Rose & Poe Read online

  “Alright,” Miranda says, “but just a bit more, then I have to go. I said I’d come out here with you because I know you’re hurting and I want to stay friends, but this is the end. I mean it. It’s over. The bridges are open, you can get out of the county now. You’re going to have to do what you promised. You have to leave.”

  Poe sees the man nod his head. Uh-huh, uh-huh. “I know, Miranda,” he says. “You’ve made yourself clear. It’s not a problem, really. I understand. I’ll get out of your life. It’s just awful because I love you so much, but I can handle it.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear that. I really hope we can stay friends.” They touch glasses. The man has a sip of wine, and Miranda drinks the wine in her glass and rolls over onto her stomach. The man is standing, his shadow over her, watching, not talking. A long shadow in the afternoon. When he moves, it is so sudden that Poe jumps up, startled, and hits his head hard on the roof of the cabin. He rubs where it hurts and looks again to be sure. It is that thing, he knows what it is. He makes that high keening sound he makes when fear or panic takes him, that sound in his throat. If he goes to help her the man will say, Idiot moron mutant, you oughta be in the nuthouse. If he doesn’t go, if he doesn’t go. If he doesn’t go, he knows what will happen. He tries to go to help her, but in his panic his bulk is caught in the narrow opening that leads from the cabin onto the ladder. He hears Miranda screaming, he hears the thud of the punches striking her, then she is quiet and he is trapped, squirming like a fish in a net, unable to break free. He lifts his arms up high over his head and blows all the air out of his lungs and he is through, squeezing through the opening and down the ladder, in such a rush that the last four rings of the ladder shatter and he falls heavily to the ground. Poe is winded and dazed by the fall, but he gathers himself and gallops toward them with a roar like a wild beast.

  Poe kneels over Miranda. Blood pours from her mouth and nose. How has this happened? The sequence confuses him. The man’s shadow and then the terrible things, and now the man is gone and Poe is not sure Miranda is breathing. He shakes her gently. Miranda? Miranda? Her eyes roll back in her head. Her white dress is open, all the little buttons undone. One of her shoes is gone, the seeing-through underpants have been torn off. Poe can’t help looking. He catches a glimpse of the down-there hair and makes the keening sound in his throat again. He puts a hand on her chest to see if she is still breathing. Her breasts with the hard brown nipples move up and down on her chest. Miranda is alive. He feels her ragged breath.

  Rose’s voice, the voice that is always in his head, tells him what to do. Get help. Get help get help get help. He can’t help Miranda in this place. All he can think of is to get her to the road. He slips his arms under her back and hoists her off the ground. She is dead weight but he carries her easily at first, cradling her body against his chest as he sets out in a shuffling jog along the dirt track, stumbling and sliding and splashing through the puddles.

  Poe stumbles along that way for two hundred yards before he can go no more. His bicep muscles burn; his back aches. He puts her down and bends over to ease his back, gasping for breath. Get help. Get help, Poe, you got to get help. Carrying her this way, the road is much too far, but there was a thing he learned in the army — how to carry a wounded man to safety. They call it the fireman’s carry, the way a fireman would carry someone out of a burning building. He slips his right arm between her legs, hefts her weight so that it is balanced across his shoulders, then grabs her dangling right arm in his strong right hand. Her weight is perfectly balanced. He could carry her all the way up to the goat pasture like this.

  The sky goes dark again, like someone has closed a curtain. It aches with rain. Poe has no shadow as he hobbles along with Miranda, desperate to reach the highway. Blood from her nose and mouth trickles down his shoulder. He slides through the puddles and trips over roots. Branches slash at his face and arms until he is scratched and bleeding. He tries to keep her head clear so she won’t get hit by the branches as he lurches along the path. She dangles like a broken doll splayed across his broad back. His lungs burn. His thighs are like water.

  He has to halt three times. Bent over, breathing like a bellows, heaving air in and out of his lungs. When he pauses the last time, he sees the woods are thinning to the highway. He takes a deep breath and jogs the last quarter mile as hard as he can, then turns to follow the line of the blacktop back toward town, looking in both directions for cars. Get help. Get help. Get help.

