Morpheus Tales #32 Preview

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ISSN 1757-5419 Issue 32 – October 2018 Edited by Sheri White Editorial By Sheri White

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YOU SNOOZE YOU LOSE By Stephen McQuiggan

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KILLING GOD By Todd Outcalt

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WEREWHAT? By Kent Rosenberger

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GOTHAM By Kris Green

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THE FRAUDULENT CORPSE By Steven Julson

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PENNY’S WISH By Christopher T. Hamel

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FATHER’S SHOUT By Gary Budgen

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CRYING BULLETS By Angela Boswell

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THE WOMAN WHO COULDN’T KEEP DOGS By Bill Green

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KNOCKING THEM DOWN By Jacob Moon

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Cover By Greg Chapman - https://darkartiste.wordpress.com Proof-read By Sheri White All material contained within the pages of this magazine and associated websites is copyright of Morpheus Tales. All Rights Reserved. No material contained herein can be copied or otherwise used without the express permission of the copyright holders.

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The prices alone made Dale want to lie down and put a pillow over his head; how could beds be so expensive? Christ, he could barely afford the mattress – yet there was Jenny looking at ones so far out of their price range she must already be asleep and dreaming. He left his wife to her browsing and contented himself over by the kids’ beds. One was a snazzy red sports car (how he would have loved one of those when he was a boy, how he would still love one even now) that he could not help but admiring, then he saw the salesman sidle over to Jenny with a predatory smile. Dale quickly joined them before she put a deposit on something they’d be paying off for the next ten years.

“We broke our old one,” he heard Jenny laugh, and the salesman eyed his approach as if calculating if Dale had it in him to have the kind of sex capable of breaking beds. Jenny blushed, suddenly realising how her statement could be misconstrued. “Not like that,” she said, making it worse. Damn it, thought Dale. He suddenly felt awkward, like he’d been asked to buy sanitary towels.

“We’ll just try a few other shops,” he said, making stern eye contact with his wife. “Come on love, we’ll make a day of it.”

“Don’t be so hasty,” the salesman said, placing his hand on Dale’s shoulder. “I assure you, you would be only wasting your time. There’s not another store in the county that can match our prices.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Or offer the special discounts we can.”

“Is that so?” Dale said, trying to hide the sarcasm in his tone. “Still, we’d best be on our way.”

“Nonsense,” beamed the salesman. “Not until you’ve at least tried out the new Dreamsoak Deluxe. It’ll only take a minute for you to discover its soothing slumberous potential.” The salesman gave Dale a shove, pushing him down onto the nearest bed.

“Hey!” he protested, but then a warm tingling enveloped his body, an almost orgasmic rush surging through his veins. Dale’s body bucked and twisted, locked in pleasure; ooooh, was all he could say.

Jenny frowned down at him. “Stop acting like a child. We’ve still got to go to the —” The salesman shoved her in the back and she flopped down at her husband’s side, writhing in seconds. He watched them a while, grinning like an indulgent parent, then abruptly held up his hands, clicking his fingers as if he held invisible castanets.

Two assistants appeared, so alike both in looks and apparel they could have been clones. The salesman nodded curtly and they grabbed the mattress, dumping the groaning couple unceremoniously to the showroom floor. The orgasmic bleating ceased. Dale and Jenny stared around them in a shamefaced daze before clambering unsteadily to their feet, snorting embarrassed laughs as they straightened out their crumpled clothes.

“So what do you think?” asked the salesman.

“It’s... it’s... ” Jenny could not meet his eyes as she struggled for words.

“Spectacular!” butted in Dale. “How much did you say it was?”

The salesman pointed to the price tag on the headboard, smiling as the enthusiasm drained from Dale’s face. “It’s the only one of its kind.” He sighed dramatically. “It’s sure to go soon. Why, the very next customer through that door might —” “We’ll take it!” blurted Jenny through her blushes.

“Jenny,” whispered Dale, “we can’t afford this, we —” His wife grabbed his hand and thrust it onto the Dreamsoak’s mattress; his knees buckled and his vision blurred as pleasure shot through him with the roar of an express train.

“We can’t afford not to,” she said, and he could only nod soundlessly.

“So,” the salesman grinned, “you are in concordance with your good lady wife? No point dithering – you snooze you lose, as we like to say in this game.”

