Nightmare Country (29 page)

“You cold?” Agnes Hanley pushed her glasses up farther on a sweaty nose. “I think she keeps this place hotter than Haiteez.”

“Just thinking of something that made me shiver.” Tamara lowered her voice. “I'm surprised to see you and Fred here.”

“Didn't want to come, but Vinnie said if we didn't, we'd be the only ones in town not here. Everybody always talks about the ones that aren't around, you know. Fred'll eat and then go on up to work. Where's Russ?”

“No one's seen him all day.”

“Truck's out front. Figured he was back.”

“Here, try one. They're delicious!” Deloris Hope handed Tamara a glass with what turned out to be a pineapple-coconut-rum drink, and she thought of the Dixie woman fixing one like it for Backra when he went upstairs to slip into something more comfortable and to comb his hair, and she realized she was thinking of her dream-fantasy again. It worried her that she couldn't seem to forget about it. That every little thing reminded her of it. She was obviously losing touch with reality.

The children served themselves first and sat together at one end of the table to insult each other. Tamara filled her plate and sat next to Nancy Baggette. “When did Russ get back, do you know?”

“No, but his truck's out in the road. We thought he'd be in here. He's probably up to his house washing up.” Nancy wore Levi's, heavy hiking boots, and her hair in one long fat braid that hung down the back of her sweatshirt. She leaned over and whispered, “How'd she get you to come?”

“Oh, Adrian didn't want to miss a party.”

“Told us if we didn't come, we'd be the only ones not here. Can you imagine throwing a party for a house plant?”

Jerusha had provided drinks, coffee, a fruit salad, and a cloying bakery cake. All the hot dishes were a variation of either hamburger or tuna. Tamara could remember other neighborhood potlucks, in what seemed now like another life, that would look like a rich man's banquet compared to this. She wondered if Adrian remembered too. But Adrian's eyes followed Jerusha, who was refilling coffee cups and freshening drinks. She didn't notice the other children giggling as Larry Johnson shook pepper into her strawberry pop.

Nancy Baggette was into things like sewing and crafts and canning. She grew the only vegetable garden in Iron Mountain. It was organic, and she let her chickens run in it to eat the grasshoppers that would have otherwise eaten the garden. Tamara rarely saw her or Helen Johnson except to wave to when they got into or out of their cars.

Jerusha kept the liquor flowing after everyone had eaten, and the group began to thaw. Oddly, these few people who lived so closely in this isolated spot didn't seem to have much in common or to feel particularly comfortable with each other. The room was overwarm, and the beer and iced rum drinks disappeared faster than the coffee.

The buds on the night-blooming cereus had been large and fat when the party started, but they'd been gradually opening unnoticed. What had seemed white with a pinkish tinge became salmon-colored tendrils separating to release thick snow-white petals. Long white hairs with yellow fuzzy ends poked out of the opening horns, and the giant blossoms grew still bigger as the petals stretched and parted.

When Tamara looked directly at a blossom, she could see no movement, but after she looked away and back again later, the flower would have opened further and have changed position. Their odor grew heavier, took on the oppressiveness of incense. The heat, the steamy, crowded room, the alcohol and heavy food, and the jungle smell of the vine combined with the scent of the blossoms to produce a druglike languor on those at the tables.

A cold prairie wind was rearranging the dusting of dry snow outside and swirling around the mountain to whistle in the weatherstripping and to rattle the windows in their frames. It seemed to be off in some other world and have no reality inside.

“Vinnie”—Jerusha licked her index finger and poked at cake crumbs on the table—“you did tell Russel Burnham about our party?”

“Couldn't. He wasn't home.” Vinnie yawned.

“Not all day?” Jerusha looked beautiful with candlelight flickering across smooth skin. But she did not look pleased. “Perhaps you, Mr. Hanley, could tell him when you go up to work.”

“What? Oh. Yeah, guess I'm late.” Fred Hanley, who'd been reluctant to come, seemed reluctant to leave now, or maybe it was just the drugged atmosphere. A refreshing draft from that other world swept into the room before Fred closed the door after him, and the talk perked up for a few minutes.

