would have killed Doc and his wife and did me in and made it look like I came in to rob the place and got caught. Made it appear me and Doc killed one another. Me nailing him with the automatic Dave would leave in my hand, and Doc nailing me with… I don’t know, a fire poker maybe, supposedly right before he keeled over dead of a gunshot wound.
I began to feel that was the score all along, and the only reason I’d been brought into any of this in the first place. They’d laid out their plan for murder and a patsy before they ever met me. They may not have known who they were going to rob or kill, or who the patsy would be, but the plan got laid out and I got the patsy role and Doc drew the victim card. It was all so neat and well designed, just the way Dave would work it. Disaster Club business.
But it all backfired. They got killed and I got away, and then I got framed for their deaths. Something ironic in all that, I’m just not sure what.
Anyway, that’s about it, Uncle Hank. I haven’t been anywhere since then but here, and I haven’t slept or had anything on my stomach but that orange soda and that Coke, and I didn’t keep either of them down.
I think about what the Disaster Club planned for me, and I feel sick. Then I think about them in my house, all messed up like that, and I feel sicker. And finally, I think about how it looks like I did it all, and I feel sicker yet.
Christ, Uncle Hank. Help me out here. Tell me. What am I gonna do?
5
I sat there stunned for a moment, then picked up the photo album and opened it. I took a real hard look at the photos on the last page. They meant more to me than before. These were the people Bill had been telling me about. He had avoided revealing that bit of i Vn, dist pagenformation until he finished his story, to give added impact, and it worked.
I concentrated on the photos and picked out who was who from Bill’s descriptions.
The Doctor’s wife, on the left hand side of the page, wore a bikini that showed a lot of nice sun-browned skin. She was standing on the deck of a sail boat. Behind her, the sea glistened bright and blue. In the photo she might have been forty, but she wore it well, maybe a little too well. I guessed the Doc had helped her out some around the mouth and eyes, and had probably put some missiles in her titties.
It was a nice photograph and it hadn’t been taken with any snapshot camera. It was likely stolen from her own collection. The photo next to it was a Polaroid. It wasn’t as flattering. She was naked on a bed with her legs spread wider than was comfortable and her panties were around her right ankle. There were ropes fastened to her ankles and wrists, and the ropes ran out of sight of the camera. They were doubtlessly tied to the rails beneath the mattress. There was something bright stuffed in her mouth, and there was a tidy little bullet hole, looking as if it had been painted there, in the center of her forehead, and beneath her head was a blood stained pillow.
Beneath her photo, on the left, was a shot of a good looking young man—Dave, I presumed from Bill’s story—and beneath that, a photo of another nice looking young fella. Bob, of course. Neither looked happy.
On the right hand side were pictures that I surmised had been taken shortly thereafter of the same two. One was a down shot of Dave with has face against the floor, turned slightly to the side so that I could see his tongue hanging out and his teeth biting through it. His eyes bulged. His ass was pasty white, except for where blood was splashed on it from the knife in his rectum. He had a leg lifted, the sole of his bare foot pointing up. The other foot still wore a shoe.
The right hand side photo of Bob showed him with his genitals in his mouth, blood splashed beneath his nose like a red mustache.
The last four photographs, also taken with the Polaroid were: Left—a pale, dark-haired looker of a girl. Right—a dark-haired mess of a girl. Those two would be Carrie.
Beneath those: Left—an astonishing blond beauty alive and not happy. Right—same beauty, only dead, with an expression that indicated she knew it would end up this way, and so what?
I closed the book and sat and thought.
“Look,” I said, “first thing is you need to relax some. Take a shower.”
“A shower? That’s your advice? Take a fucking shower? We’re talking about murders here. Murders I’m pinned for, and you want me to take a shower. I do
n’t want a shower.”
“You stink.”
“I don’t care if I stink. A shower isn’t going to solve my problems, Uncle Hank.”
“No, but you got to perk up a little. Make it a hot one so it’ll relax your muscles. Run it hard against the back of your neck and your lower spine.”
