To Make Death Love Us (12 page)

The box struck
Colonel John sharply in the chest, tum­bling him to the bed of the truck. The two cartons above
tumbled down together and formed a bridge over his head.

A heavy trunk
tumbled down on top of them, teetering on the edge of the boxes. Colonel John looked up in horror
at the huge weight suspended above him. If it fell, it would surely crush the life out of
him.

The truck rocked
gently but held its place upon the melting earth. The trunk stopped wobbling, safe enough for the
moment.

Colonel John
huddled on the floor, quivering with the effort and the fear that washed over him. He was
sweating profusely.

It was very quiet.
No one had cried out. No one had panicked. They had obeyed his admonishment. Still, the awful
strain was stamped on all their faces.

"That seemed to be
a proper stack of kiddie's blocks, did it not?" laughed Colonel John, somewhat
nervously.

Only Serena,
dreaming in the dark, dreaming for them all, knew the courage behind Colonel John's little joke.
To laugh when fear was so great, when terror colored all that he thought or did or wanted to do,
was an act of profound courage. Serena saw deeply into his mind and was amazed by the strength in
the little man's character.

Colonel John wiped
the sweat from his face and quickly rose to his feet with the air of someone who had fallen on
purpose. "This whole higgledly-piggledly mess seems to * be all of a hodge-podge. Now there's a
redundancy if anyone should want one. Caution is indicated. I'll cer­tainly have to proceed with
greater care. I don't suppose we have an architect or engineer among us, do we?"

He shut his mouth.
He was rattling on, he knew, be­cause he was frightened, for one thing—more than he wanted to
admit to himself—and wished to delay further action, for another. His confidence was badly
shaken.

"I think I can
reach the handle of the trunk that fell, that nearly fell I mean," Pepino was quick to
amend.

"Does it support
anything else?" asked the midget.

"I don't think so.
It seems free at the top of it. But its difficult to see in the gloom," said Pepino.

"I wish Serena were
close enough to touch it," mused Colonel John. "It seems to me this dark is a problem only for
us. Were you free, you could be our eyes. It seems you can feel the merest touch of a butterfly's
wing and sense dust motes dancing in the air. That being so, perhaps you'd be able to lay your
hands on this jumble of blocks and know the one that can be moved without bringing the others
tumbling down."

"Shall I try to get
my legs loose of these tent ropes and things around me?" asked Serena, uncomfortable in the
certain knowledge that it was a thing beyond her strength alone.

"No, no. Let me see
if we can get me out of this mousehole first so that I might help you."

"You're talking
very funny, John. Not like yourself at all," Paulette said suddenly.

"Funny? How so,
love?" said the midget, scrambling carefully forward over tumbled boxes.

"I mean all
educated and fancy," said Paulette. "Impor­tant, somehow."

Colonel John winced
a little at that. He chose wisely to take it as a compliment. "Why, thank you, my dear. It is the
thespian in my soul. Crisis is like a spotlight. Turn it on and one feels compelled to
perform."

"What the hell is
going on back there? What are you doing?" screamed Will with sudden violence. His nerves were
going.

"I wish Will would
stop yelling at us. He takes on so and we
are
trying to find us a way out. He don't have
much patience or faith in us either," said Paulette.

"Shut up,
Paulette!" said Will. "Who asked you!"

But Paulette was
not to be stifled. "I swear sometimes I think Will's never growed up. I think he fusses too much
when he don't get his own way."

Colonel John was
delighted with the comment. Will's sniping at them made it all the more difficult for them to
act, undermining the midget's authority as it did.

"That's just the
case. Exactly the case," the Colonel all but crowed. "Did you hear that, Will Carney? You're just
a pimple-spotted boy chasing pimple-spotted girls!"

"Shut your mouth,"
Will said.

"Have to prove
yourself, don't you, Will? Made a mess and a grand failure of your life so you have to be a
success
with the ladies, isn't that so,
Will? You'd have your way with the whole female population if you could," said Colo­nel
John.

Paulette giggled
for the thrill of the thought of it.

"Bed those that are
bedable and . . . and fair in the face and form, that's for sure," Will said and then
immedi­ately regretted the words. He hadn't meant to hurt the two women inside the van, for he'd
never had anything to do with either of them in that way.

"You're a bloody
vicious dog, you are, Will," the Colonel cackled in a manner almost pleasant. "And you are such a
winner with the ladies. Such a world-beater. You remem­ber that last one you snared? She turned
you over and blistered you a good one, didn't she? Made you out to be the damn bloody fool,
didn't she, and her only a half-grown pup?" The Colonel's taunts rang with irony. There was a
smile of triumph on his face. He was definitely in control now.

Serena smiled with
him, his triumph in subtle ways also hers.

The counterman and
owner of the run-down cafe had roused his wife to come out and see the freaks. She peered at
them, holding a tattered, pink chenille robe about her doughy body. Her eyes were gummy with
sleep and there was a network of ingrained dirt in the creases of her un­washed neck. Her eyes
slowly took in fat Paulette, moon
child
Serena, tiny Colonel John, and the huge mountain of Marco.

"Ain't that a
sight?" she said, with an indelicate shud­der. "Fitting to give a body the screaming
haunts."

"Ain't scaring you,
are they? You want I should send them away?" her husband asked.

"Are they human?"
she said. "They ain't spook folk, are they? They most give me the crawling creeps!"

"They are after
cadging a free meal. Reckon spook folk don't hanker after grits and gravy," said her husband.
"Reckon they are every bit as much human as us, scroung­ers and freaks in one
package."

