Strays (24 page)

When the song was finished, a repetitive rumble of piano chords came creeping through the AM static, and Kyle recognized another piece of music as well.  The composition was called “All Blues,” one of his father’s favorites.  Dad played this song and the album it rode in on a lot, explaining to the boys how this was a session of some of the finest jazz musicians: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans … mythical names Kyle had committed to memory from hearing Dad talk of them so much.  He turned the volume up even more, and his heart ached, as much from the missing of his family as from the excruciating sting of Jack’s words, that seemed to float about as if someone had layered an extra track of lyrics onto “All Blues.” 

… can’t … can’t … can’t …

… that’s your middle name …

The name of the song, “All Blues,” was appropriate, for all blues was exactly what Kyle was feeling.  It figured he would first hear baseball and then jazz, his father’s two greatest loves, the two things that Kyle could not share.  He gripped tight the wheel, grinding his hands back and forth as if trying to twist it off the dash, and wondered if his family even missed him.  Why
would
they miss him anyway?  His mother might, but surely not his father.  His father already had two perfect sons; why would he care about his misfit third?

The blood-red horizon faded, and darkness settled in.  The interstate was unusually empty that evening.  The sky seemed starless, and there were no light sources to be seen for miles.  In fact, the only light Kyle could see, other than the greenish glow of his dash, was from a pair of headlights behind him, far away in his rearview mirror.  They were brilliant, these lights, but still too far to cast upon him.  And yet, with nothing on the road before him and nothing in the car save that melancholy trumpet of Miles Davis, those lights were all that Kyle had.

He watched as the lights drew closer and closer.  He could see that they were high off the ground, probably a big tractor-trailer making its nightly runs.  With Molly asleep, and nothing but Miles on the radio, Kyle thought the advancing truck might be his only friend.  He hoped it was a friend anyway.  He hoped it was not like that truck in that weird movie he watched one night with Mom when Dad was out of town at a faculty retreat in Denver.  The movie they had watched was called
Duel
, and it was about a guy on the highway minding his own business when a semi-truck tries to kill him.  Boy, wouldn’t that be the worst?  But what if this truck coming up from behind was something like that?  What if Jack, that dusty, death-smelling biker with the tar pits for eyes … what if he was the one behind the wheel, coming up hard to “break everything”?

Kyle blinked and rubbed his eyes.  Driving was taking its toll on him, and he knew it.  And yet he had to press on, had to keep driving to wherever it was he was supposed to go, had to keep on moving—

“Moving where?”

Kyle jumped.  The voice had come from the back seat of the car.  He glanced up in the rearview mirror, and the center of the truck lights was gone.  He could still see their brilliance, spiking out in all directions through the rear windshield, but there was a shape in the back seat, a man’s head, framed perfectly in the light.

“Where are you going, Kyle?”

It was a gentle voice and kind, and Kyle thought he knew it.

“Dad?”

“Yes, son, it’s me.”

At once Kyle felt that warmth all over, the same warmth he felt when watching Molly fumble with the gas cap, the warmth that he had thought might be love.  He reached back with his right hand to turn on the interior dome light and see his father.

“No, Kyle, don’t turn on the light.”

He paused, his hand in midair.  “Why not?”

“You’ll wake up your friend.  We don’t want that.  Let’s just talk in the dark.”

Kyle nodded and dropped his hand back onto the wheel of the car.  “How did you get here?”

He heard his Dad chuckle, and it
was
his Dad’s chuckle, wasn’t it?  It was Dad, right here, in his car, traveling with him.  “Remember the thunderstorm?”

“The what?”

“The thunderstorm.  When you first got the paper route.  You were thirteen, I think.”

Kyle remembered.  It was a Sunday morning, and the papers were thick and heavy, and he had only had the route a couple of months.  He was in the middle of the route when a thunderstorm hit, seemingly out of nowhere.  The rain pounded out of the sky, and in desperation, more so for protecting the newspapers than himself, Kyle dashed upon to the covered porch of one of his customers.  He waited as sheets of rain poured all around him, and finally he looked in the sky and asked God matter-of-factly,
Can you hold off this rain until I’m done with my route?
  Just like that, the rain stopped.  Later that morning, when he shared the story with his father, Dad had said,
That’s funny.  When the storm woke me up, I asked God the very same thing at the very same time … and the rain stopped.
  It was one of those rare moments when Kyle had actually felt connected to his father.

