Nightrunners (6 page)

"You a fisherman?" Pop asked.

"Yes, thought I'd get a bit of line time in today or tomorrow, in fact."

"Here." Pop reached under the counter, brought out one of the flies. "Try this.

They don't make them anymore, some reason or another, but they sure used to bring in the fish. I still got one and I'm still catching fish on it. Here, take it, you can have it."

"That's kind of you."

"Not really. Nobody is going to buy this shit anyway."

"Well," Montgomery said, slipping the fly in his pocket, "I hope no one buys that peanut pattie anyway."

Pop laughed. "Wouldn't let nobody buy that sonofabitch. Talk about knocking your dick in the dirt. That thing is as old as I am, and that ain't thirty-nine, friend."

Montgomery smiled.

"New around here?" Pop asked.

"Kinda ... I mean we aren't permanent. Just vacationing. Friends, Eva and Dean Beaumont, loaned us a cabin down by the lake."

"Yeah, I know the Beaumonts. They come down here just about every summer.

That Beaumont feller likes to talk fishing."

"That he does."

"You know, pretty soon, won't be nothing but goddamned cabins down by that lake. All of them built by city folks trying to get a whiff of clean air. No offense."

"None taken."

"You from Galveston too, like your friends?"

"Yeah."

"I hear the fucking ocean out there isn't nothing but a damned oil slick anymore.

That right?"

"Afraid so. Mostly anyway."

"Damn cities. I hate the sonofabitches. They bleed the man right out of a feller. No offense."

"None taken." Not too much anyway, Monty thought.

"Like that goddamned Houston. Bastard's too close for me. All that killing and such. It's gonna spread, like some kind of goddamned disease. Be at our back door before long."

"There are a lot of people who like it, Houston, not the killing."

"God knows why. It's a fucking sewer . . . You want a basket to push around?

There's some at the back of the store , . . Damn cities and newfangled shit, that's why I let the peanut pattie rot."

"Somehow, I don't see the connection."

"Damn thing may be old and rotten, but it reminds me of a time when a man could eat cheaper and a man's handshake was better than ten contracts and all the courts in the land.

Reminds me of a time when I could sit on my front porch and not worry about getting my ears shot off by some crazy. Hell, I don't even feel safe out here in the sticks anymore."

"Times change, Pop."

"That supposed to be an answer for all this shit?"

"Guess not."

Montgomery walked to the rear of the store, pulled out one of the three shopping carts.

Above them, hanging on nails, were two rows of Halloween masks; grotesque things. A handful of them were the pull-over latex kind; he'd always wanted one as a kid.

He leaned forward and examined the masks. They were pretty gruesome, all right.

One was nothing but a skull face with rubbery sprigs of hair on the crown. The others were a bit more elaborate, The most elaborate was one with a knife (rubber, of course) sticking in the forehead. A purply blotch of blood flowed down across the contorted face.

"Hey, Pop, these masks old?"

Pop looked up. "No. Three Halloweens back, I guess. Why? You thinking of going tricker-treatin' tomorrow night?"

"Maybe, But I won't stop here. Afraid you might give me that peanut pattie."

Pop whooped at that. "Hell, boy, it's so damned old it don't even stink anymore."

"Just the same . . ."

Pop cackled.

Montgomery pushed the cart, put a loaf of bread in it.

"Hey, son?"

"Yeah." Montgomery put a can of green beans in the cart.

"That gal, the one in the truck, Marjorie. She looks pretty good, don't she?"

Montgomery could feel heat bubbling up through his body, filling to the top of his skull.

It wasn't passion. It was guilt. "Yeah, she looked all right."

"All right, hell! If I was a little younger, and not happily married—well, maybe if I was just a little younger—I'd hustle that little old gal ... Come to think of it, I'd have to be a lot younger. Used to wake up every morning with a hard-on. These mornings I do good to wake up."

Montgomery began to push the cart faster. He was suddenly anxious to be through shopping and get back to Becky. For some reason he felt uneasy away from her.