  ~

  Living in the end time

  Sheriff Jim Dunn likes the Sunday afternoon shift. It’s peaceful and quiet and a good time to think. Nothing happens on a Sunday (truth be told, very little happens in Belle Coeur County any day of the week), and he’s able to give one of the deputies with young families the day off by working the shift himself. Dunn has almost finished a wide circuit, checking how the bridges are holding up all around the county. The bridges that weren’t washed out are still sound, and the levels of the creeks and rivers have fallen enough to make a man hopeful that he’s seen the worst of it, but now the sky has deepened to the shade of black ink again, and there are jagged bolts of lightning to the northwest. The storm is going to hit any minute, and he wonders if the bridges can take another gully-washer.

  Sheriff Dunn rounds a curve near the old gravel pit and something that looks like the abominable snowman lurches out of the woods to his right, carrying a half-naked woman over his shoulders. He brakes hard, spills what’s left of his coffee on his pants, bangs his knee on the radio, and stalls the engine. He curses and rubs the throbbing knee, trying to see what manner of creature has emerged from the forest.

  Holy Jesus Mother of God. It’s Poe.

  Dunn puts the cruiser in park, sets the handbrake, calls dispatch for backup and an ambulance. He climbs out slowly, not wanting to alarm Poe unduly. He considers drawing his service revolver, but he’s known Poe pretty much his entire life. It’s best to keep things calm, especially while Poe is still holding the girl. He approaches as casually as he can, keeping his hands where Poe can see them.

  “Easy now, Poe. Easy. You’re going to want to put her down real gentle now, right over there.”

  Poe swings Miranda off his shoulders and lies her down gently in the grass. His exhausted legs give way then and he collapses beside her, his legs burning, his lungs fighting to draw in enough oxygen to speak. He rolls onto his back and lies next to Miranda, his chest heaving, staring up at the sky where the rain is about to fall, his face blank. He whispers, Get help get help get help, but the sheriff doesn’t seem to hear him. The first drops of cool rain wash over his face. He licks the water from his dry lips as the sheriff bends over the girl.

  As the wail of a siren approaches in the distance, a pair of slender, shadowy figures watch from the heavy woods on the side of the road, one of them dangling a camera by its strap.

  “Oh, man, Skeeter,” Moe says. “That’s Poe, ain’t it? That’s who we been followin all this time. Ain’t the Sasquank at all, it’s Poe. And that poor man is in a world of misery now. He’s about to learn how black folks live. Once the man gets his hands on you, he don’t let go.”

  They start walking back to the Kids Kamp, instinctively hurrying away from trouble. They’ve gone barely a hundred yards when a five-pronged bolt of lightning strikes a quarter mile away. Moe jumps two feet in the air and comes down running. “I swear, we’re livin in the end time, Skeeter. We better skedaddle or we’re goin to get washed right off this earth.”

  ~

  A ride on a Ninja

  The machine is a gray-and-silver streak on wet blacktop. It screams like a hungry thing, bearing down on Skeeter and Moe so quickly that they barely have time to crane their necks before it is almost upon them, traveling at the kind of speed that makes your bones freeze up and your muscles turn to jelly. Skeeter comes to a dead stop, mouth agape, and Moe stumbles into him, knocking Skeeter to his knees. The streak keeps coming, it
s engine wound up to a sound like an eagle’s shriek. It’s a hundred feet behind when the rider brakes, sending it into a sideways skid that threatens to take out both boys before throttling down inches from Skeeter’s toes.

  The rider twists the throttle on the Ninja once for effect and lifts his visor. He is a strange little boy-man with eyes a shade of inky blue. “You boys are from the Kids Kamp, are you not? What are you doing out here, may I ask? You do realize there’s a storm coming. I’m bound for Maeva’s abode myself. Hop on, I’ll give you a lift.”

  Skeeter and Moe look doubtfully at one another. They’ve seen Airmail making deliveries or picking up mysterious packages from Alf and Maeva from time to time. It’s not like he’s a stranger. Moe shrugs, Skeeter nods. Airmail pats the seat behind him. “Do climb aboard the Ninja, boys. I fear the storm will not hold off for long. There’s room for three when you’re no bigger than we are.”

