The Mammoth Book of Nebula Awards SF

SFWA inaugurated the Author Emeritus program in 1995 to recognize and appreciate senior writers in the genres of science fiction and fantasy who have made significant contributions to our field but who are no longer active or whose excellent work is no longer as well known as it once was. SFWA is proud to name Neal Barrett, Jr. this year’s Author Emeritus.

Within the past fifty years, Neal Barrett, Jr. has penned such lauded works as Prince of Christler-Coke (2004), Dawn’s Uncertain Light (1989), Through Darkest America (1987), and over 50 other novels in the fields of science fiction, fantasy, western, and mystery. His short works, which number more than 70, have appeared in such major magazines such as Amazing, Galaxy, Omni, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

His early inspirations included the Barsoom books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well as the science fiction of such well-known magazines as Planet Stories, Startling Stories, Astounding, and If. Neal has also lent his enormous talent to the world of juveniles writing Hardy Boys adventures as Franklin W. Dixon and Tom Swift stories as Victor Applegate. He’s also produced novelizations of Judge Dredd and Dungeons & Dragons, and put some time in writing comic scripts for Batman, Predator, Dark Horse Presents, and others. He continues to write and publish. His most recent stories appear at Subterranean Press, and collected in Perpetuity Blues and Other Stories from Golden Gryphon Press.

NEAL BARRETT, JR.: WRITER OF EXCELLENCE, AND MY BROTHER Joe R. Lansdale

First off, don’t misspell his name.

It’s Neal, not Neil.

His first name, as well as his last, has been misspelled as much as my last name, and he hates that. I know. Just to get him going I used to write him letters with his name misspelled, and he in turn would write me letters with Lansdale spelled Landsdale, with two Ds. He always told me that the first D was silent.

But back to my purpose for being here with you on the printed page.

It’s hard to express how honored, how excited I am that my good friend, and great writer, Neal Barrett, Jr., is receiving this award.

For years, Neal has been a favorite writer of mine, and I have actually been amazed at the lack of attention his work has received, compared to that of some others.

Don’t misunderstand me. I wish all those others the best. I am not saying they are not deserving of their recognitions.

But Neal Barrett, Jr. is an amazing stylist and creator of some of the most original fiction ever consigned to paper, or computer screen. And to be honest, he has been taken for granted. He has not been without respect or influence. He has taught many a new writer a thing or two with his smooth prose, humorous point of view, and brilliant ideas.

I am one of those influenced by him, and maybe, considering that admission, I should apologize to him and readers everywhere. I may have learned a thing or two from the master, but Neal, he’s still the man.

I met Neal… Oh, my God! I met Neal in the mid-seventies, though he may not remember it. Met him in Houston, Texas, at a science-fiction convention. I brought a few things of his I had, asked him to sign, and he did. I was there not only because I was a fan of his, knew he was going to be there, but because I, too, wanted to write, and my wife insisted I go because she knew how deeply I loved his work and wanted to meet him.

I had already sold a few nonfiction articles, and maybe even a piece of fiction or two, but what I remember was, when I first met him and told him I badly wanted to write full time. He told me “Good luck.”

Seemed he hadn’t figured that whole full time thing out himself. At least not then. That was to come later.

I also remember that there were some young writers there, my age, a little older in some cases, or a little younger, who wouldn’t give me the time of day. They treated my like a leper. I’ve never forgotten that. I don’t hate them for it, but somewhere in the back of my mind I made a little mark in a mental book, and that mark is still as darkly blood red and clear in my brain as the first day I made it. They knew not what they did. But I damn sure did.

Neal was different. I’ve never forgotten how kindly he treated a stranger who desperately wanted to make a career as a writer.

Bless you for that, Neal. You have no idea how encouraging that was then.

Neal gave me advice. Most of it simple and direct.

Keep doing it, and keep trying to do it better. This is really the only advice that matters.

It may not sound profound, but it was exactly what I needed at the time. It was nice to meet one of your heroes and find out they were as special as you hoped they would be.

