The Killer's Game

  And he was.

  They brought in a wrecker and took Gabe away, down the hill. That night when they rolled back in the garage, Bill found that Gabe had been dismantled and stacked. Tomorrow, he would go to the furnace to be melted down, and reformed.

  “It’s another life,” Maudie said. “He’ll be melted into some other kind of machinery. It’s not over for him.”

  “It won’t be him,” Bill said.

  “And there’s his soul, it’s gone to the sky. That can’t be changed. Can’t be taken away from him. A residue remains. Isn’t it in the manual that residuals can remain?”

  Bill thought about the ghost inside him, the residual of the waffle iron. And then he thought about heaven.

  “What’s heaven like, Maudie? What do you think it’s like?”

  “Flat. Lots of concrete. But every day, new hills pop up, and new trees, and they have to be taken down. And we’ll be there, just like all the others that have gone before us and will come after us.”

  “Will Butch be there?”

  “I don’t think so. I think he gets the other place.”

  “Gabe was just an old guy,” Bill said. “A good old guy.”

  “I know. Don’t look at him anymore.”

  Zoob rolled up. He said, “I am sorry, Bill. He was good, he was. I miss him already.”

  “Me too,” Bill said.

  “I wish you the best of a night you could have,” Zoob said. “Gabe, he is all through with the pain. The ache in the bolts and the hinges. Maybe he’s lucky. I think maybe I could wish it was me, you see.”

  “No way,” Bill said.

  “Thank you. And I wish you, and the lady, good night.”

  “Goodnight,” Bill and Maudie said in unison.

  They rolled away together, went to the dark shadows on the far side of the garage. Maudie swung her shovel so that it draped over Bill’s back. Her bumper parted and pressed to his, and they kissed. And kissed again. Soon they were holding each other, stroking metal, and then, heaven above and flatten all earth, he was behind her, and down came the oil stick, and then came the loving.

  Afterward, they set low on their treads together in the shadows and slid open their side traps and dropped their oil tubes into a fine vat of thirty weight, sucked it up together.

  “I… I don’t know what happened there…” Bill said.

  “What happened was wonderful,” Maudie said. “I haven’t felt that good since… Well, I haven’t felt that good.”

  “Neither have I,” he said.

  That night, Bill did not have the bad dreams.

  Next morning the Daves came and rolled out all the steam shovels, drove them back up into the mountains. Today, Bill was not as aware of the heights. He felt strong and wanted at the mountain.

  They came to where they had stopped working, where Gabe had been crushed, and spread into groups of four. He was in the first group. To his left was Maudie, to her left, Glen, an older steam shovel. And to Bill’s right, Butch, who was next to the ledge that fell away into what seemed like eternity.

  “I gonna show you how to work today, Tinker Toy,” said Butch. “Gabe, he done gone now. Ain’t here to take up for you. Not that it mattered none, but who wants to beat up an old steam shovel?”

  “You don’t mind threatening to beat up a smaller shovel than you,” Bill said, with a kind of new found bravado, thinking, getting tail pipe made you crazy, made you brave. “I was your size, you might not be so tough.”

  Butch narrowed his head lamps.

  “You pushing, little Tinker Toy. I gonna show you how to work. And, I may show you a thing or two other than that, you hear me?”

  “Like I give an oil squirt.”

  Butch said, “I think maybe you been getting a little business, a little of the golden steam shovel’s tail business, and it’s making you think you a man, little Tinker Toy, you know what I mean? You ain’t no man. You just a Tinker Toy.”

  Bill shoved Butch. It was sudden. Butch was actually knocked to the side a pace, near the mountains edge.

  “Hey,” Butch said.

  “Stop it,” Bill’s Dave said. “I came here to work. What are you shovels doing?”

  “I remember that you did that, Tinker Toy,” Butch said.

  “Hope you do,” Bill said.

  They began to dig and everything went well. The mountain moved for them. The dirt was mounded to the side away from the ledge, and some of it was put behind them and carried down the hill and away by other shovels. Zoob was working the edges of the road, doing the soft jobs, the way Gabe had been, though even more slowly.