3

The day Milton Pullman retired—after forty-two years of scrimping and saving—his wife, Myrtle, died an untimely death. The irony of these circumstances was not lost on Pullman. A man of considerable wealth, he had planned the perfect retirement with his beloved wife only to discover that, in his greatest hour of achievement, after life-long servitude to his shipping business, years spent sacrificing and feeding his 401(k) and his portfolio, that the love of his life had been taken from him just as they were about to embark into the sunrise of their golden years.

And so it was that Pullman—retired and grieving—assumed the mantle of a new work devoted to the destruction of God. “I will kill the bastard,” Pullman vowed. “Kill the Almighty if it’s the last thing I do.”

Such vengeance didn’t come natural to a Methodist like Pullman, who had served as Sunday School superintendent for some years and had also fulfilled a reluctant stint as trustee chair at First Church, for he had always been a protector of the innocent and a champion of the underdog. But a latent anger had awakened within him after the death of his wife. An anger that at once surprised and energized him. He sought justice. A verdict. A death to even the score.

Of course, others had taken up the cause in times past. There had been the Crucifixion. The Crusades. The Holocaust. A fair number of ethnic cleansings. Even the Death of God movement in the late 1960s had proclaimed GOD IS DEAD on the front page of The New York Times. But these attempts had been unsuccessful—down to the last nail and thumbscrew and typeset. No—Pullman wasn’t interested in fighting a theological battle nor a war of words. Pullman just wanted God dead.

And fast.

But how would one go about killing the Almighty? This question stumped Pullman. It urged him forward into the twilight of his life.

And so he sought counsel.

First, from his own pastor.

“You want to do what?” his pastor had asked when Pullman popped the question in the church office. “Kill whom?”

But the pastor was too young to know anything about the stark realities of life and death. He had graduated from a high-profile seminary only two years before—a blonde, peach-fuzzed idealist fond of quoting Barth and Bonhoeffer—a kid who was equally popular with the youth group and the older ladies of the congregation.

Pullman explained his predicament again.

But the pastor merely quoted Kant and handed over a glossy pamphlet on grief. He read a Psalm and then prayed the Lord’s Prayer aloud. “I’m sure you’ll find your way through this pain,” he told Pullman as they parted company on the church lawn. “Just remember the lessons of Job.” Screw Job! Pullman thought. And what does Kant know about killing God? ### Some days later, Pullman found himself weeping uncontrollably on the front steps of the public library. He had checked out a couple of paperback novels—the kind his wife used to read— and another book entitled A Good Grief. But a new wave of loneliness had overtaken him as he was striding toward the car and he wandered aimlessly past the public library and stared up at the slate sky in wonderment and awe. He lumbered across the street and padded beyond the park lawn into the historic part of town, his legs churning, but his mind distant and vacant in the scent of diesel fumes and rotting produce wafting up from the garbage bins. Above him, a baby’s cry emanated from an apartment window. His eyes watered.

4

“You’re late,” Miles squawked nervously, his eyes darting between the outdoor thermometer and his newly arrived company. It read seventy-seven degrees.

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I had trouble sneaking out, especially with the stuff.” Though he was scolding her, the girl with the silver tray delivered a warm smile to the teenage boy crouched near her backdoor waterspout and set down the goods she was carrying on the cement walkway in front of her. A few strands of her hair were lashed across her left eye. After a couple of failed attempts to blow the blond tresses to the side, she finally used her finger. “I don’t know why you insist on showing up only when it’s so terribly humid, but it’s always nice to see you. Man, it’s going to be another scorcher today.”

“It’s nice to see you too. I’m sorry I was so short with you. It’s just that…”

“I know, I know, you can’t stay long. Here.” She slid down next to him and drew in close, delivering a deep, passionate kiss.

He kissed her back, equally enraptured, his tongue tasting the new flavour she had brought him. “I love the way you introduce me to new fruits,” he told her, the tang of her recent consumption a sweet trace against his taste buds. Sweet…and something else he was unfamiliar with. A quick look at the mercury level indicated it had jumped another degree. He did not have much time.