A few years later I met Neal again, at AggieCon, and this time we really hit it off. Maybe it’s because I complimented his work again. Neal enjoys that sort of thing, and, he should.

His work is worth complimenting.

After that meeting, we not only became fast friends, I soon had the privilege of reading some of his works as they came out of his typewriter, via Xerox and mail. That’s how we did it in the old days.

It was a real treat to read stories and books by Neal before they were printed. It was great to spend time on the phone talking. We talked about everything under the sun, but mostly we talked about writing. Of course we met in person as often as possible, but we certainly burned those phone wires down, and faxed each other back and forth. In fact, one time Neal sent me a fax sheet with only a spot on it. It said, “Smell. Indian Food.”

He, who had introduced me to it, knew how much I loved Indian food, so he sent me the fax, called me a few minutes later.

He said, “Did you smell?”

“Yep,” I said. “Even though I knew better.”

“Knew you would,” he said, and hung up.

But the thing that is more important to me, even than the writing, good as it is, is Neal himself. We have been close friends for over thirty years. We’ve had ups and downs over this and that, but never any ups and downs where one of us fell off the seesaw. In the end, we were always there to balance each other out. We love each other as family.

Me and Neal, we’ve had some odd adventures together. We attract weirdness alone, but together, we seem to pull it out of the woodwork.

I adore Neal’s wit. I adore his honesty and loyalty. I adore that he sees curiosity in things other people take for granted, or think of as everyday. He is like a small child when it comes to that. And in many other ways. I think his wife will stand by that statement as well.

Like me, he loves animals. I adore that. I also adore that he adores his wife.

Hell, I love the guy. My whole family does.

And because of that, along with the fact I think he is a worthy recipient of this honor, I write this from the heart: I love you, Neal. I’m glad you are being honored in this way, and I’ve yet to forgive you for giving me a gift of a dollar bill torn in half.

GETTING DARK Neal Barrett, Jr.

JOHN-WILLIAM’S MOTHER TURNS the water on low and peels carrots in the sink. Wet skins slick-slick quick off the cutter and stick in a huddle where they fall. This is what skins like to do. They like to huddle up, stick with their own kind. Peel a potato and a carrot in the sink, they won’t speak at all, they’ll bunch up with someone they know. Like nigger-folks and whites, thinks John-William’s mother. That’s what Jack used to say. One’s dark and one’s not. One’s that snake in the Garden, would’ve stuck it in Eve, but couldn’t figure how.

John-William’s mother drops carrots in a pot, puts the pot on the stove. Leaves the skins alone, leaves them where they fell. They look like bird tongues to John-William’s mother, cut-cut dagger tongues, curled up at the end. She thinks about birds, big old black birds, harelipped fat birds without any tongues. “ ’weet! ’weet!” go the birds, poor little birds without any tongues. Poke in a peel now, that’d be fine, stick a little tongue in a pointy yellow bill.

John-William’s mother peers out the screen door. The birds have black ruffle necks and glitter-green eyes. They perch on phone wires just behind the house. Birds in twos now, birds in threes, birds like notes on the music at Mama Sarah’s house. Note birds hop from one wire to the next. Hop down, hop up, up and down again. The birds play “Summit Ridge Drive,” play “Chatanooga Choo Choo,” and “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” When she hears those songs, John-William’s mother gets a tingle where a tingle shouldn’t ought to be.

“Not if you’re a lady,” giggles John-William’s mother, “not ’less you come from the Wilcher branch of the tree.”

The fan on the counter hum-hums to the left, hum-hums to the right, gives a little jerk and starts back again. John-William’s mother smells Camay soap and Lipton iced tea. Smells meatloaf and pepper and water on the stove. Flour and catsup and old coffee grounds. Summer sucks Oklahoma heat through the open screen door, mingles with the smells from inside. John-William’s mother draws damp hair off her neck, pins it up back. Her dress is stuck to her skin. She pulls at her collar, lets the breeze in. Lord God, too hot for underwear in August. Grandmas and aunts in Shawnee and Maud can keep their corsets and their buttons and their snaps. This is Oke City, and a girl can jiggle what she likes down here.

