Forever Never Ends (21 page)

She didn't have a whole lot of accessories. Maybe she would make Jimmy invest in some of those see-through garments and thin-strapped lingerie they sold in that Frederick's of Hollywood catalog that kept showing up in the mail.

In the end, she had chosen her Kmart negligee that was a shimmering pink with ruffles along the bustline. She had skipped the panties. May as well give them an eyeful. It wasn't like she was going to be standing on a street corner or anything. She gave the two men the provocative look she had been practicing in the mirror. She noted with amusement that Jimmy licked his lips like a weasel.

"We parked behind the woods, Peg, and walked in around the back way," Jimmy said. "May as well keep a low profile, at least here at first."

Howard nodded as if his head were a sack of feed.

"Then what are you doing here, Jimmy?” Peggy said. “You going to hold it for him?"

A shadow crossed Jimmy's face, then he said, "This here's Howard. Don't know if you know him or not."

"We've met. Hello, Howard." She gave him a painted smile. He nodded again. She hoped the bulge in his wallet was as big as the bulge at the front of his pants.

"Well, let's get this show on the road," she said, dragging at her cigarette and taking a painful pull of cheap whiskey. Jimmy, looking a little uncomfortable, leaned down to whisper to her.

"I was wondering if, you know, you and me first? Just for old time's sake. Plus—" he leaned right to her ear—"He wants to watch."

"What's half of fifty? That’ll be twenty-five bucks, Jimmy."

"Damn you, girl, it's supposed to be like before. Us being in love and shit."

She let the negligee ride up a little more, until the soft down of her love nest showed. Jimmy licked his lips again.

“Twenty-five bucks,” she said. “Take it or leave it.”

Peggy enjoyed this new feeling of power. Maybe this little enterprise had more advantages than just bringing in some cash. She stood and walked to the bedroom, curling her feet a little so that her rear wiggled under the hem of the negligee.

Howard spoke for the first time. "You said seventy-five, and she said fifty. What's the deal, Jimmy?"

"Hush up, you peckerhead. You ask for extras, you got to pay for extras."

The men followed her into the room where she lay in the sagging curve of the bare mattress. Jimmy dropped a pile of green bills on the bedside table and began shucking off his boots and shirt. Howard nodded at her. She winked and stared at the ceiling, imagining a prince swooping from the clouds on a winged white horse.

***

Reggie Speerhorn parked his Camaro behind the GasNGo. He walked through the kudzu-draped jack pines where he and Jimmy had smoked bushels of dope together, then hopped over the oily little stream that bordered the trailer park. He had found that afternoons were a perfect time to get a piece off Junior's mom, before the bus dropped off Junior's dipshit brother. And Junior was probably drooling and puking right now, his guts ripped by moonshine. Reggie hoped Peggy's boot-brained redneck lover hadn't beaten him to the punch again.

He walked past the silent huddled trailers that were crowded together like sardine cans on a grocery shelf. He didn't understand how people could live like this. Car engines and baby-doll parts were strewn through the bare red yards. Clotheslines sagged from the weight of ragged blankets and underwear with big holes in the crotch. Even the scavenger birds avoided this place, as if instinctively knowing that not a crust of bread would escape these sorry tables.

The Ford pickup wasn't parked in front of the Mull trailer. Neither was Junior's dad's truck. Reggie crept around a rusty oil barrel toward the trailer, feeling a shiver of excitement ripple up his spine. He tried to picture Peggy at the window, her hand on her pale cheek, waiting for him to drop by, a maiden longing for her prince.

As he passed the end of the trailer, he heard voices coming from inside. He stooped and ducked under the trailer through a ragged gap in the white aluminum underpinning. He put his ear to the floor. Peggy was saying something, and the mattress was squeaking. Reggie could hear the bed's bare iron legs lifting and settling, lifting and settling, on the groaning floor.

He looked at the tar-papered tool shed twenty feet away. He could get up on top of it and see through the window. That old apple tree would hide him, that tree with the split trunk and gnarled nest of elbows. A few snowballs of white blossoms protruded from its upper branches as if the tree hadn't yet realized it was dying.