Guilt maybe, he thought. Looking for women in pickup trucks to satisfy my deprived sex urges. Just the sort of thing I said I'd never do.

Face up to it, No Balls Monty. Becky needs time, patience and love. You think you've offered that?

Do you?

No way, Jose. You've just given the impression, set a stage play for yourself.

Always trying to weasel out of your responsibilities, find the easy path.

". . .
never had no balls, Monty. That's what's wrong with you.
No
balls."

". . . sorry, son, about your wife . . . She's been raped
..."

". . .
had been home, Officer, I might have done
something. It
might not have
happened."

(Sure.)

". . . wish
to
sign
as a Conscientious Objector?"

". . . opposed to violence of any kind?"

". . .
would not raise a hand to protect your
..."

". . . could not kill another human being."

". . . never had no balls
..."

Thoughts, Words. His brother's face. Billy Sylvester smiling, taking his lunch money . . . using a candy wrapper off the yard to pick up dogshit . . ,
"Smile when he eats
it, pussy."

His own face. Smiling an insane Sardonicus grin. Piss running down his leg.

All the images of the past, all the terrors and fears and excuses of a lifetime came tumbling out of Montgomery's subconscious and rolled down the stairs of his memory and came to rest in an unceremonious heap.

He was trembling when he put the last items in the cart and rolled it to the checkout counter.

"You okay, son?" Pop asked. "You look peaked."

"Coming down with
(the lack of balls blues)
some kind of cold probably."

"Time of year for it. Weather changes so damn much. Rain one minute, dry the next. Cold then warm."

"How much?"

"Let's see." Pop tallied it up on an ancient cash register. "Thirty dollars and twenty-three cents . . . don't take no checks from outa town. Nothing personal."

"Understand." Montgomery took out his wallet, gave Pop three tens, dug the change from his pants pocket.

Montgomery took the bags, one under each arm, and started out.

"Come back."

"Will do."

On the way to his car he thought: Why have all these things so long buried, all these fears, suddenly come out of their graves to rattle their chains? What's with all this internal conflict? It was as if it had lain in ambush all this time, waiting for a good time to strike.

To hit him while he was down.

Well, he wasn't going to let stupid, insane fears from the subconscious ruin his life. This was the twentieth century. Man was civilized and no longer needed to carry a big club and beat his chest and spurt his enemy's blood.

My God, just a few years back there had been Woodstock. The Age of Aquarius.

A time of social enlightenment.

And a time of wars, riot and hate.

And let's not forget that not too long back a nasty little personal thing happened.

Your wife got raped.

All right, all right, it happened. It's bad. We'll get over it. But what can I do besides comfort and help Becky along? Christ, I'm not a caped crusader. I'm just an ordinary man whose wife was unlucky enough to get raped. That's all, I'm just unlucky . .

.

And a coward.

". . .
never had no balls, Monty."

Montgomery put the groceries in the back of the Rabbit and got in. The old man, Pop, was standing outside the store with an RC in his hand, leaning against the building, sipping slowly, watching.

Does he know I'm
a coward? Can you smell it on a person? Is there truly such a
thing as
the smell of fear?

Montgomery cranked up the car, looked back at Pop and smiled. The old man lifted his RC in friendly salute.

Waving at Pop, Montgomery pulled onto the blacktop, not looking back to see if the old man had returned the gesture.

A chill shook him, seeped down to the very core of his existence. With a twist of his shoulders, he tried to throw it off, but it remained.

You're going crackers, he thought. Crackers. You're not responsible for what happened.

You weren't there. If you had been, things might have been different,
(clear as a
bell, the
vision of Billy Sylvester smashing the dog turd in his brother's face)
might not have happened.

All blood under the bridge now. Forget it.

Said softly to himself: "There is nothing to fear. Nothing to fear. Nothing to fear at all."

But the chill did not leave him.

NINE

Becky read
Cosmopolitan
all of five minutes before she tossed it against the wall.