John-William’s mother peeks down for a look. They’re still down there, and still looking fine. You can say what you like about your big old melons, sagging on the vine when you’re still eighteen. There’s not a man living doesn’t have a liking for a grown-up woman’s got a pair of thirty-fours poking right up like happy puppy dogs.

John-William’s mother looks past her pretties, down past her tummy, feels a little shudder, feels a little warm start to grow, thinks, for an instant, why not leave the pot a’bubble, run back to bed and have a little tingle, who’s going to know? Blushes at the image like a movie show flicking in her head, raises the lid off the carrots, which don’t need checking at all…

…stops right there, holds the steamy lid in her hand, stops there and listens, hears it coming, hears it on the way, long before it gets there at all. Sets down the lid, drops her apron on a chair, kicks off her flats, and walks out the screen door. The steps are still warm. She pulls up her skirt, leans back against the door. If some old man gets a peek, well maybe she’ll let him have two.

There’s no wind at all, but it’s better out back than inside.

Still a little light, but the sky’s turning dull pewter-gray, turning dishwater blue, like the bottom of a worn-out pan. John-William’s mother doesn’t like this time of day, doesn’t now and never did. When she was little on the farm she’d sit on the back porch steps past Mama’s kitchen door. The wood was dull gray, worn by lye soap and long dead years. Sit real still and look past the gravel back yard, past the hen house and the barn, past the smoke house and the dirt storm cellar with its tin door in the ground. Out past the pile where Papa put things he meant to fix, and never did. A plow with no handles, busted wagon wheels, the carcass of a Ford, its rusty hide now a 12-gauge target, fine as Irish lace. Broken shovels, dull washtubs with the bottoms burned out.

And, past the orchard and the fence and the fields full of rattle-paper corn, to the land that stretched forever to the sky.

That’s when John-William’s mother sat still as mice and held her breath. Held it, and waited for the last pallid whisper of the light to disappear, waited for the day to give a final sigh and slide away.

You had to watch close. It happened, just like that, and it was gone. It wasn’t day and it wasn’t night; it was something in between. Every color died and the faraway fields began to smudge against the sky. The barn, the hen house, the rusted-out Ford began to blur, grow faint and indistinct, dull and undefined. The dark descended and sucked the day dry.

And it was then when John-William’s mother, Betty Ann, heard the great stone clock, felt it strike deep, deep within the earth, felt it beat against her heart. When the time was just right, at the moment in between, she listened, and heard what the clock had come to say…

That’s when the big clock stopped for a beat, and the world grew silent and still. It seemed to Betty Ann like sorrow had come to stay, as if all the lonely had spilled out from the day. Grandmaw Wilcher said this was the moment dark came to snatch life away. “You can see it if you look real close,” Grandmaw Wilcher said. “You might see a dead bird out in the yard, claw feet stickin’ right up, bill wide open, sucking for a last breath of air. You might see a rock or a stick you was lookin’ right at, and now it’s not there. For a blink, for a wink, you’re seeing things gone, things that were there a minute or so before. It might be a toad, it might be a stone, it might be someone you know.”

Mama told Betty Ann not to listen to Grandmaw’s trash, said she wasn’t right in the head. And maybe that was so, but every night after, Betty Ann ran back in, safe inside before the night caught her, caught her right between the light and dark, fled to the good smell of cornbread and jelly, to the oilcloth mustard-yellow bright, to the table set with cold ham and beans, the cloth still sticky from the noon summer meal. The kerosene lamp warmed her soul, and her mother brought cool cream butter in a bowl and said, “Time you came in, Betty Ann, it’s getting dark again…”

In spite of the prickly sullen heat, Betty Ann, John-William’s mother, feels a chill. She knows what’s happened. She’s waited just a beat, just a breath too long and the dark has caught her there, standing outside her kitchen door. Caught her as the night swept in and drew its cape across the yard and the trees and the house next door, and nearly got Betty Ann, John-William’s mother, too. John-William’s mother doesn’t even look back. Looking back’s like Grandmaw said, when you saw, from the corner of your eye, things that were missing, things that had been there just a blink before.