He glanced around the trailer park. Somewhere a kid was squalling like she had a razor blade under her fingernail, and a dog barked weakly from the end of its chain. Traffic flared past on the distant highway, but the rest of the park was hushed, as if smothered by poverty.

Reggie slipped behind the shed and scrabbled up its boarded side, pushing his feet against the knots in the apple tree. He wriggled onto the roof, hoping the shed wouldn't collapse. The tips of the tree branches skittered on the tin sheeting around him like wet chalk on a blackboard. He held his breath and looked through the trailer window, still slightly buzzed from his lunchtime smoke break.

A man was standing in the room, someone Reggie didn't know. He was nodding his big head and scratching at his gun blue stubble. His shirt was off, and his plump red shoulders hunched into a pale, hairy chest. Then Reggie craned his neck and saw the rest of the room. Peggy was in bed with a man who had a Rebel flag tattooed on one side of his back.

How many other guys do I have to compete with?

Then he saw her face. Her cheeks were wet with tears, her nice yellow hair spilling on the pillow, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. She was smiling, but it was a frozen smile, the kind you got when you were in church and the preacher told you somebody had died for your sins. Sort of like "Isn't that nice?" but you wouldn't mind being somewhere else.

Peggy never wore that expression when Reggie was making love to her. She would giggle and nip at his earlobe, her breath fresh on his neck like a morning wind. And she always caressed his back and wrapped around him like one of those eight-armed Buddha babes. But right now her arms were spread out at her sides, palms turned up and fingers slightly curled, as if surrendering to something.

Whatever that redneck was doing to her, she wasn't fighting it. But she also wasn't enjoying it. Maybe she really did love Reggie, the way she said. And he hoped that she was saving her special stuff for him. Reggie couldn't complain about other guys getting their turn. After all, she was married. But he knew she would stay true to him in her heart.

And now her redneck lover was getting up and pulling away from her. The other man got into bed with her. He was still nodding, but Peggy didn't even blink, just winced a little as he entered her. Her head rocked back and forth as he went to work, but her eyes never left the ceiling.

Reggie felt a hot firmness in his pants where the fabric pressed against the sun-baked tin. Maybe he could wait until they left, then he could have Princess Peggy to himself, to tell her that he was in love with her and would she mind letting him show how much?

But he was afraid Little Mack would come home any minute, and then word might get back to Junior. Damn the world, always getting in the way like that. Love ought not be so fucking complicated.

He slid backward off the roof and hooked his sneakers on a fat branch. Then he looped down to the ground and peered around the corner of the shed, ready to sneak back through the woods. But somebody was coming.

A wrinkled, leather-faced old man with an eye patch stepped out of the silver trailer next door. He staggered slightly, as if his knee bones were realigning themselves with every step. The man walked to Peggy's door and knocked lightly, then put his bat-winged ear to the door. He was grinning like a mud turtle as he pulled the latch and went into the trailer.

That old bastard looks eighty, if he is a day. If he can get it up, then sweet Peggy is a miracle worker. But I don't want to stay around to see if that particular wonder comes to pass.

Reggie shuddered at the image of the one-eyed old-timer’s stained khakis dropping down around those varicose legs and knobby knees. He was sick now, disgusted at himself for sharing his soul with something that opened up for anything that moved. He was about to jog off, blind with tears, when a hand fell on his shoulder. He turned and found himself in the arms of a new kind of lover, one that made him forget all about Peggy Mull’s lies.

***

Sylvester had traveled many miles. But distance no longer mattered to him. Or to the parent.

Distance was only time, and
shu-shaaa
had forever. Forever to return to the bright hot center of everything where the universe began. Forever to cross space and rejoin its kind in a white collection of energy.

Forever to gather its seeds together, the seeds that had been scattered by that cataclysmic explosion at the dawn of chaos. Forever to retrace the explosion that had spread the stars and matter and atoms and galaxies across the black mist of nothingness.

