Phantom Nights Read online

  He brushed the dirty forefinger of his free hand against his cut lower lip. More blood welled. Chest still heaving, given to a chill, molten memory of an eyelash escape. His blond mop needed washing. His bright, sharp skin bathed in boy-sweat, smelling of diesel, of tobacco. Already a smoker; there was a mangled cigarette behind his right ear. In spite of appearances, Mally didn't think he was from a rag-tag family. He wore a gold ring with a small diamond in it—of course it might be stolen—and an ID bracelet. Those were a big fad with kids nowadays.

  He tried to squirm away from Mally, run for it. But she could deal with what strength had returned to his body, which was neither childlike nor with the full breadth of maturity, more bone than muscle yet. His body hair was soft and sunburnt silver.

  "Just you sit still. I'm a nurse, and you need tending to."

  There had been no traffic on the road for a good fifteen minutes, but now a pickup truck came by, stopped at the grade crossing. Two overalled men in the front seat, a barking dog in the truck bed. Mally recognized one of the men who leaned out through the window space of the cab to ask if they could be of any help. He was married to a childhood friend of Mally's.

  "He fell off his bike, but I think he'll be all right, Cuffy. Either of you recognize this boy? Can't seem to get his tongue working yet."

  They didn't know him, and drove on. Mally said to the boy, who couldn't stop squirming, "Need to do something about that bloody nose now. Tilt your head back like this"—showing him—"pinch either side of the bridge with your thumb and forefinger 'til it stops. That's it. Lord, I never seen anyone foolish as you in my born days! Please tell me that was the first and last time you'll ever act that stupid."

  He looked at her with one eye, pinching his nose, quiet while Mally poured a little alcohol onto a cotton ball and began to clean around his nostrils and upper lip. Before she was half done he got antsy again and tried to get to his feet. He was looking at his bike, which he had seen was half under the front end of Mally's car. She hadn't noticed in time where the bike was in her anxiety to reach him before the Traveler got there first. Lost that race, and the bicycle probably was damaged. Nonetheless she yanked him down again on his butt.

  "Give me any more aggravation and I will flat turn you over to the sheriff! I'm tired, and if you'd like to know, I had a pitiful day, not to mention the scare you handed me. My name is Mally Shaw if I didn't say so before, and if there's any courtesy in you, you'll be telling me who you are."

  She waited. He was mum. With a stillness that conveyed a hint of grievance. Mally sighed.

  "Be that way. I can find out if I want to, and I've a mind. Got to let the railroad know what happened here, 'less their trackwalkers don't come across those damaged ties in time to prevent an accident."

  That warning seemed to bother him more than being run over by a passenger train.

  Mally looked over the ring, which struck her as an odd thing for a boy his age to be wearing, and the steel-link identification bracelet. "And I was serious about the sheriff."

  Maybe she ought to have been more cautious, invited the two men in the truck to stick around until she was through with her ministrations. But she didn't believe this boy was bad and a threat to her. He was just reckless and a danger to himself. Nothing about him suggested a violent disposition. Mally was confident of her instinct there. And he did have nice looks beneath the grime.

  She changed her grip on him to his left wrist and turned it so she could read the engraving on the bar of the ID bracelet in the lights of the old Dodge.

  "So you're Alex. Too much trouble just to open your mouth and tell me that?"

  His lips compressed; he shook his head, and a couple of drops of blood from his nose spattered her.

  "Look out now, look at what you did!" She let go of him. "You don't want my help anymore, fine with me."

  Mally turned away to close her first-aid box and was startled when he put a hand on her. But he released her quickly, and there was a look of pleading in his eyes. Pleading what? It was then she realized maybe he wasn't being plain stubborn not talking to her. Could be he had no power of speech, couldn't answer for or explain himself. If he was a mute, what a hard thing that could be for an adolescent boy.

  Looking down at him, Mally nodded.

  "Can't talk?"

  Alex nodding too.

  "Always been that way?"

  This time he shook his head.

  "Been to school though; you can write?" Yes. "Something you want to tell me, then, write it down for me?" Yes. "I'll be right back, Alex."