Its pages fluttered noisily and colorfully before striking the floor like a dead bird.

Once, that magazine of near-exposed breasts, chic fashion and advice had seemed so mature, worldly, modern and entertaining. Now it seemed little more than a three-hundred-page advertisement for sex and its trappings.

Sex.

If there was one thing she was not interested in, it was sex. No, thank you very much, it's yucky, get it off my plate. No, she was dead to that. Did not want any man touching her body in any manner— friendly or otherwise. Even Monty's hands, once familiar travelers on her personal terrain, seemed to crawl over her flesh like slimy worms. His body, close to her at night while they slept, the touch of it was reptilian or rather what the word had come to represent, something repulsive, frightening and evil.

She wondered if her repugnance to Monty's touch was merely because of the rape, an act of man, a gender to which he belonged. Or was it something deeper? Some bacterialike culture that had existed all along and was just now at the height of its gestation. His cowardice? Could it be that?

Had the rape caused her to look at Monty in a new light?

She had grown up in a "sophisticated" environment; grown up thinking the measure of a man was not in the bulge of his bicep or the heat of his temper. And certainly that still held true. But perhaps this modern concept sometimes went too far, was used by men like Monty to cover up their weaknesses. The old "I've got nothing to prove" might have an addition, "and I'm glad of it, because I'm scared to death."

Grinning to herself, she thought: If my old sociology professor (also Monty's) could hear me now. He'd label me a cultural throwback, a sociological retard.

Yet, why had she cheered when she'd read about a woman and her children being attacked by three men in broad daylight (even while a large number of "modern men"

watched) and along comes this 240-pound truck driver who immediately attacked all three bare-handed?

Cheered even more when she read that he had broken the arm of one. Ruptured another.

Shattered the last one's jaw.

All this while a group of "modern men," "civilized men," had watched in gape-jawed stupidity. She made herself a cup of instant coffee and tried to put such thoughts out of her mind. She was being far too harsh on Monty and she knew it. But she knew that at the bottom of it all, there was more than just a little truth to her feelings.

After a few sips of the coffee, she realized that it was not what she had wanted after all.

She looked out the window. It was beautiful. The day was turning out fine.

October and seventy degrees, and it had been fairly chilly just an hour ago.

It wasn't going to be a day for worry and introspection. It was a day to be outside, to be warmed by the rays of the sun.

She poured the coffee in the sink, went back to pick up the
Cosmopolitan,,
straightened its damaged pages, placed it on the table and went outside.

A gentle wind blew across the lake, billowed her loose sweatshirt and baggy pants (she had not been able to wear anything tight since the rape; reminded her too much of her sexuality, made her feel vulnerable), whipped her hair.

There were a lot of birds about, flittering from one tree to another, chirping, celebrating the warmth of a late fall day.

There was a squirrel out by the little storage house, quietly nibbling on something, but keeping a wary eye on Becky's progress.

Becky stooped to one knee, made a clucking sound at the squirrel and held out her hand, absently running thumb and forefinger together.

The squirrel wasn't having any of that shit. It hadn't stopped its nibbling, but it was giving Becky a suspicious eye.

Becky rose to a half-crouch, moved toward the squirrel, still making the clucking noise, still working thumb and forefinger together.

The squirrel allowed her to get within six feet before turning and darting up a pine, the morsel still in its mouth. Halfway up the tree it stopped, leaned out, held only by its remarkable claws, and looked down. It made a sudden chittering sound, then, like a jet, it was gone; a brown flash lost among evergreen pine needles.

Becky smiled wryly. Smart little bastard, aren't you? Well, have it your way.

She turned, started back toward the house, but stopped at the shed. Exploring its interior just might give her something to do, something to keep her mind off things. Eva had said there was a key hidden in a magnetic key box, attached beneath the metal steps.

She had told Becky that there was fishing equipment and tools stored in there. Neither were particularly interesting to her, but it was something to do. Becky groped beneath the steps for the key box.