The Devil's Alphabet (18 page)

Pax said, “So did you know about this stuff? That she was online, talking to people about Switchcreek?”

Deke exhaled heavily. “I didn’t know, but it didn’t surprise me. Jo didn’t have many people to talk to in this town—people who could keep up with her, anyway. You know how she was. Didn’t suffer fools.”

“Oh yeah.” She had scholarship brains. Nobody had expected her to stay in Switchcreek—until the Changes. Until she got pregnant. “You think Jo believed all that crazy shit Weygand was saying? I mean, her own girls. She couldn’t really think they were …” He gestured vaguely. “Alternate universe babies.”

“Just because she was smart doesn’t mean she was always
right,” Deke said. “Look.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wallet the size of a bank bag. With his thick fingers he fished out a heavily creased piece of paper and handed it to Pax.

Pax unfolded it. It was a printout of a black-and-white photo, a long-range shot blown up to the point of blurriness. In the foreground were pine trees, a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Beyond the fence was a wide, snow-covered plain. Half a dozen low, barracks-like buildings sat in the distance. Three figures were moving between two buildings. Two of them were clearly argos, all long arms and sloped back. Running ahead of them was a much smaller figure moving on all fours. Scale was difficult to assess, but considering the size of the argos, the third figure could have been a pony or a large dog.

“Jo gave that to me a couple years ago,” Deke said. “She found it on the web. Said it came from China.”

“Wait—argos in China?”

Deke shrugged.

Pax said, “What’s that other thing, in front of them?”

“Can’t you tell? That’s an argo child.”

Pax stared at the picture. “No fucking way.”

“There’s all kinds of theories. People think there was another Change, before Switchcreek. Completely covered up. Or maybe more than one—China in the sixties, Russia in the eighties. Or in the States, the usual secret military base in the desert. All that Area Fifty-one shit.”

Pax said, “So this picture—”

“Doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

“What?”

Deke held out a hand, and Pax gave the paper back to him.
“It’s a hoax, P.K. Urban myth, like Sasquatch. There’s dozens of pictures like these on the web. Hundreds maybe. It’s all done with computers, people jackin’ around.” He folded it up and placed it back in his wallet. “Argos in Mexico, betas in the northwest, chubs hanging out with Elvis. This ain’t even one of the convincing ones.”

“But if Jo gave it to you she must have thought—”

“Jo wanted to be fooled as much as anyone, Paxton. No one wants to think we’re alone out here. It’s the town disease.”

T
HE SMELL OF
the house was driving him crazy.

His father’s scent seemed to have infused every surface: the carpets, the cloth of the furniture, the walls. The smell couldn’t have been much different than a few days ago, but it seemed worse to him now that he knew the taste of fresh vintage. Now Pax could smell only the decay, the corruption of the pure product, like a fruit farmer attuned to the taint of rot.

He opened all the windows and set up fans in the front and back screen doors to start a cross-draft, but the humidity only seemed to give weight to the odor, turning it into something physical that shifted in strength and intensity, moving from room to room like an animal.

He tried to ignore it. He went through his father’s pile of mail, sorting junk from bills and bank statements, with the idea that he should figure out if his father was in financial trouble, but he quickly lost concentration. He couldn’t even watch TV; the scent of his father was strongest there by the couch. Finally he fell asleep in the guest room with an arm thrown over his face.

When he awoke the next morning he was damp and aching and the scent was still with him.

I should leave now, he thought. Get dressed and drive out of Switchcreek as fast as I drove in.

He went to the bathroom, stripped, and sat on the edge of the tub for a long time waiting for the water to get hot. Despite the hollowness in his stomach he had no appetite. Finally he stepped under the shower, steadying himself with one palm against the tile.

