There is a knock on the door. It surprises him, jerks the cup in his hand and sends tea sloshing over the side. He grumbles, checks his watch, then rises, sets the cup aside, and casts a final glance at the shadow over the mantel.
Chapter Ten
Though Milestone’s creeping toward dawn, it always feels like deep night on Winter Street, and if you’re looking for sunshine, you’d best look up on over the roofs and not through the windows.
Time was you came here for your groceries, or for a haircut, or for some new clothes to impress your latest date. If you wanted the fancy stuff, you’d have to carry your ass clear into Saddleback, which I’ve always thought is a long haul just to spend twice as much as you would in Milestone for more or less the same damn thing. Doesn’t matter now though. These days, you come here to get laid or listen to the wisdom of Horace Dudds, one of only three town drunks who haven’t yet realized the town’s died around them. The others are Maggie, Horace’s unofficial girlfriend, and Kirk Vess, though he tends to wander and isn’t welcome on Horace and Maggie’s turf. Apparently they have standards he doesn’t meet. Politics of the homeless, I guess. If Maggie has a second name, she has never seen fit to reveal it, and no one ever asks. I guess we all figure when you’ve got nothing else to call your own, no one will begrudge you keeping your name to yourself.
I pull up outside a narrow gray building that looks like something from an angry child’s drawing with its funny angles and not-quite-straight edges, boarded up windows and trash stuffed in the wide cracks between the short run of steps leading to main door. Through the gaps in the boards nailed over the store’s plate glass window, a blinking florescent light shows a bunch of mannequins stripped of their clothes, and lewdly posed so they look like they’ve been frozen mid-orgy. A faded wooden plaque above the door bears the legend THE HOUSE OF IRIS.
On the opposite side of the road stands what used to be a clothing store for children before people stopped having them. Beneath the tattered red-and-white striped awning, sit two figures huddled against the weather.
“Evenin’ Sheriff,” Horace says, and offers me a toothy grin, at the same time drawing his bottle closer to his chest, like he’s afraid I’m going to snatch it. Horace may be a drunk, but he’s got a long memory, and can probably recall every bit of graffiti in my old drunk tank.
I nod my head, “Horace, Maggie,” and slam the truck door behind me. The sound echoes along the street and returns as thunder. I join them under the awning.
“Bad night. You two should be indoors, by the fire.”
Horace wears a purple peaked cap he won in a card game from an Irishman. A week later he played another game and lost everything he owned. Claims to this day it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t beaten that ‘potato-eatin’ Mick’, who he says, “Went home with my luck snug in his ass pocket.” Beneath the cap’s peak, a huge nose keeps a pair of piercing gray eyes from meeting, though they seem determined, the pupils like black balloons anchored by dark red threads. His belt is a stretch of skipping rope with the wooden handles lopped off. People call him old, and he looks damn old, but the thing is, he’s been in Milestone his whole life and it seems he’s always looked exactly as he does now.
“Plenty of fire,” Horace says sagely, “But it’s too wet to walk a’far as Eddie’s.”
“What happened up there anyway?” Maggie asks. She’s dressed in her signature floral print dress—sky-blue barely visible beneath an explosion of pink roses. Maggie’s a formidable woman, heavy, and quick to anger. A tornado with a head of hazel curls. There’s no doubt in my mind she could throw me from one end of the street to the other if I pissed her off. So I don’t, even in the past when she’s given me reason to. See the problem is that when Maggie’s not sitting by Horace’s side wherever he’s chosen to settle, she’s standing in the town square, blocking traffic and hollering her damn fool head off about the government and how they’re going to round us up one by one and brainwash us to their way of thinking (whatever the hell that is). As if that wasn’t bad enough, her pontificating and gesticulating is usually enough to allow certain parts of her to spill out of her loose-fitting dress, causing quite a stir among those who don’t have the sense to drive around her. I’ve always thought that in another life she and Cobb would have made a happy couple.
“Cobb lost it,” I tell her. “Burnt the place up.”
“Oh,” Maggie says with a shake of her head. “He had a lovely voice.”
“Anyone inside?” Horace asks, after a puzzled look at Maggie. I know how he feels. No one I know ever heard Cobb sing, assuming that’s what Maggie means.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t suppose the Reverend was one of ’em?”
“Matter of fact he was.”
Horace nods his satisfaction. “Good. Bastard ruined this town. Place had a hope afore him.”
Maggie shakes her head, effortlessly snatches the bottle, which I see is a flagon of cider, from Horace’s protective clutches. “I wouldn’t say he done ruined it. Minin’ comp’ny and greed did that. Hill just helped is all. Set the stage for the men in suits and too-tight ties to come waltzin’ in and make us regret ever settlin’ down here.” She ponders this for a moment, then takes a swig from the bottle that’s so generous, Horace’s eyes widen and he makes a grab for it. They scowl at one another for a few seconds like two dogs over a piece of meat, then Horace shakes his head and looks at me. “Your boy’s okay though. Counts for somethin’.”
“He’s alive, if that’s what you mean.”
Horace smiles a little, and his bloodshot eyes gleam dully. “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
“I’m assuming you’ve seen him around tonight, then?”
Horace shrugs. “Went in Miss Iris’s place. Gone again now though.”
Maggie grins. “He didn’t stay long, did he Horace? Which is a shame, because usually them two put on some kind of a show for us less-fortunate types.” She nods toward the double windows on the first floor of Iris’s building—which, much like the main window on the ground floor, isn’t boarded over enough to prevent the curious from seeing clear into the room, especially if the room is lit—and elbows Horace in the ribs. “I’m afraid one of these days it’s going to put ideas into your head.”
This is a conversation I have no interest in being a part of, so I bid them good night.
“Sheriff…?”
I stop, turn, look at Maggie. “Yeah?”
“You leavin’ us?”
“What do you mean?”
“You look like a man flirtin’ with the idea of runnin’.”
“No,” I reply. “Not yet anyway.”
“Man’s got a boy to look out for,” Horace adds. “Man with responsibilities can’t rightly run away from ’em or they’ll dog him for the rest of his life. Ain’t that right, Sheriff?”
“That’s right.” I get the feeling he’s talking from experience.
“Well you tell that handsome boy of yours Maggie says hello, and that if he ever gets tired of that young gussied-up whore, he can come see me.” She laughs uproariously and thumps a hand on Horace’s back, nearly sending him sprawling into the street.
“I will.”
“Hey, and Sheriff?” Horace again.
Exasperated, I frown at him. “What is it?”
“Town’s awful lonesome this time of night, ain’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“You find yourself in need of company, or backup, you just let us know.”
This sends Maggie into renewed hysterics, but Horace isn’t laughing.
“Who’s your passenger?” Maggie asks, loud enough for Brody to be alerted. His pale face presses against the window of my truck and he smiles.