Old Bones: A Collection of Short Stories (13 page)

She said, “I’ve thought of that day often,
how it could have been … how our lives could have been if you
wouldn’t have become frightened and ran away.” She gazed into his
stare. “Your fear … that frustration you caused … at the very
moment of what could have been our consummation for life … it set
us against one another, made you hate me.”

He shook his head. “I never hated you.”

“But you’re still afraid of me.”

“Yes,” he said.

“We were heart to heart, all roses round the
door until then,” she said. “I’m sorry too about what happened to
me … to us. But even in my changed state, I still love you, Ronny.
I love you from deep inside my heart. I will never hurt you.”

“Then let me go.”

“Not yet, my love.” She was warm and
comfortable and soft, her arms still round him, her legs now
encircling his hips. The green tendrils filled his lungs further
with every breath. Her magic filled his mind until he no longer
remembered why he had sought out to find Maggie Miller. He felt
himself sink down, down into her darkness. Even when she rolled on
top of him, he sank deeper inside her void.

This was as close to death as she would take
him.

Or so he hoped as complete darkness sheathed
him from all sight and sound.

#

Different Perspectives

THE COFFEEHOUSE WINDOW Larry sat beside reminded him
of sitting in his car at the carwash. Except, this wasn’t Get Wet
Express. This was another rainy day in Ridgewood, at Mabel’s, on
Monday, around eight-thirty in the morning, and he sat across his
sister Elaine, her lined face drawn up in a smile for a moment
before her naked lips pursed and she blew gently at the steam
rising from her white cup. Her blue eyes twinkled despite the fact
that she had lost her husband a week ago.

“Damn weather,” Larry said. He clutched his
cup next to his mouth and felt the heat warm his hands and face. It
did not, however, go any farther. He looked at the coffee cup next
to Elaine and closed his eyes.

“We’re moving,” Elaine said.

Larry opened his eyes. Elaine grinned at
him.

“Stan and I found a place in Tampa. In
Florida. I hear the weather is a lot nicer there.”

“Look, Elaine,” Larry said. He felt at odds
to have to tell his sister that she needed to see a doctor. She had
always been the healthy one in the family. “I need you to listen to
me—”

“Although I’m told they get a lot of rain in
the winter. But it—”

“Elaine—”

“It beats the snow,” she said happily, “and
I’m getting too old for these terrible winters here.” She glanced
at the empty seat next to her. Then she signaled at the waitress
behind the counter near the front door.

“We need more sugar,” she said to the teenage
girl who left the counter and approached their table.

The girl, whose white blouse and red skirt
seemed too large on her short and thin frame, grabbed a sugar
container from the table behind Larry and brought it to Elaine with
a smile.

“Thank you, honey.” Elaine grinned.

“Can I get you anything else?”

“No. Thank you.”

Larry looked up at curious brown eyes.

“Sir?” the girl said.

“Uh, no, I’m good. Thanks.”

The waitress scurried back to her counter,
although Larry and Elaine were the only customers in the place.

Elaine sat the sugar container next to the
full coffee cup next to her. Then, “You’re welcome, dear,” she said
before returning her attention to Larry.

“You were saying?” she asked.

Larry sipped at his coffee before he said,
“He’s dead.”

Elaine stopped smiling. “Who’s dead?”

“Stan. He died of cancer ten days ago.”

“I know.”

Larry put down his coffee cup and sat back.
“If you know, then why do you pretend he’s alive?”

Elaine smiled. “I would never pretend that
he’s alive like you and I are. Stan is a Spirit. He’s here right
now.”

Larry looked at the empty spot next to his
sister.

“He’s just your imagination, Sis,” he
said.

Elaine grinned and leaned forward. “I’m not
crazy.”

“You’re acting like you are.”

The happiness weakened on Elaine’s face.

“Look,” Larry said, “I’m worried. You’ve been
pretending since the day he died that you can see Stan. Hell, you
even pretend to talk to him.”

“But—”

“And now you’re talking about you and Stan
moving.” Larry leaned forward. “Look around you, Sis. There is no
Stan.”

Elaine kept her gaze fixed on Larry. Her eyes
glistened with tears but she did not cry. Instead, she said, “No,
you look around. I see things differently than you do, Larry. I see
a world where the dead go on living.”

