Skeletons (44 page)

“Jimmy boy, that you?"

There was silence on the other end of the line. Then the voice, a timbre lower, said, "
Sullivan
."

"Yeah, Jimmy, it's me! How're the old bones rattling, babe?"

"Are you still . . .”

"Yeah, Jimmy, still human. You like that sound of that word—
human
?"

There came a strangled sound on the other end. "
Where are you!
"

"Oh, we can't have that, can we, Jimmy? See you.”

“I'll kill—“

Sullivan hung up the phone, cutting off the enraged voice. "See what I mean?" the salesman said to us. "Now, listen to
this
call."

Sullivan punched new numbers, waited while the phone rang.

"Hello?" a tentative voice said.

"Bert?"

"Benny, that you?" a gruff voice said.

"You bet, Bertie."

The gruff voice laughed. "How they hanging, Benny?"

"Just the way you like 'em."

The laughter continued. "You gonna make it or not? Tomorrow night, or I've got to leave you behind. You know I don't want to do that, Benny."

"I know you don't."

"Hell, I'm five miles out now as it is. Been boarded only twice this week, though. They're getting tired of finding nothing. Tell you the truth, I'm getting tired of hiding in that hold. Hell, Chub's been smelling bad as ever."

Sullivan laughed. "Chub! How is the old gorilla!”

“Fine, just fine. So when we gonna see you, boy?”

“'Bout sundown, I imagine. I'll call. And Bertie, hope you don't mind, but I've got a couple of guests."

There was a pause. "Oh?"

"They're all right, Bertie. Guy and his daughter. Human as they come."

"Well . . . hell, bring 'em along. We can always throw 'em to the sharks. Or sell 'em, right? 'Member Cancun, in sixty-eight?"

Sullivan laughed. "See you tomorrow, Bertie.”

“You got a date, boy."

"Bye."

"G-bye, Benny."

Sullivan hung up the phone. "See what I mean?" he asked.

My father was silent for a moment. "You sure it will be all right for us to come along?"

Sullivan laughed. "You heard it, didn't you? What's the matter, don't trust me? Think I'm gonna sell you to the skeletons? Or worse?
Wait'll
you see Bertie's steamer. It's a mess! And
wait'll
you see Chub!
Hoooeee
! I'm telling you . . ."

He looked in the mirror, smiled, shrugged. "Hey, don't worry about it," he said. "You can trust me. Besides"—he laughed—"what other choice do you have?"

Sullivan took a dizzying mix of back and main streets; one moment we were speeding down a deserted main highway; a moment later he made a veering turnoff and bounced us through a badly paved single-lane rut barely worthy of the name road. Only once did he stop, at a gasoline station in a barren landscape; pine trees dotted the near hills, but the bowl we had driven into seemed filled with rocks and dust.

"Bob Miller's place," Sullivan said, with a touch of sadness. He looked over the forlorn front of the gas station. "Thirty years ago, everybody in Millerton, just over the hills there, stopped here." He pointed to the crest of a knobby, pine-strewn rise under the towering sun, "They named the town for one of Miller's relatives back in the eighteen hundreds. Bob had the first gas in the area. What became the garage was still a country store then. He always was a loner."

Sullivan pumped gas, scoured the dusty station with his eyes. "There," he said, pointing to two open holes just to the right of the garage. "He had his dogs buried there. I imagine there's an open hole up back, too, where his wife, Mary, was buried. I don't know, I wish them all well, in a way." He looked at us. "You know what I mean? There's . . . still part of 'em that's us. They were us before, and even though they're changed . . ."

He shook his head, finished pumping the gas, put the nozzle back into its holder, and we drove off.

When we reached it at nightfall, Coos Bay was shrouded in fog.

"Bet you folks are hungry, eh?" Sullivan said. "We've got a few minutes before Bertie needs us there. I know a place."

He took us to a restaurant, at one time elegant. But now its insides were churned up, broken chairs and tables everywhere, smashed glasses littering the floor. On the wall hung undersea paintings that must have looked wonderful in low light: drifting fans of sea grass, ranking hills of alabaster coral, schools of darting sunfish. Now there were stains on the walls, broken whiskey bottles behind the bar, a sour, damp smell.

"Hell," Sullivan said. "We'll eat something later, on the boat."

We left the restaurant, and Sullivan was silent as we drove through the fog-rolled streets.

He stopped. I waited for him to go on. Fog swirled around the car, broke in clouds as it drifted into the windshield. I tried to peer through it, find out where we were, see what corner we had stopped on.

"This is it," Sullivan said.

I helped my father out of the car.

"I can smell the water," he said.

Sullivan said, "Keep your voice down." He leaned into the car, hit the horn lightly, twice.

We heard nothing.

He repeated the tooting. Then we heard two low, muffled, foghorn sounds in return.

"She's up the pier," Sullivan whispered.

We brought out equipment from the car. Sullivan went to the trunk, brought out a battered suitcase. He closed the trunk, looked into the front seat, rummaged through the sample cases, brought one out, opened it, pulled out a long rubber snake.

"Bertie loves these things," he said, coiling the snake and putting it into his pocket. He looked wistfully at the rest of the merchandise in the car. "Too bad. . ."

He walked away, dropping his car keys on the pavement, leaving the car doors open, not looking back.

We followed.

Underfoot, suddenly, was deck planking. I heard the slap of waves against rock or pier below me. I led my father. I could barely see in front of me.

Suddenly Sullivan disappeared into fog. I walked on, feeling through the roiling cloud, leading my father, and bumped into a railing that abruptly ended. Bobbing out of the fog was the pointed bow of a ship, close-tied.

I stumbled back into Sullivan.

"Whoa, take it easy! You're liable to fall into the water!"

