Things Beyond Midnight (14 page)

The rest room at the end of the coach was unoccupied. Michael stepped inside, throwing the latch, locking himself safely away from everyone. The small cubicle smelled of disinfectant, like a hospital room. It was cramped and ugly. A neatly-lettered sign on the wall above the toilet said, “Please DO NOT flush while train is in station.”

Michael took out the green bottle, unscrewed the cap and upended the contents into the bowl. Then he pressed the round silver foot pedal and watched the grainy white powder swirl and foam away.

Michael drew a small square of folded paper from his trouser pocket, opened it. He carefully funneled the contents into the green bottle. White. Grainy. The same, but
not
the same.

The train was moving faster over the unseen rails below him. The steady clicking of the wheels beneath his feet seemed to be matching the rapid beating of Michael’s heart as he made his way back to the compartment. It was evening now, and with the corridor lights on all the windows were dark, as if the glass had been painted black.

Mr. Bair was sleeping soundly when Michael entered the compartment, and even the slight noise of the sliding door did not awaken him. Lucy, too, still slept deeply near the window.

In another few minutes it will all be over, thought Michael. His hands were trembling as he slipped the bottle back into the leather case and replaced it under the seat. There, now. Everything ready. “Wake up,” said Michael, prodding his father’s shoulder. “Wake up.” Mr. Bair coughed, raising his head. He focused his eyes on Michael and frowned. “I assume you have an excellent reason for disturbing my sleep. Disturbing it, I might add, for the second time this evening.”

“I have a reason, all right,” said Michael, sitting down across from his father and meeting his eyes squarely. “I want to find out a few things, Father. A few things I’ve been wanting to know about for a long while.”

“Your behavior is extraordinary, Michael. I believe the train has upset you. Perhaps—”

“I want to know,” cut in Michael, “why you sent Mother away.”

“This is neither the time, nor the place, to discuss—”

“
Answer
me,” said Michael, his voice edged in hate. “You answer me!”

“You’ll wake your sister!”

“No, I won’t. Lucy can sleep through anything. Even this.”

“You’ll go without supper tonight, Michael. I promise you that.” Leonard Bair’s eyes glittered, coldly.

“You
drove
Mother away,” said Michael evenly. “And she died because of you.”

“She died because she was a weak-minded alcoholic. And I sent her away because the court ruled her unfit to raise you and sister. Her drinking killed her. I had nothing to do with it.”

“You lie!” accused Michael. “She drank because of you, because of the sick way you treated us, because of all the terrible things you said to her. And you’re only going back for the money she left us.”

“I won’t listen to this kind of talk,” snapped Leonard Bair. The veins on his corded neck stood out, taut with anger. “You will apologize at once or—”

“Or what? Or you’ll take out your bottle and use what’s in it. Is
that
what you’ll do?”

“Yes, Michael,” said Leonard Bair, in a quiet, steady tone. “That is exactly what I shall do.”

The scene, for young Michael, was horribly familiar. It had been repeated over and over, with variations, a thousand times in his life. Whenever he or Lucy would seriously misbehave, whenever they would create a scene with Father, the threat would descend upon them. Sometimes a knife was brandished, held close to the flesh of his father’s throat, when only the smallest movement would part the skin; sometimes it was a razor, held above a wrist artery; sometimes the gun, with the barrel inside his father’s mouth... But, always, the threat was the same: “Behave. Obey me or my death will be on your head. Tell me you’ll be a good boy, Michael, and that you are sorry you troubled your father. Tell me, Michael, tell me...”

And he would always cry and say that he was sorry, that he would do as his father told him to do, that he would never misbehave again. Never again.

But now, in the train, it was different. Leonard Bair’s threat could be challenged, put to the test that Michael had so often pictured in his mind’s eye.

“Take it, and be damned!” urged the boy. “Take it all. I
want
you to take it! Go on, what are you waiting for?”

Leonard Bair snapped up his briefcase, dipped his hand inside for the green bottle. “Then I will,” he threatened. “I will, Michael. I’ll die, and all your life you’ll remember
why
I died.”

At the window, her head deep into the pillow resting against the dark glass, Lucy stirred faintly, then lapsed back into sleep.

Leonard Bair moved to the small sink, set into the wall of the compartment.

Michael watched his father fill a paper cup with water from the silver tappet, watched him unscrew the metal cap and pour the white powder into the cup. “You see,” said the tall man. “I mean to carry out my word, Michael.”

The boy said nothing. He smiled coldly up at his father, who was swaying above the seats, the cup poised in his hand.

He
can’t
do it, thought Michael. It’s always been his sick way of establishing control over us, but he can’t do it. But, if he does, then I’ll have beaten him.

The cup hovered in the air near the mouth of his father. “You still have time, Michael. Say the words and mean them. Tell me you’re sorry.”

Michael continued to smile. He waited. Silently.

Leonard Bair lowered the cup. His face was ashen, his forehead finely beaded with silver perspiration.

“I—I’ll give you one final chance,” he stammered, settling heavily into the seat. “I’ll wait for you to regain your senses. This trip has upset you, Michael. I’ll give you one more chance.”

“Damn you, swallow it! I don’t care anymore. I
want
you to do it!”

“Then let my death be on your conscience!”

And tipping back his head, Leonard Bair emptied the cup down his throat.