“Look, have you talked to Dr. Thompson about
this?”

“I’m not crazy. You need to accept that.”
Elaine finished her coffee in three quick swallows. “Just because
you believe something a certain way doesn’t make it so.” She stood
and reached for her umbrella propped against the table.

“I wasn’t trying to offend you,” Larry said,
standing and taking her into his arms.

“I love you, little brother,” Elaine said,
returning the hug. “And I wasn’t trying to offend you, either. But
you need to open your mind.”

“I’ll try.” Larry released her and kissed the
side of her face. Then, “Sometimes people see things the way they
want to see them—”

“I love that you worry about me, but please
stop. I’m fine.”

Larry wanted to believe her.

He watched her leave before he sat back down
and drank his coffee. His job at the newspaper started at nine. He
felt like it was going to be a long day. He reached for the extra
cup of coffee, eager for the caffeine.

The cup was empty.

#

Behavior Unkind

SOMETHING STRANGE HAD happened to Myers Ridge after
an earthquake shook the little town of Ridgewood three months ago.
Vehicles began stalling on the ridge. Not all vehicles stalled, and
sometimes a day went by when no cars or trucks stalled. But when
they did stall, business at Morton Twitchel’s garage was good.

Now, Mort sat in his lamp lit sun porch,
reading the evening edition of The Ridgewood Gazette chocked full
of Christmas ads when he glanced up and saw the car go past his
house, heading toward Myers Ridge. By its sleek, aerodynamic shape,
Mort knew that sensors and computer chips controlled the
vehicle.

He grinned. Then, “Ma,” he hollered toward
the living room where the sounds of
Wheel of Fortune
blared
from a TV; “Hey, Ma, I’m going out. Be back later.”

“What about supper?” his mother called
back.

“Keep it in the crock. I’ll eat when I get
back.” He slipped on his coat and gloves.

“Pick me up some Pepsi…”

“I ain’t going to town—”

“…and some sour cream and onion chips.”

Mort sagged against the storm door and shook
his head, but his voice rose with his blood pressure. “I said I
ain’t going to town, you stupid old cow. You never listen. Never
ever. Just moo, moo, moo, all the time.” He bolted outdoors into
December’s gelidity and fought to catch his breath. There, he fired
up a Marlboro when the coughing jag subsided, and he felt his
strength return after a deep drag from the cigarette.

His long, weak shadow followed him across the
crunchy snow. The day’s timid sun had hurried to leave Ridgewood;
the last minutes of daylight clutched the western sky. Somewhere,
far away, that sun was high and hot and tanning pretty girls in
bikinis.

Mort spat a brown hocker—
cancer?
—then
pulled his capillary body into his big Ford 350 with a Holmes 440
wrecker boom and bed and hurried onto Russell Road. The tow truck
had no engine control unit to manage emissions. It was the only way
he could rescue the damn fools from the ridge’s electrical
disturbances crippling their vehicles’ fancy engines.

He spotted the dead Nissan at the
intersection of Russell and Ridge highways sooner than he expected.
It was a fancy car, a wannabe rich person’s car, no doubt circuited
with an electronic data recorder and loaded with all sorts of the
latest electrical sensors. He parked in front of the stranded
vehicle, then dropped to the ground and nearly fell when his knees
almost buckled. He tossed away the cigarette and spat before he
approached the car.

“Everything went dead,” a woman said to him.
She stood outside her car in the waning daylight and had a cell
phone in her hands. “Even my phone doesn’t work.”

Mort’s heart skipped a beat. The woman was
young—late twenties, perhaps—and pretty, despite her face looking a
bit jaundiced.

She put the phone in a pocket of her white
mink coat. Strands of her long chestnut hair lifted in the cold
breeze coming at her. She shivered, though her nose and cheeks
remained ghostly white. “The GPS went first, then the engine. The
car’s practically brand-new, and I just had it inspected last
month.”

