Seven Kinds of Death

ISBN-13: 978-1-62205-002-4

SEVEN KINDS OF DEATH

Copyright © 2012 InfinityBox Press

All rights reserved. Except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means in any manner without the written permission of the publisher.

All characters, groups, places, and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious.

Cover: Richard Wilhelm

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SEVEN KINDS OF DEATH

Kate Wilhelm

ONE

Bob Sherwood simply
kept out of the way while the two white-coated attendants got the girl in the cast aboard car seventeen. They had brought their own wheelchair, and a ramp, but, even so, all three people had worked up a good sweat before they had her settled. Her cast went up out of sight under a full skirt; she was the color of skim milk when they wheeled her past him, and by the time they were all finished, and he looked in on her, there was a green tinge under the white of her face.

“I’ll come around just as soon as we’re under way,” he said. “Won’t be long.”

She nodded. They had put her on the bench that would become her bed later on; her leg in the cast was straight out in front of her. There was one big suitcase, a carry-on type of bag, a paper sack, her purse, and, leaning against the bench, a pair of crutches. The little room looked very crowded.

“You okay? You going to be okay until I get back?”

“Fine,” she muttered. “Lovely.”

He hesitated only a moment, then swung around to go meet the other passengers booked for car seventeen. One of the guys who had brought her aboard was waiting for him at the outside door. He thrust two twenty-dollar bills at Bob Sherwood. “Look after her,” he said—something Bob Sherwood would have done in any event.

Now they were coming: a couple with too many bags; a family with two kids—whiners, shriekers, already in good voice; two women who would inspect the silverware and peer under the beds, and ask for one more pillow or blanket… There was a lot of excitement—there always was for a cross-country trip—as well as a touch of boredom for a few of the passengers who had done it all before, manic behavior from some youngsters who couldn’t wait to start roaming…

“I called you,” Toni Townsend said when he got back to her. “Didn’t you hear me?” She looked very near tears. “They didn’t bring my bag of books!”

The green had left her skin; there was even a touch of pink in her cheeks; she looked to be twenty-five at the most, with straight, shoulder-length brown hair, no makeup, brown eyes that were quite nice. He glanced at the suitcase, the carry-on, the paper sack. “You sure? Maybe they’re in one of the suitcases.”

“I had a stack of books in a paper bag, and they must have left it in the station wagon. I called you,” she said again, plaintively. “Four days! When’s the first stop, long enough to buy something to read?”

“Well, there’s Salt Lake City, around five thirty or so in the morning, and tomorrow night around eight thirty we’ll be in Denver…”

She groaned and turned to the window, ignoring him completely as he moved her bags out of the way so she could get to the little sink and toilet across the room. He always left the curtain open long enough for the occupant to get the idea, but then he closed it out of discretion.

“Now, there’s anything you want, you just pull the button, day or night. Something to drink, eat. I’ll see if I can find you something to read, and I’ll pick up your meal vouchers and bring your food…”

She kept her face averted, fighting tears, until he left again. Four days, she kept thinking, in prison, solitary confinement. She thought of the prankster god who had been playing with her and laughing at her for the past three weeks, and she cursed that god. Three weeks ago she had received the long distance call from a California firm inviting her to appear for an interview. They liked her resume and the work she had submitted; they would pay for her trip and a hotel at that end for two days. Her roommate had shrieked with joy, and awakened the god, Toni now half believed. And that god was getting even. The interview had gone well, and then, as she had left the company grounds, her taxi and a delivery truck had collided, and she had ended up in the hospital with a broken leg. Try us again in a year or two, the company goon had said, even as he was making arrangements for her return to New York.

And the goons had kept her books. Nothing to read, nothing to see. Beyond the window heavy fog lay over the fields; the Sacramento Valley was fogged in from side to side, top to bottom.

Then she heard a knock on her door and it was pushed open; a tall slender woman stood there with a friendly grin on her face, a shopping bag in her hand. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Victoria Leeds. The car attendant mentioned your problem with books and I came to the rescue.” She drew near and put down the shopping bag where Toni could see; it appeared to be filled with books.

