Dark Dreams, Pale Horses Read online

  Ergo, Jonathan was much relieved when the ‘hound rolled into Atlanta, where he transferred buses according to schedule. The remaining two hours of the journey passed in a hallucinogenic whirl, perhaps from lack of sleep, or lack of oxygen, but probably both. He arrived shortly after nine o’clock. Birmingham, Alabama: the third city on the “Promised Land” itinerary, although all enthusiasm had long deserted him. It was with an aching body and ravaged senses that he fell into a taxi and had the driver take him to the nearest hotel.

  Twenty-five minutes later he was in bed. Asleep.

  No dreams.

  A blade of sunlight, slicing through a gap in the curtains, woke him the next morning, and with due propitiousness. A new day, bright with hope. He got out of bed, and there was an undeniable spring in his step. No more Greyhound buses. No more flatulent fat ladies or Halloween-mask vagrants. Today was the first day of the dream, when he would meet Stan Lannett and finally get behind the wheel of that pink Cadillac. This was it. He was going to do it—shake it, like the King of Rock and Roll himself.

  “I’m gonna shake it, baby,” Jonathan said to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He curled his lip and rolled his pelvis.

  The sunlight blazed. The Promised Land was calling.

  “Here I come, Momma.”

  The nightmare was about to begin.

  BIRMINGHAM, AL.

  “You took your sweet time, goddammit.”

  “Five days, like I said.” Jonathan held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, too.”

  Stan Lannett was an unusual specimen. He looked like a child’s drawing of a man, with long limbs and a disproportionately small body. There was a definite crimp in his neck, so that his head did not sit evenly on his shoulders. It favored the left side, causing Jonathan’s active imagination to wonder if there had once been two heads—the other being surgically removed, leaving a head-sized space. His hair had been dyed a rich auburn shade, the roots pushing through, as white as virginity. His clothes were unkempt and dirty and his feet were bare. Toenails like ivory, slightly hooked. Jonathan thought that he could disembowel a man with those toes, like a Velociraptor.

  He shook Jonathan’s hand. His palm was warm and moist.

  “Well, you’re here now. Bring the money?”

  Jonathan nodded, pulled his hand back, and discreetly wiped it down the leg of his jeans.

  “We agreed on three hundred, right?”

  “Two hundred,” Jonathan corrected.

  Stan rubbed his whiskery chin and appeared to give this some thought. His eyes were different colors—one green, one blue. Heterochromia, it was called, although Jonathan wasn’t sure you could apply any anatomical term to Stan Lannett. He was beyond classification, appearing, for all the world, to be assembled from different parts. A scientific anomaly.

  “Right,” Stan agreed, nodding his remaining head. “Two hundred. Sure. Sometimes the old thinker gets cross-wired, you know?”

  “I understand,” Jonathan said. He decided that he didn’t like Stan very much—hadn’t really liked him on the phone, and liked him even less in person. He wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. Get the dream on the road. He had his route mapped out. I-59 south to New Orleans. Three hundred and forty miles. Five hours. The sooner he got rolling, the better.

  “Let’s get her done, then,” Stan said, as if reading Jonathan’s mind.

  “I’m ready.”

  They stood in Stan’s driveway/yard, a scrape of land littered with debris: a rain-swollen La-Z-Boy with its springs showing; a stack of bald tires; a dresser with a shattered mirror; a pile of rocks. Beyond this miniature junkyard, the garden was a blight of swampy weed, probably home to mean-tempered rattlesnakes, snapping turtles, and—like Stan himself—species yet to be discovered. The house was ramshackle, standing only by virtue of weight and friction. Timbers were exposed and windows cracked, sealed with duct tape. Porch boards were nailed across gaps in the siding, and a hole in the roof had been covered with a sheet of corrugated steel. The house—again, like Stan himself—was odd-shaped, constructed of mismatched parts. It looked like it had been picked up by a hurricane, disciplined by God, and set down several hundred miles from its original location.

  Jonathan only hoped his car was in better condition.

  “She’s in back,” Stan said, as if reading Jonathan’s mind once again. “Don’t have a garage, so she’s got a tarp thrown over her. I haven’t driven her since …” He faltered. His different colored eyes flickered. “Since I sold her, but she’ll start up just fine. ‘Specially on a dandy of a day like this.”