“Do you like it?” She gestured to the melon she carved up and the amenities that went with it spread out on the tray. “It’s called cantaloupe. You liked the watermelon so much last time, I thought I’d introduce you to another member of the same family. I can’t believe you’ve never had any of these foods before.” She held up a pre-cut slice from which she had taken the bite she shared with him.

“Some of them I have,” Miles admitted, “I just didn’t know their names.” The tip of his tongue touched all around his lips. “Is it supposed to burn like that?”

“Burn? I don’t know what you mean.” She looked from her slice of breakfast to the boy she was infatuated with. “Oh, my gosh — your mouth is bleeding.”

5

“It all starts with the costume,” Hank said as he sprayed cleaner onto the counter and began scrubbing.

“What? No.” Gary said pausing as he walked the aisles of the small convenience store, straightening the shelves.

“Yeah, think about it — the one who flies, the green one, the alien, the woman, and even the bat. It all starts with image.”

“Yeah, well, a lot of good it does me.” Gary paused again as he heard sirens wailing outside.

He walked to the window to look out, seeing the mostly closed business district with few people on the streets. He turned and looked at the clock with the red digital display reading 9:55.

“We should just close now,” Hank said pointing at the clock.

“That’s not how I run my shop.” Gary said.

“Yeah, well, I get more and more nervous every night.” Hank looked out toward the street, still hearing the sirens calling from somewhere.

“Me too,” Gary said, fluffing a bag of potato chips and feeling as far away as that siren.

“Me too.” .

“And ever since the world has needed him, Gotham’s never been the same.”

“Sure.” Gary said nodding, “But he does return.”

“Yeah, for some nemesis that’s escaped from Arkham. I’m beginning to think they just let people live there like it’s an apartment complex. The world became too big for him. He and his League are out saving the world. They’ve lost touch with the little guy.”

Gary couldn’t fight a half smile as he turned to look at Hank. “Little guy.”

Hank matched his smile, hands rubbing his belly self-consciously. “Well, you know what I mean.”

“I do.” Gary looked back at the digital display; it now read 9:57. A brief temptation crossed his mind — what could it hurt? He considered closing three minutes early.

The bell jingled as a young boy walked in. Hank’s lips went thin looking at him. He crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side. Gary looked at the kid’s large jacket wondering if the weather had changed much since he got a chance to sweep the sidewalk around three. He guessed it hadn’t.

“Can I help you?” Hank asked, deepening his voice.

The boy didn’t say anything. Didn’t even look at Hank, but kept his eyes down and walked with a quick pace that made him look nervous. Hank kept a few paces behind him on the other aisle over. It was hard to suspect every person of being a thief but then again, he thought, this is Gotham.

He kept his hand in his pocket, the only place he was comfortable keeping the gun he had bought three years ago when the clown had turned his son into a grinning corpse.

The boy stood in front of the refrigerated cases. He walked a few steps and then back. Hank thought he was going to try to buy a beer. Gary pulled his hand out his pocket and straightened a few cans of ravioli. He tried to be nonchalant as he watched the boy’s reflection in the half-ball mirror hanging from the corner.

The wall of cases started with soda and headed toward beer. Near the small door to the bathroom was a refrigerated door for dairy products. The only section Hank and Gary would divvy up between them as they began to go out of date. It was the least popular section. But when the boy pulled out a gallon of milk, Gary couldn’t help walking out behind the boy.

6

Tollin was born into the one funeral home in Eustis, third generation. He was considered the better of his predecessors not because he abstained from drinking from his embalming bottles as his grandfather was known to do, nor did he partake in the thievery of the dead’s jewelry just before interring as was claimed of his father, but rather due to the revolutionary practice of using cosmetics on the deceased. Once a corpse had been preserved and clothed, Tollin would switch from embalmer to artist and begin.

His methods began first with a foundation of rice flour and crushed pearl. Tollin followed this with a rouge made from carmine; to the lips he applied a combination of olive oil and beet juice; to the eyebrows he applied a mixture of soot and water. Sorrowful families were stunned and thankful when they saw their deceased family member in the casket. They would be entering the kingdom of Heaven as royalty, they said, as folding an extra note into Tollin’s hand.

Tollin worked past dusk as his home was then cool enough to keep moisture off the corpse.