"Don't send them
away, Pa. Please let them stay." This came from one of the couple's young daughters, a pretty and
not too bright young thing. She eyed the freaks with unabashed delight, her eyes wide as shiny
saucers. "It's like a circus come to visit," she said. She was scantily clad and even at her
tender age, her overdeveloped body and bright eyes signaled trouble.

"Aw, hell. Let them
stay a whiles," the wife finally agreed. They seemed to promise the unusual and God knew there
was little enough of that in this barren place beside the road. She called her daughters all out
by name and sent the four of them off to spread the word among the neighbors. "Ought to make a
couple heads turn, we show people this kind of truck. Maybe bring in a few paying customers, too,
'stead of them damn deadbeat friends of yours," she added, her mind sensing a profit in it
all.

The neighbors and
some farmers from an easy distance all around came to gawk. They stood and stared as Marco lifted
up great chunks of scrap metal from the bodies of old, wrecked cars dumped in mouldering heaps in
the back parking lot behind the cafe.

The crowd tittered
and poked one another in the ribs as
Colonel John hurried about, a dish towel tied about his waist, washing the windows,
sweeping the floors, and do­ing it all in ways that invented the means to reach where normal men
might easily reach.

The women in the
crowd whispered together and reached out hands stained dark as butternut to touch pale Serena's
hair, as she delicately, with stitches shiny as gos­samer, darned the cafe owner's socks and
well-holed drawers. Paulette sat beside her and laughed more than she meant to. She knew these
people hated her for being fat. Most people resented it even as they marveled at it, so she
wanted to appear jolly so they would not think too unkindly of her.

And all this time,
where was Will Carney? What was he up to? Why, in a shed behind the run-down garage with the
young daughter, just old enough, barely, to have her first taste of sin. The little girl turned
out to be much older than she looked, at least in her share of worldly experi­ence. Her skill in
love astonished even Will.

When her mother
opened the door to the shed near on to dusk, when Will was juggling for yet another book from the
daughter's shelf of experience, the daughter, wise to the ways of sin and punishment, pushed Will
away. Stunned, he fell over on his back, which ached with the enthusiastic sting of sharp
fingernails. The girl started shouting bloody murder and even bloodier rape.

While the old lady
scrambled after her still shrieking daughter, bent on whaling the daylights out of her, for the
mother was not in the least bit fooled. Will managed to run stumblingly out of reach. With a
scream, he called the members of his troupe together, and, only half clad, pushed and shoved at
his confused and thoroughly fright­ened charges until they were all back in the truck and
speeding away.

In the confusion,
Will's wallet, which the not-so-innocent daughter had thoughtfully removed from his trou­sers,
was safe under the straw where she had hid it.

The tires of the
truck keened as they peeled out of the roadside-cafe parking lot, an angry crowd railing at them
as they fled. Will would have no doubts his wallet had been cleverly lifted, for to get it out at
all, his pocket had to be unbuttoned. Every last dime they had in the world was in that
wallet.

As they highballed
down the road, Will—in the driver's seat—felt the absence in his back pocket and cursed a blue
streak.

Colonel John had
laughed in his face when Will had had to explain by what means the money had come to be gone.
Will had been all the more furious that Colonel John had dared to laugh. He suspected they all
were laughing at him behind his back. He was blind mad and stayed that way for the next three
days and more. It was this girl the midget was now twitting Will about, and the reminder brought
back all of Will's rage and frustration. Could he but get his hands on the little peacock of a
man, he would surely wrench his neck until it popped like a cork from a bottle.

"You were lucky all
she did was get your wallet. She could have given you a dose of you know what for good measure,"
teased the midget. Paulette laughed at the wit­ticism. The Colonel was being quite
wicked.

Will gave no answer
to the Colonel's taunts. In his si­lence in the darkened cab, hovering on the edge of cer­tain
death, his failure to reply was a confession of his shame, his humiliation. More than anything,
Will Carney could not stand to be laughed at, to not be taken seriously. It was the deepest wound
of all.

"The dark gets
darker and we are not much further along I think," said Serena softly, bringing them back to what
was.

The Colonel nodded
and backed off then, gave it over, for there was no taste in cheap victory. "That's that, then,"
he said, dismissing Will from his mind. There was work to be done.

"Do you want me to
reach for the trunk?" Pepino asked.

"Yes," said Colonel
John. "Let's try it now."

Pepino reached out
his hand and loosened up the joints of the limb. It worked as smoothly as the extension on a
mechanical claw. His fingers touched the leather loop on the side of the trunk. Touched but no
more. He took a great gulp of air into his chest and stretched the arm out until it ached
fiercely at shoulder and elbow. His fingers hooked the handle. He pulled it toward him, let the
joints pull for him as they went back into place. The trunk slid free and he resettled it where
it would do no harm.

The Colonel removed
first one and then the other of the bundles arched above him. He struggled, like a small fer­ret,
out of the space he was in, wriggling and feeling his way like a rodent in his burrow, making
himself smaller in places as he went along.

At last, Colonel
John stood free, trembling all over his small body. He felt disoriented, straightened his
shoul­ders, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. Surely a giant was ten times taller than he felt
himself to be at this moment. But he smiled. It did not quite matter. Bright remnants of Serena's
wondrous dream of himself danced in back of his eyes. A giant looked out of his eyes.

Paulette clapped
her hands as though Colonel John had done a trick. He waved her silent with a grand gesture and
stood there, his feet planted well apart, one hand upon his hip as though upon the hilt of a
sword.

He furrowed his
brow, planning strategies, assessing strengths and weaknesses, a small Wellington at Waterloo or
a small Napoleon on the occasion of other victories.

There was a
nightmare world, dark and deadly, just outside the van, threatening death to them all. That was
clearly in his mind and might have overwhelmed him with fear and an inability to act but for
Serena.