Stunts, page 15
“Speak of the devil,” Sarra whispered loudly.
She pointed across the street, to two figures walking away from them into the fog. One of them was clearly Brian Oakland; the other was an old man.
“Who’s the guy?” Sarra said.
“Mr. Naze,” Rita answered. “Mr. Kendal’s uncle.”
“Oh.”
They kept moving, and they kept watching, until watching had become too obvious. Then they faced front and said nothing more until Sarra peeled off with a hasty “Later,” and ran up her street. The silence this time felt more like a weight, and Greta wondered if she ought to say something then, try another form of apology. She didn’t want Rita ticked at her; things were lousy enough as it was.
“Brian,” Rita said, “told me yesterday that Mickie wants to do a stunt.”
Greta almost stopped, tripped herself instead and grabbed onto Rita’s arm to keep from smacking into a tree. “You’re kidding, right? Farwood?”
Rita nodded. “Fairy tales.”
Greta pulled at her silver ribbon. “Has to be. That girl couldn’t think her way out of a kindergarten class if she had a year’s head start.” The ribbon came undone, and she wrapped it around her wrist. “Stunt,” she said disdainfully. “What the hell does she know about stunts?”
Rita shifted the bag to her other arm. “Y’know, if I knew what it was, I’d write an anonymous letter to the Führer, maybe he’d kick her tight little ass to Colorado or something.”
Greta felt the fog settle on her legs. “So what’s Brian going to do?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Then he’s crazy,” she declared without thinking. “Dumb shit’s being hauled around by his personal gonads and he doesn’t even know it.”
Rita nodded.
And Greta searched for a hole large enough for her to jump in. It would save Galiano the trouble of slitting her throat.
A block later she was alone.
The smell of damp leaves, oil on the street, and the sweet roll she held in one hand, that Rita had given her with a half-smile and a wink.
Truce.
Greta had almost wept.
And by the time she reached her house, the roll was gone, and she had figured out a stunt that would, if it worked, blow this town away.
It wasn’t big.
It didn’t have to be.
V
IN THE WOODS
Seventeen
The station house was small, of dark brick and peaked roof and an age that had already marked more than a century of waiting. There were no lights in the high windows arched and pointed at the top, no lights in the parking lot that stood empty behind it; the slanted roof over the platform shifted, sometimes groaned, and the handful of naked bulbs burning alongside the beams scarcely cast a shadow, barely lit the air beneath them. It was the moon that dimmed them, large and bright and full; and the air that hinted of a hard frost by dawn set them in fragile globes that seemed to shimmer when the wind hissed out of the trees.
The doors to the waiting room were locked.
Shutters had been closed over the barred ticket window, secured by a hook and eye that rattled on occasion.
Over the main platform, under the roof and hanging by two thin chains long since rusted to dark blood, was a sign that tried forever to twist away from the wind, succeeded only in swinging, creaking, short bursts of harsh sound that were brittle and without echo.
Port Richmond
And a cat, long and low and a deep rippling grey, slipped out of the trees to stalk shadows on the tracks. Caught for a moment by the dead glow of the moon, it blinked and arched its back, blinked again and began moving—slower than the night wind that hissed in the branches, slower still than the dark that filled the spaces between the worn and gleaming iron. Its tail twitched slowly, its paws ghosted over the gravel that lay loose between the splintered ties, and every few moments its head lifted, and it searched, and when it spotted the man sitting on the platform it twitched its tail and it stopped.
And listened.
And narrowed its eyes.
While John Naze stared back from under the wide brim of his hat, his own puffed eyes narrowed to further narrow his face.
He didn’t like the cat. Never had. Never would. It didn’t belong to anyone. It was wild, living in the woods, killing birds and chipmunks and god knows what all else, and watching him now the way it would watch helpless prey. Waiting. Patiently. For the best time to attack.
It reminded him of the gangs he had seen prowling in New York. Just as feral. Just as cold.
It reminded him of some of the kids he saw back in town.
Like the sonofabitch in that black car today, the one that nearly ran him down. Brian had told him, but he couldn’t remember the kid’s name. That’s all right. If it came, it came; but he’d remember that car.
He shifted on the old chair, the creak of it loud and filled with comfort. The lower part of his worn overcoat fell open, and with an effort he folded it back across his legs. Not looking down. Not looking at his hands—contorted and swollen, arthritis distending the knuckles and rendering most of his fingers useless. There was pain, god damn the pain, but so much a part of him these last twenty years that he seldom felt it unless there was rain for a day or the mornings were damp, or when he was in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting to die.
The cat moved.
John followed it by jerking turns of his head until it vanished into the platform’s shadow. Then all he could do was wait.
A grunt as he pushed himself back, another as he crossed his legs knee over knee.
An owl shadowed over the tracks, and five minutes later a nighthawk cried softly.
A gust of wind made him shudder and turn his face away. It was cold for the moment, and the snap of it against his drawn cheeks made him clench his teeth. A sniff; there’d be snow soon, perhaps in a day or two, perhaps nothing more than a pre-Halloween dusting to warn the town behind him that winter was on its way and October its herald.
