Mr. Shivers

CHAPTER NINE

The dust storm lasted for nearly three days. Connelly would have been marooned if the others hadn’t shouted for him. It was impossible to see anything. They broke into one of the homes and used it for shelter, piling mattresses and blankets up against the windows and the doors to try and keep the dust out. It still seeped in, a fine mist that filled each room. Soon they learned if they did not frequently brush themselves off they would gather a coating of crimson-red, like they had just crawled out of the earth’s bowels.

Jake would not leave his brother in the storm. He dragged the corpse through the dust and into the house and sat over it in the corner sobbing and praying and promising the dead thing he would make sure it was buried right. The others kept their distance. Though unnerved by its presence they did not have the gall to ask him to toss it out. Lottie convinced him to lay a sheet over it but before the first day was out it began to smell. Its intestines had been punctured and shit was leaking into its abdomen.

They did not know it, but this was one of the smallest storms of the time. Others filled the sky with red almost past the heavens. When winter came to New England, far away, it brought red snow with it.

Food quickly became a concern as they huddled in the center of the cloud. Neither party had packed much beyond a day’s rationing. Eventually Connelly and Hammond bound their heads up in scarves and ventured out into the storm to the general store. They found the place ransacked and when they returned they looked like tribal clay puppets brought to life.

They tried to ignore their hunger and the stink of the dead man and the chalky taste that filled their mouths. Each night Roosevelt made a new little idol out of things he found around the house, and each morning they were all whole. Roosevelt seemed to believe from this that there was no real danger but no one took his word.

“I think it’s dusk,” said Pike one day as he stared out the window. “I can’t be sure, though.”

“All this dirt in the air?” said Roonie. “That’s the livelihood of every fella in this state. Every man who grew cotton or corn, his future’s in the air right now. We’re breathing it in and brushing it off.”

“God has forsaken this place,” Pike said.

“That’s awful harsh,” said Monk.

“Certainly. It may be. But I find it hard to say otherwise. Look around. The land is a desert, cracked and empty. Hell’s storms stride across the earth. I can’t say what these people have done to incur His wrath, but His wrath is what they have and it is here now.”

Connelly withdrew to a small bedroom and found Hammond on the mattress frame, cross-legged, a blanket around his shoulders.

“Don’t know how much longer this’ll last,” said Connelly as he sat across from him.

“Wouldn’t expect you to.” Hammond sniffed and sneezed. “How are the others bearing it?”

“Not happily, that’s for sure.”

“I bet I know. They’re all saying this is something new. Something about a curse for something we did. Aren’t they?”

“Yeah.”

Hammond laughed.

“What’s so funny?” asked Connelly.

“It’s not new. Things like this have happened before.”

“I’ve never seen it.”

“Doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before. Just means you weren’t around to see it.” Hammond paused. His eyes grew wide and hollow and Connelly had never seen him look so fearful. “I think it’s more than just the storm.”

“What is?”

“I think it goes further. They say the storm is a curse and they say these hungry times are a curse. Like they expect things to always be safe and this hunger is new and strange. That there’ll always be plenty. But that’s the strange thing. That’s the new thing. Living comfortably. That’s strange.”

“Think so?”

“I do.”

“Well. That’s an idea.”

Hammond sniffed again, then said, “Hey, Connelly?”

“Yeah?”

“You hear about how the last thing a guy does is shit himself?”

“Yeah?”

He paused. “Think Jesus did that when He died on the cross?”

Connelly started up, then sat back down uncomfortably. “Goddamn. That’s a crazy thing to say.”

“Isn’t it? But you have to wonder, don’t you. He was definitely human. And He definitely died. It would stand to reason, wouldn’t it?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in Jesus.”

“I’m just wondering, is all. We all want dignity. We all want plenty. But we’re probably not going to get it, are we.”

Lottie walked in, looked at the two of them, then sat next to Connelly. She undid her kerchief and her hair spilled down around her neck and she shook it out. Red clouds formed around her head like a halo.

“Look at me. I’m Irish,” she said, and tried to smile.

“What’s going on in there, Lottie?” asked Hammond. “Still a lot of moaning and groaning?”

