Do the Weird Crime, Serve the Weird Time: Tales of the Bizarre Read online
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1988, 1990, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2011 by Don Webb
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
ALSO BY DON WEBB
Do the Weird Crime, Serve the Weird Time: Tales of the Bizarre
The War with the Belatrin
Webb’s Weird Wild West: Western Tales of Horror
DEDICATION
In memory of the world’s
best weird crime writer,
William S. Burroughs
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
These stories were previously published as follows, and are reprinted (with minor editing, updating, and textual modifications) by permission of the author:
“The Divorce” was first published in Fear #3 (November/December 1988). Copyright © 1988, 2011 by Don Webb.
“Shrimp Anarchy” was first published in Fringeware Review #9 (1995), and republished in Serve it Forth: Cooking with Anne McCaffrey (1996). Copyright © 1995, 1996, 2011 by Don Webb.
“The Game” was first published in Bone Chilling Tales #1 (1990). Copyright © 1990, 2011 by Don Webb.
“Ring of the Red Knight” was first published in Talebones #8, Summer 1997, and has been expanded for this book. Copyright © 1997, 2011 by Don Webb.
“The Ice Palace,” “Yoga for Bolsheviks,” “What Are Best Friends For?”, “The Syringe,” “My Heart Shifting as Sand,” “The Joy of Cola,” “Our Novel,” “Diary Found in an Abandoned Studio,” and “The Thirtyers” are published here for the first time. Copyright © 2011 by Don Webb.
THE DIVORCE
It was to be their last fiction together. They’d had five years of various fictions depending more on courtesy and self-image than passion. The first fiction—or at least the first formally agreed to—was the Open Marriage. (It was his idea, but authorship of ideas was never mentioned—they did everything together, the second fiction.) He had thought it was for him alone, a need based on misapprehended biology. She counted his infidelities as crimes, but quietly to herself. Her only remedy, as they say judicially, were her own infidelities. This last fiction, the Friendly Divorce, was also his idea, but came closer to collaboration than any of the others.
Everything would become “final” next Monday. Both had cars, incomes and apartments. Only money was left to be divided. In the spirit of a true rite of passage they decided to blow it all in Vegas. They went to the bank on Monday, the Monday a week before “Final” Monday, and turned everything into cash. They carefully and oh so scrupulously pushed it into two piles. On Wednesday they left. On the road they’d outdone each other in kindnesses—paying for gas, for picture postcards, for dinner and drinks. Both figured they’d lose their shares in Vegas. Going back to GO, starting a new game. They’d been penniless to start and a return to that status would somehow erase the intervening five years.
On Thursday morning they’d hit the desert and conversation had dried up. In the quiet air-conditioned hiss of “his” Wagoneer remarks of the last few months echoed. She was from the “shallow end of the gene-pool.” He was as “tenderhearted as a coprolite.” The mot juste being another example of their common artistry.
Midmorning she spotted a sign, “Roy’s Rockshop and Restaurant.” It promised slot machines, poisonous reptiles, rare desert rocks, cactus candy, and a bottomless coffee cup. The coffee sounded good. The other could provide conversational fodder until they reached Vegas. Five miles later she pulled in. The rockshop had two concrete teepees out front, no doubt the dwelling place of the tribe that makes the rubber tomahawks for souvenirs. It was further adorned with four cow skulls with outdoor Christmas lights for eyes.
When they went in the white-haired proprietor had snapped awake. The owner started the coffee, apologized for the lack of poisonous reptiles—some young kids stole all the cages last year—and discussed local politics.
He ordered the Eye Opener: two poached eggs (underdone), orange juice (frozen), whole wheat toast, jelly. She ordered the Rancho Deluxe: scrambled eggs with salsa, biscuits (stale), jelly, bottomless cup of coffee. They sat on green vinyl-covered revolving bar stools, which had they been of an earlier generation would have called up romantic visions of drugstore dating. The owner asked where they was from? Lubbock, Texas. This led to a discussion of his niece who’d went to Texas Tech. They didn’t teach at the University, did they? No. Well they probably wouldn’t know her? Afraid not. Where are you going? Vegas to gamble a little and have fun.
The proprietor reckoned that not many people go through the desert to see its natural beauty. This reckoning lasted three coffee cups. An ancient black Chevy pickup pulled up. An equally ancient-looking Navajo came in. The proprietor poured him a cup of coffee. The proprietor introduced the Indian as Tonky. During the next two cups of coffee the owner told Tonky all about them. She wanted the check. Tonky was silent. He had left his yolk-covered plate and wandered over to look at the dusty bins of geodes and quartz crystal clusters.
She finally got the check. When she paid, Tonky asked her if they was going to Vegas? She said yes.
Her husband walked up carrying an amethyst-filled geode from Brazil. Tonky explained a shortcut. She didn’t really understand it, but decided not to ask for clarification. For one thing, her soon-to-be-ex-husband had always thought her small-brained. For another his body language screamed impatience.