The corpse laid out before him now belonged to a woman named Martha, an acquaintance of his. The unease of handling the lifeless vessel of an acquaintance dissipated a decade ago; what remained, however, was the balanced assault on decency: the stripping of clothes, the first sight of genitals, of breasts, discovering physical secrets. It could be sensational, depending on the corpse, so he used professionalism as a shield against his own curiosity. Meanwhile, the draining of blood and the subsequent filling of the arteries with the formaldehyde mixture played out in buckets like his daily chorus. After wringing his hands clean of the chemicals, he sat down with a whiskey. Martha’s was not a sensational corpse. Not yet, anyways.

Tollin made her acquaintance five years ago on his way to his beloved driving club. A hastily delivered letter announced the club would be meeting at the mayor’s personal residence. The cleanup from a drunkenly placed cigar at their usual haunt was ongoing.

Tollin’s newspaper sat unobserved in his lap as he viewed the goings-on outside his carriage’s window. The detour took him through the business block where he gazed through shop windows from the shadowy protection of the carriage, hoping to observe some salacious occurrence to bring with him to the driving club. He stretched his neck down alleyways, yearning for a bit of dirty laundry. On a street corner, a man and woman argued. Upon seeing Tollin and the carriage bearing his family’s name, the woman pointed and said, “He’ll see me naked before you do, rat!” She tore away from the man, who turned to scowl at Tollin and present him with an unbecoming gesture. This did not surprise Tollin, no. It was generally understood that in the end, Tollin would know everyone’s secrets of the flesh. He gave a tip of his hat to the man.

As he broke from the business block, a spread of homes came into view. Here there was money, money enough for good fencing and manicured landscapes, for trimmed oaks with tasteful amounts of hanging moss, for statues supervising benches, for terraces tangled in the appropriate amount of ivy. A large smoothed rock at the foot of one property displayed the name of the city’s tax collector. Another bore the name of a prominent banker. An oversized wooden musket stood watch at the front of another. A captain lived there, Tollin believed.

Then he saw Martha, leaning on a stickball bat in a large yard in front of a welcoming twostory home. She was caught in a fit of laughter as a group of children chased after a wildly bouncing ball. When the children returned and threw it back at the woman, she made contact so loud Tollin heard it over the carriage. In the following instant, the ball flew through Tollin’s window and banged against the opposite seat, jolting him so hard he peed a little. He hollered at the driver to stop. As he exited the carriage with the ball in hand, the group of children formed outside, smiling and wiping sweat-slicked hair from their foreheads. These children were no street urchins; urchins knew to keep a wide berth from a carriage or suffer the driver’s boot. These children had carriages of their own, surely.

7

Eight years ago, Detective Calvin Dennis left the Kennington Police Department. Part of the reason was because it was his time to do so. He was in his late fifties, losing a grip on his health, and had developed this wheeze that he later discovered was asthma. The other part was because of the last case he had worked.

In 2009, Michael Davinport, a respected man of the community—Bible Study Leader, soup kitchen volunteer, and a licensed EMT—had discovered that he needed a tighter pussy than his wife.

That tighter pussy turned out to be his four-year-old daughter, Penny.

By some stroke of luck, and perhaps grace, Calvin had avoided cases like this. In 1994, Calvin and his wife Patricia’s own son, Peter Calvin Dennis, was a victim of a child molester in Detroit.

Peter committed suicide shortly afterward. The evidence of what happened to him, however, didn’t come to the surface until he was in the ground for four-plus years.

Therefore, it was understandable why, by the time the department had gathered enough evidence against Mr. Michael Davinport, that Calvin wanted to go rogue. Just charge in, and shoot the motherfucker, and try to get his pistol’s bullet to go through Davinport’s sick brain, curing him forever.

Consequently, it was Calvin who took a bullet from Davinport’s pistol. By the time Calvin and his partner Larry arrived to the Davinport residence, Mike Davinport and his family were in their backyard. Both Mike and Penny were naked. Penny was lying on the tall, neglected grass while Mike stood over her, holding a Beretta. What was on Penny’s face was not bird shit, and it made Calvin want to vomit.

A woman, later identified as Penny’s mother, was sitting on a glider upon a porch, holding a small baby in her arms and singing softly. The baby later turned out to be Penny’s little brother, Scott.

When Mike spotted Detectives Calvin and Larry, his eyes were wide and red. He smiled, then raised his gun to shoot Penny.

