Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04] Page 2
Far to her left, the shouts of the crew cramming the last of the gear into the trucks, trying to beat the rain. They sound anxious, and probably are. Once done, and the animals bedded down for the night, there would be a final blowout. Usually a celebration with a touch of melancholy, this time it would be a wake.
She catches rain on the wind again, lightning in the clouds over the town four miles distant, and a soft rumbling, like something out there waking up.
The old man reaches over one shoulder for his hat, and as he puts it on, he looks down the midway. A tumbling piece of paper, a few leaves, dust passing through the fall of light from those half-dozen poles the town had insisted on putting in for some unspecified safety reasons. He stands just on the edge of the carousel roofs sharp shadow, squaring the hat, flicking the brim with a finger.
“Mister, really, I have to—”
“Red,” he says, not turning around. “The folks I know, they call me Red.” He half turns then, smiling at her sideways as he brushes a thumb across the stubble on his chin. “At least they used to, when this was the right color. Rusty sometimes, but mostly it’s Red.”
“So what do they call you now, Red?”
He lifts one shoulder; his voice softens. “Lots of things, Claire. Lots of things.”
Another shout, it might have been her name, and she swings easily down to the ground. It sounds like Marco, and it sounds as if he’s losing his temper. “Look, it’s been nice, Red, but you really do have to leave.” She doesn’t tell him it’s time to take the carousel down; that’s none of his business, and he’s already ruined her final farewell. “I don’t want to be pushy, but...” She shrugs her regret.
That smile, and a quick outward push of his chin, like an old bird in a silly hat. He salutes her with two fingers to the brim, nods, and walks away, hands in his pockets.
Weird, she thinks, watches him for a moment, then heads for the trucks where the others will be waiting. She knows that more than one of them figures she’s a little short in the sanity department, but she doesn’t mind, as long as they do what they’re told.
Then she groans an “Aw, shit,” when the rain, not wasting time with a let’s start with a gentle shower, suddenly slashes at her on the wind. She sprints for her trailer, home eight months of the year, and grabs a slicker and floppy hat from their hooks just inside the door.
“Taking her down now, Daddy,” she calls, and leaves without waiting for an answer.
Silver rain where it passes through the lights on a sharp slant, emerald where it passes through the carousel’s glow. Head ducked and tucked, shoulders hunched and stiff, she starts toward the ragged clump of old trucks and old trailers where the men await her signal, and she tells them with sharp gestures there’s no sense in it right now, get dry, this won’t last, we’ll do it later.
Then she looks back over her shoulder, and stops. Frowning.
That man, Red, stands in front of the carousel, turning to instant shadow when lightning turns the afternoon a swift colorless white.
“God damn,” she mutters, and vacillates—go right to him, or get some of the guys to watch her back? He’s old, and she’s strong, but she’s seen too much not to know that looks can be camouflage. The decision is made for her when he steps onto the platform.
“Damn,” she yells, and races toward him, boots splashing through mud puddles, eyes squinting nearly shut as the wind takes her head-on. This is too much. Last night, and now this. Son of a bitch, she’s gonna kill that old bastard. Goddamn old people think they got more rights than anyone else. Well, not this time, and not that old man.
She’s more than halfway there when, abruptly, everything stops—wind, rain, thunder.
One faint lightning flicker.
And silence.
She falters, licking her lips, wiping the back of a hand across her face, swearing that if he touches just one of her precious animals, she’s going to rip his face off, the creep son of a bitch.
“Hey!” she shouts. “Damnit, get the hell away from there, you hear me?”
But she can’t move any faster than a hurried walk. Feet splashing through puddles, through slops of thick mud. She doesn’t want to move any faster, because she can see him drifting among the animals, a shadow in the dark where there shouldn’t have been a shadow at all.
A sudden loud pop startles her—one of the pole lights has blown out. As she looks, another one explodes, starlike white sparks spraying to the ground.
She’s heard no gunshots, no air rifle sound, maybe it was a slingshot, and another bulb disintegrates while she watches.
Oh, boy, she thinks, and swallows, and nibbles at her lower lip; oh, boy.
It’s not so much the how and why of the exploding bulbs that unnerves her; it’s what’s left when it’s over—a single shimmering pool of vague white halfway between the carousel and the exit, and the green light that slips over the carousel’s roof and reaches the ground, where it turns darker, almost black.
When the wind finally returns, she’s grateful; it had grown too warm suddenly, and the chill is welcome; when the rain returns, she’s tempted to take off the floppy hat and let her face feel the drops, just to wake her up.
Lightning over town.
Thunder through the dark.