Betty Ann, John-William’s mother, moves quickly inside, shuts the screen door, snaps the latch, stops, pauses just a minute, listens, almost certain she can hear that great stone clock beat down-down-down, deep in the earth and far away.

Betty Ann checks the meatloaf and the carrots, pulls an Old Gold from the pack on the counter, leans in, and lights it from the stove.

John-William’s mother, Jack’s wife, Betty Ann, gets a jelly glass of water, reaches past the Sunbeam mixer and flips on the Philco radio, watches the dial begin to glow, settles in a breakfast room chair. Old familiar voices make her smile. The Kingfish tries to talk Andy into some fool scheme. Betty Ann knows exactly what’ll happen next. Andy falls for it, like Andy always does. Amos has to come in and straighten the whole mess out.

Lord, they were funny. Better than Benny or Fred Allen, either one. Jack wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t stay in the room if they were on. Said they weren’t even coloreds on the show, said niggers weren’t like that at all. Said they stole stuff fast as you could blink, didn’t matter what it was.

The very next time Betty Ann looks up, the dark has creeped in from outside, hid the catsup and the flour in shadow. All she can see is the dim blue flame below the pot.

If I had any sense, thinks Betty Ann, I’d’ve opened a can of tuna fish instead of heating up the kitchen on a hot summer night. John-William didn’t care, long as there were cookies or pies or something sweet in the house.

John-William’s mother thinks he ought to be home right now. She doesn’t like him out at night, but boys didn’t know about the dark, didn’t know what happens out there when the sun goes down and the day hides out of sight.

Amos ’n’ Andy were gone. The radio plays a song she likes a lot.

She and Jack used to hear it all the time when they’d take his daddy’s big LaSalle out and park. That was when they first began to date, before they even thought about getting married or anything else besides parking, feeling up, and having fun. And even after that, sometimes, before Jack pumped her up like a tub with John-William inside, they’d hear that song and everything would be fine. Betty Ann’s father didn’t trust Jack at all. He knew what they were doing in the back of that LaSalle. Jack didn’t wear overalls, wore a Searsucker suit and a snappy bow tie. He came from Paul’s Valley, which didn’t say much, even for an Oklahoma town. Still, like Betty Ann’s mother Sarah said, anyone don’t have shit on his shoes is worth looking at twice. Well that was a lie, considering Mr. Searsucker suit didn’t hang around all that long after John-William’s mother, Betty Ann, brought two more babies in the world who curled up and died.

John-William’s mother walks from one shadow room to the next. The furniture is dim, like chairs and tables and beds all covered in a ghosty kind of light, the pale green glow like the fireflies John-William’s mother used to capture in a jar.

It was the first brick house she’d ever lived in in her life. The first time she’d lived in town except once. Betty Ann and her mother had moved to Atoka from the farm when Mama Steck took sick and they had to live there till she died. When it happened, Betty Ann was right there, Betty Ann saw it, watched the night come until the room was inky black, watched while it hovered over Mama Steck a while, then plunged down into that dry and withered mouth and sucked her life away. Betty Ann peed her britches right then, and never, ever, told Mother what she saw.

Jack’s wife, John-William’s mother, walks through the dark, walks from one room to the next. To the living room, the big bedroom where she sleeps alone now, through the bathroom and John-William’s room, even in the closets, out through the doorway that leads to the shed that sags against the house. Light from a half-moon slants through the holes that Jack never fixed. Truth to tell, Jack never fixed shit, never put a nail in a wall, never fixed a leak.

Lord, what a mess, thinks John-William’s mother, Betty Ann. It’s like your whole life’s stacked up in there, gathering dust, soaking up time, hours used up and tossed away, moments dead and gone, rusted and frozen where they lay. Jack’s hammers and his nails and his saws and his files and his broken axe, waiting to finish some goddamn thing he never even started at all. John-William’s bike, broken and twisted, one wheel missing and one wheel bent. Wasn’t anyone going to fix it. Why in heaven’s name was she hanging onto that?