  Moe climbs on behind Airmail and wraps his arms around the little man’s waist. Skeeter does the same with him. Moe slips the camera to him and Skeeter tucks it under his T-shirt. Airmail giggles, twists the throttle again, and they’re off as though flung from a giant slingshot. Moe, clinging to Airmail for dear life, has time to think that his grandchildren will never believe this, if he lives to have grandchildren. He has some idea what a hundred miles an hour feels like from riding with one of his fool half brothers, but this is way past anything he has ever felt in an automobile — trees a greenish blur, the wind tearing at his eyeballs, the scream of the Ninja trailing somewhere behind as though they’ve broken through the sound barrier. The boys squeal with delight: this is better than all the carnival rides they’ve ever taken put together — but they moan with disappointment when the ride ends far too soon and they roar up the gravel driveway at the Kids Kamp. Airmail eases the Kawasaki past the rusty hulks of ancient and abandoned Dodge Rams, International Harvesters, Chevy Bel Airs, and Ford Fairlanes and skids to a stop in front of the main house. Maeva is at her usual spot on the sagging front porch, with a spliff in one hand and a Rolling Rock in the other.

  “Come to make a pickup for Alf,” Airmail says. He jerks a thumb at the riders behind him. “I also have a couple of packages for you. I found these lads pelting along the highway out by the old gravel pit.”

  Skeeter and Moe hop off, mumble their thanks to Airmail, and take off. They’re almost past Maeva, about to turn the corner and bolt for the cabins out back, when it occurs to her to wonder why they look like they’re being chased by a bear.

  “You boys!” she says, and they skid to a halt. “Get over here this minute.”

  Moe whispers, Don’t tell her nothing, out of the side of his mouth. They come shuffling up to the bottom of the weathered wooden staircase that leads to the porch. Maeva leans forward, her eyes shifting from Skeeter to Moses and back again.

  “Where you been?”

  Skeeter looks wildly to Moe for help, but Maeva’s eyes are on him. “Wherever Moe says,” he replies.

  Maeva takes a long toke and blows the smoke out her nose. “Wherever Moe says? Is that right? So he’s the one supposed to lie for both of you?”

  “No, ma’am. We ain’t been no place.”

  “No place. This is getting curiouser and curiouser. If you stop and think about it a minute, nobody is ever no place, do you take my meaning? Unless you’re dead, and then you’re still someplace, ’cause you’re under the ground. Well, unless maybe you gets yourself crematized and they scatter your sorry butt all over hell’s half acre, isn’t that right?”

  Moe nods. “I expect so, ma’am.”

  “So let’s try it again. You answer this time. What’s your name — you, Noah.”

  “Moses. Only they call me Moe.”

  “Alright, Moses call-me-Moe. Where you been?”

  “Hiking.”

  “Hiking, you say? That’s it, hiking? You look like you seen a ghost.”

  “No, ma’am. We didn’t see no ghosts.”

  “So where were you when you didn’t see no ghosts?”

  “Like Airmail said. We was out by the old gravel pit. Pretending we was tracking things. Alf taught us the Indian way. Alf says an Indian could track a butterfly through a hailstorm. We’re practicing to be like them.”

  “So what scared you so bad that you came running back here like that?”

  “Lightning. We didn’t want to get fried.”

  “That’s the first sensible thing you said.”

  The police radio scanner attached to the Ninja squawks to life. They hear Sheriff Jim Dunn on the radio to the sheriff’s department dispatcher, saying quite clearly that the victim is on her way to the hospital and they’re bringing a suspect in for questioning.

  Airmail perks up. “What’s that? A victim in an ambulance and a suspect in custody? I have to roll, Maeva. Must collect some photographs before they hustle this poor unfortunate inside. D’you have that package for me?”

  “You know I do.” Maeva turns to the boys. “You two get out of here. Me and Airmail, we got business to transact. But next time I ask you a question, you better come up with the truth right off, or you’re gonna have Alf in your britches. And Alf when he’s got his dander up is a sack full of mean.”

  Skeeter and Moe pelt out of sight. Maeva darts into the house and comes out carrying a shoulder satchel with three stuffed freezer bags inside.