I held on to the back of his coat as we walked on. Faintly, I heard humming. Then it was very close. "Stand to, friend," a gruff voice said.

Sullivan stopped. "You've got it, Bertie."

"Just stand while I check you over," the gruff voice said.

Suddenly, out of the fog, came a length of skeletal hand, clutching forward

"My God!" Sullivan gasped, jumping back, into my father and me.

"Ha-ha!" a voice cackled. "Got you, Sully! After all these years I finally got you!"

A massive figure leaped out of the fog at us. It was a woman, broad of girth, with a black oilcloth slicker whose hood was thrown back over her head. She was human, with a broad face, close-cropped hair.

She held up the plastic skeleton arm she gripped in her hand.

"You gave me this in eighty-two—don't you remember, Sully? Scared hell out of me, put it in my bed while I was playing cars on deck. Climbed in with the
friggin
' thing! Ha-ha! Got you back good with it, didn't I?"

Sullivan, who had begun to recover, nodded and grinned. "You got me back real good, Bertie." He took the rubber snake from his pocket, regarded it wistfully, then threw it into the water. "I won't even bother to try this one again, after that."

"Ha-ha!"

Sullivan introduced us. 'This is Colonel
Coine
, and this is his daughter, Claire."

"So . . ." Bertie examined us, keeping her eyes on me.

"She's the one, all right."

"What do you mean by that?" my father said.

"Been dreaming about her."

Bertie turned, melted into the fog. "Come on, Sully, you and your friends come on board."

We took a step after her, and there, suddenly, was a gangplank with rope handrails, leading to the solid deck of a ship. At the end Bertie waited for us. As soon as we passed onto the deck she dismounted the gangplank and pulled it in. She tramped off into the fog. We heard her mount steps, heard a door close. A moment later there was a chunk and a wish sound followed by a constant low hum. The ship moved.

"Say good-bye to land," Sullivan said, staring into the fog.

We stood a long time on the deck, waiting for Bertie to return. Finally we heard the slam of a door up in the fog again, a grunt, the sound of steps being negotiated.

"What the hell's wrong with you, Sully! Ain't you got no manners!"

Bertie appeared, kept walking past us, returned to the fog.

Sullivan, my father, and I followed.

We walked over dirty deck, around coils of rope, hooks, a mast. Finally we reached a hold. Somewhere I heard chirping, grunting sounds. Bertie took hold of the large door, hefted it up, and pushed it back until it fell with a thump.

"Down you go!" she said.

I peered down into the darkness. I saw nothing, smelled dampness.

"Sully, take 'em on down! I'll be with you shortly." Bertie disappeared into fog.

Sullivan went down first. We followed. I walked carefully on the steps, my father behind me.

When Sullivan got to the bottom, he fumbled along a wall and hit a switch. Light flared.

What I saw was nothing like what I had imagined. We were in a cozy if cold stateroom, paneled and carpeted. On the walls were mariner's charts and prints of modern art. At the far wall, next to a small bar, nestled a couch fronted by a coffee table, sided by comfortable-looking chairs; in the middle of the room, under a hanging lamp, was a pool table, racked for play.

"Chilly down here!" Sully said. He walked to the thermostat on the wall, turned a knob.

Instantly, heat ticked up from baseboard heaters with electric coils.

I led my father to the couch and we sat down.

From above, Bertie's voice boomed down. "Get 'em
somethin
' t' eat and drink, Sully! There's beer in the fridge! I'll be down—got to check the autopilot!"

Sullivan walked behind the bar, produced two bottles of beer and a can of soda.

"Colonel, when was the last time you had a
Carta
Blanca?"

My father laughed. "I can't believe it. Is the rest of this room as comfortable as this couch?"

"You bet. Bertie likes her nice things. Earned 'em, too."

My father took the frosted beer, swallowed some. He shook his head. "And cold, too!"

Sullivan was already back behind the bar, laying out cold cuts from the refrigerator.

Soon we had eaten, more and better than we had in days. Bertie joined us.

"Get me one of them Mexican Millers, will you, Sully?"

He handed her a beer. She sat in a chair beside the couch. She drank from the bottle, made a satisfied sound.

"Best investment I ever made, hauling this stuff up from
Azatlan
." She grinned. "Never got to make that last delivery to San Diego, zoo animals
or
beer. So if you get thirsty, I've got two hundred more cases of the stuff."

My father laughed, a sound I hadn't heard him make since I had first seen him.

Bertie stared at her bottle. "Wouldn't be a bad way to ride all this out, too, locked in the hold with cold cases of beer . . ."

She looked up at me, stared. "So you're the dream girl."

"She doesn't talk," Sully said.

"She didn't talk in my dream, either," Bertie said. She kept her eyes on me.

"In mine I found her on the side of the road, just like I did," Sully said.

My father said, "I dreamed about her, too. That I would find her."

Bertie nodded solemnly. "What we got is a mystery. When I started having these dreams, 'bout a week after those skeletons started popping up, I asked around. I never had dreams like that before, ones that kept coming back. I asked Nate Sherman," she said to Sully, who nodded, "and Jimmy the Macedonian, who we lost just a week ago. I called anybody I could think of. When I called Pete the Greek—remember Pete the Greek, Sully?"

Sullivan laughed. "I remember him."

"He was skeleton when I reached him. Started screaming at me, hissing like a snake."

Sullivan shook his head.

"Anyway, nobody I talked to had these dreams. Least, not that they remembered. A couple of 'em, Charlie Franks for one, remembered vague things, a girl in the back of his dreams, and when I mentioned this to Nate and Jimmy, they remembered the same kind of things. Like someone watching in the back of their dreams. Sully was the only one who had started having the dreams with the girl in them, and his were even stronger than mine. Until a couple of days ago, when mine got even stronger."