The Night Listener and Others (4 page)

I had to ask it. “How old are you?”

She smiled coyly. “What a rude question. One I won’t answer, because I doubt you’d believe me. But old enough to have forgotten how we got this old.” She shook her head, frowning. “Don’t look so sour. What we take is so very slight, never even missed. And there’s nothing you can do about it now, is there?” She replaced the frown with a warm smile, the same one she’d used when offering the Hershey bars. “No hard feelings?” she asked, and held out her hand.

I couldn’t touch it. Instead I backed off, bumping into the next row of benches. Then I turned and walked away from them, away from the bandshell and the grove, unable to make myself look back at the pair of them sitting there. And the three candy bars on the bench beside them.

I don’t know what I thought at first. I
couldn’t
think, couldn’t accept something so crazy, so implausible, so totally unreal. So I walked my rounds and looked for slug users, and I didn’t go past the bandshell to see if the Youngers were still there. I knew they would be.

It wasn’t until I was in my street clothes and on my way home that I began to try and deal with what they had told me as a reality, even if a reality created from an aging couple’s cruel fantasy. At the best, they were crazy. At the worst, they were…far worse. Either way, I had to get them out of the park.

Or did I? What harm had they really done? Assuming that what they had told me was only their own pitiful delusion, they did no harm at all, except for contributing to tooth decay and nausea, and who was I to stop them? I think that was the main reason I didn’t want to believe them—I simply didn’t know what to do if it were true. It was a lot easier to consider them wacky old coots with a gift for healthy longevity than to believe otherwise.

But I couldn’t help myself. I
did
believe them. Ethel Younger had been sane. Her eyes had been as clear and as honest as a child’s. And as young.

Well then
? she had asked, and I asked myself—well then?—trying to find a path out, to find a way to do nothing and still be able to live with myself. What the hell, I thought, popping open a fourth beer at my kitchen table, what’s a week to an eighty-year-old? And how many kids would even live to be seventy or eighty anyway, with the shape the world was in? Would anybody even be around in good old 2060? What did it matter? And I flopped into bed, mind and room both spinning, thankful that tomorrow was my day off. As I fell asleep, I kept seeing Ethel Younger’s white teeth smiling confidently at me, her mouth moving, telling me what she’d told me earlier that day, replaying it in my mind to reassure me that I need do nothing, because
they never miss it
…
nothing you can do about it
…
what we take is so very slight
…
once we were able to control it
…

My eyes snapped open, and the room started to roll again, but it was only my body that had had too much beer. My mind was suddenly clear, remembering those words so vividly—
once we were able to control it
—and remembering everything else too, so that it all fit together like a snap-lock puzzle. There must have been a time, then, when they were learning, when they
couldn’t
control the power they had. And it was because of that time, not all that long ago, that I would do what I had to do.

The next day, Sunday, I woke up early and went to Magicland dressed in my street clothes. I showed my pass, got in before opening time, and went to the grove and sat on the Youngers’ bench, waiting for them. It was cool, with a hint of rain in the air, and the light jacket I wore felt good. They arrived ten minutes after the park opened. When they saw me, they slowed down, but didn’t turn back, just kept coming toward me until they were right next to me.

Ethel Younger smiled. Her husband didn’t. “Another visit?” she said. I nodded. “Your passes,” I said. “May I see them?”

She pursed her lips. “You’re not in uniform today.”

“I’m still a guard. I can show you my I.D.”

“That won’t be necessary.” She dug into her purse and came up with a plastic card that she held out to me.

“Just put it on the bench beside me,” I said, not touching it.

“My, aren’t we peevish this morning,” she said, doing as I asked.

“Now yours,” I told Carl Younger. He hesitated, then took his pass from his wallet and placed it next to his wife’s. I picked them up and looked at them. The faces in the photos looked ten years older than those of the people standing in front of me. I bent the soft plastic in two and put the passes into my pocket. “Your passes have expired. They’re not good any more.”

Carl Younger’s face got red, and he opened his mouth to speak, but his wife’s raised hand stopped him. Though her eyes looked calm, her mouth had drawn down and her nostrils had widened. “I believe you’re wrong,” she told me. “The expiration date is September tenth. This is only August fifth.”