“The thunderstorm,” Kyle said.  “This is something like that?”

“I’m worried about you, son,” Dad said.  “So I asked God to let me know you’re okay, and here I am.”

“Wow,” was all Kyle could say.  “Wow.”

“When are you coming home, son?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know, Dad.”

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”  There was a hint of jocularity in his voice, and Kyle could imagine his father’s playful smile.

“I wish I knew but I don’t.  Molly won’t tell me.”

“Molly.”

“Yes.  She’s my friend.  She’s sleeping here on my lap.”

Kyle watched the shadow in the mirror to see if Dad would bend forward to see, but the shadow held fast.

“Tell me about Molly,” Dad said.

“She’s my friend.  I met her when I was walking the route, and she told me I needed to leave with her.”

“Do you love her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does she love you?”

“I don’t know, but she acts like she does.”

“You don’t know much.”  Dad’s voice dropped half an octave, taking on an edge like an ax blade.  “Do you, boy?” 

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t say that again,” Dad barked.  “If you’re any kind of man, you won’t say those goddamn words again.”

“Dad?”

“You think that girl loves you?” Dad growled.  “She doesn’t love you.  She wants to control you.”

“No, it’s not like that.”

“No?  Then why is she lying on your lap?  Hmm?  Want to tell me
that
, boy?”

Kyle looked down at Molly, who was snoring now, ever so slightly.  “She wants to be close—”

“The hell she does!”  The shadow in the mirror began to tremble, and something like steam flowed from its edges.  “She’s lying there because she doesn’t trust you.”  Dad’s voice dropped even lower, and something rattled at its core as if Dad’s lungs were filled with dry ashes.  “She knows you’re going to want that last bottle under the seat, and this way you can’t reach for it without waking her up, isn't that right, boy?”

“You’re not Dad,” Kyle whimpered.  “You’re not my Dad.”

“Don’t you cry on me, boy!”  The thing in the backseat no longer sounded human, let alone like his father.  It sounded like some ravenous wolf learning to form words with its heavy, blood-soaked jowls.  “Crying’s for little boys.  You need to be a man now.  You need to turn this car around.”

“Around?”

“Turn this car around and come back home.  Your mother’s worried about you.  Worried sick, literally.  She’s so sick with worry she might be
dying
.”  On that last word, the thing seemed to chuckle a bit.  “If she dies, the blood is on your head, and your father will never—
never!
—forgive you.” 

“Go away!” Kyle cried.  “I don’t want to hear it.  Go!”

“Never forgive,” the thing said.  “Kyle Winthrop, the grand disappointment.  How does that one fit you, little boy?”

“Go away!”  His voice was growing in strength, and Kyle gritted his teeth and said it again.  “Go, now …”

The thing in the back chortled again, but the steam that arose from its fur—and it was fur, Kyle could see, not the lean angles and prominent ears of what he thought was his father—began to dissipate and withdraw.  The laughter grew in strength, but Kyle could swear the shadow was getting smaller. 

“Funny little boy,” the thing whispered.  “I’ll
never
go away.”

The horn of the semi-truck blared, and Kyle gripped the wheel, tugging hard to the right to avoid drifting into the shiny front panel that curved like a whale’s back over the truck’s massive tire.  He heard a rumble as his tires thudded across the grooved shoulder, shaking him out of his doze, and the semi-truck’s horn wailed into the night, dropping in tone as the Doppler effect carried it around the Impala and on into the night.  Kyle pressed the brake pedal, and the Impala slowed, and then he glided over onto the shoulder, feeling the grooved asphalt rumble even louder.  At last he stopped, and the winking red tail lights of the semi were already fading into the night before him.

Molly bolted up like the arm of a catapult.  “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Kyle said, hunching over the wheel and breathing through his teeth.  “I fell asleep, I think.”

