Such a Good Girl and Other Crime Stories

Ghosts

Some nights were kinder to thieves than others.

Tonight, for instance. The October Saturday was prisoner to chill rain and rolling fog. All kinds of things could hide in such darkness.

The convenience store was an oasis in the gloom, windows bright with neon letters blue and green and red advertising various beers and wine, parking lot filled with the battered cars of the working poor, cracked windshields and primer-gray spots covering up damaged fenders and doors and leaking exhaust systems that shook the vehicles in orgasmic spasms, black radios booming rap, white radios booming heavy metal.

Byrnes was of the night and the fog itself, the damp slimy fog encircling him like glistening nightmare snakes, his own dark eyes glistening, too, anger, fear, need, loneliness, and a strange dreamy feeling, as if he were detached from himself, just watching this dumb pathetic fuck named Byrnes do all this stuff:

The night smelled of coldness and traffic fumes and his own harsh cigarette breath. He was trembling.

He stood across the street from the store, black coat, black gloves, black jeans, black high-top running shoes, just the way he’d learned in prison up to Anamosa. Five-to-ten armed robbery. But because of his young age — and because of overcrowding — he’d served only four.

He’d been out six months. His young wife was gone, the baby she used to bring to the prison and claim was his, the baby gone, too. First month or so he’d been a Boy Scout. Did everything his parole officer told him. Showed up nice and regular at the job at a wholesale tire company where he put outsize rubber on truck fleets and big-ass farm equipment. Got himself a respectable little sleeping room. Stayed away from his old crowd. Even went to mass a few times.

Then Heather, this chick he met down to this Black Crows concert at the Five Seasons, she turned him on to meth and man, he hadn’t been straight a moment since. Now, he was lucky if he dragged himself into work two, three days a week. Once a month, his parole officer checked with his employer, see how Byrnes was doing. Pretty soon it would be his ass. The parole officer would demand a urine test and they’d find the meth in Byrnes and he’d be back in the joint for parole violation.

His only hope was to get enough money to lay by a few weeks’ supply of meth and then head for the yards down by Quaker Oats. In the joint there’d been a lot of talk about bein’ a hobo. The stories you heard in prison you had to cut in half — nobody loved to bullshit you as much as bored cons — but even cut in half the life of a ’bo sounded pretty cool. The idea of waking up in a gondola on a beautiful warm morning out in the west somewhere... and the life would be so healthy, he’d even be able to kick meth too. He’d be free again in all senses.

He had to stand there nearly forty-five minutes before the lull came. He’d hit eight stores in the past seven weeks and by now, he knew their patterns pretty good. Even the busiest convenience store had a lull. Even on a Saturday night. This store was having a lull now, parking lot empty, clerk working on a counter display.

Byrnes gripped the .45 in the pocket of his cheap black raincoat and walked across the rain-glistening street.

Clerk was a black woman in the orange polyester uniform jacket and silly hat Happy Campers made all their employees wear, the orange only emphasizing her already considerable size. She looked smart and friendly, smiling silently at him as he walked to the coolers in the back where the beer was kept. He was quickly checking to see if any customers were lurking unseen back there. None were.

He went right up front and pulled the gun and said, “Just make this easy for us, all right?”

She did something he wouldn’t have expected. She smiled. Couple gold teeth, she had, and she smiled with them. She smelled good, a heady, spicy perfume. “You look more scared than I do.”

“I just want the money, ma’am. Just please make it easy for both of us. All right?”

She glanced at the cash register. “Most I got in there is five, six hundred.”

“Give me everything you’ve got in there. Now.”

She sighed. “You’re shakin’, boy. You know that?” There was real pity in her eyes and voice. “I got a boy about your age. I sure hope he never do nothin’ like you’re doin’.”

The car was in the parking lot, then, the beam of its headlights playing across the wall behind the clerk.

She’d been talking too much. Lulls never lasted long. She’d been talking too much and he hadn’t stopped her. And now there was a car pulling in the lot.

“You better get your ass out of here,” she said. “And hurry.”

He couldn’t believe it. She didn’t seem intimidated at all by the gun. Or his black getup.

He said, “I just got out of prison, lady.”

She grinned. “I did time myself. Now you git, you hear me?”

Thunk of a heavy car door slamming. Then a second door shutting. Two people at least. Coming inside. Quickly.

“And lemme do you a favor and take that before you hurt somebody.”

His mind was divided, part of it on the door and the two figures now outlined inside the fog. The other part watching as the woman reached out — slo-mo, just like in the movies — and started to take the .45 from him.

“Hey!” he said, wanting to cry out in frustration and bafflement.

The door opening. Two balding, middle-aged men coming in. And the clerk grasping the gun and twisting it to get it away from him.

And him so startled and angry and—

He fired twice.

He would never know if he’d actually meant to fire. Or if it had just been a terrible accident. He could never be sure.

He’d never seen anybody shot before. TV had conditioned him to expect an imposing and dramatic moment. But all she did, really, was put big hard-working black hands over the blood patches in the front of her silly Happy Camper orange uniform jacket.