“Ain’t the car,” Mort said, and then said no
more about it. He had learned his lesson several weeks ago when he
blabbed his theory to a stranded traveler from New Cambridge: “It’s
this here hill … seems to knock out everything electronic …
ignitions, dashboard displays, all that ultra-fancy stuff. Not sure
how it happens, but it’s been good for my business.” The guy turned
out to be a reporter. He interviewed others familiar with the
ridge’s mysterious nuisance and wrote a news article, which brought
some scientists from New Cambridge University to snoop around.
Afterwards, the county wanted to close the roads to outside
traffic. But the ridge’s two highways were essential shortcuts to
Alice Lake, even in the winter. So far, his towing business was in
the black for the first time in five years.

He jerked a thumb at his tow truck. “I’ll
getcha back to my garage. Then I can getcha up and running in no
time. Meanwhile, you can ride with me.”

“I’d like that, Mr. …”

“Twitchel. Call me Mort.” He kept the smile
on his face despite the cold picking at his dingy front teeth,
returned to his truck, opened the passenger door, and helped the
woman into the truck’s cab. When she was settled, he closed the
door and spun, as much as his rickety ankles and knees would allow,
and went to work getting the Nissan fastened to his hitch. Then, on
the way to his garage, he turned on the radio to avoid
conversation. The radio played a silly Christmas song about a
grandmother run over by a reindeer. Mort chuckled. The woman
smiled. Both were silent until Mort parked inside his spacious
garage behind his mother’s lesser house.

“This shouldn’t take long,” he told her
before he set the truck’s fan and heat at high so she could wait
comfortably inside the cab. Then he went to work lowering the car
and pretending to inspect the Nissan’s engine. He knew the car
would start on its own; they were far enough away from Myers Ridge.
And besides, the electrical disturbance at the ridge never fried
any circuits. But if he were to get any money out of this woman, he
had to put on a convincing show.

“Mr. Twitchel,” she called out from the
rolled-down window a few minutes later, “do you have any hot
coffee?”

“This won’t take long.” He had forgotten to
start the Mr. Coffee in his office. His beverage of choice was the
Budweiser in the garage fridge and anything on tap at the tavern a
mile south.

“Won’t take long at all,” he said.

He went to his workbench and returned with
some wrenches. Then he clacked them against each other from time to
time under the hood while he pretended to fix the engine. He even
sprawled his backside on a dolly and rolled beneath the car.

“Mr. Twitchel,” the woman called out again,
“do you enjoy being a mechanic?”

Mort stopped clacking his wrenches and looked
surprised. It was an honest question that few people ever asked
him.

He shrugged at her sincerity.

“Most of the time,” he said above the noise
of the truck’s fan, “except—”

His forehead scrunched suddenly. If she
wanted to be sincere, then he would oblige for the moment.

“Except when our lousy government passes
stupid rules like emissions laws. You know, there was a time when a
mechanic could legally build a car engine without computer chips
telling it what to do. My truck’s engine is how a man free from his
greedy Gestapo government intended an engine to be.”

“Yes,” the woman said, “man shall not be
rewarded for behavior unkind.”

Her cryptic remark caused Mort to pause. Then
he shrugged and smiled and returned to clacking his tools beneath
the car.

“Mr. Twitchel, my watch must have stopped. Do
you have the correct time?” The woman sounded restless, perhaps
becoming impatient with his act. An unhappy customer could sour the
deal. It was time to wrap things up.

“There’s a clock on the wall above my
workbench.” He got up, wiped his hands on a rag from his jeans’
back pocket, then got into the car and turned the ignition. The
Nissan’s engine purred to life.

A large canvas tote bag beckoned him to look
inside it. He was not after money (should there be any), just
something small like a fancy pen to give his mother for Christmas
so he would not have to spend any money on her. He pulled out a
small white box, the kind with jewelry inside. He shook it and
thought he heard the delicate rattle of a chain.

He hurried the box to his coat pocket,
climbed from the car, closed the hood, and went to the truck,
smiling kindly as he opened the door and helped the woman out. Then
he climbed into the truck’s cab and turned off the heater.

“How much do I owe you for your prompt and
valuable assistance, Mr. Twitchel?” the woman asked as she
retrieved a wallet from her coat pocket and opened it. Several
expensive rings on her fingers flashed and sparkled under the
fluorescent shop light. Mort paused to admire their value and hoped
something of equal value was inside the box he’d stolen.