He bought the purple geode and gave it to her. She said it was treasure. The proprietor said it was sweet to see married people so much in love. Tonky walked around the counter to pour himself another cup of coffee. They left.
The short cut began—as best she understood—at a two-lane road leaving the highway after a mile and a half. When the two-lane did appear, she decided she had understood Tonky’s muddled directions after all. As she turned off the road she watched for his reaction, but he just stared into the violet depths of the geode.
Sixteen miles later she decided she was lost. Reluctantly she admitted it. He told her to turn around. There was a dirt road about two miles back that should intersect the highway. He’d been waiting for this. Preparing to show her up.
The dirt road was noisy and small. She hoped she wouldn’t meet any oncoming traffic. He smiled and said it didn’t look like there’d been any traffic at all for a long time.
A tiny wooden bridge over a fairly steep arroyo broke as the Wagoneer crossed it going sixty m.p.h. She remembered being airborne for a minute.
When she came to she was sitting upside down hanging by the seatbelt harness. The windshield was a spider web around a wall of sandstone and gypsum. Blood was running up her face through her hair and onto the ceiling below. He was moaning. He wasn’t in the car.
Getting down from the harness was easy after she realized that she could fall sideways against the half-open door. The door opened completely and she fell onto the hot red sand. It took a long time to stand up. Her bleeding seemed to have stopped.
He was lying about two car lengths away. His face was red. He was moaning quietly. She ran over. He reached up she caught his arm. He gasped.
Then he was quiet. Not moving. Not breathing.
She started to release his hand. Then stopped herself. What if she couldn’t let go? She’d been trying to let go for five years. What if she failed this time? What a crazy thought—the blood loss must be making her crazy. She laughed. Laughing hurt. She drug his body over to the shade of the overturned Wagoneer. She decided to hold on a while, it was only right. You couldn’t just leave someone so—suddenly.
She had to figure out what to do. She couldn’t carry him to the freeway.
She didn’t know which way was quicker. She squeezed the dead hand as though he would wake up and tell her. Maybe he was right after all. After a long time, after the flies came, she decided what to do.
* * * * * * *
The Highway Patrol picked her up. It wasn’t just her bloody face or agitated manner. It was the severed hand she carried.
THE ICE PALACE
The widow MacPhearson never did anything. She was just like me, she never went out at night, never talked on the hone. Nothing.
She wasn’t doing anything the night of the Fourth, the night she was shot. I wanted to know. I wanted to know exactly what kind of nothing she was doing that night. She and I are the same age, excepting now of course she is dead, actually if she were alive she would have been six months older than me, which doesn’t matter much now, but kept us in separate grades in school.
I was retired, but she kept working. I had worked the Sears catalog show room. Doublesign, Texas had had the last Sears catalog showroom in the country. It should have been closed years ago, but a clerical error kept it going. I am fascinated by errors. Maybe the people that shot her, had meant to shoot me. Maybe they just had the wrong address. A simple computer error. I hate computers. I had to stop working just as computers came in.
Velma MacPhearson also had no truck with computers. She ran the Ice Palace, which was a place to buy soft ice cream and shakes near the state park. There weren’t many places like that left. I mean not affiliated with some big chainlike Dairy Queen. When she was working there years ago, everyone called the Ice Queen, because she had no truck with men either. She wasn’t rude to us, just a little cold, just like ice cream. But as she got old no one would have wanted her anyway, so we stopped calling her the Ice Queen. I have heard her called the Ice Bitch, but I was brought up never to call a lady things like that (even if they were true).
I wish she hadn’t been so cold to men. She would have made a good neighbor. Both of us were in bad health. Hers was worse though. She was past the time in life when you should have to stand and make a living. I think she had enough money to retire, just no one to give her permission to do so.
The sheriff said the FBI came into town after her killing. She was killed by a serial killer. I don’t know what he killed or why. Maybe it was just women that worked in the ice cream industry. Maybe just people that were Ice Bitches. I want to know.
I was at the VFW hall. I had lied about my age to get into the end of WWII. That was how my legs wound up the way they are. Which is another reason I wanted a nice neighbor. My kids pulled a mean trick on me. They both died, so that I am alone a good deal.
I know she used to watch TV, because I could hear it. I could have heard the shot, except I was at the VFW hall. We were watching the fireworks show. Last Fourth of July of the century, of the millennium. I had to listen to idiots explaining Y2K to other idiots, but it was people. I have always needed people.
People will tell you who you are.
One of my big fears is that I won’t have any people around me when it is time to pull the plug. I could fall and they could put me into one of those damn life support machines, and I could live forever.
Someone came to pull Velma’s plug.
They just walked in off the street.
I can’t believe that. I can’t believe that someone could just kill you without even knowing you. There must be a mistake. Maybe it was somebody that she shorted for change. She did that. I’ve seen her cheat a tourist out of a dime or a nickel, a quarter if she was feeling bold. They lost their quarter and they came to get her. I could live with that. It puts a price tag on human life.
