Dark Harvest, page 9
You found a job. You filled up your days. And you filled up your nights, too. On one of them you found yourself with a girl who made you feel a little bit better about the way things were, and pretty soon you found yourself with that girl most every night. And a ring went on her finger, and the two of you carried around a couple of keys that matched the same front door, and at night you both found your way through it and closed that door behind you and, together, you waited for the morning to come.
That’s the way it was for you if you weren’t a winner. And it wasn’t so bad, really. Even when you finally started to figure things out, it wasn’t so bad, because you still had each other when that door closed at night, and maybe if you were really lucky you had something else to go along with that, something that was a little bit of both of you, something that allowed you to push away the truth just a little bit longer.
But by the time your first kid was out of diapers, you couldn’t run from the truth anymore. You knew about that cornfield. You knew about all those young men buried in that black soil. Once you’d thought those poor bastards had gone somewhere better, when they really hadn’t gone anywhere at all. And now you thought about them sleeping down there in the dirt as you stared up at the ceiling in the middle of the night. And you thought about them every time you heard your own boy cry out as he woke from a nightmare in his tiny little bedroom down the hall.
And you told yourself that you really shouldn’t worry so much, that the odds are really in his favor. They only took one boy a year. And it wasn’t your decision. It wasn’t your call. It was only the way it was, and you really didn’t have anything to do with it at all. It was those steel-rail bastards in the Harvester’s Guild who kept that trainload of misery rolling year after year after year, and no one could stand up to them.
You told yourself that, but it didn’t slow your thumping heart. Your fear was there between the pulse beats, no matter what you said. And it banged at you, because, hell, you weren’t sixteen, or seventeen, or eighteen anymore. You knew better than to believe the lies that people told you. You knew better than that because you’d learned there were other things besides dreams that could make your heart pound like it was ready to batter its way through your rib cage and take off on its own.
Turned out it didn’t matter what you’d learned, because the years swept by regardless. And one day, your boy turned sixteen. And one night, he stepped through your front door. And you let him go, knowing what you knew. And you were there when he hit the finish line, and you were there when he was crowned a winner, and it didn’t matter at all that you tried to stop it, because by then there was no way to stop it.
What mattered was that you made it home that night, and your boy didn’t. What mattered was that you got up the next morning, and he didn’t have the chance. And that’s the way it was from there on out—night after night, morning after morning. It turned out the whole deal was really as simple as that.
And now you sit in a church with a shotgun cradled in your arms, staring down at your hands, knowing full well all the things you did with them and all the things you didn’t do. You see the ditches there in your skin, and you can almost hear the shovels working. And you wonder what those hands will do this night, and you wonder how bad they’ll ache tomorrow morning.
Outside, young men are screaming in the streets.
You listen to the sound for a few long minutes…and then the sound drifts away.
In its place comes a smell that drifts through the open back door.
The raw stink of smoke.
You walk to the front door of the church and open it. Boys are running down Main, toward Oak. A couple miles to the north, flames score the sky.
Sirens scream in the night. A fire truck roars by, and a police cruiser follows. But you don’t think of the sirens…or the truck or the car…or the fire.
You think of your son, beating the hell out of the odds just a year ago.
You think of your son, beating the hell out of the odds tonight.
You feel it, down deep, in your bones. You know he’s coming. Your boy. Jim. The son you let down. He’s coming here…and he’s coming soon. You close your eyes and you can see him—the heavy church door creaks open like a castle drawbridge in an old horror movie, and that misshapen thing from the cornfield steps through the gap. You close your eyes and you can see him—a little kid reaches for a doorknob in a tiny three-bedroom house, and that pink-faced baby you once held in your arms steps out into the world on his own for the very first time.
You see all that in your mind’s eye. In your mind’s eye, you see everything.
The riot gun in your hands weighs about a thousand pounds.
But you manage to lift it.
You manage to lift it one more time.