Calvin took his gun out before Larry could even think about touching his. He fired, and missed the asshole’s forehead by a few inches. He knew later that, if the rage and the grief buried beneath it hadn’t been present, he could’ve ended Mike Davinport right there and then. There would be no trouble, because it would be self-defense.

Calvin’s miss, however, caused Mike to raise his own pistol and fire a bullet into Calvin’s abdomen.

Larry, a damned slow detective sometimes, but a much colder and more calculating man than Calvin—something the elder detective had always secretly envied—shot two bullets into both of Mike’s legs. Mike screamed and dropped the gun.

That was almost a decade ago and it was certainly a big part of Calvin’s diagnosed PTSD. Yet, he hadn’t thought of that incident for quite some time. What brought the memory back up was a call from Doctor Ellen Weiser of the Derois County Medical Hospital a couple of days ago.

“I’m calling on behalf of the Grant-A-Wish Foundation,” Dr. Weiser had said.

At the time, Calvin was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup coffee while Patricia lay sleeping upstairs.

“What can I do for you, Doctor?”

“Do you recall a case you worked involving a four-year-old named Penny?”

Bright sun filtered in through the window, illuminating the whole kitchen. After hearing Penny’s name, that light now seemed like a cheap nightlight, with the darkness of that day creeping into Calvin’s mind, shrouding everything in depressing shadows.

“I remember.”

8

Outside, the grey snow had covered the fields all the way down to the distant roadway with its stationary cars. Ella looked out from the upstairs window as she shivered inside the blanket she’d wrapped around herself. It was always cold at night and there was no way Father would allow her to put the heating on. The heating hadn’t been on for longer than she could remember.

Soon Father would awake and bang on the floor with his walking stick, wanting his breakfast.

She’d cared for him since mother had gone. Nothing ever truly dies, he’d said then, weeping over her body as he struggled to stuff it into the plastic bin bag. After that everything had been different.

As she threw down the blanket and rushed to change from her nightgown into her clothes, she saw that over in the corner of the room the mice had been playing their games again. They had laid out a little dolls house table and chairs that they’d got from somewhere. The furniture was pine, the colour broken only by the spread of red and blacks of a pack of tiny playing cards. In the middle of the table, someone, Ralphie probably, had laid down a winning hand with a royal flash of court cards.

It was good when Ralphie won. He was a generous mouse and would spend the winnings on a party for all the others.

The bang of the walking stick on the floor sounded and the floor vibrated.

“Girl, girl!” Father shouted.

She struggled into her sweater and ran to the door of her room, opened it and called out.

“Yes, Father. I’m coming!”

In the kitchen she put together his breakfast and cup of tea. She carried the tray up the stairs taking slow, careful steps, making sure the tray didn’t tilt and slurp tea out of the cup. He would be angry if that happened. On the upstairs landing she stopped outside his bedroom door and put down the tray on the floor.

The smell from inside Father’s bedroom seeped out from the space beneath the door. Holding her breath she opened the door, picked up the tray and went in.

It was a rotten stench, like decaying meat stuffed with dust. But better to smell it than to breathe it. Quick pigeon steps took her to the bedside table.

Inside the curtained bed he groaned, a long slow noise from deep within.

She put the tray on the bedside table, manoeuvring round the walking stick leant against it.

Then she ran back to the door mouth spluttering open as she could no longer hold her breath.

“Your breakfast, Father.”

“Good,” he growled. “Now get off.” ### As usual, when she collected the tray, there were little bugs crawling around on the plates, worm-like grubs feasting on the smear of food remains. She swept them off onto the floor from where they slowly navigated their way back under the door into his bedroom. Once, long ago, she had tried to talk to Father about possibly giving the bedroom a spring clean but he had shouted, hurling abuse at her from behind the bed curtains.

She came into the kitchen with the tray and stopped. Over by the sink she caught a sudden movement. It was a mouse, standing on two feet. With the hat pin it held, it was jabbing down on the draining board. Another mouse appeared, scrabbling up from the floor. This one she recognised as Ralphie by the way the hair of his head was tufted up. Ralphie started to run around the sink, stamping then smashing down with his tiny fists.

She rushed over, putting the tray down on the kitchen table.