Leave or go, he thought. Back to Chicago, or sink back into the life he’d left when he was fifteen? There was hardly anything calling him back to the city. He’d probably been fired from the restaurant by now. And there was no one back there who’d miss him, not really. He had coworkers, and people he got drunk with, and coworkers he got drunk with. Had even one of them called him to see if he was okay? Okay, his cell phone was dead and he hadn’t packed the charger, but even if they had called, was there one of them he would have felt compelled to call back? People around him fell in and out of love affairs—some of them even got married—and he had no more interest in their dramas than he did for his father’s Discovery Channel documentaries. Fuck or don’t fuck. Move in together or not. Don’t dress it up in all this costume emotion to make it seem important. There’d been a few women and a couple of men who’d wanted more from him, who wanted a
relationship
. But Jesus, no. He’d never had to do much to drive them away. He didn’t have to be mean, or push them away. He simply shut off whatever part of him he’d let slip, whatever glimmer of him that made them think they knew him. Once he sealed that crack, soon enough they went away on their own.

He dried off and walked naked down the hallway. He knew there weren’t any clean clothes left in his suitcase; he’d only
expected to stay a couple of days. He walked past the guest room to his father’s room and pushed open the door.

The room looked much as it had a dozen years before: a long, mirrored bureau, wood veneer bedside tables, the long gauzy drapes his mother had liked. The bed was unmade, the bedclothes pushed against the wall. The box spring had been lifted off the frame and reinforced by a row of two-by-fours, but his father’s weight had still pressed a hollow into the mattress.

A pile of clothes lay on the floor beside the bed. Pax picked up a huge white T-shirt. He rubbed it through his hands, then lifted it to his face. He inhaled, breathed out, and inhaled again. The smell of the vintage swam thickly into his nose, his lungs.

He dropped the shirt over his head. The wide neck hung lopsided on his shoulders, open to his collarbone; the hem reached to his knees. He held out his arms and looked down at himself. The shirt was as big as a tablecloth.

He imagined his father laid out on some bed at Rhonda’s Home, staring down the expanse of his body. Waiting.

He took off the T-shirt, went to the closet. He pushed aside hangers until he found his father’s old clothes, from before the Changes. He pulled on a striped button-down shirt—several sizes bigger than what he wore, but in the realm of the wearable—then went back to the guest room to find his jeans.

He realized he had his father’s T-shirt in his hand again. He spread it across the bed like a blanket.

His father loved him. His father needed him. The terms were indistinguishable.

He went back to the guest room and looked under the bed for the stack of papers Rhonda had given him. They weren’t
there. He sat on the bed, looking around at the bookshelves. He’d signed them that night, then—what? He remembered falling asleep, but he couldn’t recall putting the papers away.

It didn’t matter. He’d find them later, and burn them.

The gate was closed, of course. He leaned out of the window of the Tempo and pressed the intercom’s call button. “Hello?”

After a long pause a male voice came back. “Can I help you with something?”

“Hi, this is Paxton Martin. Is this—” He couldn’t remember the name of the security guard he’d met. Barry? Brian? “I’m here to see my father.”

“Oh, hi there, Paxton,” the voice said. Genuinely friendly. “I thought that was you. We met the other day.”

Pax looked at the gate, then spotted the camera sticking up above the wall. Paxton lifted a hand in a wave. Another five seconds passed. “So if you could open the gate?”

“Rhonda’s not here right now,” the guard said. “You want to leave a message?”

“No message. I’m just here to see my father. Harlan Martin.”

“Rhonda always tells me if we’re going to have visitors. Did you call ahead? Visitors need to call ahead.”

“Well I didn’t do that.” Pax struggled to keep his voice level. “So if you could just let me in, I need to talk to my father. It’s important. Family business.”

“You really need to call ahead.”

“Listen—what was your name again?”

“Barron.” Cold now.

“Barron, open the gate. I never signed anything, so you’re
holding my father illegally. I’ve come to take him home. You can’t stop the next of kin from seeing him.”

“You’re going to have to talk to Aunt Rhonda about that. Now if you can give me your phone number, I’m ready to write it down.”

“Open the fucking gate, Barron.”

“Son, there’s no call for cussing.”

“Open the fucking gate!”

No answer. Pax pressed the call button, then pressed it again.

He switched off the car, got out, and marched up to the gate. He grabbed the iron bars with both hands and yanked, but they didn’t move.

He stepped back, looked at the stone walls that adjoined the gate at each side. They were about ten feet high, made of big stones set into the mortar. Maybe climbable, if his legs didn’t already feel like Jell-O. An argo could have pulled himself right over them.

He walked back to the car, slid between the side mirror and the intercom post, and got in. He thought about gunning the engine and ramming the gates, but the little Ford would probably bounce off.