  Mally noticed how feeble the car headlights were, battery running down, must have stalled the engine when she skidded to a stop. On her way to start it up again and keep the battery charged, she looked under the bumper to see how much damage there was to his bike. Looked like an almost-new blue-and-white Schwinn, run over by the right-side tire. A pedal pushed up, chain off, and the front fender bent out of shape. He wouldn't be riding it anywhere else tonight.

  She took a pocket spiral notebook from her purse on the front seat and went back to where Alex was sitting, arms around his knees, nose elevated again. His lower lip was swelling, bitten, she supposed, during his fifteen seconds of extreme terror beneath the Dixie Traveler. A wonder he hadn't loaded up his jean shorts too.

  Mally handed him the pad and pencil.

  "Write down anything you want me to know. Where you live, who your folks are."

  He took the pad, hesitated; then slashed two words across the page and thrust pad and pencil back to Mally. Licked his cut lip, hunched himself tighter in a mime of misery.

  THEY'RE DEAD!!!

  Mally stared at the words he had scrawled, then stared at him, her perspective forever changed.

  "But that's no reason for you to throw your life away, is it?" she said to Alex. "What is it you need to be provin' to yourself?"

  TWO

  "The Situation"

  Wyatt Sexton and Silver Ghost

  Unconfessed Demons

  Bobby Gambier arrived home a little past ten p.m. from Memphis, where he studied law three nights a week at Memphis State College. Cecily was still up and so was ten-month-old Brendan, fretful from feverish gums where a couple of teeth were erupting in front. Cecily walked him up and down the front porch in her robe and pajamas, crooning a made-up song in Brendan's ear.

  Bobby dumped his law books on a wicker table, batted away a hardshell beetle winging too close to his face, kissed his humid wife and took the sleepy, irritable baby from her. He looked in Brendan's mouth by porchlight, then gave Brendan his little finger to teeth on.

  "Should wash your hands first," Cecily reminded him. "You had anything to eat?"

  "Mars bar?"

  "Bobby."

  "Let's get Brendan quieted down first, then I'll eat some eggs. Where did we hide the brandy Uncle Pete gave us last Christmas?"

  "Bottom drawer of our dresser. But you're not thinking?"

  "Works like a charm, doesn't it?"

  "We'll be raising ourselves a little alcoholic," Cecily said, smoothing the fine golden hair of their child across the crown of his head. She opened the screen door and Bobby carried Brendan inside.

  "I'll get the brandy," Cecily said, "but easy does it or he'll be sporting a pip of a hangover." She paused on the stairs going up. "Bobby?"

  "Yeah, hon?"

  "Alex has been gone since I guess middle of the day, and doesn't he have a curfew after he was caught going through other people's mailboxes?"

  "He thought his Boy's Life might have been misdelivered but, yeah, he has a curfew."

  "We need to talk," Cecily said, that little lump of muscle showing at the corner of her jaw; it looked as if she were double-jointed there.

  "Couldn't we—"

  "No, tonight. Let's get this settled about Alex, once and for all."

  "Cecily, I'm dog-tired and I've got studying to do."

  She shook her head tautly, and he saw a shine of tears in her eyes just before she went
on upstairs to their bedroom to fetch what had become an illicit object in their household. Cecily's mom had been married to a convivial guy—not Cecily's dad, but Bernice's third husband—who had turned heavy social drinking into a string of lost weekends before kicking off with a liver hard as a meteorite. Bernice subsequently became wrathful in the cause of temperance, particularly in Robert G. and Cicely's house, where she was a frequent drop-in presence. Snoop said it better, Bobby thought. Cecily was her only child, and Bernice, like a lot of women getting along in age and with nothing in particular to occupy their time, had an overprotective streak. Bobby liked his beer after his shift with the Evening Shade Sheriff's Department, something harder on occasion when his hours caught up with him and he needed a stiff snort to put himself to sleep. But that was just how it got started, Bernice, the expert on alcoholic husbands, told Cecily at every opportunity, drumming her theme home with a marching-band tempo.

  And, Bobby knew, Bernice was relentless in her condemnation of what she called "The Situation"—not Bobby's fondness for Budweiser but his obligation to his little brother Alex, whom "Bernie" had no regard for and mistrusted and constantly had Cecily on the ropes about, to the point where she might be imagining things . . .

