The Dead Town

Chapter 26

The sad piano music followed them through the house and all the way into Officer Bozeman’s two-car garage. The garage contained no cars, but there were a Ford Expedition, a motorcycle, and in front of the cycle a snowmobile on an open trailer, just as Nummy O’Bannon had told Mr. Lyss there would be.

“Peaches, every time I think you’re as useless as a two-legged cat, you come through for us. You’re all right.”

This praise greatly pleased Nummy until he realized they were stealing another vehicle, just one without wheels this time. He was being praised for helping Mr. Lyss to steal.

“Sir, when that there lottery ticket in your wallet wins big, it’ll be good if you pay for the Boze’s snowmobile then.”

“Hell and all, who would I pay? Bozeman is dead in the kitchen. His wife is dead and buried. They never had kids. I’m damn well not going to pay his monster look-alike so it can make the next mortgage payment and just sit on its ass playing morbid piano.” He poked Nummy in the chest with one finger. “You’ve got this fixation about always paying for things.” He poked Nummy again. “It’s not just because you’re a moron. It’s psychological.” He poked Nummy a third time. “It’s neurotic is what it is. Sick. It’s deeply sick. Sick and damn annoying. Nobody pays for everything. I guess I should pay for the air I breathe! For the sounds I hear! For all the things I can see because I’ve got eyes! Who do I write those checks to, hmmmmm? Who?”

Nummy was pleased that Mr. Lyss had begun to understand. He said, “You want to tithe? Grandmama she always tithed to St. John’s over on Bear Claw Lane, so if you want to tithe where she did, then that would be good.”

Mr. Lyss just stared at Nummy while the piano got even sadder. Then he threw his hands in the air as if shouting hallelujah and tossing away all his cares. “I give up. How can I expect you to learn some street smarts when you don’t have any other smarts of any damn kind? Can a donkey waltz? Can a monkey sing opera? Can a cow jump over the freaking moon?”

Nummy didn’t know what to say because he didn’t understand any of those questions. They didn’t make sense to him.

Fortunately, Mr. Lyss didn’t try to shake answers out of Nummy, like he sometimes did. Instead, the old man climbed into the open roofless trailer with the snowmobile and began examining the controls, all the while muttering to himself.

Nummy shuffled around the garage, looking at the tools hanging on the walls, the workbench with all its little drawers, several gasoline-company signs the Boze collected, and the spiderwebs here and there in corners. He didn’t like spiders at all. Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web was okay, she was nice, but she wasn’t a real spider, she was a story spider with a good heart. He hoped it was too cold for spiders now because real ones didn’t have good hearts.

Once, more years back than he could count, he came upon a web where a fly was stuck and a spider was eating it alive. Nummy felt awful for the fly because it didn’t know webs were sticky, it just didn’t know, it made one mistake, and now it was being eaten. The fly was hardly alive. Nummy was too late to save it. He turned away but couldn’t stop feeling awful for the fly. He felt awful all that day, way back when. And later that evening, he realized why he was upset about the fly’s suffering. The little fly was dumb, and the spider was smart, making its sticky web, and so the dumb fly never had a chance. When he figured that out, Nummy told Grandmama about the fly, and he cried while he told her.

Grandmama listened to every word, she never cut him short, and then she said the fly wouldn’t want Nummy to cry for it. She said the fly led a happy life, just as free as any bird, exploring all day and always delighted by what it saw in the world, playing fly games, no need to work because it ate crumbs and other things that were free, and it didn’t have to have a house with all the upkeep that required. Meanwhile, the spider was always spinning webs, scheming, either working or lying in wait, which was just another kind of work. The spider couldn’t fly. It crouched in corners while flies flew. The spider could only watch flying things and envy them. The spider lived in shadows, darkness, but the fly’s life was full of light. Because it only ate flies and such, never a cookie crumb or a dropped bit of a candy bar, the spider never tasted anything sweet. The spider was proud about how smart it was, but when you really thought about the situation, the fly had all the fun. And even though the fly came to a terrible end, it didn’t know that such a thing could happen to it, and therefore it lived without worry. Because the spider knew what it did to flies, it also knew that some other creature might do the same to it, some toad or frog or bird. So the fly lived without worry and free and flying, while the ever-working spider lived in fear and shadows, crouched and wary or scuttling for cover.