In the dining car a little later, Victoria Leeds was sitting next to an obese man, opposite his wife and her sister, who was also very fat. The wife seemed quite normal. The man was saying: “You know, I always thought I could write, if I had the time, I mean. I tell you we’ve had some adventures out on the farm, haven’t we, honey?” His wife smiled and nodded.

Their waiter brought soup, which Victoria began to eat with apparent concentration, but actually she was thinking: It was evident why this trio had chosen the train, not a flight; she wondered if it was even possible for them to fly. He filled three quarters of the seat they shared. And Toni Townsend obviously couldn’t fly with her leg in the cast straight out like that. The families with several children would find it difficult, of course.

“Remember that poem Freddy wrote back in high school?” the man was saying to his wife. “Got it published in the Davis newspapers, he did.”

Across the table his wife smiled and nodded. He talked on and on. “Always thought it was knowing the right people, being in the right place at the right time. Know what I mean?”

Victoria picked at her salad. The train was getting near Davis. As soon as it stopped, she decided, she would escape. Waiters dodged passengers who passed back and forth through the diner; a child paused at her table to eye her disconcertingly, its expression as alien as a wild animal’s. She watched the woman across the table bite into her chicken sandwich, and half listened to the man next to her suggest that if Freddy just knew one editor who was interested in him, he might really make it, know what I mean? She drew out two dollar bills from her purse and put them under her plate as the train slowed for the Davis station.

“You going on in to Chicago?” the man asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, we’ll see you again in the next day or two. Nice talking to you.”

She fled. She made her way through the two cars separating her own from the diner before the train started to move again. In her tiny compartment she drew the curtain across the door, sat down, and closed her eyes. Across the hallway, down a room or two, a child was screaming lustily. She envied it.

“Why are you traveling by train?” Toni asked later that afternoon.

Victoria had been talking about her luncheon companions, the others in the diner. She shrugged. “Time out. I just wanted a little time out. Do you like that book?”

“It’s okay,” Toni said. “Do you get a lot of that when people find out you’re an editor? Wanting you to look at Freddy’s poems, their stories, stuff like that?”

Laughing, Victoria held up her hand. “First, I have a question. Are you now, or have you ever been a card-carrying aspiring writer?”

Toni laughed with her and shook her head.

“Okay. Sure we do, all of us do, I guess. And in a way that guy in the diner is right, partly it is a matter of luck, being in the right place, and so on. If they persist, I give them my card and say send your stuff in to the office.”

“Do you ever accept anything that comes in like that?”

“Hardly ever,” Victoria said slowly. “We deal almost exclusively through agents. As I said, he was more right than he knows.”

Later, in her own compartment again, Victoria wondered at the pinched look that had crossed Toni’s face. All right, she thought, Toni had a problem. Who didn’t? Determinedly she watched the passing scenery; the Sierra mountains now. Then, there would be darkness, the wasteland of Nevada, the desert of Utah… Soon she would think about Paul Volte, she told herself. Not this minute, but soon. For that was why she had taken the train, why she was spending four days that she could not really spare, time out, in order to think seriously of herself and Paul Volte. But not just yet.

During the next day the train wound through spectacularly beautiful river valleys and gorges, the canyons cut by the Colorado River through the Rocky Mountains. Victoria visited with Toni several times during the day; they chatted about books, movies, music, New York, but most of the time they simply gazed at the view beyond the window.

As she neared Toni’s room late in the afternoon, she saw the car attendant, Bob Sherwood, blocking the doorway.

“You made this?” he said, the wonder in his voice undisguised. “I’ll be damned! How’d you do that?”

More faintly Toni’s voice floated out, “I don’t know. I never know. My hands know what they’re doing, but they don’t talk to me much.”

Victoria felt as if the train had lurched violently, although it had not; she felt as if she were falling, although she was unmoving. She held onto the metal of the bathroom door waiting for the vertigo to pass, and when it was over. Bob Sherwood was talking again, this time turned to include her.

“Did you know she’s an artist? A real artist. Just look at this.”

It was a plasticine bas-relief head, Bob Sherwood’s head, rising from a smooth base no more than four inches square. Even without studying it closely, Victoria could see that Toni had caught his broad face, the widely spaced eyes, the thick nose and narrow lips. The expression was of intelligent patience, exactly right.