There was this terrible silence — it couldn’t have lasted more than a second or two — and inside it he could hear her start to sob. She was dying. He had no doubt about that and neither did she.

And then there was no room for silence in the store as the men crashed into aisles trying to find a safe place from his weapon. And him firing to keep them at bay. And then her screaming as she started to fall over backwards into the silver ice cream machine.

And then he was running, too. He didn’t know where. Just running and running and running and the fog made it a bitch running you can believe that running into a tree once and stumbling over a sidewalk crack another time and then tripping over a tiny tricycle another time palms all cut to shit from the sidewalk and all the time cursing and sobbing and seeing her die there over and over and over seeing her die had he really shot her on purpose? Her dying over and over and over.

And him running through this Midwestern night and sirens now and fog heavier now a half-world really not the real world at all half-world and faint half-lighted windows and half-voices in the houses and apartments lost in the gloom muted cries of infants and lusting lovers and angry lovers and droning TVs and him nothing more than slapping footsteps and whining searing breath in the windpipe in the night. Alone...

He made no conscious effort to reach this place. And when he saw it he had to smile. Maybe he wasn’t as luckless as he’d thought.

Not easy to see the railroad yard in the fog. But he could make out the general shape of it. Smell the oil and heat and damp steel of it. See the vast brick roundhouse and the two-story barracks-like building where business was conducted during the day. The crosshatching of silver track. And the box cars, walls of them lined up into infinity into the fog and the night, unseen engines down the line, rumbling and shuddering and thrumming in this half-world like great beasts of a prehistoric time, unseen but all-powerful as they stole a line of boxcars here and a line of boxcars there, and began moving them into the Midwestern night borne for places as forlorn as Utah and as magnificent as California, and hoboes of every description (if prison talk was to be believed) riding fine and happy inside the dark empty wombs of them.

Riding fine and happy.

He’d be doing that himself in a few minutes.

Three hours ago, Chicago Mike had enjoyed a gourmet meal at the local Salvation Army. Chicken and peas and mashed potatoes. This was a good town, far as free food went. He’d been planning on staying a few nights but the place was full up and they had to put the extras in this little building away from the main action where all of Chicago Mike’s friends were so he just decided to head back to the yard from whence he came and find a westbound train. He had to ask one of the yard clerks for help. Chicago Mike, a scruffy sixty-six years of age, could remember the days when rail workers had been the enemy. No more. They hated management so much for always trying to bust their unions that they were happy to help ’bos with information. A railroad dick tonight even walked Chicago Mike to a newish car and helped him up on it. Long long ago — back in the days when he still had teeth and had an erection at least once a day — Chicago Mike had busted his knee up hopping a freight and he’d moved real slow and ginger ever since.

He was ensconced now for the night. Tucked into a corner of the big car. He’d taken an apple and a Snickers from the Salvation Army. He figured these’d make a good breakfast. He had his .38 stuffed under his right thigh. Sometimes, you’d fall asleep and find yourself with unwanted company, a ’bo with bad manners or murderous intent. There were gangs on the rails these days, and they’d kill you just for pleasure. He threw his blanket over his legs and hunched down inside his heavily layered clothes. If it got real cold, he’d get inside his sleeping bag. Two things a ’bo needed to learn real good and they were patience and how to deal with loneliness. Long time ago somebody had taught him how to summon and while most ’bos didn’t believe in it, nobody knew better than Chicago Mike just how real summoning was...

He wasn’t sure just when the kid hopped on board, Chicago Mike. He’d been in a kind of half-sleep, a sweet soft summer dream of he and his wife Kitty on the pier in Chicago 1958, just after he’d put in his Navy years. Could there ever have been a woman as pretty and gentle and loving as Kitty? Fourteen years they’d been together until that night, dancing in his arms on a dance boat, she’d slumped forward and died. Aneurysm, the docs said later. And so, after burying her, Michael Thomas Callahan, respectable purveyor of appliances to the public in Oak Park, Illinois, became Chicago Mike, rider of the rails. For years, Chicago Mike believed that only in distance and the violent metal thrashing of speeding boxcars could he find solace... And then he’d learned about summoning...

The kid huddled in the far corner of the big, empty car with the wooden floor and the metal walls defaced in spots with some singularly uncreative graffiti. Trouble, Chicago Mike knew instantly. He’d been too long atraveling not to recognize it. Trouble. He wondered what the kid had done. Robbery, at least. You didn’t hop a freight for anything less. Maybe even murder.

Chicago Mike took out his long black flashlight and beamed it on the kid. “You all right, son?”

“Just leave me alone, old man.”

“Most of the people on the rails, they try to be friendly and help each other.”

“Good for them.”

Chicago Mike clipped off his flashlight. In a few minutes, the train started to move. And then they were in the prairie night and really rolling. Chicago Mike worried vaguely about the kid jumping him — scared people were dangerous people, and this kid was definitely scared. But he wasn’t worried enough to stay awake. Chicago Mike dozed off.