“What’s going on?” she said.

But she could see now that the area around the draining board and worktop was crawling with darting cockroaches and slower, ponderous, woodlice.

9

I put the gun to my head. With the amount of suffering I’d been through in the past few weeks, it was clear this was the only way to make it stop. And to get my revenge. Calvin had it coming. Boy, did he deserve this. He was going to be crying tonight, that was for sure, and I wished I’d done it sooner.

The ache had to be raw. It had to sting. I pressed the barrel into my temple until it nearly broke the skin, the tears still coming, my face drenched with salty slime. Calvin was supposed to be the one.

This was supposed to be the end of my search, the sunny shore on the other side of the hurricane.

I pulled together all the ache of the loss, the betrayal, the searing pain of the emotional amputation, the vision of my life after this as just a long walk down an empty corridor towards death.

All this crushing pain I pulled together until it exploded into an orgasm of suffering, and at that moment, I pulled the trigger.

Then, I felt nothing.

The shock wave from the gun had knocked me to the floor, and I was dazed, staring at the wastebasket next to my desk, squinting as I wondered for a moment what it was. The gun lay next to my hand, and it took a moment for the meaning of the simple metal object to return. I hadn’t realized before that the end of the barrel was blue, somebody’s spoof on the orange tips of toy guns.

And then I checked the tank. 97 percent full. I’d been told I probably wouldn’t get it up past 85%, since for safety reasons it was built to absorb more emotion than was humanly possible. I’d always thought I felt things strongly, but still.

I got to my feet again and put the gun in my purse. Where would Calvin be right now? I looked at the note I’d written myself before loading the contents of my head into the gun. Oh yes, he was going to be leaving work at the distribution center. This would be a sniper sort of thing. I’d just park in the visitor spots by the front, and wait till he came out. Then I’d level that gun at him and he’d feel my pain.

The drive was kind of long and I was still a little out of it, thinking that maybe I should have waited until I was in the parking lot. But I’d been warned to load the gun at home because of the whole temporary amnesia thing. And the fact that it was illegal.

I also started to think that maybe this was all a bit much. I mean, yeah, he was sleeping with my best friend, but had he really meant that much to me?

A 97- percent reading on the gun said he did. Also that gaudy engagement ring I’d flushed down the toilet. Oh, and the revenge porn he’d let loose on the Internet when he found out I wasn’t returning the stupid thing. Facts flooded back into my emotion-vacuumed mind, followed by a renewed sense of what I’d felt in the apartment. That bastard was going to pay.

Just shooting my emotional pain at him didn’t seem like enough anymore. Whatever I’d put in that gun, it was nothing compared to what he deserved to feel. I wanted to publicly humiliate him, physically harm him, and get under his skin to some secret fear he’d never even felt comfortable sharing with me. Or that two-faced slut he preferred to me.

When I got to the distribution center, I parked at the end of the visitor spots and got out, looking for a place to hide. A row of bushes near the side of the parking lot, right where the ground started to slope away into a retention pond, offered both cover and a clear view of the door. Now all I had to do was wait.

The door opened, the low afternoon sun reflecting off the glass. My heart skipped, but it wasn’t him. I got into position, laying the barrel of the gun across the wood chips under the bushes. I smiled.

10

This old boy’s had it. Too many unnatural things thrown in my lap, things I can’t explain. Or country people ready to pull a town-bred stranger’s leg as quick as tease a cat. I swear I will never again take census again. But in 1910, after they voted me off the bench, I needed the money and reckoned I’d had heard them all. Well, you know what they say about old fools.

You’d think with a ten-dollar pocket watch, an almanac, and two good eyes, I could anticipate an occurrence as regular as sunset and make preparations, but there’s an upside-down laziness that makes us work harder so we can loaf sooner, so there I was with the sun making colors at the end of a washed-out lane that dead-ended at a log house slap up against some nameless piece of swamp, which was said to be the home of one Widow Brantley.

The place felt odd as I rode up, and then I put a finger on it. There were no dogs. Country people, especially widows, always keep two or three to skulk around the house, chase rabbits, and sleep on the porch, and when a stranger rides up, especially at sunset, to slither out and ripple their black lips, threatening to dismember man and horse. Then somebody comes out and yells at the poor brutes like they’ve committed an abomination, though that’s what they’re kept to do. I rode up slowly, expecting to rein in and wait while hellhounds snarled death and mayhem.