She’s tempted again, this time to check her watch, knowing it’s way too early to feel so late. Hell, she only had lunch an hour or so ago. But an hour or so ago the clouds hadn’t yet made their way from the horizon, and there was still autumn-warm sunshine and the familiar sound of the crew laughing and cursing as they broke the carnival down; an hour or so ago, she had said to her father:
“I think you’re wrong. Honestly. I think we ought to go into town and file a complaint. We’ve got damage, Dad, and they should pay.”
Craig Sultan had looked up from behind the folding table he used as a desk and shook his head as if it weighed a ton. “Why bother, hon? We aren’t going to repair it, just sell it, for God’s sake.”
“It’s the principle,” she’d insisted.
“It’s a waste of time,” he’d answered.
No, she’d thought then, and thought now as she remembered; it’s not a waste of time. They got away with it. They’ll do more. They need to be taught a lesson, the sons of bitches. They need to be taught.
She grimaces at the heat the thought rushes to her face, dripping rain from chin and nose. It must be because it’s over, she decides, because she’s never felt this way before. Other times, in other years, she was never so quick to vengeance. It must be because it’s over—the carnival, her life.
Instead of weeping again, she snarls and stomps through the mud to the carousel.
She doesn’t care why; she can only taste the rage.
* * * *
4
She can see Red more clearly, rubbing a hand along the neck of one of the horses, and she wonders if maybe he’s not such an old creep at all, if maybe he really does understand what this all means, that if, like her, he’s saying good-bye.
She slows, rage momentarily dampened, shoulders hunched against the rain, the wind.
An old man who’s seen who knows how many carnivals in his time. Memories that stretch back who knows how many decades. And now he comes upon one of the last, and it’s no wonder he disobeys her and comes back. One last time. Because he’ll never see another one again.
She stops.
The wind causes some of the rain to scatter into ribbons of mist; near the carousel the rain has turned to emeralds, a beaded curtain of tiny flaring emeralds that makes looking at her animals confusing, because emeralds and animals shift and shimmer in the wind. Movement without the carousel spinning.
Old man or not, though, he has to go.
She takes a step, opens her mouth, and ...
... the rumbling she had heard beneath the storm earlier grows louder, low trapped thunder in a great cat’s throat.
Red tilts his head up and looks at her from beneath the brim of his hat.
He smiles that smile and swings onto the back of a white-speckled horse.
She stares stupidly at her hand and lets it drop heavily to her side.
He reaches for the reins and settles in the saddle, boots slipping into the stirrups while one hand rests on his thigh.
She wants to weep, this time for his memories, maybe a summer afternoon when he was a kid, waiting for the bell to sound, the warning bell that sends the parents laughing off the platform, the bell that signals the beginning of the ride and the music and the reach for the brass ring that will keep the ride going.
Forward; always forward.
When he tugs lightly on the reins and the horse slowly, stiffly, turns its head, Claire knows it’s the way the slanting rain distorts what her eyes try to see; when he leans forward a little and whispers something and the horse’s legs straighten until its hooves touch the platform, she knows it’s the way the rain and mist have confused her vision; and when the horse shakes its head and she can hear above the storm the sound of a bridle and a snort and a sharp stamping hoof, she knows it’s the rain.
What she doesn’t know is why she can see the horse turn, pulling away from the brass pole that once pierced its shoulders and pinned it in place.
What she doesn’t know is why it can, with a flick of its reins and a word from the rider, toss its head and bare its teeth and step down off the platform without hesitation while the rain washes each little white speckle from its flanks and leaves only gleaming black behind! Tail snapping side to side, mane ruffled and fluttering as the storm eases from downpour to shower.
They stand there, horse and rider, caught in the pale green glow.
They stand there, and Claire’s mouth opens for a word, perhaps a scream, and nothing comes out but a short terrified whimper.
They stand there, and she checks fearfully over her shoulder, thinking she should call Marco and the others, one call that would have them armed and running even though, suddenly, she believes without reason that she is in no danger.
A short sharp shudder she blames on the day’s chill.
The shower is little more than drifting mist now, light-rung and thunder confined to the clouds, and with a careful deep breath she takes off her hat and, as she approaches the carousel, lets it fall to the ground. One eye on horse and rider, ready to bolt if they so much as look at her crosseyed, she pulls herself onto the platform and examines the pole that had once held the horse. The brass is cold against the palm and fingertips that slide along it, searching for the break, knowing she won’t find it but reason demands she look anyway.
When at last she turns, so slowly she can almost feel each muscle working, she attempts a questioning pleading smile, but the attempt is so feeble she nearly cries. Nearly screams. Nearly falls.
But she does scream, short and sharp, when the green tulip bulb explodes high overhead into emerald sparks that fade quickly and for a moment leave nothing but darkness behind.
She holds her breath, some part of her ashamed at her reaction, some part of her angry because she doesn’t understand.