I shook my head.

“Perhaps we should take this up with your superiors.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “But he’ll believe me, not you. And when I tell him you’ve been giving candy to kids…”

“That’s not against the law!” Carl Younger burst in.

“…and asking them for certain things in exchange…” I went on.

“That’s a
lie
,” Ethel Younger cried.

It was my turn to shrug. “Why would I lie about a thing like that? What point would it serve?”

“You’d need witnesses.”

“Would you want it to go that far?” I asked her. “You want people to know your date of birth?”

Then she laughed, softly at first, but it grew louder, until tears started to form in the smooth corners of her eyes. “He
believed
us!” she said, clapping her husband on the shoulder. “Carl, he actually believed our story!”

Carl Younger smiled uncomfortably, then started to laugh himself. It was forced and phony, but it didn’t matter. I knew she was lying.

“Such a silly story!” she went on, “and…”

“Shut up,” I said, my fear lost in anger. “It’s too late for that. Just like it’s too late for Jimmy.”

She stopped laughing. Her husband continued for a few seconds afterward. “Jimmy,” she said condescendingly, as though it were all a joke. “And who is Jimmy?”

“
Was
Jimmy. My brother. My younger brother. Died when we were kids. Died fast, just got sick and died in two days. The doctors thought it was leukemia but were never really sure. That was the same summer my hair turned gray. The other kids thought it was funny. Ten years old and gray hair.”

The Youngers weren’t smiling anymore.

“You hadn’t quite gotten it down by then, had you? Not quite able to control it, huh?”

Her mouth opened, trembled, and shut.

“And last night I put it all together. After thirty years I remembered, and it all went click. And I knew why you looked so familiar the first time I saw you this summer. I’d seen you before. Hadn’t thought about it for years, but it was still back there. Not every day strangers give you candy. One each. You gave us a candy bar each. A long time ago,
you
probably don’t remember. But then why would you? Why remember one out of so many?”

I bit the inside of my lip. My words had been coming in a rush, and I didn’t want to get upset, emotional. I had a job to do. “It’s time to stop now,” I said. “You took too much. Get out of this park and don’t ever come back. But I’ll be watching you, and if you ever try to touch another child, I’ll kill you both.” I pushed back the front of my jacket just far enough to let them see the butt of the .38 Special I had wedged in my waistband.

Faces pale, they turned without a word and walked away. I followed them to make sure they left the park, and then I followed them to their home, a small house on a quiet residential street in a town fifteen miles from Magicland. Their lights went off at midnight, and I drove to my place, got my bag, woke up the security head with a phone call, and told him I had to go out of town for a week or so.

I think a week’s about right. To obtain youth with just a touch must be more addictive than any drug, and I can hardly blame them for slipping. In the past few days we’ve been to two zoos, a library, three museums, and two small-town parks with playgrounds. Although they look for me, they haven’t seen me. But they will soon.

Today they bought some candy.

Night Deposits

You almost got to know Zane Kaylor to appreciate this. Course young as you are you probably wouldn’t. You might recall, though, seeing Zane on the street. A big, tall, skinny fella he was, built like a fence post a rough wind split in two. Jesus, but he was thin.

Wasn’t always like that, though. Hell, I remember him back in the thirties being really stocky like. That was when he owned the mill. Big wood mill, everybody in town got their lumber there, back before wood got so dear nobody can afford it no more. Course too that was before the Martin boy’s accident. That was what made Zane so thin. And what made him finally start making those queer night deposits of his at the bank.

Must’ve been ‘34 or so when it happened. There wasn’t much call for safety things back then, and there was a great big band saw Zane had at the mill. Now it would’ve been all right if Zane had grown men who knew what the hell they were doing on that saw. If he had, I doubt the sheriff ever would have said a thing. But Tommy Martin was working it after school, since Zane hired boys like that rather than pay his regular men overtime after four.

Well, Bill Painter—he was sheriff then—comes in to pick up some planks and sees Tommy Martin working on that big old saw without no blade guard or nothing, and he tells Zane that he’s a fool to put a kid on that machine and if he’s going to do it he’d better goddam well put a blade guard on it, or maybe Painter’ll take a close look at some fire regulations that Zane wasn’t paying all that much attention to.