Sylvester dripped with the glory of the parent, stewed in cleansing juices of perfection, and wallowed in the brilliant healing rays of the sun. Its warmth washed his flesh and the sweet breath of the far trees sang in his ears as his budding fingers found memory of the door latch. His mind screamed words, but words had no place upon those flowery lips. He dimly recognized the trailer park and the white metal box that had once had meaning, that drew him forward on some buried instinct.

He was still much too human, human enough to know the parent was beyond names. Human enough to remember Sylvester Mull and the existence of pain. Human enough to know that hunger came in many forms. And the parent’s hunger drove Sylvester to harvest.

He grabbed the boy by the shoulder, watched the human eyes widen as Sylvester bestowed the parent’s flawless blessings. They communed, mouth to mouth, and Sylvester tasted speerhorn stooge stoner prince, all crazy images, as their juices swapped genetic mutations. Then he let the boy fall, left him to answer his own calling, and continued toward the white metal box that had once been home.

He wished he could say words. He wished that the parent would lift its green veil so that he might speak his human heart. But wishes were fruitless. His tongue had gone to seed.

No matter. This was his door and doors were made for going through.

The parent was hungry.

And he was home.

“
Shu-shaaa
.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Emerland negotiated the narrow, twisting road, cursing the stupid hick loggers who hadn't bothered to remove all the stumps. The branches that hung low on both sides of the road swatted at the candy-apple red paint on the flanks of his Mercedes. He winced at the grating of wooden fingernails.

Calm down. This time next year, or two years from now, this will be a two-lane blacktop. Hell, maybe even by autumn. These winding dirt roads can be yanked straight and these mountains can be shaped the way they were intended.

He drove out from under the trees into the late afternoon sunshine. Blinded by the sudden light, he didn't see the capsized SUV in front of him until he was almost upon it. He jerked the steering wheel to the right, hoping his tires didn't fall into the same deep rut that the Pathfinder had hit. He bounced onto a flat patch of land and steered around the wreck.

"What in the hell is going on here?" he shouted to the empty passenger compartment of the Mercedes. His only answer was the purring German diesel engine.

Once safely past the Tracker, he slowed and looked in the rearview mirror. A thin layer of dust covered the overturned vehicle and the front grill and bumper were spattered with green goo. A small rivulet of brackish gold oil ran down the rut. He couldn't tell if the wreck had occurred hours or minutes ago.

The scene didn't make sense to Emerland, and that made him uneasy. Someone who could afford to drive a new SUV could pay for a tow truck. And what was somebody with a new car doing in this neck of the woods? Or was it Mull's, bought with DeWalt's money? And where was the driver?

He saw the Mull farmhouse a hundred yards down the slope. An old pickup truck was parked by the porch, its grill and round headlights making a grinning mask. The farmhouse itself was supported by locust poles and bordered with field stones, constructed back before the days of building codes. Emerland noticed that Mull had electricity and a telephone line, but no cable television or satellite dish. No doubt the old bastard had been dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, but probably had developed a taste for technological and material comfort by now. From such seeds, Emerland grew gardens.

He drove up to the farmhouse and got out, smelling the damp woodsy humus and barnyard rot, and the rich odor of manure and stale hay. The air was heavy with the pollen of poplar and wild cherry blossoms. It seemed that the leaves had come out in the last few hours. The fields were actually rolling hills, just like the cliché, and Emerland tried the words on his tongue as a possible name for the new resort.

"Hello. Mister Mull!” He was peeved that Mull hadn't come outside to greet him. At least the old bastard could have stood on the porch barefoot with a flintlock across his arm, the way Emerland had imagined.

But whoever had spilled that Pathfinder might have gotten such a cold and menacing reception, which may be why the driver lost control.

He had acquaintances who were developers, and they always talked about how obstinate these old mountain families were. Rumors went around that some of these backwoods rednecks shot at every three-piece suit that turned a cuff on their land. That they believed anybody who showed up without a hound at their heels was either a Revenuer or an evangelist, both of which meant you’d better be on your toes. That anybody who had all their teeth couldn't be trusted. But that was ridiculous. The movie
Deliverance
was not a documentary. At any rate, Emerland wasn't scared off that easily.