A Winter Haunting

SEVEN

DALE had driven only a few miles south out of Oak Hill toward Elm Haven when the two pickup trucks cut him off.

At first he thought it was Michelle and her friend in the white pickup approaching quickly in the rearview mirror, but then he saw that it was not a new Toyota truck, but a beat-up old Chevy, with another old pickup—this one a scabrous green Ford—roaring along just behind it.

Dale slowed down, waiting for the idiots to pass, but the first pickup pulled up alongside and stayed there, slowing when he did, accelerating when he did. Dale glanced over, saw the black leather jackets and the shaved heads, and thought, Oh, shit.

The white Chevy pickup passed him and then slowed. The green Ford pickup pulled closer to his rear bumper. Suddenly the white pickup in front of him hit the brakes.

Dale braked hard, lurching forward against the Land Cruiser’s shoulder harness, but still had to swerve right to avoid the Chevy. Luckily there was a gravel turnout by the side of the road—some sort of small picnic area rest stop. The Land Cruiser slid to a stop in the gravel there, and the green and white trucks blocked his way out.

Three young men spilled out of the white Chevy pickup. Two more jumped out of the cab of the green Ford. All five of them had extremely short hair or shaved heads. All five wore black leather coats and combat boots. The tallest of the five had a swastika tattooed on the back of his right hand. The tallest was also the oldest—perhaps in his middle twenties—and the youngest looked to be about sixteen. At least three of the five were taller and heavier than Dale.

Dale had perhaps ten seconds to decide what to do. It wouldn’t have been a problem for Dale’s father; he had always carried a lug wrench tucked under the driver’s seat of the family station wagon. Dale had always noticed that fact but had never asked his dad why he carried the heavy lug wrench there. Now he knew. But Dale Stewart—even while living and traveling in the wilds of Montana—had never thought that he needed a weapon handy.

He wished like hell that he had one now.

Heart pounding, Dale briefly considered locking the truck’s doors and waiting in the Land Cruiser. He even considered throwing the truck into four-wheel drive, going up and over the curb, driving through the grassy picnic area and the adjoining cornfield if necessary, and making a run for it down the county road. His pride kept him from doing either.

Dale stepped out and down just as the five skinheads made a semicircle around him. Well, he thought, there’s still an outside chance that they are Jim Bridger: Mountain Man fans.

“You the Jewboy Zionist motherfucker?” snarled the tallest of the skinheads.

There goes the fan theory, thought Dale. He was amazed to realize that his pulse rate had fallen back to near-normal and that he was no longer frightened. Perhaps the situation was just too absurd for him to take seriously. It seemed like a bad postmillennial remake of Gentleman’s Agreement by way of Deliverance.

Dale took his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and held it up with his thumb over the speed dial button. None of the programmed speed-dial numbers would do him a damn bit of good—even if the phone condescended to work out here in the boonies—but maybe the skinheads didn’t know. Standing there, phone poised, Dale felt a bit like Captain Kirk preparing to have Scotty beam him up. Yeah, I wish, he thought.

“One of you named Derek?” said Dale, his voice strong and steady, all the while shooting an I’m-an-adult-and-you’re-going-to-be-in-deep-shit-in-a-minute look at each of the punks.

The skinheads blinked. The next-to-youngest, an overweight mouth-breather who looked to be the least sharp knife in this particular drawer, actually blushed through his acne and took a step back. Dale fixed his heavy glare on Derek for a minute and then moved it to the leader’s face.

“You didn’t answer our question, asshole,” said the leader, a gaunt-faced, hollow-eyed fascist if there ever was one. “You that nigger-loving Jewboy that wrote those magazine things?”

“Articles,” said Dale. “Magazine and newspaper articles. That’s your vocabulary word for the day. No charge.”

Four of the five stared blankly at him. Obviously they had not imagined the dialogue going quite this way in their fetid little power fantasies, and the discrepancy threw them off stride. The leader reached into his jacket pocket with a menacing glower.

Will it be a knife or pistol?wondered Dale as he raised his own weapon—the useless cell phone. He heard himself say, “I know Derek, of course,” looking straight at Derek, “but I’ll need to know all of your names when I punch the state police number here. But I guess they’ll already know who Derek hangs around with.”

Four of the skinheads looked at their leader. The older man’s hand came out of his pocket.

Ah,thought the strangely detached part of Dale’s mind. Knife it is. He had always hated edged weapons.

The other four clicked out their own knives: not switchblades, but ridiculously long survival knives that came from scabbards under their jackets.

Dale punched Clare’s speed dial number at the same time, surreptitiously touching cancel as he heard the dial tone and the first rings, and raised the phone.

“Get the fuck out of here and stay out,” said the oldest skinhead. He nodded to his pals.

The younger boys slashed the closest two of Dale’s tires. Dale made no move to stop them.

The lead skinhead gave Dale the finger—an oddly childish gesture under the circumstances, Dale thought—and then all five were scrambling back into their pickups and roaring away, throwing gravel against the Land Cruiser and Dale.

Dale waited a minute to make sure they were really gone and then checked the damage.

He had a can of flat sealant in his emergency kit in the back, but these tires were well and truly slashed. And he had only one spare.

Dale dialed 911. Amazingly, someone answered. “Creve Coeur County Emergency Services. Please state the nature of your emergency.”