  They worked on and on and the sun rose high and grew hot and made their metal warm and finally very warm, and then hot as the top of a stove. Their metal shined like a newly minted coin in the sunlight, and their well-oiled shovels and treads worked beautifully and tore apart the mountain, and somewhere, inside the mountain, as if the mountain had had enough, a vein of rock that ran all the way to the summit quivered and quaked and let go, and the huge tip of the mountain, like a peaked hat knocked over by a high wind, tumbled down on the four working shovels below.

  One moment there was the sun, then there was the darkness. Bill could feel the pressure of the dirt and the rocks pushing down on him. Then, below him the ground moved, and he went down into it. Amazingly, he slipped down at an angle, and down, down, down, as he slid into a weak place in the mountain, a natural tunnel filled with soft dirt. He began to slide back into that. And a rock, dislodged, shot out and stuck in front of him, stopped the progress of falling rock from above.

  It gave Bill a bit of space.

  He could move his shovel, like a Dave might move his elbow if he were inside a tow sack. He moved the shovel and some dirt shook. He began to move it back and forth. More dirt shifted. Finally he grabbed the great rock and gave it all he had. The rock moved and dirt came in, but Bill rocked back on his treads and the dirt flowed around him like black water.

  He kept working that shovel, and it made a sound like it was trying to let go of clotted oil in the lines. Still, Bill shoveled, lifting it a bit up and down, a little from side to side. Finally, he had traction, and he was moving the dirt. And he was going up that incline, climbing it the way he’d climbed the sweet, golden Maudie the night before. He put that image in his head and kept at it, and pretty soon the image was as tight in his head as a screwed down bolt.

  Up he went. Up. And finally there was light.

  And he realized his Dave was gone. Probably washed away in the rock and dirt, covered up and crushed like an aluminum oil can.

  On the surface, he found the shovels and the Daves digging at the mountain, furiously. As he rose out of the ground like a metal mole, the Daves cheered and the engines revved their motors.

  He lifted his shovel high.

  But it was a short lived triumph.

  He saw that the mountain had come down in such a way that it had covered Maudie and Butch.

  Glen had survived it all. His shovel had been knocked off and one of his treads was slightly dislodged, but already a huge wrecker had come for him and he was being hooked up even as Bill looked.

  As Bill watched the wrecker take Glen away, he realized he didn’t feel so good and his vision was blurry. There was dirt inside of his busted right head lamp, and it was partially covering his line of vision. Inside, way down deep, he felt as if a bag of bolts and gears had been randomly mixed and tossed into a paint shaker. When he moved, he squeaked and clanked and he hurt near the right hinge of his shovel like a Dave had been at him with a welding torch.

  Bill hunkered down on his treads and tore at the mountain. Tried to dig where he had last seen Maudie, but he couldn’t be sure she was there. Maybe, like him, she had been washed down into a soft part of the ground. He dug and he dug, and finally he saw metal. He revved his engine and other shovels came. They dug and dug and pretty soon they saw the shiny gold metal of the beautiful Maudie, less beautiful now. Dented and scratched gray in strips, her sho
vel dangling by one bolt.

  Bill hooked his shovel around her and pulled her out. And as he did, he saw behind her was a roof of rocks supported by a wall of rock slabs, and in there, crushed down, but alive (he could see the headlights blinking) was Butch. When Maudie came out, the dirt went down. Butch went out of sight.

  Bill sighed air through his manifold.

  Maybe he was dead. The bastard.

  The shovels were slowing down behind him. They had Maudie out, and no one was working that hard for Butch, and Bill could understand that….

  But, damn it, Butch was a steam shovel. He was a worker. And he had been caught in the storm of the mountainfall while on the job. And though Bill thought it might be nice to just let the mountain crush him, he just couldn’t do it. That wasn’t the way it was in the manual. Machines helped machines. Machines helped the Daves.

  Bill went at it again, digging, digging, and pretty soon the other shovels were helping, and the dirt began to move.