  He started to walk and Jonathan followed, struggling to keep up with those long legs. A dusty path ran beside the house to the back yard. Lizards skittered out of their way, leaving S-shaped trails, disappearing into the weeds or into gaps in the siding. Jonathan, understandably more apprehensive than when he’d woken that morning, felt his bubble of excitement rise again.

  “I take it the car is in good condition?” he asked the back of Stan’s head.

  “Ayyurrggh,” Stan replied, half-belching.

  “Only, I didn’t get those photos you promised.”

  “I didn’t promise,” Stan said. “And I didn’t send them.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  “Junior didn’t have time to come out with his fancy camera.” Except he said Canberra, as in the capital of Australia.

  “That’s…that’s fine.”

  “But she’s a creampuff. You’ll see.”

  They came to the backyard (even more junked and jungly than the front), and there in the middle was a sight that got Jonathan’s mouth watering. It was just a shape, at the moment: a tarp-covered hump…but it was a tarp-covered, Cadillac-sized hump. Jonathan detached from Stan’s shadow and walked toward it. He could see the bottoms of the whitewall tires and a thin, happy sound escaped him.

  It’s real, he thought. A flood of relief washed through him—relief that he wasn’t aware he’d been damming. Less than a week ago he’d been at home in London, clicking through gigabytes of web data, seeking his dream. And now here he was, thousands of miles later, exhausted but elated. It’s real.

  “Gimme a hand with the tarp,” Stan said. He kicked away a rock pinning down one corner. Jonathan took the other side and together they pulled back the cover. It lifted easily, catching a belly-full of air, and sighing to the ground behind the Cadillac’s rear end.

  Jonathan was—for one heartbeat—whipped back in time. Graceland, 1986, standing behind a velvet rope and gazing longingly at Elvis Presley’s 1955 Fleetwood Series 60. He blinked and was back in Stan Lannett’s backyard, but the car was exactly the same. Every strip of chrome. The upholstery. The pink body and pearly-white roof. He remembered what Stan had said on the phone: I could drive her to Graceland and do the old switcheroo with that one parked in Elvis’s driveway, and nobody would ever tell the difference. Jonathan nodded, smiling ridiculously, amazed. He ran his hand along the rear fender with a tenderness reserved for moments of love. Another happy sound leaked from his mouth and he had to look at his feet to make sure they were still on the ground.

  “She’s an angel, huh?” Stan said.

  “Unbelievable,” Jonathan agreed.

  “Yup, about the only decent thing I ever owned. Breaks my heart to let her go, but …” He shrugged. His shadow twitched in the dry Alabama heat, and somewhere a chickadee cried for its mate. “She needs to go. I got a bastard case of arthritis in my shoulders and spine, aches like the curse of God, so’s I can’t drive her much of anywhere, anyhow.”

  “Is that why you’re selling her?”

  Stan nodded, but his shaded expression suggested there might be another reason, something he wasn’t willing to share. Jonathan didn’t push it. He walked from the rear of the Cadillac, sweeping his hand along the shimmering body, to the front driver’s side fender, and then around to the hood. The imperfection, amidst such flawlessness, was jarring. It was toward the passenger side, so he hadn’t seen i
t at first: a deep crease in the polished chrome bumper and grille, and a ripple in the hood. Of course, Stan had told him about this: She’s a creampuff, all right, except for a little ding in her front end. It was considerably more than a little ding. Jonathan frowned. He felt some of the dream cower and cry.

  “There’s the ding,” Stan said, as if he hadn’t seen it.

  “The ding?” Jonathan shook his head and trailed his fingers over the ripple in the hood. A chill touched the base of his spine. His heart moved a little faster. “I hope you didn’t tell the buyer it was just a ding.”

  “She bought it sight-unseen, and for a song, dammit,” Stan said, his southern drawl laced with bitterness.

  “She?” Jonathan looked at him. “A female buyer?”