A swallow, an exhalation, a step toward the edge as the light on the pole in the middle of what is left of the carnival’s last midway allows her to see him again. He’s watching her, she knows it, but she can’t see his face beneath the brim of that hat.
Watching her.
Not smiling.
Mist curling lazily around the horse’s legs, creeping across the mud, swirling up onto the carousel and curling cold around her ankles.
The horse bobs its head and steps backward, water splashing silently from beneath its hooves. Its mouth works the bit, its tail lashes the air, and the one eye she can see is wide and white and staring.
“Hey,” she says hoarsely, knowing what’s about to happen and demanding an explanation.
Red makes a clucking sound with his tongue, and horse and rider turn away, walking slowly toward the exit and the road that lies beyond.
“Hey!”
She feels stupid, standing there so helplessly, and that angers her. She wants to know who the hell he is, she wants him to bring back her horse, she wants him to tell her how he did it, she wants him to tell her there’s nothing to be afraid of despite the deep-throated big cat thunder that rolls over the field and the lightning that snaps at tree-tops and distant rooftops like the tongue of a dark dragon.
He stops and looks over his shoulder.
She still can’t see his face.
But she can, this time, catch a glimpse of his eyes, and they’re green. Not emeralds. Not jewels. Not glowing.
Just... green.
Not smiling.
Although there is the storm, and the distance between him and her, she can hear him as clearly as if he were whispering in her ear:
“Spare the rod, Claire,” he tells her. “You know the rest.”
They ride through the light from the single bulb on that high pole, and she isn’t amazed and isn’t frightened and isn’t the slightest bit bewildered when she thinks she sees the light pass through them both, thinks she sees tiny flares of scarlet fire splash from the hooves, thinks she hears those hooves striking the earth as if it were dry and laced with iron.
Thinks she sees them vanish before they reach the other side, nothing now but the mist, twisting, curling, drifting away into the dark.
It’s the rain and the wind; it’s the lightning and the thunder; it’s the rage she feels at the bastards who’ve ruined her final good-bye.
So she leaps from the carousel and races toward her men, screaming at them, shrieking, ordering them to get moving, find weapons and get moving because no one, especially not a bunch of drunken half-witted sons of bitches is going to take away the only thing she has left.
Her good-bye.
Her farewell.
And when Marco asks her what she wants done when they find those hick freaks, she looks back toward the midway and she doesn’t hesitate at all when she says, “Kill them, Marco. Kill them all.”
* * * *
2
1
A
lmost autumn; just past noon.
A light warm wind that carries the scent of sea and pine, a faint touch of mudflat and marsh, just the slightest hint of a flower that has bloomed past its time; a high afternoon sun bright but not bright enough to haze the color of the sky, a handful of high island clouds that take their own sweet time drifting west to east; gulls in the air, pelicans on wharf pilings, a young blue heron picking its away across shallow water beneath gnarled cypress and twisted mangrove, while something dark shifts in the reeds, and the surface ripples.
A single story, wood-and-stone schoolhouse, its windows open, the voices of teachers and children; several score houses, mostly wood, a few brick or stone, windows open, the voices of radios and televisions, here and there someone on the phone; pedestrians on the main street, pleased they can still wear shorts and short sleeves, taking their time, no hurry at all, while the locals count their blessings there are any tourists at all.
Camoret Island, in the eye of the storm.
* * * *
2
The Camoret Sheriff’s Department was housed in a single-story brick building on the north corner of Midway Road and Landward Avenue, a T intersection that marked, within a yard or two, the geographic center of both town and island. The recessed entrance was trimmed in scalloped wood painted white, with double glass doors propped open to lure the sea breeze inside. Above the arched lintel was a sign that announced the building’s function in fancy gold letters outlined in black. There were no windows in front, or on either side. In back there were six: one for the sheriff’s private office, two for the main room, and below them, along the top of the high reinforced foundation, there were three, narrow and barred, one for each of the cells in the basement.
Sheriff Vale Oakman figured that after fifteen years he knew the place so well he could be struck blind tomorrow and still find his
way around without once barking a shin.
Today, however, he could see all too well.
He stood to one side in the entrance recess and pressed his lips together in order to stifle a decidedly unprofessional groan. For a moment he considered retreating to the street, pretend he hadn’t been here. But it was too late, and his eyes closed in a brief silent prayer that this isn’t a sign of how the week was shaping up.
It was Monday, and Mondays were supposed to be reasonably peaceful, a natural extension of Sundays when, in the main, nothing happened at all. It was supposed to be a time to shift out of his weekend gears, a gentle and painless transition into the rest of the week. A time for paperwork. For checking the wanted notices the state and Feds piled on his desk like slush, marking the trails of the gangs that had begun to swarm out of the cities across the landscape.