Just too much to bother about, thinks John-William’s mother, and not enough time, not any time at all….

Betty Ann, John-William’s mother, perches on the edge of the tub and turns on the hot water tap. John-William’s clothes are wadded in a pile. He’d ridden out for crawdads with bacon on a string, down by the creek behind the park. He’d gotten all soaked, peeled everything off, left it on the floor. John-William’s mother gave him a proper scolding, the boy knew better than that. She’d scrubbed him good, tossed socks and underpants into the bin. Picked up his shirt and shook her head. His brand new Ferdinand the Bull shirt and already ruined for good.

In John-William’s pockets she found a Krazy Kat button and a string from a top, a cap from a Nehi Orange and a broken lead soldier with his legs cut off above the knees. When Betty Ann was fifteen, she stayed with her cousin Helen for a while. One night they drove into Lawton for a picture show and ice cream. Helen took her daddy’s new Packard. They were supposed to be back before dark. They told Helen’s daddy they had a flat. What happened was they met two soldiers in town from Fort Sill. The soldiers were both nineteen. They had a pint of gin and a carton of Wings cigarettes. Helen made Betty Ann drive while she and the best-looking boy sat and giggled in the back. Betty Ann knew they were doing more than that.

Betty Ann and the other soldier spread a blanket on the grass. Helen and her friend never left the back seat. Betty Ann couldn’t stand the taste of gin. She drank a little all the same and smoked a lot of cigarettes. She let the boy kiss her, and he kissed real fine. After a while she let him reach in and touch her breasts. Just on the tops and not any lower than that. She hadn’t meant to but the boy was real nice and he came from out of state. He said he’d like to see her naked. Betty Ann said absolutely not. They kissed a lot more. Betty Ann was flattered he was getting so hot. The cigarettes made her too dizzy to stop. She let him get on top and rub against her through his clothes. His hardness touched her once and that was that. The boy made a noise and walked off in the grass for some time. On the way home, when they’d let the soldiers off, Helen made Betty Ann tell her everything that happened in the grass. Then Helen told Betty Ann things she hadn’t even thought about before.

John-William’s mother lets the water run in the tub. Back in the bedroom she peels the sticky dress up over her head, drops it on the floor. Just like John-William, she thinks. Doesn’t get all his bad habits from Jack. On the way back she stops, stands there in the hall. Something seems to move, something in the almost not quite corner in the dark. Something nearly there, something nearly out of sight. John-William’s mother turns around fast. Gives a little jump, a little start. And there’s Betty Ann looking back, just as surprised, just as naked as Betty Ann herself. Betty Ann knows she ought to look away, knows she shouldn’t stand there staring in her birthday suit. Still, the sight in the mirror holds her fixed, holds her still, like a doe caught frightened in the light.

My lord, who’s that, thinks John-William’s mother. It sure isn’t me, isn’t anyone that I ever knew! It looks like her. But it can’t be John-William’s mother, can’t be Jack’s wife. Betty Ann feels sticky from the heat, from the sweat between her breasts, from the tingle in her nipples, from the heat between her knees. The woman in the mirror has beaded points of light in the dark between her thighs, has slick-silver flesh, has an opalescent glow like she’s just stepped out of a moonlit sea. The woman in the mirror doesn’t think about meatloaf at all, doesn’t think about carrots on the stove. She thinks about the soldier and the need in his eyes and the hard thing pressed against her belly that night.

The woman in the mirror remembers every feeling, every moment with the soldier in the grass, later with a boy named Freddie and one named Alex, and Bob after that, and every single night, every morning with Jack, even the moments when he hit her too hard, when her face swelled up and she went out back to cry….

Goodness sake, thinks John-William’s mother, uneasy with the thoughts in her head, and the warm spots farther down than that. “Well that’s what you get,” she thinks out loud, “gawking at yourself like a Fort Worth floozie struttin’ down Third Avenue.”