She was in her bedroom on the second floor. Ever since that night I have slept in my second floor bedroom. She and her runaway husband had bought their house, but I inherited mine. In the “historic” center of downtown Doublesign. That’s because it has the old library and the post office and places for people to sell junktiques to tourists. Otherwise it would be just plain old. It isn’t very likely that you’ll meet anyone that lives in the house they were born in, but I do. I will die here.
I have been sleeping in the second floor, because all I can do is think about her death.
She was shot twice. Once by a .22 at close range and once by a kid’s dart gun. That’s how they know it was this serial killer. I wonder if they shot her with the dart gun first, or second.
Imagine if it was first. You know someone has broken into your house. They had come in through a window facing the backyard. She must have heard them come up the stairs. She probably screamed, and then whup she is hit with a dart. She must have been so relieved. It was all a joke, a prank, and then blammo a real bullet into her head making a third eye.
I saw her when they took her away. I wanted it all from my upstairs window. Then the sheriff came to talk me about it. I had been down at the VFW Hall listening to a recorded version of Elvis signing “Dixie.” So mainly he told me about it, rather than me answering his questions. He called her “the Ice Bitch.”
I don’t know what is wrong with ice. Many of my friends have moved out of Texas because they can’t take the heat. They are living with their kids in some cool town. Those that live here, spend all their time inside, with their air conditioners turned up so far that if they were to die, their body wouldn’t be in any danger of rotting. It seems a safer way to die.
I bet her body was very cool, when they carried it out.
I can’t get this place very cool. It’s those damn high ceilings. You see they used to build ceilings very, very high to encourage circulation of air. This was a cool house in my grandfather’s time. But I can run my AC all the time and It doesn’t get cool. I think about cool things when I am going to sleep. I think of icy mountain springs, and snow and ice cream. I think about the soft ice cream down at the Ice Palace. Before I got diabetes, I used to dream of just sticking my mouth under the spigot and letting the thick stream of soft ice cream fill me up, make me good and cool.
I always envied her her job at the Ice Palace. I used to work in a catalog showroom. That meant mainly I helped people look things up in a catalog and then order them. That what webpages do now. Sometimes people were happy when they used my service. They were ordering swing sets for the children or luggage for a round-the-world trip. But sometimes they were unhappy. They ordered home repairs, or equipment that let them use the tub safely and so forth. But I was never there when they would get their stuff. I never got to see the real smile—the smile of ownership—of material culture. All I got was vague smiles of hope. This was something that Mrs. MacPhearson had over all of us. Everyone is happy to buy ice cream. Even the little kids she used to be mean to, were still happy to buy ice cream. I don’t think you can look at an ice cream cone and be unhappy.
I have seen many unhappy people.
Constance, my wife, was unhappy. I saw her unhappy face for many years, and everything I did, everything I tried, made her more unhappy. She died young, escaping me the way Velma’s husband did her. Of course he didn’t die. He just bought the Ice Palace and then ran off and left her to pay for it for many years. It wasn’t the Ice Palace to start with it, it was the Golden Bucket and sold chicken. It never did well, but the Ice Palace did OK. It even did OK enough for her to have one or two young girls work there with her in the summer. It didn’t do crap in the winter, but she would be down there. I have driven by when there was snow on the ground and seen the widow’s unhappy face, just staring at the snow. She would be open all day for that one cup of coffee she would sell. But she didn’t have anything else. All she had was the Ice Palace. She lived across the street from the library and didn’t go. She didn’t even allow herself cable TV. Up every morning to wash it up, and then serve the pre-lunch crowd of farmers that came in to drink coffee, and once-in-a-great-while have a single ice cream cone. Then lunch. Local people. The afternoons filled with tourists back from the state park. Small dinner trade, then the local kids out riding around. Everyday she knew what she had to do.
I don’t know about angels. I have never been sure about God. I’ve thought I should drag my butt down to church, so I would get a chance to meet people, talk with people. I think it has been ten years since anyone stepped into my house. I mean other than a plumber.
I wonder if Velma thought about God, when they shot her.
She knew she was going to be shot that’s the important part. She had been sitting at the swivel chair at her desk in the bedroom. She would have swiveled argon as they came up the stairs. They had clipped off her power. Things were dark. I bet she was getting up the steam to go downstairs and check her fuse box. Her wiring was bad, like every house on this block, they hadn’t figured on people having washing machines and dishwashers and satellite TV. She probably had already turned around, with that very resolved and determined face she had for everything, and was about to get up. She would have seen them head first. She would have known if she knew them.
If the FBI is right, she would have known that she didn’t know them. So she had to know she was going to die. People don’t show up in the dark to give you flowers.
She could have seen the cold barrel of the gun. The light from the street light would have let her see it. I have measured this. My own bedroom is just as far from the streetlight. I have tried to make it just like hers. I turnoff all the lights and then I try out different things with mirrors and stopwatches. I want to know how long she had to think about it. She couldn’t have time to think all the things I’ve thought about it. I’ve had weeks and weeks. I suspect that she had less than a minute, from when she saw them to the bullet entering her forehead.
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Do the Weird Crime, Serve the Weird Time