He held it out for her to look at, but his hand was protective, cupping the piece; he was not inviting her to touch it. When a call button sounded, he looked resigned. “She gave it to me,” he said to Victoria, then turned back to the room. “I’ll bring your dinner between six thirty and seven. Okay? You want anything before that?” Her response was inaudible. “Okay. You take it easy. And, Ms. Townsend, thanks. Just thank you very much.”

After he had left, Victoria entered the little room, studying Toni as if for the first time. “What was that job you interviewed for? You said a computer company?”

Toni was on the window bench that opened to make a bed. She nodded. “In the graphics department.”

“Oh,” Victoria said. “Designing software packages, something like that?”

Toni lifted her chin almost defiantly. “It had something to do with art, anyway. The first job possibility that did.”

“What will you do now?”

“I don’t know,” Toni said miserably. “Back to my job washing dishes, I guess. I’m a very artistic dishwasher.”

“You have a lawyer, I hope,” Victoria said. “Have you signed anything yet?”

Toni shook her head. “I was too mad.”

“Good. Don’t. Not until you see a lawyer.” Abruptly she stood up. “I’ve got a bottle of wine in my room. And a book you might want to read. I’ll be right back.”

In her room she picked up the page proofs of Paul Volte’s book.
With These Hands
, and for a moment she stood holding it tightly. She could have opened it and found a passage almost identical to Toni’s words, almost as if she had been reading from the text:
I never know. My hands know what they’re doing.
She retrieved the wine from her bag, and returned to Toni’s room.

“Do you know his column?” she asked, handing over the book. It had an orange cover, and the stamped message,
Uncorrected Page Proofs.
It was very thick.

Toni examined it curiously, shaking her head.

“Too bad,” Victoria said dryly. “His column on art and architecture appears every month in our magazine. This is his third full-length book, and it’s going to be a best seller. Due out at the end of the month.” She began to work with the cork in the wine. Her little corkscrew was sometimes uncooperative and crumbled the cork instead of lifting it neatly.

“How do you know it’ll be a best seller?”

Victoria was turning the corkscrew slowly. “Oh, two book clubs have taken it, and advance reviews have been dynamite. And it ran as a three-parter in the magazine last winter. I was the editor for the piece,” she said, even more dryly than before. She glanced at Toni in time to see a flush cover her face. The cork came out smoothly and she nodded at it in satisfaction. She poured the wine into little plastic glasses and handed one to Toni. “Cheers,” she said. “Now let’s talk about you and your accident and broken leg and lawyers and your future. And cabbages and kings, if they seem pertinent.” Toni looked mystified and Victoria drank all her wine and poured herself a second glass.

At two in the morning Victoria finally brought her thoughts to the problem that had made her take the train. There had been far less thinking time than she had anticipated. The train was crowded and noisy. A child down the corridor from her room was unhappy and vocal about it. Intermittently the loudspeaker brayed announcements about meals, about a bingo game or something like that, about a trivia game, about movies to be shown in the lounge car, about happy-hour prices, about snacks. And, of course, there had been all that scenery.

She sat up in her bed with the curtain open to the black night with not a sign of human activity out there on the prairie, nothing to distract her. “All right,” she said under her breath. “All right.”

In three months she would be forty-two years old. Sometimes she looked it, most often not, but she knew. She knew. She had been married for seven years, a long time ago, so long ago she thought of that period as if it concerned someone other than her. She had a good job, with the offer of a better job waiting for her decision. And she had to face the fact that although she and Paul were a “thing,” had a relationship, were ideal for each other, loved each other, nothing was going to happen between them that hadn’t already happened.

“All right,” she said again. “Them’s the facts. Now what?”

You have to bring it out into the open, discuss it with him, her counselor had said nearly two years ago. Two years, she repeated to herself. Yes. Right. Bring it out, talk to the wind, throw the words on the waves. He wouldn’t discuss it. He wouldn’t go to a counselor. She had dropped counseling when the question surfaced: what are your choices then? She didn’t need to pay anyone to tell her the choices. Don’t rock the boat, go on with everything exactly the way it is, or get out.