Feeling sheepish, Dale explained his situation and asked for the number of a towing service in Oak Hill. The 911 lady did not chastise him for using the emergency number for frivolous purposes, but gave him the number of a repair garage with towing service, offered to connect him, told him to call back if the belligerent youths—her phrase—returned, and then told him to sit tight, that someone would be there in fifteen minutes or less.

“I don’t need. . .” began Dale but the 911 lady had signed off.

Dale had not called the sheriff, but the sheriff arrived before the tow truck. Dale took one look at the fat man getting out of the green county sheriff’s car and felt his heart pounding with fear.

C.J. Congden looked nothing like he had in 1960—the thin, lanky bully had gone to fat—but the mean eyes and yellow teeth and stupid expression were somehow the same. It can’t be him, thought Dale, but the fat man wheezed closer and Dale saw the name tag over the badge—“C.J.” Dale tried to remember the last time he had seen C.J. Congden: an image came back of the sixteen-year-old, mean-eyed bully hanging Dale over the edge of the Spoon River Bridge while Dale’s eleven-year-old friend, Jim Harlen, aimed a snub-nosed.38 revolver at Congden’s hot rod and threatened to pull the trigger if the bully dropped Dale into the river.

What the hell was that all about?wondered Dale. If it was a real memory, it was one that he had forgotten for more than forty years.

Sheriff Congden stepped closer, looked at the Land Cruiser’s deflated tires, and said, “What the hell happened here?” It was the same bully’s voice, thickened by decades of cigarettes and power, but the same voice.

Dale had to clear his throat before speaking. He told Congden about the skinheads, all the while praying that Congden wouldn’t recognize him. Do bullies remember their prey?

“Yeah, I know ’em,” said the sheriff, squinting at Dale through sunglasses. He was talking about the skinheads. “But do I know you ?” said Congden.

Dale shook his head, afraid to speak, afraid that C.J. would remember his voice.

The sheriff walked around the rear of the Land Cruiser and squinted at the license plates. “Montana. You just passin’ through, Mr.. . . ?”

“Miller,” said Dale and immediately realized that if and when Congden asked to see his license, he’d be in trouble—certainly more trouble than the local skinhead punks. “Tom Miller,” said Dale. “Yeah, I’m just driving through on my way to Cincinnati.”

Congden squinted at him and rested his thumbs in his gun belt. Leather creaked. The sheriff’s gray shirt was dirty and straining at the belly.

If he asks me for my license and registration, I’ll say that I forgot them, thought Dale in a panic and realized at once that this would not work. He’d just end up in the county jail while they traced the registration. He shook his head. What the hell am I panicked about? I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m the victim here. That was the reasonable point of view, but Dale remembered those mean pig eyes of C.J. Congden’s behind a shotgun aimed at Dale’s head when he was a boy. There was no statute of limitations on bullies and their victims.

The fat sheriff opened his mouth to speak, but right then the radio in his cruiser squawked and hissed. Congden leaned into the open door, listened a minute, said something into his radio, and hung it up.

Congden straightened up, rested his hands on his gun belt again, and turned back to Dale. “You want to ride back to Oak Hill with me? We gotta get some paperwork done if you’re going to swear out a complaint.”

I’d rather have a colonoscopy with a Roto-Rooter, thought Dale. He shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him. “I’ll ride back in the tow truck. I need to get some junk out of the Land Cruiser.”

Congden squinted at him again as if trying to remember where they’d met. Finally he shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just make sure that you stop by the sheriff’s office.”

Dale nodded and watched the former bully wheeze his way back to his sheriff’s car, get in, and drive off.

The tow truck arrived less than a minute after Congden’s sheriff’s car disappeared. The two mechanics, Billy and Tuck, were efficient in getting the Cruiser slung into its towing cradle. “We could change the one tire here for you,” said Billy, the older of the two brothers. “Wouldn’t do no good, though. I don’t think anybody in Oak Hill’s got any of these tires in stock. Probably have to bring one in from Peoria or Galesburg. Tomorrow afternoon maybe.”

Dale nodded. “Is there a place to rent a car in Oak Hill?”

The brothers shook their heads. Then Turk said, “Wait a minute. Mr. Jurgen over at the Happy Lanes rents out his dead wife’s car sometimes.”

“That’ll do,” said Dale.

Dale did not get out of Oak Hill until after 7:00P.M. The tires would be delivered the next day and he could pick up the Cruiser the next afternoon. He ate dinner at the counter of a five-and-dime on the city square—not a Woolworth’s, they had all disappeared from America years before—and Mr. Jurgen brought his late wife’s blue Buick by from the bowling alley. The Buick was older than most people Dale knew, it reaked of cigarette smoke, and it cost Dale more to rent than it would have to rent a luxury car from Hertz and he had to leave $300 for a damage deposit, but he was glad to pay and get out of Oak Hill before C.J. Congden thought to come looking for him.

It started to snow again during his drive back to Duane’s farmhouse. Dale was sleepy as he turned down the long lane and drove past the dead trees, snow dancing in his headlights, but he woke up quickly and slammed on the brakes a hundred yards from the farmhouse.

Dale had not left any lights on when he had driven off to buy groceries earlier in the day. The downstairs was dark.

But there was a light burning on the second floor.