Things Beyond Midnight (32 page)
REDDING
: Did he speak to you?
MRS. E
: Not at first. He just... smiled at me... and that smile was so... so
evil!
... And then he said... that he wanted me to know he’d won at last...
REDDING
: Won what?
MRS. E
: That’s what I asked him... calmly, in the dream... I asked him what he’d won. And he said... oh, My God... he said...
REDDING
: Go on, Mrs. Evans.
MRS. E
:... that he’d won Frank!... that my husband would
never
be coming back... that he, the boy, had him now... forever!... I screamed—and woke up. And, instantly, I remembered something.
REDDING
: What did you remember?
MRS. E
: Before she died... Frank’s mother... sent us an album she’d saved... of his childhood... photos... old report cards... He never wanted to look at it, stuck the album away in a closet... After the dream, I got it out, looked through it until I found...
REDDING
: Yes...?
MRS. E
: A photo I’d remembered. Of Frank... at the age of ten... standing in the front yard on Forest... He was smiling... that same, awful smile... and... he wore a dark sweater with holes in each elbow... and knickers... black tennis shoes. It was... the
same
boy exactly—the younger self Frank had always hated... I
know
what happened in that house now.
REDDING
: Then tell me.
MRS. E
: The boy was... waiting there... inside that awful, rotting dead house... waiting for Frank to come back... all those years... waiting there to claim him—because...
he
hated the man that Frank had become as much as Frank hated the child he’d once been... and the boy was
right
REDDING
: Right about what, Mrs. Evans?
MRS. E
: About winning... He took all those years, but... he won... and... Frank lost.
00:18
KELLY, FREDRIC MICHAEL: 1928
In the previous story, “Dark Winner,” I utilized my real Kansas City neighborhood as the locale. Same street names, same house address, the same movie theater I attended as a bay, same school.
With “Kelly, Fredric Michael: 1928,” I delved even deeper into my past, into those Missouri years of my childhood, and on into the San Diego years of early adulthood. The year of my birth is 1928. My mother’s maiden name was Kelly. Michael was my father’s name—and he died of cancer under the exact conditions described in this story Reading Mickey Mouse... watching Gary Cooper and the
Lone Ranger
at Saturday matinées... sledding in winter... fishing with Dad at the Lake of the Ozarks... reading James Oliver Curwood’s heroic dog stories, stomach-down under the porch... breaking up clinkers in our old iron furnace... All of these are fragments from a real past put into a fictional future.
I’ve never been aboard a rocket—but I am Fred Kelly.
MONITORED THOUGHT PATTERNS CONTINUE:
...
wrong; twisted... and I’m being... being... Steen is already... they want file to free form again... goddam it, I don’t understand just what this...
We had a coal-burning furnace in the basement with a slotted iron door, and you broke up the clinkers inside with a poker, lifting the door latch with the heat sweating you...
And Mickey left Minnie standing at the little white picket fence. She was blushing. “Love ya,” he said. “Gee,” she said. “Gotta fly the mail for Uncle Sam,” he said. “Golly, you’re so brave!” she said, His plane was a cute single-seater with a smiling face and rubbery wings...
The Moon! They’d made it after all, by Christ, and Armstrong was walking, jiggling, kind of floating sometimes with sixty million or more of us watching. He could still be a part of it. He was only 41 and that wasn’t old, not too old if he really...
... kept shooting, but the bullets bounced right off his chest. “Time someone taught you fellows a lesson in manners!” He tucked a thug under each arm, pin-striped suits with their hats still on, and leaped through the window of the skyscraper with him in the air now and them yelling and him smiling, square-jawed, with that little black curl over his forehead and the red cape flaring out behind... soaring above the poorly-drawn city with the two...