He took a breath and pressed the button again. “Barron, I’m sorry I swore. I’m a little frustrated. All I want to do is see my father.”

No answer.

He pressed the call button again. Pax said, “I need to talk to Aunt Rhonda in person. Could you tell me where she is? Barron?”

“Hold on,” the guard said.

A minute passed. Pax leaned against the steering wheel. The back of his head was wet with sweat. Another blazing August day in Switchcreek, Tennessee.

Another minute passed, then Barron said, “Aunt Rhonda says she’ll talk to you. It’s Saturday, so she’s working at the Welcome Center.”

Jesus, Pax thought, he couldn’t have just told him that?

“Okay, thanks,” Pax said. He started the car and then leaned out to the box again. “Could you do me one favor? Could you tell my father that I was here?”

“Uh, I’d have to ask Rhonda about that,” Barron said.

“Barron?”

“Yes?”

He was going to ask him, When you take a shit, do you ask Rhonda if it’s okay to wipe your ass?

“Have a
super
day,” Pax said.

Downtown seemed busier than when he’d arrived last Saturday. There were two buses at the Icee Freeze, and scores of cars lined the streets and filled the Bugler’s parking lot. He finally found an empty parking spot on Main Street and walked a block to the Welcome Center.

Pax didn’t know how old the building was—late 1800s? Over the years it had been a church, a post office, and a one-room schoolhouse. It had been boarded up years before he was born and no one had gotten around to tearing it down.

He walked up the wooden steps and through the open door. Inside it was cool and shadowy. The wide, uneven planks of the floor looked original, but the rest of the interior had been refurbished into a combination information center and gift
shop; half a dozen tourists were browsing through racks of books and postcards and knickknacks. A charlie girl worked the cash register in the back. Aunt Rhonda was talking to an older couple and pointing to a topographical map of the area hanging on the wall. She noticed Pax and let him know with a nod that she’d get to him in a bit.

He looked over the merchandise: commemorative plates; novelty “argo-sized” pencils; stuffed black bears with “Welcome to Switchcreek” dog tags; bald beta dolls you could dress in male or female outfits. One wall was all T-shirts and sweatshirts. The book rack held several scientific books on the Changes, as well as a couple photo-heavy coffee-table books and a slim, cheaply printed book titled
The Families of Switchcreek
. He looked up “Martin” in the index and found that his father was given an entire page. His mother got two sentences—one about her life as the pastor’s wife and one on her death of TDS-B. Paxton got one line: “His son, Paxton Martin, was one of the few who did not contract TDS.” He was relieved there wasn’t more. Something like, “He lives in Chicago, where he smokes dope, plays Halo, and continues to be an embarrassment to his father.”

“How do you like our little store?” Aunt Rhonda said. She’d slipped up beside him.

“It’s …” He put the book back in its spot. “People buy a lot of this stuff?”

“More than you think. It’s only been open two summers and we’ve already earned back the setup costs. Why don’t you come on back?”

She led him to the back of the center. “We’re part of the Smoky Mountain Tourist Complex. We’ve got the most visited national park in the country just down the road, and that generates all kinds of spillover.” She lifted up a section of the back
counter and held it open for him. “Now, we’re never going to be Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg. The whole unsolved genetic catastrophe thing keeps our numbers down.”

Rhonda told the girl behind the counter that she’d be out back, then led him out to a fenced yard behind the center. Everett, bald head gleaming in the sun, sat at a patio table talking quietly into a cell phone. Rhonda took a chair next to Everett and gestured for Pax to sit next to her. “This is just the start,” she said. “I’m working with an eco-tourist company to develop an educational entertainment package. Meet with the residents, see how they live, that kind of thing. Have you ever been to Williamsburg? The colonial village? Something like that. But with all the clades. Shake hands with an argo! Cook dinner with a beta. That kind of thing.”

“A freak show.”

Rhonda poked him hard with a stubby finger. “It’s only a freak show, Paxton Martin, if ignorant people talk about us that way. How do you think we’re going to get people to understand us and not fear us? Education. Education and exposure. I’m trying to get the Learning Channel to do a reality show on us, like they did with that midget family.”