  He walked Brendan back to the kitchen, little finger still in the baby's mouth, as always a little awed by the snug bundle against his shoulder, not minding the crankiness and poop diapers, feeling a quiet kind of joy about the whole business of fatherhood when, only a year ago, the tumulus of Cece's glazed belly and popped navel like a skin balloon had unnerved him badly. So that he found himself unable, in her last months, to provide her with a decent hard-on although Cecily, too shy during the first couple of years of their marriage, had developed a real liking and lusty facility for oral sex.

  Cecily came down the back stairs with the brandy bottle and a change of diapers from the nursery. She silently cleaned up and changed Brendan on the kitchen table while Bobby poured a thimbleful of brandy into a saucer.

  "How about a couple of biscuits with your eggs, and I think there's sawmill gravy from last night I could heat up." She hesitated. "Honey, would you like a beer? Out of Bud, but there's Blue Ribbon left over from our barbecue Sunday."

  "Okay," Bobby said, stopping and making a show of looking under the checkerboard oilcloth on the kitchen table, pretending to see if Bernice was hiding there, putting another check after his name in her Day of Reckoning book, the one she kept for the Lord's benefit in case He overlooked something. Cecily caught Bobby's drift and retaliated by booting him in the rear with a slippered foot.

  Bobby grinned and took Brendan from her, moistened a fingertip in the brandy and rubbed where the baby's gums were fiery, touching the merest edge of a tooth about to come through. It made him feel happy. Brendan suckled, his eyes on Bobby's face. He could pull himself erect now using a sofa or a wall for support, stand for half a minute without wavering, looking around. The schedule he was keeping, Bobby thought, eighty hours or more a week away from the house, probably he would miss Brendan's first steps. That troubled him, so much time apart from the two loves who gradually had separated him from the ongoing despair of his loss. Occasionally Bobby's mother still sang in his dreams: she'd had one of those true and glorious voices that are the beauty part of humaness. Always he awoke in tears.

  Cecily levered the cap off a sweaty-cold bottle of Blue Ribbon and set it on the table, smiling a little at the two of them, and Bobby knew she was thinking Wouldn't it be perfect if . . .

  Bobby glanced at the clock on the wall, then at the cork message board where Alex was supposed to post his intended whereabouts day or night. But he seldom knew where he was going when he left on his bike. Like many friendless kids, he was a wanderer.

  Cecily put the omelette pan on a low flame to warm and cracked three eggs, whisked them in a stainless-steel bowl.

  "When was the last time you saw Alex?" Bobby asked her, figuring just to get it over with so he could eat in peace and not have heartburn to keep him awake at three a.m.

  "I told you already; middle of the day, which is when . . . I caught him upstairs in Brendan's room just after Brendan went down for his nap!"

  "Doing what?"

  "Sitting on the window seat, staring at the crib." Whatever resolve Cecily had to keep bitter feelings from pouring out vanished when her voice broke. She turned to Bobby. "But he was told. Wasn't he? Never to go near Brendan again! If he wants to go on staying with us."

  "I'll take care of it, Cecily."

  "How many times have you said, 'Oh, I'll take care of it,' and Alex goes right on doing just what he pleases! He pays no attention to any of us, Rhoda included, and Bobby—I'm s-sorry, but your brother has me in such a state—"

  Brendan's eyes were closing, the brandy drawing fever from his gums, numbing them. Bobby said, "I've almost got him asleep. I'll put him upstairs now. Then, okay, we'll talk."

  "Thank you," she said with a wan show of grace, took a deep breath, and whipped eggs furiously before pouring them into the heated skillet. "That's all I'm asking. I know you have your hands full with this situation, Bobby."

  The Situation. Well, he couldn't lie to himself, that's what it came down to.

  When Bobby returned to the kitchen, Cecily had served him and was sitting at the table buttering a biscuit from that morning's breakfast.

  "Sound asleep," Bobby said, sitting opposite her. "Did you get in some tennis today?"

  "Marcy couldn't play. And it was hot as the hinges from nine o'clock on. Bobby, Priest Howard died."

  He nodded. "Calls for a big funeral. Saturday, I'd say. I'll have to work." He dug into his omelette, took a bite of the biscuit she extended to him. "Cecily, he's not, talking about Alex now, he doesn't mean Brendan any harm."