So that’s the way it goes for Dan Shepard. Hey—no surprises there. That’s the way the cards hit the table if you live in a town where winning is just another name for losing.
And that’s the way it is for the kind of men who worry about the furrows life has carved in their hands, the kind who happen to be the fathers of sons. Dan Shepard, alone in that church with a cop’s shotgun…he’s one. But there’s another man, this one sitting in a chair in a beat-up living room. There’s a bottle on the table in front of him, and there’s a telephone receiver clutched tightly in his fist.
Jeff McCormick’s son is on the other end of that line. Pete’s out there somewhere in the darkness. A lot has happened to him since he walked out the door a few hours ago. He’s figured out a few things, and he’s running on adrenaline and something else—something that crackles through the phone line like electricity.
“So it’s all true,” Pete says. “Everything I just said. None of it’s a lie.”
McCormick stares at that bottle on the table. “You’ve got to understand, Pete. I never had a say in any of this. None of us did. Not me, not my father, not his.”
“And not me. I didn’t have a say, because no one told me the truth.”
“The truth isn’t something you get around here. Maybe you understand that now. But I never wanted you hurt. You have to understand that, too.”
“But you gave me that machete. You let me walk out that door.”
“I did.” Pete’s father swallows hard after saying those words, staring at that bottle, but he doesn’t reach for it. “Everything you said earlier tonight…I know why you feel the way you do, but you don’t know the whole story. I did some things after your mom died. Stupid things. The drinking was part of it…but only part. Things wouldn’t have gone so bad if I’d kept it to myself, but I ended up in a bar one night. Jerry Ricks was there, and so was Ralph Jarrett. I was drunk…angry…I started talking about the town, about the way we all lived. I said I’d lost your mom to cancer, but I wasn’t going to lose you to the Run—”
“More words.”
“Maybe you’re right. If I hadn’t been drunk, I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to say anything at all. But I did, and it cost me. When I went to work the next morning, Joe Grant called me into the office and canned me. He didn’t even tell me why. He didn’t have to.”
“Right then, we should have loaded up the car. We should have gotten the hell out of here.”
“No…losing my job was just the tip of the iceberg. Guys like Ricks and Jarrett play a lot harder than that with anyone who gives them a reason. Taking my paycheck was their way of teaching me a lesson. They wanted to pin me in a corner, like everyone else. If we would have run, they would have killed us.”
“They’ll kill us anyway. I’m not going to spend the next twenty years dying inch by inch, the way you have. If Ricks and his buddies finish me, fine. But I’ll go out standing on my feet.”
“Will you, Pete? Really? Do you really think it’s that easy to die? If it meant taking someone else with you…if it meant taking Kim—”
No. Jeff McCormick bites off those words. The conversation’s spinning out of control just like it did that night in the bar, and he’s as angry as Pete is now, but his fight isn’t with his son. It’s with Ricks, and Jarrett, and every other guy in the Harvester’s Guild.
His entire adult life, Jeff’s known this town’s dirty little secret. He knew it tonight when his son stepped through the door, but knowing didn’t make any difference. The Run rolled around the year of his boy’s sixteenth birthday, and Jeff McCormick might as well have said: Sure thing, I’ll ante up. I’ll toss my only son out there on the green felt. If those are the rules of the game, that’s the way I’ll play it. And it doesn’t matter that he wanted to stop Pete on his way out that door, because when push came to shove he let his boy go, just like everyone else in this damn town. That’s what it comes down to—what he did…not what he wanted to do. And that’s the reason Jeff McCormick can’t say those other words…the ones you’d expect. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’d take it all back if I could. Those words can never be enough once you’ve gambled with your own flesh and blood.
So Jeff holds on to his silence. He doesn’t have another choice. Not if he wants to hold on to his last shred of self-respect, too. And Pete listens to that silence. He listens, but he still doesn’t understand.