  “What? Women can’t buy cars?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Jonathan said. He remembered how Stan had tried to pull a fast-one on the phone: Say…five hundred bucks? No. Seven hundred. He’d sniffed-out Jonathan’s eagerness like a bloodhound and had tried to turn a buck. “I wouldn’t want to think that you were pulling the wool over anybody’s eyes.”

  Stan bristled. He stepped toward Jonathan, his odd frame looming, like a haphazard stack of blocks, defying balance. “What I choose to do is my business.”

  “Did you at least send her a photograph of the car…of the damage?”

  “Shit on you,” Stan said. A fleck of spittle popped from between his lips and landed on Jonathan’s cheek. “I told her there was probably two G’s’ worth of damage. She’ll need a new bumper and grille, and will have to get the hood hammered out—”

  “And resprayed.”

  “She knows the deal. I haven’t pulled the wool over anyone’s eyes, you goddam slimy little limey bastard. And besides, she’s only paid a deposit. I guess if she doesn’t like it she’ll keep her money, and I’ll have to find another buyer.”

  Jonathan wiped the little glob of spit away. He bit his lip and heard an orchestra of nervous energy play inside him.

  “Shit on you,” Stan said again.

  “Where are the keys?” Jonathan asked.

  Stan grinned. His teeth were as white as the Cadillac’s roof, and straight, too—a staggering detail, given that the rest of him was so out of sorts. He jingled his hip pocket in reply and loped away from Jonathan, away from the damaged front end, as if he didn’t want to see it. His shadow rolled across the baked earth, disjointed, like a gantry with loose rails.

  “She’s got a quarter-tank of gas in her,” he said, “but you’ll have to fill up soon, because she drinks like a catholic on Paddy’s Day. Oil was changed at the beginning of the summer, and she hasn’t done but a hundred miles since then, so you got no worries there.”

  Jonathan nodded and walked around to the driver’s side; he didn’t like looking at the damage, either. The nervous energy, immediately, lowered its volume, but he could still feel it vibrating through his bones.

  “Buyer’s details are in the glovebox,” Stan continued. “Address, phone number, and such. Slip’s in there, too, but I don’t want you handing it over until she’s wired the rest of the money into my account and I’ve confirmed that it’s there. You understand?”

  “Yes,” Jonathan said.

  “Call me when you get to California. Give me a number I can reach you at.”

  “Right. Anything else I should know?”

  Stan rubbed his thumb and fingers together. “You should know how to open your wallet and hand over two hundred greenbacks.”

  Jonathan sneered, rolled his eyes, and fished his wallet out of his back pocket.

  Stan patted the roof. “She drives bigger than she looks, believe it or not. She’s heavy, too, so don’t be whipping her into any tight turns. Oh, and you’ll feel some vibration on that right-hand side when you skip her over sixty, but it’s nothing to worry about; she’s old and that’s just her way of moaning.”

  Jonathan counted out two hundred dollars. He still felt that he was being duped somehow, and he didn’t like it. Not at all. He handed over the money. It disappeared into Stan’s fist with a snapping sound.

  “Heater’s bust, too,” he said. “I forgot to tell the buyer, but feel free to enlighten her, Mr. My-shit-don’t-stink, if you get an overwhelming sense of conscience.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Jonathan said. “Does the radio work?”

  “She’s got the AM band. It was crystal last time I checked.”

  “Good. Can you recommend any oldies’ stations?”

  “WVOK, fifteen-eighty. She’s already tuned in, but you’re gonna lose her south of Tuscaloosa.”

  Jonathan managed a thin smile. Again he felt his dream cry—Stan’s ungainly attitude, and that dent in the Cadillac’s front end: small disappointments; rainclouds in what should have been a sunshine moment. He was sure he’d feel better once he was behind the wheel, the wind rippling through the open windows and the radio cranked, but right now his heart was hurting. Just a little, maybe, but enough.

  He held out his hand. “The keys?”

  Stan scooped them from his pocket and tossed them to Jonathan. “How long before you hit California?”

  “A week or so.”

  “No more’n a week, I hope.” Stan showed his white teeth again, but he wasn’t grinning this time. “I want my money, dammit. Don’t frig me around.”

