Whistling Past the Graveyard (35 page)

Near Danny and Far Danny said it at the same time. “Power.”

Francisco said, “Huh?”

“Death came to that little fucking town and made everybody its bitch,” said Far Danny.

Near Danny nodded. “And that boneyard—hell, that…what word am I looking for?”

“’Symbolizes,’” supplied Far Danny.

“Yeah, that boneyard symbolizes death. So…of course someone who lost everything’s going to go take a piss on it.”

“Show death that
he’s
alive, that he’s nobody’s bitch.”

The two Dannys nodded.

“Wow,” said Francisco.

Then Far Danny leaned across the card table and stabbed a finger at him. “But if any of these mamluke bastards fucks with
you
, then that’s different.”

“It is?”

Near Danny grunted and gave him a hard sneer. “You’re family.”

“Nobody fucks with the family,” said Far Danny. “No fucking body, you hear me, Frankie Spoons?”

“Any shit comes down you can’t handle, you pick up the phone.”

They sat there grinning at him like extras from a bad gangster film. Chest hair and gold chains, big gold rings, perpetual five o’clock shadow on lantern jaws. But they were the real deal. South Philly muscle who were tough on a level that Francisco could understand only from a distance. It was the kind of feeling you get looking at the big cats in the zoo.

Then the conversation turned to sports, as it always does. Could the Eagles do anything about their passing game, ‘cause right now it was like watching the Special Olympics.

More weeks passed and that's when people in town started talking.

Whispering, really. Real quiet, nothing out loud. Nothing in front of anyone. The whispers started over beers. At first it was late at night, before closing, guys talking the way guys do. Talking shit. Throwing theories out there because that was the time of night for that kind of thing.

Even then people talked
around
it. They didn't so much say it as ask questions. Putting it out there.

Like Scotty Sharp who asked, "Do you think they really put drugs in the water?"

People said sure, of course they did. The Fed tested the water, they did blood tests on the people.

That's when Mike DeMarco said, "Yeah, well my sister Gertie's oldest daughter goes out with that kid, you know the one. He's an EMT up to Crestville. And he said that only about one in four people tested positive for drugs."

Then some guy would say that was bullshit and there'd be an argument. It would quiet things down. Until the next time it came back up.

Lucky Harris—and Francisco thought Lucky was a kickass nickname—asked, "Did you guys see that thing on the History Channel?"

They all did. A special about Pine Deep. Two thirds of it was the same bullshit you could get out of any tourist brochure, but then there was section near the end when they interviewed a few survivors—and Francisco wondered if they deliberately picked the ones who looked like they were either half in the bag or half out of their minds. These 'witnesses' insisted that the Trouble wasn't what the news was saying it was, that the white supremacist thing was a cover up for what was really happening. And this is where the host of the show changed his voice to sound mysterious right as he asked what the
real
truth was about the Pine Deep Massacre.

"It was monsters," said the witness. An old duffer with white around his eyes.

"What kind of monsters?" asked the host.

"
All
kinds. Vampires and werewolves and demons and such. That’s always been the problem with Pine Deep…we got monsters and that night? Yeah, the monsters came to get us."

The host then condensed the eyewitness reports into a speculation that the white supremacists were really servants of a vampire king—like Renfield was to Dracula—and that the drugs in the water and all of the explosions were distractions, subterfuge.

Then there was a montage of jump shots that lasted only long enough for a dozen other witnesses to say the word 'vampire.' The segment ended with the kind of dumbass tell-nothing questions those shows always have, accompanied by stock footage of old Dracula flicks and shots of Pine Deep taken with cameras tilted to weird angles. "Was Pine Deep the site of an attack by vampires? Do the dead really walk the earth? Have creatures out of legend begun a war against the world of the living? And what about the missing eighty-four? Authorities continue to search for their bodies, but there are some who believe that these people aren't missing at all and are instead hiding...and perhaps
hunting
during the long nights in this troubled little town
.
Government sources deny these claims. Local law enforcement refuse to comment. But there are some...who believe."