John-William’s mother remembers the water in the tub. Lord, she’d gone and left it on. There’d be water running out the door, into the hall and onto the carpet, and Jack’s wife, Betty Ann, running naked ’round the house with a mop and John-William’s supper in the stove.

Betty Ann stops right there and frowns at the tub. She’s real sure she turned the water on, but there isn’t a drip or a drop, and the tub’s dry as a bone. Betty Ann shakes her head, says “Well, I declare,” pads in her bare feet back down the hall, back to the kitchen, back to the stove, back to the counter and the peels in the sink, back to the meatloaf in the stove. Walks to the screen to check the latch. Stops, looks out the back. Remembers where she is and has to laugh. No one walks around naked in the kitchen, bare ass naked, not a stitch at all, even in the dark. If Jack came in right then he’d think she was crazy as a loon. Which doesn’t much matter, she remembers, Jack’s not coming back at all.

Betty Ann stands at the screen and looks out. Doesn’t seem that long ago she was watching the light slink away, waiting for the dark to slide in. She looks past the drive to the Hooper’s back yard. The walls are black, the roof has faded into night. She can see the Prewitts’ fence, but the Kamps are out of sight. John-William’s mother looks up as something flutters in the night. Just for an instant, it hangs there, a smudge against the inky sky. Maybe it has red eyes, she thinks. Maybe its tongue is colored orange.

A wind hot as syrup fills the night. Betty Ann’s heart skips a beat. Skips two, hesitates, decides to try again. Betty Ann catches her breath, backs away from the door, leans against the sink. Lets her eyes touch the room. The garbage can, the broom, the chair, and the stove. She opens the pot, peers inside. The carrots are limp, dry as brittle leaves. The pale blue flame has gone out. She opens the oven door. The meatloaf is cold, pink, with little eyes of fat. The radio is dead, the refrigerator, too. The lights, the gas.

Turn on the faucet. A sputter and a cough. Betty Ann tries the phone. “Hello? Hello?” Just like in the movies. Nobody’s there.

Betty Ann walks naked through the gray heavy gauze of her first brick house. She’d been real scared once before, when she and John-William were alone and Jack was in Tulsa overnight. Something had scratched on the window and made wet steps on the lawn. In the morning, there was nothing there to see. The next night Jack was snoring by her side, but Betty Ann didn’t sleep for a week.

“It’s all right,” she says, “everything’s fine. Everything’s off right now, but it’ll all go on again.” Her voice sounds funny in the still and empty house. She feels her way back to the kitchen, finds her Old Golds, a box of matches on the sink. Paws through the junk drawer, finds a wad of string, pencil stubs, and dry fountain pens. No candles at all.

John-William’s mother moves back down the hall. Looks in the mirror. Can’t hardly see herself at all. Lights a kitchen match. Betty Ann naked, skin white as tallow in the flare of sudden light. The living room carpet’s black as tar. The easy chairs are blurs against the greater dark. Feels for the sofa. Can’t find it anywhere at all. The match doesn’t work. She tries another and another after that. Tosses the box on the floor.

Moving real slow, doesn’t want to bump her toes. Opens the front door a crack. Can’t see much better than she did in the back.

The houses across the street are just like hers. Stubby brick, living room, bedrooms, kitchen in the back. Arch across the porch. Now all the houses are solemn and gray, all the color drained out, the life washed away. No lights in the windows, no lights at all.

Betty Ann opens the door a little wider, a little wider still. One bare foot outside and then the next. John-William’s mother, Jack’s wife, Betty Ann, stands naked on the hot front porch. Night wind brushes her flesh, tickles her breasts, whispers naughties in her ear.

Betty Ann stands very, very still. She can’t remember when she last stood out in the night. Didn’t flee, didn’t run when the big clock deep in the earth warned everyone the light was dying and the dark was sweeping in, told everyone to hurry, get safe inside.

Still, it isn’t so bad if you stand real still, if you don’t think hard — if you don’t let the dark know you’re there. It can’t see everything, can it? A whole world of night out there, it can’t watch every leaf, every stone, every time a dog does his business on the lawn….