  “It’s a six-day itinerary,” Jonathan said, not looking at Stan as he unlocked the driver’s door and popped it open. The bad dream was there, dancing on the cold rim of his mind. Here’s your ride, Elvis had said, and the blood had cascaded around him, pouring from the Cadillac’s interior like water through a sluice gate. A bubble of foul air escaped, but that was all. The interior was frosty-white, like the inside of a refrigerator. Jonathan took a deep breath and sat behind the wheel. The seat creaked. He curled his fingers around the wheel and a shiver bolted through him.

  Everything was cold. Too cold, given that it had been sitting in the sun, covered with a tarp. It felt like the inside of a refrigerator, too. He touched the chrome switches that operated the lights and windshield wipers, then flipped down the sun visors and stroked the gear shifter. He looked at the backseat and at the roof. Everything was spotless. It was like a showroom model. Jonathan closed the door, then slipped the key into the ignition and started the engine.

  The Cadillac rumbled into life. The steering wheel vibrated in his hands and the hood trembled like the flank of a nervous animal. He touched the accelerator and two hundred and fifty horses snatched at their bridles, eyes wild.

  Stan tapped on the window and Jonathan rolled it down.

  “She purrs, huh?” he said.

  Jonathan nodded. “Yeah…sounds great.”

  “Just like I told you, she’s a Detroit angel.”

  Jonathan looked at the hood. He could hardly see the damage from behind the wheel: a little kink at the front, perhaps, and a shallow dip that looked more like a shadow. He gestured toward it with his eyes.

  “So what happened?”

  Stan placed his hands on his hips and took a step back, his strange head hanging for a second. He knew what Jonathan was talking about—had to be expecting the question. Emotion ticked and vibrated across his face, making it tremble, like the hood.

  “Goddam kids,” he said, but he couldn’t look Jonathan in the eye. “No respect these days. Little fuckers took to her with a tire iron. Maybe a baseball bat. Anyways, that’s why I started parking her in back under a tarp.”

  “Right. Of course,” Jonathan said, but he didn’t believe it for a second, and it had nothing to do with Stan’s evasive body language, either. Prior to life at the post office, Jonathan had worked for six years in social services, and had encountered a great many disruptive children. He understood their habits well enough to know that, equipped with a tire iron or baseball bat, they would not have gone for the bumper and grille—not when there were mirrors and lights and windows to smash. Maybe American kids were different, but he didn’t think so.
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br />   What really happened, Stan? he thought. What are you hiding? But he didn’t ask these questions, because all he wanted was to get out of his peculiar shadow, and get the dream rolling.

  Again, it was as if Stan reached into his mind. “I expect you want to hit the road, huh?”

  Jonathan smiled. “My thoughts exactly.”

  He steered the Cadillac along the path beside the house, and had to wait while Stan cleared away enough junk in the front yard for him to wend a route off his property. There were no goodbyes and no good lucks. Both men raised their hands, but that was all. They were scratching each other’s backs, but that didn’t mean they had to be chummy about it. Jonathan watched Stan and his rickety house recede in the rearview, then he turned at the end of the road and they were out of sight. A fabulous grin broke across his face, and it felt—cliché but true—like sunshine breaking through thick cloud. He put his foot down and the Cadillac responded, the V8 snarling, the road unfolding. He was on his way.

  Jonathan hoped to be in New Orleans by five o’clock, which would give him plenty of time to find a hotel and venture out for some pure Louisiana culture. He planned on eating Cajun tonight, then taking a stroll through the French Quarter, hopping between bars and soaking up the atmosphere. The Cadillac purred in approval and Jonathan’s sunshine-grin beamed ever brighter. He flicked on the radio as he merged onto I-59 South.

  Insanity blared from the speakers—not music, like he had been expecting, but a rush of dark noise that thickened his blood and made the mercury in his fillings flare. It sounded like static snagged on razor wire, or glass breaking inside a thunderhead. An image glimmered in his mind, but it made no sense: three gold letters—UAB—hovering in the dark. Jonathan jerked the wheel and the Cadillac swerved, tires protesting, eliciting a no-nonsense horn-blast from the car in the next lane. He corrected his line, then steered into the shoulder and hit the brakes.