... in the back of the car, not watching the movie (a comedy with Hope in drag and Benny pretending to be his daughter), not giving a damn about the movie and him with his hand there inside her elastic white silk panties... “Don’t, Freddie. I can’t let you.” Sure she could. He’d taken her out often enough for her to let him. He wouldn’t hurt her, ever. He was sure he loved her, or if he didn’t he
would
—if she’d just... He had her blouse all the way open and God those tits! “... never have come here with you if I thought you’d...” Seat slippery under him but he got her legs open enough to do it, but all he did was rub her down there. He’d lost his erection and his penis was soft; it flopped against her white stomach and she was...
Tight against the rocks with the Arabs coming. The legion guy next to Coop was plenty nervous. “Think we can hold ’em off?” And Coop smiled that slow easy boy-smile that meant nothing could touch him; we all knew nothing could touch Coop. “Sure, sure we can. They won’t attack at night. We’ll slip out after dark.” He fired twice and two fanatic Arabs fell in closeup. A hidden ground wire tripped their horses, but we were too young to know about hidden ground wires...
“... so I’m going to tell Dawson he can go fuck himself!” “They’ll bounce your ass right out,” I told Bob. “So what, so who needs a Ph.D. from this lousy... Look, man, college is shit. Dawson is a phony little prick and he knows it and so do his students, but they just sit there listening to him spout out his...”
...
planet wants me to... no, no... it isn’t the planet itself. It isn’t alive, doesn’t tell me anything... dead planet out here on the fringe of the System... but it has... a kind of influence—in conjunction with the rest of this System... the whole thing is a form of... new force, or goddam it I wish they’d let me... just wouldn’t
...
Mother wanted to know what I was doing in my bedroom all alone for so long and I said reading a Big-Little-Book and she came in to see. I had a pretty fair collection and the best were the ones set on the planet Mongo. “You read too much. It’ll ruin your eyes?” But she looked relieved. I didn’t know why. She was smiling and roughing my hair, which I hated but I didn’t hate her. I loved her very, very much. “... to sleep now. You can read more tomorrow.” The room was small and comfort-making and I could smell the special soap she used and I liked the way she smelled, always, and she was always...
... close to the shore, along the rocks, while Dad fed line into the quiet lake. “This is where the fat ones like to come in,” he said. The sky was so blue it hurt my eyes so I kept my head down. A mosquito bit me. That was the only trouble with lakes, the mosquitoes. They loved water the way Dad did. I liked rowing, feeling the long wooden boat slide through the water with Dad at one end, feeding out his line, and the lake blackgreen with no motorboats on it, quiet and hot and...
She twisted under me, doing a thing with her pelvis, and I came. Hard, fiery. First time inside... She groaned and kept her eyes squeezed shut and she looked tortured and I kept thinking what her father would say if he knew I had her doing this. He always worried about her. “You two kids take care, ya hear?” And then he’d say, “I trust you, Fred because you’re a Catholic.” And I told him that I...
...
more... keep wanting more... I’m being... forced to spill out all the
...
“Hey, Kelly, the old man wants to see you.” Sure he did, and I knew why. Because I was late three mornings in a row this week. I had reasons. The lousy freeways were jammed so I took surface streets but Old Cooney would never listen to reason, which is why he’s such a prick to work for. “Tell him I won’t be late anymore.” I was going to the Moon. To work there. To train for space. And someday, with luck, maybe I could...
Whap! Pow!
Pie right in the kisser. The little tramp wipes it off, sucks his thumbs, does a kind of ballet step back and falls down three flights of stairs. Terrific! Up he bounces, dusts the seat of his baggy pants, tips his hat, spins his cane, and walks into a cop! Whomp! Cop is furious. Jumps up and down, shaking his stick. Tramp does a polite little bow, tips his hat again and ducks between the cop’s legs. Zing—right down the middle of the street. Cars missing them by inches. Two more cops join the first cop. Three more. A dozen. Falling and yelling. Tramp is up a fire escape, over a roof, through a fat lady’s apartment—she’s in the tub!—out a door, down an alley, and...