- In the 1950s, a young small-town projectionist mixes it up with a violent gang.
- When Mr. Bear is not alerting us to the dangers of forest fires, he lives a life of debauchery and murder.
- A brother and sister travel to Oklahoma to recover the dead body of their uncle.
- A lonely man engages in dubious acts while pining for his rubber duckie.
But as she
negotiated the curve a blue Buick seemed to grow out of the ground in front of
her. It was parked on the shoulder of the road, at the peak of the curve, its
nose sticking out a foot too far, its rear end against the moon-wet, silver
railing that separated the curve from a mountainous plunge.
Had she
been going an appropriate speed, missing the Buick wouldn’t have been a
problem, but at her speed she was swinging too far right, directly in line with
it, and was forced, after all, to use her brakes. When she did, the back wheels
slid and the brakes groaned and the front of the Chevy hit the Buick, and there
was a sound like an explosion and then for a dizzy instant she felt as if she
were in the tumblers of a dryer.
Through the
windshield came: Moonlight. Blackness. Moonlight.
One high
bounce and a tight roll, and the Chevy came to rest upright with the engine
dead, the right side flush against the railing. Another inch of jump or greater
impact against the rail, and the Chevy would have gone over.
Ellen felt
a sharp pain in her leg and reached down to discover that during the tumble she
had banged it against something, probably the gear shift, and had ripped her stocking
and her flesh. Blood was trickling into her shoe. Probing her leg cautiously
with the tips of her fingers, she determined the wound wasn’t bad and that all
other body parts were operative.
She
unfastened her seat belt, and as a matter of habit, located her purse and
slipped its strap over her shoulder. She got out of the Chevy feeling wobbly,
eased around front of it and saw the hood and bumper and roof were crumpled. A
wisp of radiator steam hissed from beneath the wadded hood, rose into the moonlight
and dissolved.
She turned
her attentions to the Buick. Its tail end was now turned to her, and as she
edged alongside it, she saw the front left side had been badly damaged. Fearful
of what she might see, she glanced inside.
The
moonlight shone through the rear windshield bright as a spotlight and revealed
no one, but the back seat was slick with something dark and wet and there was
plenty of it. A foul scent seeped out of a partially rolled-down back window.
It was a hot coppery smell that gnawed at her nostrils and ached her stomach.
God,
someone had been hurt. Maybe thrown free of the car, or perhaps they had gotten
out and crawled off. But when? She and the Chevy had been airborne for only a
moment, and she had gotten out of the vehicle instants after it ceased to roll.
Surely she would have seen someone get out of the Buick, and if they had been
thrown free by the collision, wouldn’t at least one of the Buick’s doors be
open? If it had whipped back and closed, it seemed unlikely that it would be locked,
and all the doors of the Buick were locked, and all the glass was intact, and
only on her side was it rolled down, and only a crack. Enough for the smell of
the blood to escape, not enough for a person to slip through unless they were
thin and flexible as a feather.
On the
other side of the Buick, on the ground, between the back door and the railing,
there were drag marks and a thick swath of blood, and another swath on the top
of the railing; it glowed there in the moonlight as if it were molasses laced
with radioactivity.
Ellen moved cautiously to the railing and peered over.
No one lay
mangled and bleeding and oozing their guts. The ground was not as precarious
there as she expected it. It was pebbly and sloped out gradually and there was
a trail going down it. The trail twisted slightly and as it deepened the
foliage grew denser on either side of it. Finally it curlicued its way into the
dark thicket of a forest below, and from the forest, hot on the wind, came the
strong turpentine tang of pines and something less fresh and not as easily
identifiable.
Now she saw
someone moving down there, floating up from the forest like an apparition; a
white face split by silver—braces, perhaps. She could tell from the way this
someone moved that it was a man. She watched as he climbed the trail and came
within examination range. He seemed to be surveying her as carefully as she was
surveying him.
Could this
be the driver of the Buick?
As he came
nearer Ellen discovered she could not identify the expression he wore. It was
neither joy or anger or fear or exhaustion or pain. It was somehow all and none
of these.
When he was
ten feet away, still looking up, that same odd expression on his face, she
could hear him breathing. He was breathing with exertion, but not to the extent
she thought him tired or injured. It was the sound of someone who had been
about busy work.
She yelled
down, “Are you injured?”
He turned
his head quizzically, like a dog trying to make sense of a command, and it
occurred to Ellen that he might be knocked about in the head enough to be
disoriented.
“I’m the
one who ran into your car,” she said. “Are you all right?”
His
expression changed then, and it was most certainly identifiable this time. He
was surprised and angry. He came up the trail quickly, took hold of the top
railing, his fingers going into the blood there, and vaulted over and onto the
gravel.
Ellen
stepped back out of his way and watched him from a distance. The guy made her
nervous. Even close up, he looked like some kind of spook.
He eyed her
briefly, glanced at the Chevy, turned to look at the Buick.
“It was my
fault,” Ellen said.
He didn’t
reply, but returned his attention to her and continued to cock his head in that
curious dog sort of way.
Ellen
noticed that one of his shirt sleeves was stained with blood, and that there
was blood on the knees of his pants, but he didn’t act as if he were hurt in
any way. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out something and made a
move with his wrist. Out flicked a lock-blade knife. The thin edge of it sucked
up the moonlight and spat it out in a silver spray that fanned wide when he
held it before him and jiggled it like a man working a stubborn key into a
lock. He advanced toward her, and as he came, his lips split and pulled back at
the corners, exposing not braces, but metal-capped teeth that matched the
sparkle of his blade.
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