“I’d be shocked if there wasn’t.” She chewed her lip. “He’s long gone, isn’t he.”

“Yeah,” said Connelly.

“I guess a man could run through that if he didn’t care where he was going,” she said. She chewed her lip more, then began to bite her nails. “Go over what happened in the house one more time,” she said.

“I been over it enough,” said Connelly. “Everyone’s been asking me about it ever since we calmed down.”

“We haven’t calmed down. I can’t imagine someone being calm in these circumstances.”

“Well, since things got less goddamn crazy, then.”

“It doesn’t make sense, is all. How’d he get out of the house? Through the window? What the hell was he doing there? I won’t ask Jake to talk about it, but how did he… How did he do what he did to Ernie so fast?”

“Jake won’t know,” said Hammond. “He wasn’t there.”

“You saw?”

“No. Stands to reason if Jake had been there to see he’d be cut up just as much as his brother.”

She shook her head, eyes wide. “And the storm…”

“I don’t want to hear any more ghost story talk,” said Connelly. “He’s a man. I know more than anyone. I saw him scared not more than a day or two ago when I almost caught him and pulled the guts out of him. Ghosts aren’t scared.”

“I hope you’re right,” she said, and patted his arm. Connelly looked at it. She took it away but did not seem to have noticed that he had looked.

Hammond coughed and said, “I don’t know. I heard the craziest shit about him. One old woman told me he could make the night sing.”

“Sing?”

“Yeah. I asked her what it sang about, and if it was a waltz or a march or anything you could dance to, and she got mad as hell. Thought I was making fun of her. Which I was. Then she said he could make all kinds of things sing, if he wanted. He could take a bone and write on it and make it sing. Make it sing you nightmares which would make you sicker than a dog. Said it tainted the land, sort of like poisoning it.”

“Did you believe it?” asked Lottie.

Hammond snorted and laughed. “Hell no. Old lady was drunker than a boiled owl and had the French disease something fierce.”

“Oh.”

“Say, why are you after him?” asked Hammond. “You never told us.”

“I didn’t want to,” Lottie said.

“We told you why we were.”

“I never asked you to. I never heard Connelly tell his, either.”

“That’s right,” said Hammond, looking at him. “I don’t know why you’re doing this, either.”

“I’m doing this,” Connelly said. “All you need to know.”

“You two are terrible conversationalists,” said Hammond. “Here, let’s try again. Where are you from, Lottie?”

“Galveston. In Texas.”

“Huh. What’s that like?”

“Big. And pissed. Port cities usually are. Especially Texan port cities.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t. Jews are a rarity in Texas.”

“Christ,” said Hammond. “How come everyone has to know I’m a Jew?”

“Because they’re a rarity.”

“Thanks,” said Hammond sarcastically. He stood and grabbed a blanket off the floor. “I’m going to get some damn sleep. I’m in favor of pulling the mattresses off the windows. They’re not doing any good.”

“Suit yourself,” said Lottie. “Make sure to put a blanket over your head as you sleep. I bet you could suffocate in this.”

Hammond sighed, nodded, and walked into the living room.

“How’s Jake?” Connelly asked her.

“Bad.”

“I never heard anyone scream like that. I hope I never do again.”

“How old are you, Connelly?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know how old you are?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I never kept track.”

“How can you not keep track of something like that?”

“It never occurred to me to try.”

“Hammond’s just a boy.”

“He is.”

“And Pike’s an old man.”

“Yeah. He don’t act like one, though.”

“I wonder now,” said Lottie. “There’s got to be more than us. If there’s us there’s got to be more. How many? Dozens? Hundreds? How long has he been doing this?”

Connelly was silent for a while. Then he said, “It was your child, wasn’t it?”

Lottie flinched. She blinked, made as though to move away, then stopped. “Yes,” she said.

“I can tell.”

“How?”

“Don’t know. Just do. These folks, they lost a lot. They each lost their own. But parents grieve for their children in a special way. It’s a special kind of hurt. I don’t know if it has a name but you can see it in a face. It’s in yours. Suppose it’s in mine too.”

Lottie did not say anything. The wind clawed at the windows. She said, “It was my boy.”

Connelly sat and waited.