  “Sorry,” Airmail says. “You know I always love to tarry and chat with a beautiful woman, Maeva, but this could be big.”

  Maeva nods. Alf is always saying something like that, This could be big, when most of the time it’s no bigger than a half-price sale on toilet paper. She nods and watches the Ninja roar away, thinking that the little man should be dead about fifty-seven times over by now.

  The first heavy scythe of rain comes before Airmail reaches the highway. Maeva hurries inside. It occurs to her that she ought to get hold of those two boys and get to the bottom of what they were up to out by the gravel pit, but the rain is building up to a full-scale storm, and besides, it’s time to roll another spliff.

  Airmail is already there and waiting when the cruiser pulls up in front of the county jail. He has an ambition to work as a paparazzo, and he never goes anywhere without a camera in his saddlebag, but there is rarely anything around Belle Coeur County worth photographing. This week has been an exception. He’s already sold more than twenty photos of the storm and its aftermath, and if there’s been a horrible crime, there will be more sales. He parks his Kawasaki around back, because Sheriff Dunn hates the sight of him, and peers around the corner to see what’s going on.

  As Poe is helped out of the backseat of the cruiser, Airmail stays back in the shadows where the roof overhangs the sidewalk to protect his bulky Speed Graphic camera from the driving rain, but he’s still able to grab seven frames of the deputies helping Poe out of the car before Deputy Travis Proulx sees him and aims a kick at his backside. “Get outa here, you little parasite!”

  Airmail gets, but not before he has taken his photographs of a massive and forlorn-looking Poe standing handcuffed in the rain.

  ~

  The room with the puke-green walls

  Rose is patching an old pair of pants for Poe when the phone rings. She answers on the third ring. Joey Ballew, trying without much success to thread a needle for her, sees the shadow pass over her face. She murmurs something and hangs up, looking dazed.

  “What was that?”

  “That was Jim Dunn. We got to go to the jailhouse to get Poe. They got my boy locked up for something he didn’t do. C’mon, now. Don’t dawdle.”

  “There’s a helluva storm out there, Rose. It ain’t entirely safe.”

  Rose is already pulling on her rain slicker. “You think I don’t know that?”

  Joey has trouble starting his pickup, which is so old the original red paint has faded to a blotched pink. Rose waits while he pokes a
round under the hood. A bolt of lightning cracks so near them that Joey can smell sulfur in the air. The engine starts on the third try, but he has to crawl along in first gear, reaching out with one hand to keep the single feeble wiper blade going on his windshield. The wind is blowing so hard that the rain sounds like hail rattling on the roof of the cab. Twice he has to stop to drag heavy fallen branches off the road. Rose pays no attention. She sits bolt upright in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. When Joey brakes the pickup in six inches of water in the parking lot outside the jail, she hurries in through the torrent, leaving him to follow along behind. By the time he manages to tug open the door against the blast of the wind, she has already barged into the sheriff’s office.

  Rose has known Jim Dunn since he was a bump in his mother’s belly. She comes right to the point. “Hello, Jim. I’m here to take Poe home.”

  “Hello, Rose. Have a seat. Helluva night, raining cats and dogs out there.”

  “I didn’t come to get the weather report, Jim. I know rain when it’s falling. Turn my boy loose.”

  Dunn picks up a paperweight, sets it down on a different pile of papers. This is the hard part of being a small-town sheriff. He remembers seeing Rose bring Poe to school. He was the star quarterback on the high school team when the coach tried to make Poe a football player. He buys goat cheese from Rose, and sometimes he follows with the lights flashing on his cruiser to warn drivers as Poe goes around town gathering up old Christmas trees for the goats, piling them on an old sled and letting a slew of kids come along for the ride. Now he has to break the news to Rose, and the only thing worse is telling a parent that a child is dead.

  “I couldn’t be sorrier, Rose, but I can’t turn your boy loose. We’ve got the Thorne girl hurt bad, and we don’t know whether she’s going to make it or not. I found them myself. I was out patrolling on that stretch of Highway 116 by the old gravel pit when I saw Poe come out of the woods, carrying the girl. She’d been beaten half to death. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”