  When it was clear enough, they could see Butch in there. He was much shorter than before, his metal rippled in the center, and above him, supported on two wobbly slabs of rock, was a much bigger slab of rock. It looked as if it were large enough to build a subdivision on.

  Bill moved in close and tried to pull Butch out, but it was like trying to work a greasy bolt out of an engine with a coat hanger tipped with chewing gum. Touch and go.

  Butch was moaning with pain as the tugging tore at his metal.

  “I’ve lost my crankshaft,” he said. “And my oil pan’s loose. I can feel it sliding around in side.”

  “Don’t move,” Bill said. He dug a space close to the edge of the mountain, and within a short time he found he could scrunch in there. One tread was hanging halfway over the edge, and he could hear rock tumbling down the side of the mountain, and feel it sliding out from under his treads. He felt himself slipping a little. For a moment, the old dream came back, flashed before his inner head lamps, and he was falling, and he was scared.

  He shook it off.

  He looked out and he saw Maudie. She was banged up, but she was going to be okay. Nothing a few tools, a blow torch and paint couldn’t fix. She looked at him and her lights came on and her bumper parted in a smile, showing that pretty gear work inside, slightly dusty. It gave him strength. He scrunched back farther. Being smaller, he could fit right in beside Butch.

  “What in the world will you be doing, my boy?”

  It was old Zoob. He had slid up close to the opening. The old steam shovel bent down on its creaky treads and eyed Bill with his head lamps.

  “Why are you in there, my boy? Let the rock crush this one, the big hunk of scrap metal.”

  “He was on the job,” Bill said. “He’s one of us.”

  “I think he’s not worth it at all, that is what I think.”

  “You may be right,” Bill said.

  “Hey,” Butch said. “I’m right here.”

  Bill brought his shovel up and touched the great slab above him. He hunkered down on his treads and flexed his metal, and lifted with the shovel.

  And the great rock moved.

  Shovel God in Heaven, and praise Jayzus, but Bill felt strong. He pushed. And he pushed with his shovel, and he felt the bolts that hinged it go tight as a pair of vice grips, but he pushed up anyway.

  And that rock moved some more.

  “Pull… him… out,” Bill said.

  They came forward, two big steam shovels, and they reached in and got hold of Butch, started pulling.

  Bill, looking at Maudie, suddenly felt weak. He could feel his hydraulic fluid starting to eek out, could hear it hissing as it erupted through the tubes.

  “Oh, shit,” Bill said.

  Then there was pain.

  Sharp. Quick.

  And he was flying along through darkness, and ahead of him was a great tunnel lit by a white light. He could see himself flying along, treads working, but touching nothing, and a flock of birds and scampering squirrels and insects and fish and snakes and possums and raccoons and bears, and all manner of wild life, was rushing along beside him, as well as a flying waffle iron.

  And he felt good and happy and fulfilled.

  He rushed faster and the light grew brighter, and the animals and insects were sucked forward as if by a vacuum cleaner, and then, just as he was about to go into the brightest and warmest part of the light—

  He saw Gabe.

  Gabe was blocking his path.

  Gabe rammed up against him.

  “Gohtdamnit, boy. Not yet. Id’s not yer time just now. Ain’t far off. But not yet. Got to finish whad yer doin’, son.”

  There was a rush of wind and light as Bill fled back along the tunnel and the light went dark. Then he was standing there, with that great slab of rock on his shovel, and he saw Maudie, looking at him, and that look in her eye was worth all the agony in his shovel, worth the tubes he was splitting, the fluids he was draining.

  The shovels tugged at Butch, and, slowly, he came free.

  Bill couldn’t see him now. Couldn’t see much of anything. Maudie and Zoob, the other shovels, they were a blur.

  “Is… he… out?” Bill asked.

  “He is,” Maudie said.

  “I love you, Maudie,” Bill said.

  “And I love you. Oh, no, Bill. Hold on. We’ll prop it up and pull you out.”

  “Too late. I’m… a hero… aren’t I?”

  “You are,” Maudie said. “Oh, no, Bill. Hold on.”

  “You’ll always remember me?”

