Authors: Barry Gifford
“Gee, baby, I really don’t know. I think when the nurse came to give him a shot for the pain, he’d already died in his sleep. There was nobody in the room.”
“Do you remember the last thing he said to you?”
“Oh, I think it was just to not worry, that he’d be okay.”
“I bet Dad knew he was dying and he didn’t want to tell us.”
“Maybe so.”
“What if he got scared just before he died? Nobody was there for him to talk to.”
“Don’t think about it, Roy. Your dad didn’t live very long, but he enjoyed himself.”
“Dad was on the up and up, wasn’t he, Mom?”
“Your dad did things his own way, but the important thing to remember, baby, is that he knew the difference.”
Black Space
I
SN’T THAT TERRIBLE?
Roy, did you hear that just now on the radio?”
“I wasn’t really listening, Mom. I’m reading the story of Ferdinand Magellan. Did you know there’s a cloud named after him that’s a black space in the Milky Way? What happened?”
“They found two cut-up bodies in suitcases in the left-luggage department in the railway station in New Orleans.”
“Do they know who put them there?”
“The attendant told police it was a heavyset, middle-aged white woman who wore glasses and a black raincoat with what looked like orange paint stains on it.”
“It’s raining now. When it rains in Louisiana, everything gets fuzzy.”
“What do you mean, things get fuzzy?”
“The drops are wobbly on the windows and that makes shapes outside weird.”
“People are capable of anything, baby, you know that? The problem is you can never really know who you’re dealing with, like this woman who chopped up those bodies.”
“Were they children?”
“Who? The corpses in the suitcases?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, honey, I’m sure they were adults.”
“But the crazy lady who did it is loose.”
“They’ll get her, Roy. don’t worry. Maybe not right away, but they will”
“Do you think it’s easy to kill someone, Mom?”
“What a strange question to ask. I don’t know. I suppose for some people it is.”
“Could you do it?”
“Maybe with a gun if I were being threatened. I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Could you cut up a body like she did?”
“Roy, stop it. Of course not. Let’s talk about something else. Are you hungry? We can stop in Manchac and get fried catfish at Middendorf’s.”
“I wonder if she wrapped the body parts up so blood didn’t go everywhere.”
“Please, baby. I’m sorry I mentioned it.”
“Remember the shrunken head Uncle Jack brought back from New Guinea?”
“How could I forget?”
“Somebody had to chop it off before it got shrunk. Or do you think the whole body was shrunk first?”
“Roy, that’s enough.”
“I bet that attendant was really surprised when he saw what was inside those suitcases.”
“They must have begun to smell badly so the attendant got suspicious. I think he called the police, though, and they opened the suitcases.”
“Do you think the woman is still in New Orleans?”
“Baby, how would I know? Maybe she just took a train and beat it out of town, f m sure she did. She’s probably in Phoenix, Arizona, by now.”
“Nobody really has control over anybody else, do they?”.
“A lot of people don’t have control over themselves, that’s how a horrible thing like this can happen. Now stop thinking about it. Think about horses, Roy, how beautiful they are when they run.”
“Mom, you won’t leave me alone tonight, okay?”
“No, baby, I won’t go out tonight, I promise.”
Ball Lightning
I
T WAS LATE AFTERNOON
of a late-spring day. The rural two-lane next to which stood a two-pump filling station was empty. The faint sound of an approaching car could be heard, a dim buzz that became louder and louder until a sparkling new blue Ford Sunliner convertible with the top down pulled up at the pumps. A young blond woman sat behind the steering wheel She pressed the horn several times, until an attendant emerged from the station garage. The attendant, dressed in grimy gray overalls and a red baseball cap, stepped around to the driver’s side of the Ford.
“You must be in a hurry.”
“Fill it up.”
“Regular or ethyl?”
“Ethyl,! guess.”
“Pretty automobile.”
“I guess.”
“Machine inside has soft drinks. Mostly Nehi. Grape, orange, and root beer. “
“Just fill it, okay?”
The attendant walked over to the ethyl pump, rotated the handle to activate it, took down the hose, unscrewed the Ford’s gas cap, inserted the hose nozzle, and began fueling the car.
“Hey,” said the driver, “how far am I from Superior?”
“The lake?”
“No, the town.”
