“That’s my old man’s truck,” Wes said, already climbing out. “What’s it doing just sittin’ there?”
“He’s prob’ly off jackin’ or something. Where you going, asshole?”
“Not here he ain’t jacking.” Wes ran back, trampling through the thicket. “Looks like he just rolled off the road,” he mumbled to himself as he approached the truck; it rested against a small cluster of pines.
Al clambered down. “Get back over here! I need a goddamn drink an yer—” He saw the sudden tension in Wes’s shoulders. “What the fuck?” Al approached, muttering. He glanced first at Wes, then gazed into the truck and let loose a low whistle. “What in hell…?”
Wes stared, the cords of his neck bulging. Then he yanked the door open, and out billowed the flies. The truck was empty, cabin torn apart, cushion stuffing ripped out in great fistfuls, all of it spattered with brown. Dripping ropes of a thick, dark substance hung from beneath the door, and dried gobs lay on the ground in places where wetness had been absorbed into the earth, leaving only scum at the top, crusted bits gleaming in the sunlight.
Bloated flies buzzed drowsily in the heat. Some swarmed on a damp patch, covering it with their shining bodies.
“Can’t we get the damned windows fixed?”
“Cigarettes bothering you?”
Coughing, Athena kept her eyes on the road. “Your perfume.”
Doris laughed. “I overdo it again? Sorry, kid. Just a habit I got into back when I…”
“Don’t say it.”
“…used to work in the morgue. Like I always say, you can take the girl out of the icebox, but you can’t take the—”
“I’d settle for taking the icebox out of the conversation, thank you.”
Doris laughed again, then her face went hard. “Was that bitch at the desk giving you a bad time? What’s her problem now?”
“Said we should have taken them to the infirmary in Chatsworth.”
“Injuries that serious?”
The younger woman shrugged, steered the rig up to the bay door. They found Sig the Stink out in front of the hall, grinning shyly. Siggy Applegate was fat and bald, slow moving and unwashed, but the rest of the crew were under strict instructions to be nice to him. He was a Quaker—there were a lot of them in the area—and through him Doris hoped to gain some mea sure of community support. They needed it.
Blinking small moist eyes at them, Sig blocked the driveway, and his little arm shot up as though holding back the rig. There was something spastic about the gesture; the arm seemed to have moved of its own accord. “Uh, Athena, uh, don’t put the rig away. We had another call, Doris. It just come in. Uh, kid playing with firecrackers out by Ong’s Hat.”
“Jackpot,” said Doris. “I hope you appreciate this training, Larry. Sometimes we go days without a call. Take us out, honey. We’ll see you to night, Jack. Siggy, get in the rig!”
Peeling tar paper covered the few cedar wood shacks. In the center of the clearing, a dog sniffed around a huge mound of discarded clothing and tin cans, and everywhere rotted abandoned cars and pieces of cars.
Munro’s Furnace.
With a clattering roar, the truck aimed for the main cluster of buildings. Al yelled as the truck slammed to a halt, spraying sand, just in front of his gin mill.
“You start knockin’ on doors!” Wes swung down. “Find out if anybody’s seen Pa! I’m gonna round up guys wi’ shotguns. An dogs!”
“Count on me, buddy.” Al jumped down. “We’ll find ’im.” Any gathering of the residents of Munro’s Furnace would be sure to occasion the selling of whiskey, and as he started toward a neighboring shack, a grin seeped through his mask of concern.
Behind him, Wes cursed. Al whirled around.
A brown and white cat rubbing against his leg, Marl stood on the crumbling cement steps of the gin mill. Unkempt blond hair framed his face, pale and dappled with acne, and his short body looked well padded with baby fat. Half in the shadowed doorway, he blinked at the daylight, his cotton shirt and the lower part of his slack face glistening with wet blood.
A few yards away, Wes faced him, his mouth working silently.
“No, Wes!” Racing toward them, Al yelled, “Leave ’im alone! He jus’ gits nosebleeds allatime!”
The cat vanished, and the boy stared after it. By the time his vacant eyes widened, it was too late to run.
Wes slammed into him, shook the boy viciously, Marl’s head snapping back and forth. “My pa! You fuckin’ loony! Where’s my pa? Whad you do to ’im?” He kept screaming while the boy’s head knocked against the wall.
Al jumped in as Wes turned, shouting and swinging, and the pine wall made a buckling sound as the two men hit the side of the building.
Released, Marl sank to the ground, his expression puzzled as blood slowly branched, trickling from his white nostrils.
Under a graying sky, a small group of women hurried out of one of the nearby houses, and from somewhere men came running with eager shouts of “There’s a fight down Spencer’s!”
“But he’s got blood all over ’im!” Wes slumped against the wall, choking with rage and surrender as the blood dripped from his mouth and down his chin.
“I told ya, ya asshole—he gits nosebleeds!” Face white and rigid, Al stood astride Wes, shaking his big fists. “He don’t know nuthin’ ’bout yer friggin’ father.”
The gathering crowd made disappointed sounds—it was over.
Panting heavily, Al took a step back and looked for his son. “Where da fuck…?”
Random bullet holes pocked the wood of the doorway like tiny black tunnels. From within the darkened gin mill came a whimpering sob.
Storm clouds massed.
The highway to the shore cut straight and clean through the forest, and Athena drove mechanically through the flat sameness of the countryside.
Doris pointed out a yellow call box. “That’s got to be where the call came from.”
When Athena pumped the brakes, the ambulance took the turn sharply. As always, her breath caught at the instantaneous transition from highway to wilderness, and her palms began sweating slightly as she tried to imagine what this road must be like at night.
Navigating the choppy sand, she recalled the first stories she’d ever heard about “pineys,” so long ago, old tales told mostly as shuddery jokes. Everyone snickered about the pineys, about their being weird and dangerous— seven feet tall, some of them, supposedly; whole families with six fingers on each hand; cannibals, degenerates and worse. She shook her head and half-grinned to herself, remembering the first self-professed pineys she’d actually met: a well-dressed couple, both of whom spoke with a slight country twang. That had been almost a disappointment, and later, upon meeting so many others just like them, she’d dismissed the fables as just that.
She hadn’t known then about the shantytowns.
The road became a rut through desolate runty trees, and they passed a shack that looked as though it might collapse at any moment, flowered curtain trailing out a lopsided window. A few minutes later, similarly primitive structures appeared at a crossroads. Ong’s Hat, population twenty-three. Sagging beneath a blueberry-dark sky, these dwellings leaned at awkward and unlikely angles, as if built by children out of cards, as if any strong wind might knock them down.
Athena tightened her grip on the slickness of the wheel. All these sand-road hamlets looked the same. Yet something hung in the air. A feeling. A sense that those who lived like this had no hope…couldn’t help but be brutal. Bestial. Never would she get used to it.
A small knot of people in the road refused to budge, so Athena switched off the siren, and straining at the