After circling Officer Bozeman’s garage, Nummy saw no spiders in the webs or out of them, but he found the keys to the three vehicles on a Peg-Board by the open door to the kitchen. He knew which one was for the snowmobile because he’d seen the Boze use it. He took the key to Mr. Lyss, who was just climbing over the railing of the open trailer.

Accepting the key, pointing at the snowmobile, the old man said, “I think I’ve got this bugger figured out. But before we go scooting off into the storm of the damn century, let’s find some gloves and get your feet properly protected.”

Mr. Lyss led the way back into the house and into the sad piano music. Nummy reluctantly followed because he didn’t want to find a spider when he was alone in the garage.

Searching the bedroom closet, the old man found waterproof boots. Mr. Lyss was already wearing good boots, but Nummy had only shoes. Mr Lyss stuffed some of Officer Bozeman’s socks in the toes of the boots, and then they fit Nummy’s feet well enough.

“I won’t take these here boots,” Nummy said. “I’ll only borrow them.”

There were a few pairs of gloves. For both of them, Mr. Lyss chose two pairs with what he called wrist and gauntlet straps. He could pull the straps to make the gloves fit nice and tight.

“I’ll only borrow these, too,” Nummy said.

“Me too,” Mr. Lyss said. “I’ll just borrow these gloves for the rest of my life, and when I’m dead like Bozeman, I’ll give them back to him.”

Because the Boze had only one snowmobiler helmet, which Mr. Lyss would need because he was driving, Nummy had to settle for a toboggan cap. He could pull it down over his ears once they were moving fast and making cold wind.

“But don’t you go thinking that cap is yours now,” Mr. Lyss said. “It’s only yours on loan.”

“I know,” Nummy assured him.

Mr. Lyss found a red-and-gray wool scarf for Nummy to wrap around his face later, when they were speeding through the snow. “You understand this is only on loan, too?”

“That’s right.”

“You lose it, I’ll make you pay for it, even if you have to work the rest of your life to earn the money.”

“I won’t lose it,” Nummy said.

From the Boze’s bedroom, Mr. Lyss went to stand in the living-room archway. He watched the Xerox Boze playing the piano.

At last the old man said, “I don’t know why it doesn’t feel right, but it doesn’t. I just can’t kill him.”

“Maybe you’re not a killer.”

“Oh, I’m a killer sure enough. I’ve killed more men than you’ve ever met in your whole life. I’d as soon kill most people as look at them. I’ve killed some people just because they smiled and said hello to me.”

Nummy shook his head. “I’m not sure you really did.”

“You better not be calling me a liar. Somebody calls me a liar, I cut him open, rearrange his innards, sew him up, and for the rest of his life he has to pee out of his left ear.”

“What you said before is you cut out his tongue and fried it with onions for breakfast.”

“That’s right. I do that sometimes, and sometimes I make him pee out of his ear. Depends on my mood. So you better not be calling me a liar.”

“I’m not. That wouldn’t be nice. People they should always be nice to each other.”

In the garage again, the old man pushed a button to put up the big door. A little wind had come up, and snow blew in from the night.

Putting his long gun on the workbench, he said, “I can’t see any way to take this. It won’t fit in the saddlebags. We’ll have to hope the pistols are enough.”

The smaller guns were in the deep pockets of his long coat, and there were lots of bullets in other pockets, all borrowed from the preacher’s house that they burned down.

Nummy had been with Mr. Lyss not even a day yet, but it seemed like a life’s worth of stuff had happened. You didn’t have time to be bored around Mr. Lyss.

“We’ll pull the trailer into the driveway and drop the ramp in the snow,” the old man said. “But wait. Just let me put on this damn thing.”

The damn thing was the helmet. It was silver and black with a clear window across the face.

A circle of little holes in the helmet, in front of Mr. Lyss’s mouth, let out his voice. “How do I look?”

“Like a spaceman.”

“Scary-looking, am I?”

“No. You look funny.”

“You know what I’ve done to any snarky bastard who says I look funny?”

“Nothing nice,” Nummy said.