“Forty, forty-five miles. But you won’t get there this way. “
“I thought this was the road to Superior.”
“Twenty-one.”
“This is State Route 15, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So what’s twenty-one?”
“Your age. I’m guessing.”
“I’ll be twenty-two next month. Look, you mean this isn’t the way to Superior?”
“Not anymore. Used to be, though.”
The driver got out of the car. She was wearing a thin, sleeveless dress, A wind picked up, blowing her yellow hair around her face. She walked to the rear of the car and looked at the attendant,
“Hey, you’re a girl.”
“So?”
“Nothing, Just I’ve never seen a girl gas jockey before.”
“Now you have.”
“You alone here?”
“Yeah, My Uncle Ike owns this station. He’s sick today.”
“The president?”
“Yeah, of the Black Fork Elks.”
“Bad heart?”
“Uh-huh. How’d you know?”.
“How old are you?”.
“Eighteen, Nineteen next month.”
“What day?”
“The fourteenth. You?”
“Me?”
“Your birthday. It’s next month, too, you said.”
“The fourteenth.”
“That’s pretty cool, I think. Our birthday is the same!”
“Fm older, though.”
“Only three years.”
The attendant removed the hose nozzle from the car and replaced it on the pump. She reattached the gas cap, then moved closer to the driver and extended her right hand.
“My name is Amelia.”
The driver hesitated, then shook Amelia’s hand.
“Terry.”
Amelia took off her cap, allowing her abundant black hair to drop to her shoulders.
“You have gorgeous hair.”
“Thanks. I ought to cut it. Gets in the way when I’m workin’ on engines. Do you want to come inside and have a drink? Or maybe I’ll bring some out. What flavor would you like? My favorite’s grape.”
“Orange, please.”
Amelia went inside and Terry wandered over to the front of the station office and sat down in one of two adjacent flamingo chairs. Amelia came out, handed Terry a bottle of orange soda pop, and sat down in the other chair, holding her bottle of grape pop.
“What’s in Superior?”
“My boyfriend,”
“That his car?”
“Yes. He left it with me up in Pigeon River.”
“That where you’re from?”
“My parents have a house there. I live in Chicago,”
“I’ve never been in Chicago. I was in Pigeon River once, though. As a child. Don’t hardly remember much, except for the falls. My brother, Priam, and I walked across the falls on a skinny, shaky little wooden bridge. Both ways. I was seven.”
“Your brother’s name is Priam?”
“Uh-huh. His nickname was Tick.”
“Was?”
“Maybe it still is, I don’t know. He disappeared on us six years ago, when he turned twenty-one.”
“Disappeared? You mean you don’t know where he is?”
Amelia took a long swig from her bottle.
“Haven’t seen or heard from him since. Bet he doesn’t know our folks died, either.”
“I’m sorry. How did they die? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Plane crash. They were flying down from Huron to Black Fork in Daddy’s boss’s Cessna. Mr. Herbert. He was flyin’ — Mr. Herbert, that is — and there was a violent thunderstorm. A big red ball of lightning struck the plane. That’s what a farmer said who saw it happen. Said there was a loud bang, like a rifle shot, as a fireball collided with the Cessna. Broke the damn plane apart, my mother and father and Mr. Herbert, too. They all of ‘em rained down from the sky in pieces,”
“My boyfriend?”
“What about him?”.
“His name is Priam. His real name. Everyone calls him Pete. Pete Farnsworth.”
Amelia dropped her bottle onto the ground. The soda pop spilled out.
“That’s my name. Farnsworth. There can’t be another Priam. It was our mother’s grandfather’s name. How old is he?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Does his left eye wander?”
Terry nodded.
“I don’t believe this,” she said.
“He in Superior?”
“Yes. We’re going to drive together to Chicago. Pete had some business there, Superior.”
“What does he do?”
“He sells paper products.”
Amelia was crying. Terry leaned over to comfort her, putting her bottle on the ground.
“Tick and Uncle Ike were really close when Tick was a boy. He was closer with Uncle Ike than with our dad.”
“We can call him, Amelia. Priam, I mean. Do you have a telephone here?”
“What for? I guess he didn’t want anything more to do with us.”
Amelia stopped crying.
“Look,” she said, “don’t tell him you met me, okay?”