“Yes,” Molly said.  “I’m sure that’s it.”  She placed a hand on his arm.  “I’m driving.”

“You know how to drive?”

“I’m not stupid, Kyle,” she said.  “You need to sleep.”

“Yes,” Kyle whispered, his breath still hissing over his incisors.  “You’re right.”

But at that moment, he felt like he would never sleep again.     

In Dreams

Funny little boy … I’ll never go away …

Sarah’s eyelids flickered, and she lay very still.  For a moment, she was in the Nightmare House again, fixing her stare on the ceiling, breathing through the fear.  She dare not turn her head right or left lest she make eye contact with the vomit-yellow
fleur-de-lis
pattern that laughed at her from the wallpaper.  She focused on a crack in the ceiling—a new one, she realized—and waited for the thundering stomps of Big Buddy’s work boots.  When they did not come, she dared to lift her head.

The upstairs room in the older section of Trudy’s house was too dark despite the open curtains on the south windows.  It was a moonless night, perhaps overcast due to a cloud front rolling down from Washington, but in the distance, framed by the window and flanked by the two standing trees, the clouds on the horizon glowed with the reflected lights of Pendleton.  Sarah rolled her eyes back and forth, assuring herself that she was safe, that there would be no more late-night visits from Big Buddy, and then let her head plop back onto the pillow.  At once, there was movement about; she was not alone.

Something stout and covered with a short layer of fur slid under her hand.  She heard the habitual
humph!
as Tom pressed his cool cat’s nose into her palm.  More movement to Sarah’s right, and something nestled against her head.  She felt Strawberry’s paws kneading in her hair as it splayed on the pillow, and she heard the low purr in her ear.  So this was how it was to be.  Tom had promised he would not leave her side, and apparently Strawberry was following his lead.  Sometime after Sarah had fallen asleep, they had both taken on their feline forms and were now sharing the bed with Sarah, ever the vigilant bodyguards.

Sarah smiled and closed her eyes and took in the moment, trying for a time to forget her dream.  She had seen the boy again, that awkward silly boy who was making his way to her, and he seemed even more helpless and desperate than ever.  There had been another with him, a girl Sarah could not quite make out but someone young and poised and pretty.  As far as Sarah was concerned, this girl could have the silly boy; she was doing just fine with Tom and Strawberry taking care of her.

But there was something else in the dream, something dark and stinking.  She did not get a good look at it, but it moved about easily, a black and oozing mass that could go anywhere it chose, through cracks and keyholes and passages no larger than a sipping straw.  At first, the thing looked like tarry mud, the kind that sometimes clung to Big Buddy’s boots at the end of his shift.  Other times it seemed to be more alive, with thousands of eyes darting and looking for Sarah.  At one point, Sarah was deep in the vision, an active player in her nightmare.  The black, pustulant thing had passed within inches of her nose, humming like a phone wire, and she realized that it was a mass of fat, shiny, black flies. 

She tried to scream, and that was when she had awoken, and Tom and Strawberry had both been there, moving close to touch her, trying to pull the terror out of her like sponges sopping spilled water.

What is it, Sarah?

The voice was not coming from either cat but somewhere inside of her.  It was the same voice she had heard days ago, when she had been sharing the car with Creepy Jack, and something ethereal had urged her to roll down the window.  It was neither male nor female, so it could have come from either cat, but Sarah was inclined to suspect it was Tom since back on The Strip, the command to roll down of the window had set him up for his daring rescue.

Sarah.  What is it?

“Just a dream,” she said aloud.  “I was having a nightmare.”

Tell us about it.

“It was about the boy.  He was making his way here.”

What else?

“There was something chasing him.  It wanted to scare him, to make him turn around and go back home.”

Tell us more.

Sarah opened her eyes again and stared at the ceiling, adjusting to the dark and now able to trace a crack from the southwest corner until it disappeared in an old water stain that looked a bit like the face of a gorilla.  There had been the boy, yes, and there was a girl with him, and there was the mass of flies that hovered about, buzzing and whispering.  But there were other things too, weren’t there?  Other very bad things that stank of garbage and dried sweat, lying in wait and marking the minutes until the time was right to pounce.