“I wasn’t a very good momma, I think,” she said softly. “He ran away when he was fourteen. I can’t blame him. I didn’t miss him at first but then I did. That was years ago.” She shut her eyes, breathed out. “Then I hear from a guy that heard from a guy that heard from a guy that he ran into trouble in Kentucky and he’s not alive anymore. Killed. Some damn fight. Some damn thing. A scarred fella who just had it in for him, they said. It’s a bad thing to lose a child but it’s worse if you never got to know them and you don’t even know where they’re buried or how. Hell, I’ve… I’ve never even been to Kentucky. I don’t know where he’s lying now or if there’s any peace in it. It isn’t right that a man can take that away from you, can do that to you. It isn’t right.”

“No,” said Connelly. “It isn’t. But it happened.”

“I heard something from a man south of here, down in Killeen. He said that when a woman’s heavy with child and she feels the first hurts from labor she’s got to take her first baby tooth and put it in a pot of dirt and put it on her windowsill. That way Mr. Shivers will pass that house over and leave that baby be.”

“I heard something similar,” said Connelly. “Coroners have to leave the teeth of men they find dead in alleys or ditches on their doorsteps or windowsills. As a signal. For him. People that die in the between places, in roads and switchyards. Those belong to Mr. Shivers.”

“You believe it?”

“No.” Then he considered it. “Though by now I’m willing to believe a lot of crazy shit I wouldn’t have thought twice about before.”

They sat together, not saying anything.

“Sometimes I wonder,” said Connelly. “I wonder what he sees when he opens his eyes in the morning. If he’s looking at the same place I’m looking at. Or if he sees something else.”

“He’s not a ghost,” Lottie said. “You said so yourself.”

“I did. I still believe it. When I first saw him, he was scared. Did I tell you that?”

“No.”

“He was. When he… When he first saw my daughter. He was scared. I was with her. Just walking her to school as any father would, but she was at that age where, you know, she wanted to show she was on her own, so I let her walk ahead of me. And as she did I saw him on the other side of the street. Pale fella who looked at the world like it didn’t matter an inch to him, like he owned it, with a scarred face and a mouth that stretched back to his jaw. He looked at her and I saw his face go all hungry and then he looked all scared.”

“Scared of what?”

Connelly thought about it. “Scared of me, I think,” he said.

“Why would he be scared of you?”

“I don’t know. He looked at me and just was.”

“He looked scared of you just the other day, too.”

“I know. Don’t know why, though.”

“What was she like? Your daughter?”

“Like her mother. Which was good. She had blonde hair and she was smart. Smart as hell. When she was five she could name every bird in our garden. Said they danced for her, danced when I wasn’t looking. Maybe they did. I don’t know.”

“Where’s her mother?”

“Back home in Tennessee.”

“She let you go?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t even sure if we were married anymore. Not really. One day it was like two strangers stole our lives and we didn’t do anything more than walk through the house. I said I was going to put things right. I was going to go out and find that man and make things right.”

“Did she understand?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

They sat in silence for a while.

Lottie said, “What time do you think it is?”

Connelly shrugged.

“I think I’ll follow Hammond’s idea. I’m tired. You should think about it, too. You look dog-tired.”

“It’s the dust. That’s all.”

“If you say so.” And she left.

Connelly waited for her to be far away. He reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. He opened it and eased his fingers in and took out a tiny folded-up piece of paper, shiny with age and wear. He unfolded it. In some places it was worn until it was like cloth. On it was a charcoal drawing, done with some skill but not much. A picture of a girl’s face, smiling and laughing.

He had paid a man at the fair to do her portrait. Hung it up in the living room later. Then when that life was over and he left, it had been the only thing he had taken. It was the only valuable possession he owned and the only thing that brought him to his feet in the morning and kept him walking in the day.

He tried to imbue it with color. Tried to use his imagination to project the things the drawing missed. Her crooked smile. Kitten’s teeth. Her hate of the rain and love of the wind. And her eyes were green. He remembered that.

“Your eyes were green,” he told the picture. “Green. They were green.”

He looked at it, letting time pass in silence, then folded it up and put it back in his wallet. Then he just sat.