  Oil slipped from between the edges of her head lamps, rolled down her metal face, over her rubber mouth, as she said, “I will.”

  “So will I,” said Butch. “You ain’t no Tinker Toy, after all. You a better man than me. Than anyone I know.”

  “Nice knowing you some, kid,” said Zoob.

  And the great slab of rock came down.

  It was like an explosion when it hit. Bill felt himself being crushed, washed sideways over the side of the cliff. For a moment he felt the old fear, and it was a fear worth having now, for, in fact, he was falling.

  But he didn’t keep the fear. Didn’t hold onto it.

  He was a goner. He knew it. But he was a hero too. And as he fell, he looked up, saw the shadow of the great rock slab falling after him. He chuckled deep inside his gears, yelled, “Geronimo!”

  Then he hit the ground. His shovel, which was hanging by a strand of metal, came completely off and spun away. His head lamps went out. There was darkness.

  Along with the sound of the great rock falling, a sound like wind through what was left of the world’s pines.

  “One, one thousand,” Bill said, counting the fall of the rock. “Two, one thousand.”

  Of course, he never heard it when it struck, but—

  —down that long, black tunnel he went again, and it gave up its blackness to a warm light, and there in the light, fleeing along with him, were more birds and insects and snakes and all manner of wildlife whose homes he had destroyed, and that damn waffle iron, whose soul had been caught up inside him, and he thought, Shit, that wasn’t good of me, doing that to the birds and the squirrels and such, but here I go anyway, because this must be heaven, it feels so good, so bright and warm, and he could see Gabe up ahead, beckoning him forward with his shovel.

  Then he realized Gabe was whole again. He hadn’t thought about that before. In fact, Bill thought, I’m whole again. Bright and shiny with paint blue as the sky.

  Now Gabe was beside him. They flowed forward.

  Gabe said, “Ya know, stuff I told ya aboud all dem Gohtdamn birds and such?”

  “Yeah,” Bill said.

  “I was wrong. But The Shovel Ghawd, he don’t gib a shit. We is his, and he is ours. He knows what kind of fuel pump is in a good machine’s chest, and boy, you and me, we got good ones.”

  Then, they were sucked into the total light of paradise.

  Alone

  (with Melissa Mia Hall)

 
The smooth, silver rockets stood against the sky, silent sentinels piercing the night. Waiting for something or someone, those spaceships reminded him of those big, old stone faces down on the ridge outside of Mud Creek. He never knew rightly how they got there but their open mouths and wide eyes turned ever skyward seemed connected somehow, since the rockets never rusted and the moss never grew over the expectant stone features. They were always bright with the morning light or copper red with the dying sun. He liked them best when they glowed silver in the moonlight or burned like white gold when the moon vanished blindly behind clouds.

  And though the rockets seemed ready for take-off at any time of day or night, there was no one to ride in them. And no one had anything to do with them except him, James Leroy Carver, the self-appointed guardian of the town and the rockets—although what he did wouldn’t pass for much and there was never anyone to pat him on the back and say, “Good job, Jim; good job!”

  For that matter, there was hardly anyone left at all. There was Sleepy Sam who worked the fields with the help of his son, Cranky Dan’l, and Issy, a big, spotted hound dog, two cows, a goat, two hogs and some chickens. They lived in a farmhouse that used to be white but was now faded into mottled gray. They also had a barn with a tin roof and some pitiful outbuildings they took care of just about as good as they took care of the vegetable garden that was surrounded by barbed wire—fair-to-middling. There used to be a horse but it died of old age. They gave Jim eggs, carrots, onions and potatoes when he helped out. He had to barter for anything else.

  Behind and beyond the spaceships, the trees had started to come back, and Jim realized he had lived practically his entire life (how long that was he had no expert opinion) watching them return. First, they’d just been scorched sprouts, but somehow their roots had survived and given bloom to new life. Gradually, they inched up until they were almost taller than Jim. Lately, they’d grown as big as one of the sheds at Sleepy Sam’s. It amazed him. Didn’t seem quite right. Were trees supposed to grow that fast?