“What's his truck doing out front if he ain't back yet?” Darrell Johnson stretched and blinked.

“Augie and I took it into Cheyenne to buy things for the party,” Jerusha said. “Augie's truck wouldn't start this morning.”

“Where do you get off, taking the boss's truck, Mapes?” Saul Baggette had both elbows on the table, and his shoulders hunched.

“Keys were in it. He's got the company truck, and he's borrowed mine before.” Augie'd been strangely quiet until now.

“You are saying that Russel has been gone all day?” Jerusha asked.

“Nobody's seen him.” Saul looked at Darrell and then away. “Thought he'd gone off in his truck.”

Jerusha parted the vine at the window over the sink to look out at the night and Iron Mountain.

“You'd better report this to somebody.” One blossom near Tamara resembled a sea anemone as its pale-salmon tentacles were flung out to make room for expanding petals. Another, which was at a different angle, looked like a ragged tutu.

“Yeah, I suppose,” one manager finally answered her.

“He's old enough to take care of himself,” the other one said. Both wiped sweat from their foreheads with their napkins.

Jerusha turned from the window, her white shift dress so out of season but making her the only comfortable-looking person in the group. In the dim light, the white of her dress and the white splashes of blossom seemed to unite the woman and the plant. “Have you looked inside the mountain?”

“Yeah, he ain't in there. Nothing's in there. Not even a cave-in.”

“We must of looked in the wrong tunnel,” Darrell said.

“No, we didn't. I know where it was. And now it isn't.”

Little Ruthie had fallen asleep in the playpen. The nippled bottle had slipped from her mouth. Talk subsided, and it grew quiet. A balloon near the ceiling burst. No one even jumped.

Bennie Hope sniffled. Agnes Hanley got up and poured herself another drink. A series of yipping sounds like old-style Hollywood Indians used to make, and then drawn-out wailing howls, came from somewhere on the mountain. They seemed to move closer to the back porch. Other voices joined the wailing in a ragged tempo, and the wind moaned an accompaniment.

“My God, the ghosts!” Tamara came out of her lethargy with a start and began a rush for Adrian. “Jerusha's raised the ghosts.”

Somebody snickered. Augie grabbed her. “This teacher lady's spooked.” He laughed and held her tight when she tried to push away. “I'll protect you, teacher lady. Settle down, now.”

“Way to go, Augie.” The sound of clapping hands and cheers. The chuckles multiplied, became laughter.

“'Nother schoolmarm bites the dust.”

“Suppose that's what killed the last one?”

Tamara could hear them, but couldn't see past an enveloping Augie. “Adrian!” Didn't anyone else hear the ghosts?

She kicked Augie repeatedly, as hard and fast as she could make her leaden feet move. He put her down and backed away, looking surprised and sleepy. She made a dash for Adrian, but stopped short when the back door burst open.

Tamara's screaming filled the crowded room and her head.

30

Russ Burnham stood in the doorway, blinking as if the light bothered his eyes.

Tamara's screams turned to coughing and then to barely audible squeals that happened every time she exhaled. She had no more control over them than she'd had over Augie Mapes. The room came back into focus. Adrian hadn't moved, and was apparently asleep. Bennie Hope had crawled into the playpen and slept with his baby sister. The rest of the children looked half-asleep or dazed.

“What time is it?” Russ's voice broke.

“We're having a party,” Jerusha said, as if everything were normal. “I will fix you a drink.”

“It's close to midnight.”

“Where you been all day, boss? We had to send the men home.”

“Mrs. Whelan thought the coyotes was ghosts,” Larry Johnson said in the tone and with the sly grin he usually reserved for Adrian.

Russ stood in the open door to the utility porch and stared into the room without appearing to see it.

“Want some food?” Jerusha handed him a glass. “I can heat it up.”

“Just had breakfast a couple hours ago. What day is it?”

“Thursday. Been that way all day.” Darrell guided his boss into the room and closed the door on the fresh air.

Russ downed a tumbler full of rum and pineapple and coconut and handed it back to Jerusha. She mixed him another. “Where have you been, Russel Burnham?”

“In the mountain.” He walked with a funny wobbly motion to the nearest free space on a bench and sat. “Thursday.”

“What's wrong with Adrian?” Tamara said suddenly.

“She's just sleeping, worrywart.” Jerusha put a hand on Adrian's back. “Still breathing, Mama.”

“Went into the mine this morning, early.” Russ emptied half of the refilled tumbler. “Came out a couple hours later and it was night.”

Jerusha dribbled long fingers across his crew cut. “And what did you see, Russ Burnham? In the mountain.”

“Saw the old-timers alive.” He drained the glass and handed it to her over his shoulder.

“Careful with those drinks.” But Tamara's voice didn't cut through the stuffy, tropical air to reach him.

“Saw a whole city of white and blue plaster, right here at Iron Mountain, and people in funny clothes lined up at the six-hundred-foot portal. Some of them saw my shadow. They pointed to it and talked English and another language all mixed together, without moving their mouths.” He still didn't seem to see the room, the awful party, the danger breaking out everywhere.

Tamara tried again to warn him through the humidity and heavy scent. Only Agnes Hanley heard her. And Agnes just patted her hand. She'd taken off the little cat-eye glasses and set them on the table. Her eyes looked smaller and pinched around the edges, like Miss Kopecky's lips. Everyone had stopped talking and stared sleepily at Russ. The coyotes no longer howled out back. The vaporizer “whooshed” more steam into the room, and Tamara expected to see it hanging in clouds near the ceiling soon.

“Me and Darrell went in looking for you when you didn't show up this morning. You couldn't of been in there. You'd of heard us calling.”

“You know that cave-in site? Well, you were right.” Russ ate a few bites of the cake Jerusha set before him, pushed it away, and reached for his drink. “There's a round room behind that wall, with a machine in it. Didn't you see the hole I made to get in?”

“No hole, no cave-in. Like it'd all been put back together. Like it never happened.” Saul looked pointedly at Darrell Johnson. “And I knew just where it should've been.”

“Can't be. I made a hole big enough to crawl through.”

“Dammit, Burnham, I know where it was!” The underground manager jumped to his feet.

Nancy Baggette took hold of her husband's arm. “Sit down, Saul. Being as overdramatic as the schoolteacher.”

“Way I figure it, the mob is using that thing in the mountain to transport drugs up here from South America.”

“Why South America, Russel?” Jerusha opened another bottle of rum.

“Because that's where the motherfucker sent me by mistake. 'Least there was lots of palm trees and ocean and stuff.”

“Mayan Cay,” Tamara said, hearing the wonder in her voice.

“You dream about Mayan Cay too?” Nancy Baggette turned around from the other table and stared at Tamara.

“Way I see it, the mob can go back and forth on that machine without having to go through the metal detectors at airports and can carry their guns with 'em this way.” Russ nodded at his own logic.

“Ain't that the place Jerusha tried to send us in our heads?” Agnes asked Tamara. “At the last party, when somebody fell against a table, knocked over the candles and all. And burned the place down.”

“I didn't live here then.” She was surprised to find a drink in her hand and to realize she'd been sipping it.

“Oh, yeah. Augie, wasn't that the place at the last party, where—?”

“Sure sounds like it. Lucky nobody was killed.”

“Jerusha and Abner used to live next door before the fire,” Agnes explained.

“I dream about that Mayan place,” Will Baggette offered. “All the time. It's an island.”

“You do?” His mother looked startled to find him still in the room. “How come you never told me?”

“You never asked.”

“Where's Adrian?” Tamara set down her glass and pointed to the place where her daughter had slept at the table. “Jerusha made her into a ghost like she did Miriam Kopecky!”

“Oh, God, here she goes again.”

“I don't know about you, but I'm going home before the fire starts this time.” Darrell Johnson went into Jerusha's bedroom and returned with his coat and those of his wife and son. Helen gathered the place settings she'd brought for her family and found her casserole dish.

“Thanks for the party. Nice plant,” Darrell said with little conviction, and pushed a sleepy family out the door ahead of him.

Nancy Baggette tried to get Saul to leave too. When he wouldn't, she took her boys and left without him.

“Be home as soon as I convince old Russ here that his hole's gone,” he yelled after her.