“A shower. That’s great. Take a shower. Want me to wash my hair?”
“Why not? Doing it with bar soap won’t hurt you. While you’re doing that, I’ll get you a hamburger. You’re bound to be hungrier than you think. I get back we’ll talk some more.”
· · ·
I drove over to a Quickie-Mart and bought a large two-liter bottle of Coke, a razor and blades, a toothbrush and toothpaste.
By the time I came out of the store, the sky had lost its blueness and turned grey and cold as a tin roof. The air was nippier, and I could smell a hint of rain.
I drove through the drive-thru of a hamburger joint and ordered a large hamburger and fries. That just about depleted the money Beverly had allowed in my wallet.
I raced back to the motel and hammered on the door and Bill let me in. He was wearing a towel and had his wet hair pushed straight back. He looked a smidgen less tense.
I put the supplies on the table, and gave him the food. He sat on the bed and ate the hamburger while I went down to the ice machine and scraped what ice there was into the room bucket. I thought the ice looked suspicious in color, but not so much I didn’t figure on letting Bill use it. I went back with the bucket and filled a questionable looking glass with ice and poured him some Coke. By the time I did that, he was finished with the burger. He drank the Coke rapidly, and I filled his glass again.
“Listen now,” I said. “I’m going back to the house. I’ll come back later with some clothes, a little money, a few odds and ends. I’ll bring you some more food and some coffee.”
“Any ideas yet, Uncle Hank?”
“My instinct is to tell the police, tell them what you’ve told me. I don’t care how you feel the frame looks. You tell it the way you told me, and no matter how the evidence is presented, I think you got a better than average chance. I’ll see you get a good lawyer. I’ll do everything I can.”
“I don’t know, Uncle Hank. It looks bad. I start talking about a fat man and a stinky guy with a cobra painted on his head killing the Doc and the Disaster Club, who’s gonna buy that? I mean, that sounds like some comic book shit. Know what I’m saying?”
“Well, I’ve thought about it from that angle too. I swing from one feeling to another, but I figure whatever I decide it’ll come down to you going to the police. So, you can get ready for that. But before we go, we got to get our game plan together. For now, I’m going to see if there’s anything on the news about this, anything in the papers tomorrow.”
“All right.”
“I’ll be back after while. I’ll bring you some clothes. Mine’ll be big on you, but you can get by.”
“I appreciate it, Uncle Hank. Really.”
“Watch some TV. Jack off. Take another shower. Whatever, but relax. Sleep if you can. You didn’t kill anyone, Bill. You never had any intention of killing anyone. Your biggest crime is you’re a dumb asshole.”
“Beverly’s going to [’atch some love this,” Bill said.
“I might not tell her everything right off. We’ll ease into this one.”
I got the photo album off the table. “I’m going to take this with me. You don’t need to look at it anymore.”
I started for the door, paused. “I don’t know if I’m being melodramatic or what, but you lock this door behind me. And don’t go anywhere.”
“You don’t need to tell me that,” Bill said. Then: “Uncle Hank?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“I love you. I’m not just saying it. I’m not trying to con you or nothing.”
“I love you too, you moronic little shit. Now shut up and lock up.”
“Sure.”
“Uncle Hank?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you get me some cigarettes?”
6
I started out with home in mind, but didn’t keep thinking that way. It was like I didn’t know what I was doing, least not on a conscious level. I begin to feel the way Bill said he had felt. Driven. Not really wanting to do what I was doing, but doing it anyway.
The direction I took wasn’t even near home. I live east and I went west, right on out of Imperial City, out into the country.
The trees thickened and the roads narrowed. It had started to drizzle and the wind had picked up. Oak and maple and sweetgum leaves blew across my path so thick it was like a colorful snow storm. The wet ones stuck to my windshield, and I turned on my wipers to bat them away, but that only bunched them up.
I drove until I came to the blacktop I had been looking for all along, went down it until it broke into an unpaved road that wound its way into the depths of the east Texas woods.