It comes to her then, like the secret was there all the time, like she knew it in her head. Grandmaw didn’t know it all — she knew the scary part, knew about the bad, but she didn’t know the rest. All you have to do is stand very, very still, listen, listen, to the great stone clock down deep-deep within the earth, listen to it tick-tick-tick away the quiet moments, the hours, the long years of the night. Don’t move, don’t breathe, feel the silence and the wind, feel the whisper of the dark against your skin….

John-William’s mother, Jack’s wife, Betty Ann, peers into the dark, looks into the inky night for a very long time, and after a while she wonders if she might not be Betty Ann standing naked on the porch, she might be Betty Ann dreaming somewhere, Betty Ann back at Mama’s on the farm, looking at the rusty old Ford. She might be Betty Ann having ice cream with Johnny Two Horse, who said he was pure Cherokee. She liked Johnny Two Horse a whole lot, kissed him twice till Mama found out he wasn’t white, washed her mouth with soap and put a stop to that.

Johnny Two Horse kissed her again, or maybe it was only the hot breeze sliding in upon the night to sweep the dream away. And, when she peered once more into the dark, Betty Ann could see things she hadn’t seen before. The houses and the lawns and the trees looked different now, like the shiny things you get when they send your pictures back. Everything that used to be black was murky gray, and everything white went just the other way. It didn’t seem wrong, turned inside out, it seemed, to Betty Ann, the way things ought to be. Maybe the way things had been all along and were getting right again.

Up past the Harpers and the Smiths and the Roers, where the street lamp stood on the corner, something seemed to shimmer, seemed to tremble, seemed to hide behind a veil, like looking through Grandmaw’s glasses where the world was all a blur. Betty Ann blinked and the blur went away.

Then, for an instant, something was there and something not, something just beyond the corner, something coming, something waiting, something maybe in-between, something not quite ready, something not really there.

Betty Ann feels her mouth go dry, feels her legs go weak, backs up against the cold brick wall, backs up, finds the wall isn’t there, knows, for sure, that isn’t right at all. Walls stay where they are, where a wall’s supposed to be. Betty Ann tries again, staggers, very nearly falls, slips through the wall, through the wires, through the wood, through the pipes and the nails, through the cobwebs and little dead spiders and bugs that huddle there.

John-William’s mother, Sarah’s daughter, Betty Ann, walks through the curtains that trickle like powder, like snow, like ash, before her eyes, walks through the sofa that crumbles into dust, into the hall where the walls begin to vanish, into the kitchen where the stove, the mixer, and the radio sigh and fall away.

Betty Ann stands naked, looks through the screen door, where it used to be, looks for the black birds singing on the wire, black birds white now, sees them on the ground, lying on their backs with their little beaks open, claws up in the air.

“Well my goodness,” says Betty Ann, “now isn’t that a sight to see. Why, it’s like Andy always says, ‘You neber do knows what gon’ be happ’nin’ but you kin bets it will.’ ”

John-William’s mother laughs at the thought, walks back through where her first brick home used to be. Stops, for a moment, glances at the mirror in the hall. The mirror’s not there but someone is, someone Betty Ann thinks she ought to know. Just for an instant, just for a blink, then just as quickly gone.

Betty Ann stands outside where the porch used to be, stands there naked and watches the corner past the Smiths and the Harpers and the Roers, looks at the lamp that’s black instead of white, at the murky light on the street down below. Now, the thing on the corner, the thing that seemed to shimmer, seemed to tremble, seemed to hide behind a veil, isn’t something maybe there anymore, isn’t something maybe not, isn’t waiting in-between anymore….

John-William’s mother can feel her heart pound, feel the big clock down far-far below begin to chime. Whatever wasn’t there is coming on slow, dark and heavy, faint and distant, closer, closer still, hardly even there, turning, turning, past the Roers and the Smiths and the Harpers, coming right up to where John-William’s mother stands naked where her first brick house used to be….