And Michael thought, I’ve finally called his bluff. Now that I’ve forced him to do it, he’ll try to find a way out, a way to pretend it was real. It will be more fun if I help, give him what he wants me to give him, what I’ve always given him: repentance.

“Father, I didn’t really mean what I said! Shall I call for the conductor?” Michael stood up, looking frightened.

“No, that’s not necessary, not if you promise me you’ll never question me in this manner again, ever!”

“I promise.” Soft-voiced. Defeated. Head down.

“And you will always remember this?”

“Yes... always.”

“Very well then. Luckily, I brought along an antidote. It will reverse the effects of the poison.”

And Leonard Bair shook the contents of a small packet into the paper cup, added water, drank quickly. “There. Done.”

“Not quite, I’m afraid,” said Michael.

“What?”

“It’s not quite done. Not until you die, Father. Then it will be done.” Leonard Bair stared at his son, as Michael continued. “Too bad your antidote wasn’t real. It could have saved you.”

“You’re talking nonsense!”

“No, for the first time in my life, I’m talking honestly to you. I don’t even hate you anymore. Now that you’re dying. You’re like a cockroach that’s been stepped on. One almost feels sorry for it.
Almost
.” And Michael smiled.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that the fake antidote you took won’t change anything.” Bair was ashen-faced, beginning to tremble. “Fake? What do you—”

“Fake... like the knife you never
really
would have used... or the gun, with no shells... or the stuff you had in the bottle. I wasn’t absolutely sure until I tasted it, tasted your‘poison’ before we left for the train. Saccharine. Then I knew you’d never do it, never really kill yourself because of anything we did, Lucy and I...” Michael began to chuckle. “But the joke’s on you, Father—because you
have
killed yourself after all!”

Bair’s face glittered with sweat; his skin was paper-white, his hands shaking. “You—you put—”

“Real poison, Father. That’s what I put in the bottle.”

And Leonard Bair fell forward, across the seat, eyes jittering, fluttering closed, glazing with death.

Michael watched him quietly.

Los Angeles was waiting for them beyond the depot—an immense city in which they could hide forever. The tall buildings were waiting, and the endless rush of cars and the hurrying people, all waiting to engulf them, to swallow them up.

Michael was breathing hard when he stepped from the station doorway into the bright California sunlight; he could feel Lucy’s small hand in his, clinging tightly. He paused on the edge of the concrete wilderness, afraid. Despite himself, afraid.

But they were free now, at last, and there was no turning back.

The people on the train had been so nice, so kind and understanding. A shame about his father. Man that age, should have had many good years ahead of him. But a heart can give out on anyone. Yes, Michael had agreed, on anyone.

Now he would have a
double
funeral to attend.

“Where are we going, Michael?” his sister asked him. “Are we going to see Mother? Is that where we’re going?”

“Yes,” said Michael, “that’s where we’re going.”

And he stepped forward, under the hot noon sun, into the city.

00:07
FAIR TRADE

He tole me to speak all this down into the machine, the Sheriff did, what all I know an’ seen about Lon Pritchard an’ his brother Lafe an’ what they done, one to the other. I already tole it all to the Sheriff but he says for sure that none’a what I tole him happened the way I said it did but to talk it all into the machine anyhow. He figgers to have it all done up on paper from this talkin’ machine so’s folks kin read it an’ laugh at me I reckon. If you don believe it why should I talk it all down I wanted to know but he says it’s for legal when they stan’ me afore Judge Henry for Lon Pritchard’s killin’ which I sure never done. I witnessed it done, with the blood an’ all, but I never done it personal.

Well, anyways, here goes...

First, my name is Jace Ridling. I guess that’s Jason but none as ever called me the name formal. I was born right here in this part’a Virginia where I been all my life but I’m not rightly sure about my years due to my bein’ alone an’ all with no kinfolk alive to testify my age. I don’t recall I ever had no blood kinfolk—’cept my Ma and my Pappy an’ I never knew ’em proper. Not enough to hang a recollection on ’em. They both took off when I was a tad an’ left me at the county home an’ I run away an’jus growed as best I could, livin’ off the woods an’ what you find there. Guess I’ve et everthin’ that grows there in my time—grub worms an’ wiggly bugs under dead logs an’ squinch owls an’ frogs an’ crickets an’ skittery squirrils an’ what all else I can’t rightly recall. Don’t matter none to this story, ’cept that’s why I saw what I did. Livin’ out in deep woods like I do I see what goes on when town folk are abed of a night. Lotsa funny things go on in deep woods if yer a mind ta look for ’em.

Like I tole Sheriff Meade this here story begun a week back, at the tail end’a that real mean rain spell we had. Hard black rain, the worst anybody kin recollect, worst ever in this county, slicin’ inta that yella clay out there on Cemetery Ridge, makin the ground all soft an’ slidey. It was the rain, jes comin’ down an’ comin’ down what done it—what caused the box they had Lafe Pritchard nailed inside to bust open at the bottom’a Calder’s Hill. Rain loosed it—an’ that wet clay run like yella blood down the hill, carryin’ the box hard onto the rocks. Knocked the top clean off, lettin’ the rain in onto Lafe an soakin’ his nice black fifty-dollar store-bought suit, the one they buried him in.