“I think we’re done now,” he says. “I didn’t call to argue, anyway. I just wanted you to know that I’m getting out of here tonight. There’s a fire burning on the north side. It’ll keep everyone around here pretty busy for a while. I can use it as a way out, and I’m going to take it.”
“You won’t make it, son. Ricks…Jarrett…those other bastards, they’ll stop you any way they know how—”
“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But I have to try. You can help me, or you can hang up the phone. It’s your choice.”
Jeff McCormick closes his eyes. He knows his son. He knows what it means for him to ask for help in this moment, thinking what he must think. And the true hell of it is that he can’t blame his son for feeling that way. He really can’t blame him at all.
But maybe he still has a chance to change that. Maybe it’s not too late—
“What do you need, Pete?”
“Like I told you, the fire’s on the north side. Grain elevator’s on the south. I’m going to get hold of a car, and I’ll be there as soon as I can. I want you to bring Kim to me. Pack her stuff. I won’t leave without her.”
Jeff McCormick’s heart sinks. He knows he should say something. He has to say something. But he doesn’t have the words—
“It’s the right thing, Dad. She’ll be better off with me. You know that as much as I do. This time, I need you to deliver. If you don’t, I’ll come after Kimmy myself.”
Just like that, the phone line goes dead. Pete’s father cradles the receiver. He opens his eyes. Of course he does. What else can he do? And he’s still in the same beat-up living room, and there’s still a bottle on the table in front of him.
But there are no second chances.
His boy is gone. Out the door for good.
That door didn’t slam a few hours ago.
But it sure slammed now.
Pete hangs up the phone in the theater office.
“If he doesn’t come through…” Pete says. “If he lets me down one more time…”
“He’ll come through,” Kelly says. “He’s got to want what’s best for your sister as much as you do. You have to give him that much.”
Pete nods, but he can’t even trust that simple motion. Kelly’s sitting across the desk, staring straight into his eyes. In that moment Pete has nowhere to hide. His head is full of words, but he can’t find a way to say a single one of them. And suddenly Kelly looks away, just as he did when he pulled her off of Riley Blake and glimpsed that wildfire running deep and strong in her own eyes, the one he knew he shouldn’t see until she wanted him to.
“Hey,” he says, reaching across the desk and taking her hand. “It’s okay. Really.”
And it is. Because there’s nothing left inside him that he wants to hide. Not from her.
Kelly raises her head. Their eyes meet again. This time, she doesn’t look away.
They don’t say anything for a long time.
“Okay?” he asks finally, because now there are tears in her eyes.
“Okay,” she says, and then she smiles.
A strong squeeze, and their hands part.
Kelly takes the brakeman’s club off the desk.
Pete picks up the .45.
He says, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The big Dodge jumps the tracks—chassis coming down hard, shocks crunching—and Jerry Ricks’s teeth clack together so hard that he nearly bites his cigarette in half.
Shit. That’s all Ricks needs. He slams the gas pedal with a steel-toed boot and flicks on the high beams. The patrol car speeds through a bright tunnel carved by the headlights, past the market where Ricks gunned down those kids an hour and change ago.
He’s heading north, toward the fire.
Make that fires. Because dispatch had it wrong. The radio call Ricks caught a couple minutes after parting company with Dan Shepard mentioned one fire, but Jerry spots two towers of flame rising from the north side.
Those fires look to be several blocks apart.
The town has exactly one fire truck.
Shit. Everything’s gone nuts tonight. First the deal at the market, now this. If Ricks gets his hands on the pimply-faced arsonist who pulled this crazy stunt, what that kid gets won’t be as easy as a bullet. He’ll hang him from a tree like a heavy bag and do the job right…and slow.
Ricks heads toward the blaze that wasn’t called in. He gets on the radio and takes care of that little detail, even though he knows it’s pointless. Even the lazy bitch at dispatch is smart enough to figure out that a fire crew can’t be two places at once, so guess who gets to pick up the slack—your pal and mine, Jerry Ricks, who’s suddenly pretty sure that several city blocks are going to end up as cinders tonight.