They glide down the street now, slide on in without a sound, slip on in without a hum from their engines, a whisper from their tires. One before the other, one behind the next, hazy Buicks, Franklins, and Cords. Cloudy Chryslers, Lincolns, and Fords. Plymouths, Packards, Porsches, and Rolls, dusty and obscure. Duesenbergs, Dodges, Ramblers, and Olds, scarcely present, hardly there at all. Studebakers, Chevys, Rovers, and nearly invisible Saabs. Bentleys, Austins, Minors, and — goodness sakes, cars Betty Ann never heard about before.

They keep on coming, gliding down the street in a motion so slight they hardly stir the air. Each one black where they ought to be white, white where the black ought to be. Everything backwards, inside out. Just the way the big stone clock down, down, way below likes to see.

Betty Ann knows she shouldn’t ought to move, shouldn’t do anything at all. Ought to just mind her own business, shouldn’t ought to pry. Still, she feels she’s got to know, got to see what it’s all about, got to know why these peculiar cars are driving by. Ought to see who, ought to see what’s inside.

Betty Ann walks naked in the street, gets close to the windows, peers inside an old Franklin, looks inside a Saab. Can’t see anything at all. The glass in each and every window is cold, cold, icy to the touch, covered with frost, dark and river deep.

John-William’s mother wipes a little hole free and peers inside a l930 Cadillac. And, to Betty Ann’s surprise, there’s Grandmaw Wilcher sitting up straight, straight as you please, hand-bones clutching the wheel, shriveled, shrunk, stiff as a board, hair hanging this way and that.

“Grandmaw Wilcher,” Betty Ann says, “why, you can’t even drive!” Driving she is, though, nothing you can do about that.

There’s no one she knows in the Lincoln or the Cord. No one in the Nash. Helen, though, is there in the back seat of the Packard, caught in what seems intimate, dark coagulation with the soldier boy from Fort Sill. Ruin and rot have set in and a coat of fuzzy green. Still, Helen looks happy as a clam and, as Betty Ann’s mother Sarah always said, happy’s better than not.

Mama Steck looks not much worse than the night Betty Ann watched the dark slide in and slide out again, and suck her life away. Betty Ann can’t recall anyone drove a Studebaker back then, but there’s lots she can’t recall.

“Jack, Jack, Jack,” thinks John-William’s mother, as she peeks into the LaSalle, “I got to say you do look a sight.” Except for the blight and the ruin and the dent where she’d hit him with the axe. Except for that and the gross degeneration — well, time is going to take a toll, that and ancient ulceration of the soul — “Told you to stop,” says Betty Ann. “Told you hit me one more time, that’s it, and by God it’s just what you did, you got nothing to complain about that.”

Papa is in the rusted-out Ford, not looking all that good, something like tar and tallow dried on his overalls down into his shoes and some distortion of the bones.

Betty Ann thinks she might cry when she gets to the Chevy, she knew she’d find him there. That truck had hit him head on, wrapping the brand new Schwinn around him twice, penetrating bodily parts, leaving limbs twisted, badly out of whack.

Still, he did the best he could, God bless him, holding the wheel real steady, one hand sort of going this way, the other going that.

“You were my pride,” says Betty Ann, “and I never forgot you, not for a minute, John-William, not for all the years that passed. I kept that Krazy Kat button and the Nehi cap as well. You tore that Ferdinand shirt real bad, but I don’t guess you care about that.”

Betty Ann opens the door, and slides real quiet inside. Looks at JohnWilliam, pictures in her head that he’s looking back.

Just for a moment, no more than that, Betty Ann glances behind her, sees the two she lost sitting quiet, sitting still, looks there once and doesn’t look back.

Nobody said it was time to drive on, but real soon everybody did. Rolling down the window, she listened to the music playing on the car radios: “Moonlight Cocktail,” “Twilight Time,” “One for My Baby,” “Laura,” “Willow Weep for Me.”

And, coming from somewhere, out of the hot and inky night, just before the clock deep-deep in the earth strikes again, a whisper in the hot night air: