Cold Dead Past (3 page)

             
                                          CHAPTER 3

Jack Hauser stepped down from the cab of his Dodge Dakota and slammed the door.  The hinges squealed and a hunk of rust from down near the bottom of the door broke loose.  He looked down at it for a moment and then ground it into the frozen

gravel with the toe of his boot.

He rummaged through his filthy, brown coveralls until he hooked his snuff and as he pulled off the lid he said, "Shit."

The big pinch he pulled out with his dirty fingers just fit into the neat pocket he’d worked in between his lip and gum over the years, right there where the nasty brown stain had formed on his front teeth.

 
Jack sucked in his cheeks and took another look at the truck.  In better times he’d taken care of it like it was his first-born.  It reminded him of himself, now, battered and beaten after ten years and gone to seed.  Ever since June had left him the year before, things just hadn’t gone right.

First there was a flood that wiped out his crop.  Then there were the notices from the bank about the mortgage.  He was past-due three payments and they were threatening to put him into foreclosure.  His beat-up rust bucket pretty much summed it all up for him.

He spat out a gooey stream of brown chaw juice at an imaginary target halfway between himself and the truck.  He didn’t even make an attempt to wipe away the bit of spittle that settled into the scruff of beard at the corner of his mouth.

 
Jack just spent a sizeable portion of the ready cash he had on hand to buy some tools and barbed wire to repair his fences.  Even though he was about to lose everything, he still had the involuntary reflex that told him to put the farm in order.  It was ingrained from years of having it beaten into him by his father.  Anyway, there was nowhere else to go.

Well, that’s what he told himself.  He could sell the land and maybe make enough to put away for the future after he’d paid off the bank and a few other bills.  There was a lot to be said for the security of a job at the factory in Milford that stamped out parts for those Japanese cars.  Even working at a place like the new Wal-Mart on the outskirts of town.  He had no kids to leave it to, after all.  That bitch June had made sure of that.

When Jack had thoughts like that, he would open up the locked cabinet in the parlor of the old house and measure out a thumb’s worth of bourbon against the edge of a glass.

If it were a really bad night, he’d drift off into past dreams and think how things had gone so terribly wrong.  Those were half bottle nights, when he’d wake up the next morning with a nasty taste in his mouth and the mother of all hangovers.  Nights like that were the reason June had left him.

As he stared down at one of the lug nuts on the truck, an orange tabby cat came padding out of the barn and across the frozen, rutted mud and gravel.  It sinuously wound its way round and between his legs.

 
Jack came out of his trance and smiled as he bent down to pick it up.  The cat’s name was Rufus.  He’d been a constant companion around the farmyard for the past few years.  Jack held him up in front of his face and rubbed noses with him before cuddling him up to his chest, listening to him purr for just a moment before getting to work.  The thought occurred to him that if you needed friends, a bottle and a cat were welcome in most apartments.

"Okay, boy," he said, as he set the feline back on the ground. "Can’t stand here daydreamin’about things that can’t be."

He nudged Rufus along with his boot as he walked to the rear of the truck.  The cat ran back into the barn, stepping gingerly over the edges of the ruts so as to not get his paws wet.  Jack let down the tailgate, revealing a couple of rolls of barbed wire for mending the pasture fence and a new pulley he hoped would make do for stretching it tight.  He let out a loud grunt as he took a roll in each gloved hand and slid them out of the bed.

When he got inside the barn, he heaved the rolls of wire into a corner beside the door.  A hiss from Rufus brought him up short as he turned to go back for the pulley.  Jack surveyed the interior.  It was empty except for the Farmall, laid up for the winter and waiting for him to repair the hydraulics on the excavator.  He couldn’t place the sound and listened for it to repeat as he walked around the tractor toward the ladder to the hay loft.  Bits of chaff and dust falling from on high sparkled in the shafts of light that broke through spaces in the barn’s siding.

As he stood, slack-jawed and squinting at the bottom of the ladder, he heard the hissing again, followed by a loud, high-pitched growl.  Jack grabbed a rusty spade that was leaning against a nearby stall and began to climb.  The ladder creaked in protest beneath his weight as he climbed with one hand on the rungs.  The spade rested loosely in his other hand, banging against the side of the ladder with each step.

About three-quarters of the way up, he stopped, breathing heavily. "C’mere you damn cat.  You know I hate those rats as much as you do."  A smile curled his lips at the thought of a little sport.

Jack’s head popped up into the gloom at the top of the ladder and he swung the shovel up onto the hayloft floor.  He turned and took another spit, following the glob as it sailed to the barn floor twenty feet below and disappeared.  He heard a howl and glimpsed a dark form flitting quickly across his peripheral vision into a remote corner.

 
Cats moved fast, but not that fast.  Then Rufus let out a mournful wail that crescendoed into a shriek.  Then, sudden silence.  Nervously, Jack called, "Rufus.  C’mere, boy.  What you got?"

 
A shaft of light bored down through a hole in the roof, spotlighting a pair of pale hands.  The fingers were pressed deep into Rufus’ flesh.  He clawed and scratched at them, howling all the while.

 
Jack stared.  "But there ain’t no blood."  Almost before the words could form a frosty mist in the cold air, Rufus came flying at him.  He got a mouth full of fur.  Reflexively, he drew back, and as he did so, lost his footing on the ladder.  When he hit the barn floor, it raised a cloud of dust.

He lay sprawled on his back, moaning.  Jack had to suck hard to take in a deep breath.  It felt as if someone had stuck a red hot poker into his side.  He could taste the smell of blood in his mouth and hear a gurgle in his throat when he exhaled.

His vision blurred and there was a dull ache and a warm, sticky wetness at the back of his skull.  In the light and shadows that surrounded him he could see a dark shape float down from the roof of the barn and hover over him.  He never saw his spade as it was driven into his chest accompanied by the sickening crunch of bone.  He glub-glubbed for air like a fish out of water.

 
The last thing that Jack Hauser felt as he struggled to breathe was the sudden rush of cool air in his gut as his belly was ripped open.  The last thing he heard was the hissing of Rufus, hunched up in a corner with his hair bristling.

             
                                          CHAPTER 4

A few days later, Jay was sitting at a table in a bistro, his fingers massaging his left temple, as his agent, Pat Gilhenny, tried to explain to him for the fifth time why he couldn’t get another advance on his royalty payments.

Pat was an unlikely choice for an agent.  She was a dumpy, orange-haired, matronly type who seemed more like she would be at home fixing corned beef and cabbage or playing with her grandchildren.  She’d seen something in Jay’s work and stuck by him for months trying to sell his book.  She’d worked over Titan Books, the publisher, like a she-wolf protecting her young.

"Now if you had something on the new book, then maybe we could talk to them.  Get an advance for that.  But you’ve already gone to them twice and they’re not going to go for it again.  Not with sales falling off the way they have.  Trust me.  Just get me some pages and I know that I can get you what you want."

And there it was.  He knew that if Pat said there was no water in the well, then it was as dry as the Mojave.  How could he tell her that he’d dried up, too?  He’d been trying to come up with an idea for months and couldn’t.

That wasn’t exactly true.  There had been plenty of ideas, just nothing that he could see through to completion.  Nothing that he considered worthy of what he thought a first-class author would write.  He couldn’t tell her that, not after all that she had done for him.

"Not to worry.  I’m working on this idea.  It’s gonna knock your socks off.  Trust me."  And then he smiled.

He only hoped that what he’d read wasn’t true, that when you faked a smile, it came out crooked, and if it were, that Pat didn’t know.  She smiled.  He smiled.  The waiter smiled as he came to the table with their double chocolate death cake.  As he reached to pick up his dessert fork, her hand slipped across the table and gripped his tightly.  She looked into his eyes and said, "I KNOW you won’t let me down."

When she released his hand, he looked down and saw the red marks where she’d left an imprint of her fingers in the back of it. "She knows," he thought.  There was an uncomfortable silence through the cake and coffee, and when it was time to pay the check, Jay tried to save face by snatching it up from the tray.  Pat was generous and let him.

When he got back to his apartment, he tossed his keys on the coffee table and dropped heavily into the plush of his sofa.  Why did he lie to Pat?  She would have understood if he had just told her the truth.  Now he really DID feel obligated to have something for her soon.  She knew he was lying and he had to cover his ass.

This whole afternoon had been a nasty reminder that he was just a few months from being broke.  Worst of all, he felt like he had betrayed the one person who could save him.

 
Jack let out a sigh and looked absentmindedly at the end table.  The red message light on the answering machine was blinking.  He leaned over, hit the play button, and slumped back into the sofa.

"Hi, this is Linda!  How are you?  I heard about the book and was wondering if we could get together to discuss old times?  My number’s the same.  Call me!"

Jay frowned.

"Right, you bitch.  I remember when you kicked me out of your apartment and told me my writing was shit."

The next message caused the hair on the back of his neck to prick up.

"Jay, this is Mark at Titan.  I’m just calling to let you know we’ve scheduled some more book signings for you.  We really need to get together on these, because it’s promotion, you know?  I know that these things make you uncomforable, but the book’s been out for months and the momentum just isn’t there any more unless you get out and push.

"Oh, and I talked to Pat this morning.  She assured me that we’d be seeing something new from you soon.  I’m really looking forward to getting together with you on that, too."

Mark was Jay’s editor.  He was right when he said that signings made him uncomfortable.  It was an understatement.  Jay didn’t enjoy spending hours developing writer’s cramp while listening to people tell him how wonderful he was when he knew better.  He still couldn’t get over the idea that people actually paid for anything he had written, no matter how much Mark and Pat assured him they were getting their money’s worth.

What bothered him even more was that Pat had talked to Mark before she had met him for lunch.  That just put more pressure on him to come up with a good story.  It wasn’t only his reputation at stake any more.  Jay leaned forward and buried his face in his hands, rubbing them up and down over his eyes.

He was about to reach for the erase button when he heard a familiar voice. "Jay, this is Meg."

Her speech was halting and breathy, as if she were trying to hold something in.

"Jay, the reason I’m calling…God, I hate these machines…the reason that I’m calling is that Jack Hauser is dead."

She sniffled and he could hear her voice get more distant as if the phone had been moved away from her mouth.

"The funeral is the day after tomorrow and it would be great if you could be there.  There aren’t a lot of us left here in town and it would be really nice if you could come and pay your respects."

There was a pause and then the machine clicked and went into rewind.

             
                                          CHAPTER 5

The morning Jay was to leave for Jack’s funeral in Haddonfield, he awoke gasping for air and soaked with perspiration.  He scanned the ceiling as he sought to collect himself.  His eyes fell on the watch that had replaced the ruined clock on his nightstand.  Five o’clock.

 
Jay grabbed the remote and turned on the television.  The weather news wasn’t good.  When he’d set the alarm, it was based on the assumption that the weather would cooperate.  Now, a front had come through with heavy snow up north.  He’d be lucky to make it to the funeral at all.

He shuffled off to the bathroom.  While the water for his shower was warming up, he checked out his face in the mirror.  Dark circles had formed under his eyes.  He wished there were no such things as dreams.

 
Jay wasn’t so sure he’d have gone if one of the others had called him, but Meg was different.  He hadn’t heard from her in ages.  She had been his first kiss, behind the Valentine’s display at the drugstore.  To Jay, the kiss had been something really special.  When he shared what had happened with Frank, though, he couldn’t understand his reaction.  Instead of being happy for him, Frank had laid into Meg.  Really nasty remarks that hurt.   She had comforted him when Frank died and they promised to keep in touch.

A couple of times, she came to the city with her parents during summer vacations.  They spent hours together on the roof of his apartment building, watching the stars.  Through it all, there had been another presence, Frank, whom he could never discuss with her.  She never pressed.

Jay thought that he was happy when Meg told him that she would also be attending Columbia.  With her so close, it was hard not to fall into a relationship.  It should have been the happiest time of his life, but things started to unravel after they began dating in earnest.  Jay had bouts of depression.  He went to a therapist. The guy said Jay’s closeness with Frank caused him to feel unreasonably guilty about being the one who lived that day on the pond. Maybe he was right.

The shit hit the fan when Meg suggested a trip back to Haddonfield to catch up with old friends.  Jay viewed the whole idea with trepidation, but didn’t say anything because he thought that she might think he was being silly.

He fidgeted during the trip and stared silently out the window as she drove.  Once they passed the "Welcome to Haddonfield" sign, he fell into a deep funk.  Meg tried everything she could to rouse him from it, but it didn’t do any good.  He was irritable, had mood swings, there were arguments.

 
Back at school, she tried to get him to talk about what was bothering him.  He could see in her eyes that he wasn’t getting through to her, so he clammed up.  The relationship didn’t end, really, it just sort of petered out as they drifted apart.

 
Eventually, with lots of therapy, Jay felt able to put his feelings about that day and Frank behind him.  Meg had been in the city on business a couple of times in the interim.  Their relations were cordial.  She was very understanding as he spilled out all he had learned about his psyche.  He still hadn’t been able to get up the guts to ask her out again.

 
Jay hadn’t thought of Jack in years.  What if he were just seizing on the funeral as a chance to see Meg again?  How sick was that?  He shook his head and frowned at himself in the mirror.

It was almost seven by the time he’d dressed and made it down to his car in the garage.  Jay tossed his overnight bag into the back seat and fished around in his pockets for his keys and cigarettes.

He pulled his sunglasses out of the center console as he drove up the ramp.  They had been a ritual since the day, blinded by the sun exiting the garage, he’d almost run down an old woman pushing a shopping cart.

Once he’d gotten acclimated to the light, he tossed the sunglasses onto the passenger seat. Jay turned on some music, loud, as he picked his way slowly through the streets in his Jetta.  Through the thwick-thwick of his wipers, the city traffic’s normal staccato of color was changed to an impressionist smear.

The light snow of the previous day had changed to a downpour.  He thought about what a long drive it would be.  If it were raining like this in the south, by the time he got to Haddonfield, the snow might be very heavy.

Beyond the city, traffic cleared up.  Jay sped up to take advantage of all the open asphalt.  He didn’t relish the idea of spending any more time with his thoughts than was necessary.  Being forced to concentrate on his driving would help.

Unfortunately, his plan failed almost immediately.  His hands squeezed the wheel so tightly that his fingers began to cramp up. It gnawed at him that he hadn’t been able to come up with any good ideas for his next book.  The pressure from Titan, which had signed him to a new two book deal on the strength of sales of his first novel, wasn’t helping any.  He needed time to let an idea simmer and stew.

"Raven’s End" had taken him a year to flesh out, part-time, while he’d worked as a copywriter for an advertising agency.  It had started out as a lark, something to do in his off hours. He wanted to prove to himself that his talents extended beyond writing quips about disposable diapers.

 
As Jay got deeper into it, the story took on a life of its own.  It went beyond an exercise in creativity to being a game.  And it was a game that he enjoyed -  moving characters and ideas around like the pieces on a chess board, playing with the action and reaction until he’d found something just right. 

 
That was all well and good, the money, the signings, critical success.  These were all things that he enjoyed.  What he didn’t like were people like his editor, Mark, giving him calls pressing him to deliver when he wasn’t ready.

 
Jay was afraid to allow himself the luxury of failure with the new book.  So many times he felt that he had come up with that one great idea that he could run with, only to be faced with doubts as to whether it was worthy.

It didn’t matter that there were people telling him how great his ideas were.  He was the one who was going to have to spend months with them.  Jay found it hard to explain to someone else why it was so easy for him to churn out ad copy compared to a novel, nor did he want to try. There was a lot more pain in digging into your self with the knife of introspection to write a novel.  Maybe this was the real reason for delay.  The moment of truth was coming, though.  Money was running out. Titan was making polite, but insistent noises to his agent about threatening legal action to recover some of his advance money. Jay couldn’t miss his deadline without even the hint of an outline.

He was snapped out of his dismal reverie by a patch of black ice. The rear wheels of the Jetta whipsawed and he almost sideswiped a passing delivery van.  Jay pulled off onto the shoulder and sat for a moment, breathing hard.

The rain had changed to sleet. Little pellets of ice clicked and popped as they bounced off the windshield. "Fuck," he exclaimed.  The wheels spun as he threw the car into gear and pulled back out onto the freeway. The sleet mixed with snow and what little traffic there was, slowed to a crawl. Jay checked the dashboard clock and found that he’d lost almost an hour.

Four hours had elapsed when the car’s radio began presenting mostly squawks and static when he punched the seek button.  When he did find a station, Jay discovered he was in a hell for anyone who didn’t like country music or the oldies.  Hit radio in the sticks was the music that time forgot.

Once he got to the outskirts of Albany, he ran into white-out conditions that made it seem like a curtain had descended around the car.