I cruised along for a short ways until the trees grew thick enough to drape over the road and wind their limbs together. I went along that way for a while, then pulled over to the side of the road underneath a massive oak. I sat for a moment with my hands on the wheel, letting the lint inside my head spin around, then I looked at the photo album lying on the seat beside me and felt a chill jump up my spine and spread to the base of my skull.
I got out of the truck and didn’t slam the door. I walked around front and got hold of the leaves bunched on the windshield and removed them, even as more swirled out of the woods and twisted over the truck and planted themselves on the glass.
I pulled my collar up against the wind and drizzle and leaned on the bumper of the truck. About a hundred yards in front of me the trees were less thick and there was a partial clearing. In the center of the clearing was an ugly double-wide mobile home with a shiny aluminum skirt that went all the way aroun ^’atal cd the bottom, except for a large gap beside and underneath a set of black iron steps that led up to the front door. Jutting out of the opening at an angle to the steps was the rusty handle of a lawn mower.
Arnold’s place.
The home had once been brown, but was now grey with weathering and age and the little flagstone walk out front of it had dried weeds sticking up on either side of the stones. Underneath a carport/shed that had been built against the home was a dirty white Dodge pickup and a hooded barbecue grill that looked well used.
Hung by string, dangling like fruit from the branches of a barren iron wood tree at the edge of the car shed, was a batch of beer bottles. When the wind blew and went into the bottles, they gave out with a shake and a sound like haints moaning.
I had seen trees fixed up like that before. Mostly in the yards of old black people. Someone had told me the story behind the bottles when I was a kid, but now I couldn’t quite remember what it was all about. Something to do with spirits. I certainly hadn’t a clue why Arnold had fixed his tree up that way. That seemed out of place for him.
Beyond the double-wide, I could see the woods. It was very thick near Arnold’s place, because that’s where the creek ran through. I figured, come summer, the mosquitoes would rise off the water and muddy banks in a mass so thick and black they’d look like a fishing net being lifted, about to be dropped over the property.
Behind, and to the left of the trailer, at an angle from the woods, was a couple of acres of junk cars and car parts.
Way out back was a large, old-fashioned red barn that looked newer and cozier than the mobile home. That would be where Arnold’s wrecker lived.
I wondered what Arnold was doing inside his double-wide. Most likely sitting around in his underwear drinking beer, watching the wrestling matches, maybe racing the dial with his channel changer, scratching his belly, listening to the wind blowing through his bottle tree.
Or maybe he was having an early supper. Eating beanie-weenies out of a can. Spearing the weenies with his p
ocket knife, sucking the beans and juice straight from the container, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm as he watched thumb-sized roaches run out and around an oily-bottomed, brown paper sack at which he tossed his garbage.
I was taken aback by these thoughts. If that’s how I thought of him, then why had I driven out here to spy through the trees on Arnold’s trailer and suddenly wonder what he was doing after not speaking to him for ten years and not having the urge to?
When I was a kid, Arnold had been my hero, and I grew to love him the way a younger brother should love an older brother. He came around to our house some, but my mother was never relaxed with him. She tried to treat him right because of my father, but you could tell she wasn’t comfortable with the idea. My father didn’t know what to do about it. He loved Arnold, I know, but his firstborn was from a time when Dad had been a boy himself; hadn’t had the experience then that he had with his new family. I think seeing Arnold made Dad feel like a failure. When they talked to each other, it was around things, and Dad always had a kind of desperate look about him when Arnold was about, as if there was something he wanted to say, but c togs, the language in which it needed to be said was unknown to him.
One night, when I was twelve, a noise in the kitchen woke me up, and I got up and found Dad in there breaking up some cornbread in a half glass of milk, eating it with a spoon.
I got a glass, went over and sat down by him and took cornbread from the pan and broke it into my glass and chunked it up with the spoon and poured milk on it. He put a big arm around me while I sat there and ate the cornbread and drank the crumbed milk, and I saw then that he had a bunch of old school pictures of Arnold spread out on the table and was looking at them. I didn’t know where he got them or kept them, but they were well-creased and a little greasy.