A sudden inhalation when the wind blew again, and the cat darted into the open and raced across the tracks to the dark on the other side. A snap around of his head when he heard a twig snap in the woods.
This won’t do, John, he thought; this won’t do at all.
A flash of dark red back there in the trees. Too quick to focus on, there and gone, without a sound.
Now you’re seeing things, you bloody old fool. Next thing you know, you’ll be seeing the damn train.
Something red? Couldn’t be. It wasn’t the cat, wasn’t a bird, wasn’t some fool kid—even they had more sense than being out here in the damn cold. Seeing things is what it is. Hearing things. This won’t do, not at all.
He was making himself nervous, sitting here all alone, though he’d sat here on hundreds of nights since the last day of his job. It was something to do. He didn’t like television, and there was nothing on the radio anymore, not the music he liked, and his eyes were too dim and milky for him to be able to read even a newspaper with any satisfaction. Sitting here, however, drifted him into the past, when Port Richmond was seven decades younger, not so filled, not so loud; when he could walk with a straight back, when he could shoot pool with the best, when later he could take his wife in his arms and squeeze her until she squealed.
The platform, like the trains, took him away.
And he had every intention of a train taking him away for the last time, when it was time, and the pain didn’t die when the night died with the sun.
Another twig snapped.
Another gust of wind.
He pulled back a sleeve and brought his watch to his eyes; just gone midnight, and he smiled to himself. Mrs. Oakland would finally be going to bed about now, flowery bathrobe clutched to her throat, all that hair in curlers, tiny feet in tiny slippers, leaving on the back porch’s yellow light to show the way to his rooms, three of them, all to himself, nobody else. Just the way he liked it.
He shifted.
A flash of red, down there, at the edge of the platform.
Nope. Couldn’t be.
He shifted again.
A curious one she was, Neeba Oakland, a city woman, just like he had told Brian on their walk this afternoon. City woman, city ideas. But he wasn’t fooled a bit by her endless fussing or her kindness or her sly and coy glances whenever he left the house for one of his walks. Didn’t fool him at all. Too old for that. She was after him. Had been, he supposed, since the day he’d watched his wife into the ground, even though he still had the old house then. Renting him the garage rooms at a rate that would make a young man weep, making his bed, cooking his meals when he bothered to eat; she never gave up, and he guessed he had to give her credit—she never pushed herself, letting devotion to his comfort do her speaking for her.
But now she was in bed, and he figured it safe to go back. The one thing he didn’t need tonight was a brace of the present when he was so filled with the past.
Gravel crunched.
He looked quickly to his right, thinking there was someone walking along the tracks.
Kids.
Track iron dark under the moon; trees hissing.
Most of the time they left him alone.
Most of the time.
Except for that sonofabitch in the old black car, radio screaming, laughing like a jackass.
Using the heels of his hands he pushed himself to his feet, groaned when his legs failed, and cursed when he swayed and fell back again.
The time was coming.
He could feel it.
Any day now, any day, maybe even before his nephew finally came to his senses and came home. And that, he thought, would be tragic. He had always hoped Evan would be at his bedside when it happened, or standing with him on the platform when he finally gave up the fight. A good boy Evan was, even if he did travel too much and didn’t spend enough time with his poor ailing uncle all alone in this cruel world.
He laughed and liked the sound of it, laughed again and shook his head.
Cranky; oh yes. A bit stiff in the joints and damn these damned hands, definitely. But not poor. And not quite ailing. Just … old, and getting older.
The wind.
All right, get up, you old fart, he ordered himself; get up before they find your skinny ass frozen to the chair.
His hands braced again, his shoulders stiffened, and he leaned forward, prepared to rise, and felt his mouth open when the lights flared out, one by one. The light walking away from him, until there was nothing left but the dead moon, and the dark beneath the roof.
I give up, he thought; the hell with it, I’m going home.
Then he saw something standing there, down the platform a few yards.
“Who…?” he asked, voice rusty with silence.
It was too dark to distinguish shape and form, and when he rubbed a forearm over his eyes, all he could see was a flare of fleeting red.
“Brian, boy, that you?”
Probably. Neeba the city woman probably got worried and sent her grandson to fetch him. He shook his head, feeling for the boy.
“You could help me up if you stop standing there and move your feet a little,” he said.
It moved, whatever was down there.
It moved swiftly, without a breeze, without a whisper, and for the briefest, longest second something touched his hands, covered them, and pressed down, and he felt the pain in the knuckles, in his palms as the flesh was forced against the hard wood. He swallowed to cry out, thrusting himself back and feebly kicking out one leg.
Then the pressure was gone, the shadow gone, and he felt the perspiration running down his cheeks, matting his hair beneath the hat, laying ice along his spine.
He thought he had seen a flash of red across the tracks. Flickering into the woods. Vanished. Not a sound.
“Sonofabitch!” he shouted, though he couldn’t see the man anymore. “Who the hell d’you think you are?”
When the lights suddenly popped on, all of them, one by one, he stood quickly, heels cracking on the boards, and had taken several angry steps before he realized he wasn’t shambling, that his hands were tight fists.