“But your parents — he’ll want to know what happened to them.”
“No, probably not. Not about any of us. I’ll tell Uncle Ike, that’s all”
“Why would Pete — Priam — Tick — run off like that?”
“What’s he told you about his family?”
“That he was an only child. That his parents are both dead.”
“He won’t be lying now.”
“Amelia, come with me to Superior. I’m sure your brother will want to see you.”
Amelia stood up.
“You must’ve been a lot of places,” she said, “I mean, travelin' around.”
“Not so much before I met your brother. He travels quite a bit for business, and I go along sometimes. How did he get that nickname. Tick?”
“I always knew him as that. It was from before I was born. Uncle Ike played a game with him when he was little, to teach Tick how to tell time, I don’t know exactly how it worked, but Uncle Ike would point at a clock and look at my brother and Priam would say, ‘Tick!’ Then Uncle Ike would say, ‘Tock!' And Priam would say, ‘Six o’clock! Or whatever time it was. Anyway, after that everyone just called him Tick.”
“It’s strange how you think you know someone, know him completely, and then discover you don’t. I know people compartmentalize their lives, they keep secrets, everyone does. But this scares me a little.”
“You feel betrayed, huh?”
“I don’t know if betrayed is exactly the right word. I’m not sure I have the
right
to feel betrayed. Maybe he’s got a good reason for burying all this. What about you?”
“Me?”
“Yes. Don’t
you
feel betrayed? After all, your brother did abandon you, didn’t he?”
“I suppose he did. For a while, anyway.”
“Here he’s been in Chicago all this time and never contacted you. Closer, even, in Superior. He’s driven right past this place without stopping.”
“You make him sound so … so … vile. Tick was always sweet to me. He was a good brother.”
“Past tense.”
“The summer my friend Lolly and I were thirteen, we went swimmin’ one day at Foster’s Pond and it started rainin’, thunderin’ and lightning. We took off runnin’ for home. A car stopped on the road and the driver offered us a lift. It was a man we didn’t know, he was about fifty. Ordinarily we never would have taken it, but being that it was pourin’ down buckets and the sky was crashin’ and all electric and everything, we got in. Besides, he was an old guy. I figured he couldn’t be too dangerous."
Terry clucked her tongue.
“Lolly got in the front seat with him and I got in the back. He didn’t say much. as I recall. We were riding along and all of a sudden Lolly let out with the loudest scream I have ever heard. She jumped over into the backseat with me, and yelled, ‘Stop this car! Stop it right now!’ The old guy hit the brakes and skidded to a stop right in the road and Lolly grabbed my hand and pulled me out the rear/door on her side. We ran off into the woods and hid until we were sure the car was gone.”
“Did he touch her?”
“No. Lolly said she looked over and there was his big old hairy thing hangin' out of his pants.”
“It could’ve been worse. What’s it got to do with your brother?”
“What you were sayin’, I think. Feelin’ of being betrayed, or almost. Lolly and me trusted that man to give us a ride out of the storm and he made it into another thing altogether. “
“Thing a girl doesn’t need to think about. Girls your and Lolly’s age.”
“That’ll be six dollars and twenty cents for the gas.”
Terry stood up.
“Amelia, please.”
“After a lightning ball explodes, it leaves a kind of mist in the air. The farmer who saw Mr. Herbert’s plane go down said that afterwards there was a red fog all around where it happened. It wasn’t raining except for the body parts and pieces of metal.”
“Could I—”.
“Six-twenty.”
Terry walked to the car and took some money out of her purse, which she had left on the front seat. She brought it to Amelia.
Amelia looked at the bills and took them.
“ill get your change.”.
She went into the station office. Terry waited outside. Amelia came back out and handed Terry several coins.
“Thanks for stopping.”
“Look, Amelia, what can I do?”
“If you want to get to Superior, go back in the direction you came from on 15 until you hit State Road 8. That’s about a mile west of Victory. Go south on 8 to Highway 12 East. Take 12 all the way to the fork. Left is Badgertown, right is Superior. If you get going, you might make it before dark.”
Terry started to say something, then put the change into her purse and walked to the car. She got in, started it up, and pulled around the pumps. Amelia walked over to the flamingo chairs and sat down in the one she had been sitting in before. She watched Terry drive away.