The scream woke him. The kid’s scream.

Chicago Mike pulled himself up straight, grabbed his light and shone it on the kid.

The way the kid looked, the way he was shaking, the way his face gleamed with sweat and his eyes were wide with frantic fear... Chicago Mike could pretty much guess what had happened.

He stood up and walked the length of the rocking car. He moved slowly, his busted-up knee and all. The kid opened his mouth a couple times, as if he was going to tell Chicago Mike to stay away, but he ended up not saying anything at all.

Chicago Mike sat down next to the kid and handed him the pint of cheap whiskey. The kid took it and gunned himself three quick drinks.

“What kind of trouble you in, son?”

The kid just glared at him. “I didn’t ask you to come over here, old man.”

“No, I reckon you didn’t.”

“And I don’t want you hangin’ around.”

“All right, son, if that’s the way you feel.”

Chicago Mike started to push himself to his feet, arthritic bones cracking. The kid grabbed his arm.

“I shouldn’t be in the trouble I am,” he said. “I just meant to rob the place is all.”

“But somethin’ else happened, huh?”

The kid looked miserable, lost. “Yeah, somethin’ else happened, all right.”

Chicago Mike knew not to ask any more questions. The kid would tell him what he wanted to tell him. Nothing more.

“And then I had this — nightmare, I guess you’d call it,” the kid said. “Just now, when I was asleep. She — the black woman — she was in it and she was trying to get me to come with her. You know — to die.”

The kid leaned his head back against the wall. Closed his eyes. The door was partly open so you could smell the cold autumn night and see the quarter moon above the cornfields. The kid said, “But that wasn’t all. When I woke up — I could smell her perfume. I still can.” The kid sat up and looked at Chicago Mike and said, “You know what that means? That I could smell her perfume?”

“What?”

“She was here. Right in this boxcar.” He trembled. “Right in this boxcar, tryin’ to get to me.” He paused. “Her ghost.”

“You think ghosts still have their perfume?”

“Hers did.”

The pint of whiskey sat between them. Without asking, the kid picked up the pint and drained off a couple more good ones. “I appreciate it.”

“My pleasure.”

“You mind if I ask you to go back now?”

“No problem.”

“Thanks again.”

Somewhere in the night, somewhere near the Nebraska border, another scream woke Chicago Mike. But this time when he woke up, he saw the kid standing up and walking across the swaying boxcar.

“Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” the kid was shrieking.

And then he was firing the gun in his hand.

Chicago Mike had to put it together fast. Kid sees the ghost again. Grabs his gun. Starts firing. Two things wrong with that, one being that there’s no way you can kill a ghost, the other being that the kid, not seeing what he’s doing, is firing right at Chicago Mike.

“Kid! Kid!” Chicago Mike shouted, trying to free the kid from his nightmare. “Quit firing your gun!”

But the bullets kept coming. Chicago Mike rolled to his right, grabbing his .38 as he did so.

The kid couldn’t have many rounds left but he continued to fire right at where Chicago Mike was. The kid was screaming at the ghost all the time. Telling her to leave him alone. Telling her it was an accident. Telling her he was sorry. All the time firing.

“Kid! Kid! Quit shooting at her!”

A bullet took a piece of fabric off Chicago Mike’s jacket. And then he knew he had no choice — he had to fire back, injure the kid enough to disarm him.

But just as he fired, the train rolled around a long, steep bank and Chicago Mike’s shooting was thrown off: He’d meant to hit the kid in the arm. Instead, the bullet moved over and took the kid in the heart.

The kid went over backwards, kind of a Three Stooges thing actually, bouncing off the wall only to pitch forward, arms windmilling, to run head first into the other wall as the train continued to curve around the steep bank. Then he did a little pirouette in the middle of the car, and fell forward. And died.

There would be too many questions if Chicago Mike was found in a box car with a dead young man. Somewhere near Plattville, Chicago Mike pushed the kid out the door. He watched as the body hit the side of the tracks and sprawled on its back.

He’d seen it before, Chicago Mike, how a kid’s first encounter with a ghost made him literally crazy. He didn’t understand that the ghost didn’t have any power to kill him. She was just angry that he’d killed her. Her soul hadn’t passed over yet. That would happen in a day or so and then she’d forget all about him.

Chicago Mike remembered the first time he’d seen a ghost. What a wondrous experience that had been. It’d happened right after the old ’bo had taught him how to summon.

As Chicago Mike was doing right now.

He felt plain terrible about having to kill the kid. He needed a gentle and loving person to talk to.

And so he summoned. Closed his eyes as if in prayer and said the words the old ’bo had taught him.

And when he opened them again, there she was, pretty as she’d been back in 1958, the year he’d married her. His lovely wife Kitty.

She knelt next to him and kissed him and then just held him for a long time. He told her about what he’d been doing and how awful it had been accidentally killing that young kid, and then they just sat together holding hands and listening to the train spectral as the night itself, rushing into the solace of darkness.