All Ricks can do is jump on the problem, maybe contain the blaze if the people who live closest to it aren’t already panicking. And if they are, well…maybe he can save the asses of the ones that matter before they get barbequed. The way Jerry figures it, there won’t be too many of those—the only good news he’s got right now is that there aren’t many Guild members living in this dumpy little corner of town.
And that’s not much if you’re looking for a silver lining. Ricks signs off the radio, clips the mic on the dash, and swerves just in time to miss a couple of knotheads running toward the scene. Jesus. As he makes the next couple blocks he notices that there are dozens of kids on the streets, and they’re all heading toward the fires…every single one of them.
And that’s when it hits him.
The identity of the firebug.
Gotta be the October Boy himself, a.k.a. little Jimmy Shepard.
Yeah. Ricks slams his palm against the steering wheel, figuring it all out just that fast. Ol’ Hacksaw Face did the deed. Sure he did. And every chuckleheaded kid running on a five-day hunger has fallen for his feint. Because that’s what this action is. The freak has them kissing up to the flames like a bunch of idiot moths. He needs a diversion. He had to come up with some way to draw the gangs away from Main Street so he could clear a path to the church, and it looks like he’s done just that, because every starving little moron running around in a pair of tennis shoes tonight is beating a path in the wrong direction.
“Well, fuck me with a fistful of splinters,” Ricks says. “This boy is good.”
Houses blur by on both sides of the patrol car. Flickering pumpkins leer at Ricks from porches, and he can almost hear them laugh. Almost. Because imagination only goes so far with Jerry Ricks. It might crawl up on his shoulder and say howdy now and then, but it’s never long before he gives it the back of his hand.
And that happens right about now. Ricks stares straight ahead at the blaze silhouetted by peaked rooftops. He butts out the cig he nearly bit in half when the Dodge rattled across the tracks, gets another one started with his Zippo. There’s part of him that’s thinking maybe it’s not too late to stop the fire. But there’s another part that wants to forget the whole deal, rip a U-bender and point the Dodge in the other direction, because a glance at his wristwatch tells him that it’s 11:30. That leaves Dan Shepard’s misfit son thirty solid minutes to make it to the church, and Ricks doesn’t trust Dan to do the Guild’s dirty work if his kid manages to make it all the way to the finish line before the bell tolls midnight.
But what the hell can he do? Could be the Boy is still up ahead somewhere. That’s where the smoke is…that’s where the fire is…maybe that’s where his scarecrow ass is, too.
“Goddammit!” Ricks shouts. “Goddammit!”
His foot jams the brakes. He skids to a stop. He’s so damn close now. Flames are licking the rooftops just a block away. A half dozen boys race past him, heading for the show with bats and pickaxes and chains. The idiots don’t even realize that no one’s coming to fight the fires besides good old Officer Ricks. They don’t even know how close they are to running headfirst into a blast furnace they’ll never escape.
Ricks sits there behind the wheel, just sits there like he never has before in his life. For the first time he can remember, he can’t make a decision, and he can’t fucking stand it. He drags so hard on his cigarette that he nearly burns it down to the filter. And then a kid comes running toward him. A big kid. Ricks thinks he remembers him…maybe from the football team. Yeah. The kid looks familiar. But his face is swollen, and his nose looks like it ate fifteen rounds’ worth of jabs. Someone must have bashed him good…and more than once.
He’s pounding on Ricks’s window, screaming something. Jerry grabs his .38 with one hand, rolls the window down with the other. The kid stumbles back when he sees the gun.
“Christ…no! Don’t shoot!”
“Calm down. What the hell do you want?”
“I saw Sawtooth Jack! He’s a couple blocks over…in front of the Bagley place. He had the gas cap off Old Man Bagley’s pickup, and he was stuffing a rag into it—”