The guys at the Scarecrow had all seen that special. Just as they had all seen the headlines of the National Enquirer which had supposed photos of vampires on the front page at least once a month.

Everybody knew about the stories. The conspiracy theories. As soon as the main shock of the tragedy died down, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert went ass-wild on the subject. They did bits about small town vampires. Conan started a running segment with a vampire dressed in farmer's coveralls; at the end of each segment the vampire would get killed in some funny way. He'd go out to harvest, forgetting he'd planted his fields with garlic. He'd trip over a chicken and fall on a convenient sharp piece of wood. The vanes of a windmill would cast a shadow of a cross on him. Shit like that. Making a joke out of it because it was stupid.

Vampires.

It was all bullshit.

Except that as the first year crumbled into the dirt and the next year grew up dark and strange, it got harder and harder to call it bullshit.

Especially after people started dying.

There was a rash of car accidents in town. Accidents weren't all that rare with all the twists and turns on A32, but before the Trouble it was mostly tourists who wrapped their SUVs or Toyotas around an oak tree they didn't see, or college kids driving too drunk and too fast with too much faith in underdeveloped decision-making capabilities.

But there was no tourism in Pine Deep right now. Maybe in another couple of years. Maybe if some outside group rebuilt the Haunted Hayride and the other attractions. Right now, State Alternate Route A32 was mostly empty except for farm workers coming and going to day jobs or farmer’s wives heading into town to work shifts at the hospital or at one of the craft shops.

So, it was locals who started dying.

Linda Carmichael went first. Her six-year-old Hyundai went off the road, rolled and hit a parked hay bailer that was sitting at the edge of a field. The papers said that she was so badly mangled that her husband had to confirm her I.D. by looking at a mole on what was left of her torso. Francisco didn't know if he believed that part, but when he drove past the accident spot on the way to work the next day, the car looked like a piece of aluminum foil somebody'd crinkled up.

It was a matter of discussion at the Scarecrow, but the Carmichael's weren't part of their circle, so the conversation moved on to sports.

The second accident was a bus full of Puerto Rican day workers. Nine dead because the bus skidded off the road and hit a panel truck. Both drivers were dead, too. There were no witnesses, but it must have been a hell of an impact to mangle everyone that badly.

"Yeah, maybe," said Lou Tremons, "but here’s the thing, Spoonsie, there were no skid marks and my cousin Davy heard Sheriff Crow say that it didn't look like a high speed crash."

"Well hell, son," said Scotty, "you can't kill that many people in a low speed crash."

They all agreed that the sheriff, who used to be a drunk a long time ago, was probably drinking again and didn't know his ass from his elbow.

The conversation turned to sports.

But the deaths kept happening.

A mailman ran his truck into a drainage ditch and went halfway through the windshield in the process. Aaron Schmidt's son flipped his motorcycle.

Like that.

All violent accidents. Every single body torn up.

Lots of blood on the blacktop.

Except...

Lou's cousin Davy heard Sheriff Crow tell his deputy that there didn't seem to be enough blood. In each case there was less than you'd expect.

When Francisco dropped that little tidbit the conversation at the bar stalled. Nobody talked sports that night. Nobody said much of anything that night. Even Francisco kept his thoughts to himself and watched the foam on his beer disappear, one bubble at a time.

The following summer was when the fires started. Everyone blamed it on the constant high temperatures, on global warming. But this was Pennsylvania not Wyoming. There was a lot of water in the state, and even with the heat there was plenty of rain. Francisco found it hard to buy that a drought killed all those people.

And a lot of people burned up, too.

Three of the Carter family went up while they slept. Only Jolene survived because she was in the Navy.

The guys all talked about that, throwing out different theories. Bud Tuckerman suggested that it was most likely bad wiring because Holly Carter always had the air conditioners going full blast, and it had been a lot of summers since her husband had bought a new unit. The other guys mumbled agreement, but nothing sounded like enthusiastic support for that theory to Francisco.

The other fires? Five dead at the Hendrickson farm when the barn went up and cooked some kids from the horse camp.

The wiring at the camp was inspected twice a year. Scotty said so because that's what he did for a living and he'd swear on a stack of fucking bibles that everything was up to code. Better than code, he said.