The wind.
Autumn wind.
Twisting sign.
He moved under the nearest bulb, took a deep breath, and raised his arms.
Then he looked at his hands, turned them over, and began to scream.
Eighteen
Neeba Oakland sat in the front parlor and listened to the wind as it slammed out of the trees across Forest Road. She didn’t like it. It sounded like an army marching toward her porch, the blown twigs and dead leaves gunshots against the roof. Every time there was a clatter, she jumped; every time there was a lull, she tensed and waited for more.
It was days like this when she thought she’d made a mistake, moving here. Fifty-one years in the Bronx, thirty years of it living in the shade of Woodlawn Cemetery, and then her husband had died. Left her alone. Left her to cope with all she hadn’t known, the simple things everyone else took for granted—writing checks, paying bills, getting the car serviced, walking alone to the shops through those packs of animals that stared at her, made noises at her, sometimes followed her, laughing. It had been terrifying, nearly overwhelming, more than once had sent her to bed weeping, shaking, praying for someone to take her away and take care of her again.
He had known all along she couldn’t manage herself; he had coddled and protected her. Sheltered her. Deliberately, she was sure now. Kept her in her place, his place. No ideas of her own. Supper, sewing, and sex. But at the end she had fooled him; and when her son, rest his soul, told her about an available, affordable house he had heard about across the river, someplace in New Jersey, when he drove her out one brilliant Sunday afternoon and showed her the neighborhoods and the stores and the schools and the train station, she fell in love.
He, the son of a bitch, rest his soul, had sworn that prices in the suburbs were too high for simple people. The cost of living, buying groceries, paying the electric, astronomical. They could never afford to live there. The Bronx was their home. All their friends were there; they’d be there forever.
A lie. All her friends had moved out, all the buildings suddenly too old and too large.
She hadn’t needed a realtor’s convincing. The moment she saw the place, the Bronx was a memory. A few stocks he had left her, some of her savings he hadn’t known about, and she had bought the first house she had lived in since she was a child.
“Ma,” her son had said, standing with her on the front lawn just before the signing, “this thing is huge! I didn’t realize how big it is.”
“I like it,” she’d answered.
“But Jesus, Ma, you could put an army in here.”
“When I was two,” she had told him, grinning at the house, “I was moved to the Bronx. I have lived in, under, and above apartments ever since.” She threw out her hands. “Now I’m fifty-nine, and by god, I want room!”
He had laughed and hugged her, and it was eleven years ago that he, God bless him, and her grandson helped her move.
She just wished they had told her that the forest would still be right there, across the street. They hadn’t told her plans to clear it and give her something to look at besides the waiting trees had been abandoned. Oh, the people on the block were friendly enough, never sneering because she was from the city, never whispering, but it was unnerving to look out the front window every day, every night, and not see anything but dark trees gathered in untidy ranks and taking out the western sky. The others, those who weren’t from the city and had no other reference, they exclaimed over the positively bucolic view.
They didn’t understand.
They had never seen the shadows.
The wind punched the house again.
She wished Brian were home, and immediately took it back. Her grandson—fatherless, motherless, because of a faulty airplane valve—had better things to do than fuss over an old woman.
He did, though. All the time.
“Neeba,” he said hundreds of times, “I don’t mind, honest. I’ll go when I’m done, okay? Jeez. No big deal.”
Neeba. Even he had called her that.
There were days, though, when she nearly had to take a broom and a shotgun to get the boy out of the house, out to his friends.
She wanted him to go.
Sometimes, though she loved him dearly, his energy and that so-called music he played up in his room rubbed her nerves raw.
But, a few years ago, when he was out at night, gone for a Saturday from breakfast to past sunset, even when he was only playing in the street with his friends, it had begun to get lonely.
It had been a godsend, then, that she had been granted permission to rent rooms in the huge place, and fix an apartment over the garage. She hadn’t expected it. She thought the neighbors would complain, that Brian would think her crazy. They hadn’t; neither had he.
“Neeba, for Pete’s sake, what are you worried about? You could use the company, right? You think I think you’re gonna have orgies or something?”
“Watch your mouth!” she’d told him.
He had laughed, kissed her forehead, and—Jesus save him! —had pinched her waist on the way out.
So two of the four large rooms in the made-over attic had been taken by Shirley Atkins, a teacher at the high school, the other two by her friend and colleague, Lyanna Gough. And over the attached garage, her first boarder, John Naze.
Her John.
If only he knew it, if only he would stop thinking about the wife he had buried more than a decade ago.
The wind blew.
She sighed.
She glanced around the room, crowded and clean and today looking as old as she felt. She tried not to stare at the telephone by the couch. If she didn’t watch it, it wouldn’t ring; and if it didn’t ring, it wouldn’t tell her that John had been found. Dead somewhere, all alone in the cold.
Another sigh.
Her hands bunched in her lap, pulling at her slacks, one of them fluttering now to the collar of her blouse, plain but tasteful, suiting the narrow face, the age there, the black hair waist long, now caught in a bun at her nape, not pulled too tightly, not making her severe.