This pisses Zane off something awful, but he don’t want to get on Painter’s wrong side, so he says real sulky that he’ll get a guard on it and not to worry. Tommy Martin hears all this, but he don’t pay no attention to it much. Hell, a quarter an hour was damn good for a high school boy then, and it’s fun sawing them boards up.

But Zane, he’s pretty tight with money anyway, he looks for the cheapest way to make a blade guard, so he solders together a few tin can halves, and bolts them onto the housing. A couple days later Painter comes back and looks at the guard and tells Zane it looks like shit. Zane gets pissed and says a guard is a guard and it’ll hold up, and Painter doesn’t push it any. A week later, though, he wishes he would’ve.

It’s like that fella’s law, says if something can go wrong, it will? Sure enough, the mill’s open late Friday night, it’s about ten o’clock, and Tommy Martin’s dog tired. He’s pulling a big four-by-eight off the saw for Glenn Weidman when he loses his balance and falls on it. Those tin cans get knocked against the blade and it just whips them apart, shooting them into the air like knives. A piece caught the kid’s face, Glenn said afterwards, and it sliced his right eye open like a grape. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The boy fell right across the blade then, and it started to chew into him at gut level. He pushed himself off, but fell back for a second, and that was when it got his hands. Both of them. Must’ve gone through the wrist bones slicker than shit through a goose. By the time Glenn and Zane got to him to pull him away, he was bleeding like anything. Wasn’t screaming because he’d gone into shock. They called the county ambulance first, then Doc Lindemuth. The boy lived, though. It was a miracle how, Jesus, both hands and the eye. What made it a double shame is that he was the best goddam pass receiver the high school’d had for years.

Well,
that
was over, of course, and so was Zane Kaylor’s mill. When Sheriff Painter heard about it he actually arrested Zane and locked him up. He got out on bail the next day, and the county didn’t press any criminal charges, negligence or whatever. But Painter told Roy and Esther Martin—they were Tommy’s parents—to sue Zane, and that he’d back them up.

They had the sympathy of everybody in town over Zane. Oh, folks
liked
Zane well enough, but we all knew he was a
cheap
bastard, and it was plain to see that if he hadn’t been cutting corners so close, this all wouldn’t’ve happened.

So the Martins got a real good lawyer from over in Harrisburg, and Zane hired John Moyers here in town. County judge found for the Martins. After Bill Painter and Glenn’s testimony, there wasn’t much doubt that’d happen. I don’t recall what exactly Zane had to pay, but it was a heap. And because Tommy was a kid, Zane hadn’t paid no worker’s compensation for him. That was just like Zane, though, always wanting to take a chance rather than spend an extra buck.

It hit him hard. Had to sell the mill and even that wasn’t enough for what the judge had ordered, so he borrowed the rest from the bank and just got himself into awful debt. He stayed at the mill as a workman for Homer Johnson, who bought it from him, but he didn’t stay long.

Three months after the accident, Tommy Martin killed himself. Pulled the shotgun trigger with his toe. Doc said it was a helluva mess—worst he’d seen in thirty years. The Martins moved away soon after, down south to Florida. Zane started drinking then, coming to work late, sneaking away early, until Homer Johnson told him he’d better find another job somewhere, that being in the mill just wasn’t good for him. Truth was, aside from the drinking. Homer was afraid Zane would hurt himself. Sometimes Homer’d come and Zane would just be standing staring at that big band saw. Made Homer feel all creepy.

So he fired Zane, and Zane had to look for another job, which wasn’t easy in the middle of the Depression. He just kept drinking and not doing much of anything until his payments to the bank fell way behind and they had to foreclose on his house. That was the last straw for his wife. She took their little girl and went upstate to live with her folks. They got a real divorce a couple years later.

Her leaving sort of brought Zane around. He got
two
jobs then, both ones nobody else much wanted. Days he worked out at the rendering plant—isn’t there no more—and nights he was over at the White Horse doing everything the bartender and the waitress wouldn’t, cleaning spittoons, keeping the john red up, taking the garbage out from the kitchen till midnight, when he went to bed in the room they let him have above the kitchen. Then he’d get up at six to go to the rendering plant.