But no dogs came.

After I dismounted and called the widow’s name a couple of times, I tied Bess to the gate, went up on the porch, and called again. There was no light inside, but it wasn’t quite dark. Then the widow opened the door and shoved a rifle up in my face.

She was a squat woman with white, clinched hair, a caved-in chest, and enough girth in her feed-sack dress to carry twins if age didn’t disqualify her. Curling her lips over toothless gums, the widow stared hard at me—or maybe stared through me into the twilight.

“What you want?” she growled.

From where I stood, the bore of her rifle looked big enough to hold a prayer meeting. I didn’t wait for the rest of the congregation. It was an old rolling-block single-shot, but one shot would do the job.

“I say, what do you want?”

“Toomer’s the name, ma’am,” I declared in as level a voice as I could manage. “Paul Toomer, and I’m taking census hereabouts.” The book was under my arm, which I usually present as identification, but I didn’t move an elbow then. No, sir.

The widow didn’t seem to hear me, but kept on staring, searching the yard and the lane and the fence and the woods—and then all of a sudden she raised the barrel, let off the hammer, and went inside, leaving me in a sweat on the porch.

“You come inside, Mr. Toomer!” she hollered. “I reckon you be hungry and wanting to stay the night. You just set down, Mr. Toomer. Supper’s on the stove.”

The widow made me sit at a homemade table and dished out three or four vegetables, all the same greasy mush run together on a cracked plate. She stood there in the dark until I ate whatever it was, not saying a word. Then she dumped my plate in the slop bucket and sat down in a rocker by the woodpile, right by the rifle. She motioned me to face her, and I was agreeable after my prayer meeting with the front rifle sight looking big as a stump. A man doesn’t forget that in ten minutes.

“Thank you, ma’am. That sure hit the spot,” I lied.

“Have some more.”

“Much obliged, but I’m a light eater.”

“You look like you thought I was fixing to shoot you, census taker. Now that might steal a man’s appetite.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, it ain’t nothing to be scared of. No, sir!”

11

I open the door and familiar aromas of bowling ball oil and rows of rented shoes fill my senses. It’s ten o’clock and the sign says CLOSED, but the door opens anyway so of course I step in. I’m not from around here—in fact, I’ve never even heard of this town—and from what I could tell no one saw me enter. I turn the lock just to be safe.

The place is empty of customers, just an old man behind an office desk. I make a sound with my throat to announce my presence. He looks up at me with big, smiling eyes. In front of him sits a half-eaten watermelon on an over-sized plate. Next to it rests a large knife, hunks of rind still clinging to it. He spits out a seed and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.

“Howdy,” he says, checking the clock on the wall. “I’m afraid we just closed. Martha must have forgot to lock the door. She’s getting a fright forgetful these days. We open at eleven tomorrow if you want to—" “I’m looking for work, if you have any,” I say. I make sure to sound respectful and humble.

It makes people endear themselves to you. It’s worked every time I’ve done this. Over one hundred by now, I’m sure.

Something softens in the man’s eyes. As if he has been in my shoes before, in a former life when the spoils of youth cast harsher shadows on one’s own future. He nods. “Okay. I can respect a man asking for honest work. I don’t have much around here. Just me and the missus. Place has been in the family for three generations. I’m hanging up my hat soon—gonna sell the place, although I hate to. I s’pose I could drum up some odd jobs for you. What did you say your name was?”

I step into the office for the first time, having been careful not to give my intentions away.

People can sense those things. I’ve learned that. We are animals, after all. We have instincts.

Sometimes they get buried beneath modern technology and the comforts of a new world, but they’re there. Have someone scare you and see what happens to the hairs on the back of your neck.

I extend my right hand as the old man does the same. It’s my opening, and I take it. I snatch for the knife, but I must have given the old man a tell because he catches my hand as my fingers wrap around the handle. I calmly pull at his fingers but they don’t budge. I whisper for him to let go. When he doesn’t, I step around the desk to get behind him but our contorting bodies knock the watermelon to the floor, spilling juice everywhere. If both my hands were free I could get behind him, but they aren’t and when I plant my right foot it slips out from under me.

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