  She sat back abruptly in her ladderback chair as if an attack had been signaled.

  "I don't understand how you can say that! You know he was crazy jealous when Brendan was born, sulking around here all the time . . . Then when he took Brendan from his playpen when I was out shopping and Rhoda had her back turned a minute and we didn't know where either of them were for three hours—what do you think was on his mind that day if he didn't intend to, I don't know, maybe what Mom says, drown Brendan in Fulkerson's pond?"

  "Jesus Jumping Christ, Cecily, that is so like your mother; she's been doing it to you all your life—"

  Cecily dodged the accusation with a side twist of her head.

  "Doing what to me?"

  "Sabotaging your relationships. Your best friend and roommate at Sweet Briar. Bernice takes a dislike; she spreads dirt like a nigger gravedigger. Then, when we started going together—"

  "We won't get into it about my mother; this is about Alex."

  "Not to say Alex didn't show poor judgment, but he only wanted to show Brendan those huge goldfish that have been in Fulkerson's since I was a kid."

  "Which you know for sure because you can read his mind."

  "Alex can't defend himself very well against ridiculous accusations. The way he is."

  "Bringing that up again. Bobby, don't lawyer me, please."

  "Try to imagine what it must be like. Hearing 'dummy' most all his life. If kids aren't acting mean, they're being malicious."

  "Not my Brendan. He won't ever act like that."

  "So Alex withdraws, doesn't have, what do you call it, social skills, and you interpret his reaction to the shit he has to put up with as hostile behavior."

  "He is hostile, and I'm not imagining. Please don't curse in our house, as I've reminded you a thousand times. Ugly words create an atmosphere; they bring trouble."

  "Just make an effort, why don't you? Show Alex a little affection like when you first met him. Where'd that go to?"

  "And when did you start saying 'nigger' again? I hate that in you."

  "You were raised in Wisconsin. Only black you ever saw was dairy cows. This is the South. Down here they are what they are. Show him some honest affection again, Cecily, instead of that grim
look you put on whenever he's around. Alex is probably out late tonight because he knows Wednesdays I don't get back from Memphis 'til after ten."

  "Bobby?" Near tears. "All I want is to have a happy home, a normal home, is that asking too much of you?"

  Bobby laid his fork down, already feeling hot twinges in his esophagus. He picked up the bottle of Blue Ribbon and had a couple of swallows. They made an okay beer up there in Milwaukee, but nothing compared to Budweiser.

  "What does that mean?"

  "I don't want Alex in my house anymore! I'm afraid of him and what he might do. Can I make it any plainer?"

  "I made a promise. To my dying mother."

  "It was okay when we were first married," Cecily said, hoping to ignore what she knew they were about to get into. Sometimes talking to Bobby was like knocking down a hornets' nest. "Alex was younger then. But now we've got Brendan, and Alex is big. Going on fourteen. And he—"

  "Burnt over seventy per cent of her body. Daddy never even made it out of the house." Army Transport Command had flown Bobby back from Heidelberg, where he was stationed, a military policeman. He was granted a hardship discharge a year early to look after Alex, who had been spending the night in a cousin's treehouse three blocks away. But he ran home in time to witness the worst of it, his house a glowing pyre collapsing into the cellar. "Fuckin' faulty space heater," Bobby said, a burning reflected in his own eyes.

  Cecily overlooked his profanity this time. Better for him to get it out now, or he'd be grinding his teeth in his sleep. She hadn't been acquainted with his parents. They had met nearly two years after the house on Old Durham Trace was destroyed. The property was now a vacant lot, worked over by a bulldozer so that no sign of the tragedy remained except for a bronze memorial plaque on a flowering quince tree Bobby had had transplanted on that plot of ground, which would never be for sale while he had anything to say about it.

  Getting back to Alex. "Another thing he's been doing. He masturbates."

  Bobby was going to say Don't we all but thought better of it. Cecily had been in fragile shape emotionally for the months since Brendan's birth, which had not gone smoothly, and the truth was she still couldn't handle much stress. Since puberty she had suffered from monthly migraines: they blanched her in a way that tore his heart.