A lot of beers got drunk in thoughtful silence that night.

The weeks of summer burned away, and by fall there were four more fires. Two business, one hotel, one house.

That last one was a ball-buster. That's where it hit home to the guys at the Scarecrow. It was Lou Tremons who got fried.

After the funeral the guys met at the tavern in a missing man formation, with Lou's seat left empty and a glass of lager poured for him. The conversation was lively for most of the night as they all told lies about Lou. Tall tales, funny stories, some tearful memories. Francisco talked about the time he and Lou drove down to Philly to play cards with the Donatella cousins. Francisco described how Lou nearly busted a nut trying not to laugh at what everyone called the cousins. They were both named Danny, and as cousins they looked a lot alike, almost like twins, except that one of the Dannys—the one from Two Street—was really short, maybe five-seven, and the other Danny, the one who lived near Gino's Steaks, was a moose, six-seven. They looked like the same guy seen up close and far away, and long ago the Don had nicknamed the big one Near Danny and the little one Far Danny.

Francisco warned Lou ahead of time not to laugh about it to their faces. Near Danny would break his arm off and beat Lou to death with it; and Far Danny carried a Glock nine and a straight razor and he was a bad mamba-jamba. They worked the protection racket and they were a pair of guys with whom you absolutely did not want to fuck. No sir, no way.

Francisco had a private motive for inviting Lou to the game. The Donatellas always called him Frankie Spoons, and he hoped Lou would pick it up and spread it to Pine Deep. But it didn't happen.

They had fun though. Francisco caught the laughter in Lou's eyes all through the night, but Lou kept a plug in it until they were back in the car on I-95 heading north toward home.

"Then he totally lost his shit," said Francisco, and everybody had a good long laugh. Then they toasted Lou and tapped their glasses to his and drank. More than a couple of them had tears in their eyes.

Mike said, "Hey, Spoonsie, I saw a big bunch of flowers from the Donatella family. Was that the Dannys?"

"Yeah,” said Francisco.

"Nice of 'em."

"Yeah. They're standup. They liked Lou."

The guys nodded. Everyone liked Lou. What wasn't to like?

“Far Danny called me,” added Francisco. “After Lou…you know.”

Everyone nodded.

“He said that he heard a lot of people been dying here in town.”

More nods. Nobody said anything.

“Then he asks me if I thought there was anything hinky with Lou’s death.”

“Hinky,” said Mike. Not a question, just keeping the word out there.

“Hinky,” agreed Francisco.

“Why’d he want to know that, Spoonsie?” asked the bartender, Joey, who was leaning on the bar, listening like he usually did.

“Like I said, he and Near Danny both thought Lou was okay. They told me they thought he was standup.”

Nods.

“I thought you said those boys were wiseguys,” said Joey.

Francisco shrugged. “Yeah, well…they’re not bad guys.”

Which was bullshit and they all knew it, but they were Francisco’s cousins and when you’re related to criminals—unless they were pedophiles or like that—then whatever they did wasn’t so bad. Or as bad. Or something. None of them really looked too close at it.

“If it
was
something hinky, then maybe they’d have come up here, looked into it. They’re like that. Lou was my friend and he didn’t shark them at cards, and they laughed at his jokes. So, I guess…you know.”

They nodded. They knew.

“But I told them it was just an accident,” said Francisco. “Just a string of bad luck.”

They nodded at that, too, but no one met his eyes.

The only one there who was nearly silent all evening was Scotty and eventually Francisco noticed.

"What's wrong, man?" he asked. Scotty was friends with Lou, but only here at the bar. They weren't really tight.

“I don’t know, Spoonsie,” Scotty began, fiddling with a book of matches. He’d pulled each match off and distractedly chipped off the sulfur with his thumbnail and peeled the paper apart layer by layer. He stopped and stared down at the pile of debris on the bar as if surprised that it was there.

“What is it?” asked Lucky Harris.

“It’s just that…” Scotty began, faltered and tried it again. “It’s just that I’m beginning to wonder if your cousin Far Danny is right.”