Night Shift(101)

Dusty elms stood on both sides of the road, most of them diseased. They passed the Gatlin Lumberyard and a 76 gas station, where the price signs swung slowly in a hot noon breeze: REG 35.9 HI-TEST 38.9, and another which said: HI TRUCKERS DIESEL FUEL AROUND BACK.

They crossed Elm Street, then Birch Street, and came up on the town square. The houses lining the streets were plain wood with screened porches. Angular and functional. The lawns were yellow and dispirited. Up ahead a mongrel dog walked slowly out into the middle of Maple Street, stood looking at them for a moment, then lay down in the road with its nose on its paws.

'Stop,' Vicky said. 'Stop right here.

Burt pulled obediently to the curb.

'Turn around. Let's take the body to Grand Island. That's not too far, is it? Let's do that.'

'Vicky, what's wrong?'

'What do you mean, what's wrong?' she asked, her voice rising thinly. 'This town is empty, Burt. There's nobody here but us. Can't you feel that?'

He had felt something, and still felt it. But -'It just seems that way,' he said. 'But it sure is a one-hydrant town. Probably all up in the square, having a bake sale or a bingo game.'

'There's no one here.'

She said the words with a queer, strained emphasis. 'Didn't you see that 76 station back there?' 'Sure, by the lumberyard, so what?' His mind was elsewhere, listening to the dull buzz of a cicada burrowing into one of the nearby elms. He could smell corn, dusty roses, and fertilizer - of course. For the first time they were off the turnpike and in a town. A town in a state he had never been in before (although he had flown over it from time to time in United Airlines 747s) and somehow it felt all wrong but all right. Somewhere up ahead there would be a drugstore with a soda fountain, a movie house named the Bijou, a school named after JFK.

'Burt, the prices said thirty-five-nine for regular and thirty-eight-nine for high octane. Now how long has it been since anyone in this country paid those prices?'

'At least four years,' he admitted. 'But, Vicky -'

'We're right in town, Burt, and there's not a car! Not one car!

'Grand Island is seventy miles away. It would look funny if we took him there.'

'I don't care.'

'Look, let's just drive up to the courthouse and -, 'No!'

There, damn it, there. Why our marriage is falling apart, in a nutshell. No I won't. No sir. And furthermore, I'll hold my breath till I turn blue if you don't let me have my way.

'Vicky,' he said.

'I want to get out of here, Burt.'

'Vicky, listen to me.'

'Turn around. Let's go.'

'Vicky, will you stop a minute?'

'I'll stop when we're driving the other way. Now let's go.'

'We have a dead child in the trunk of our car!'

he roared at her, and took a distinct pleasure at the way she flinched, the way her face crumbled. In a slightly lower voice he went on: 'His throat was cut and he was shoved out into the road and Iran him over. Now I'm going to drive up to the courthouse or whatever they have here, and I'm going to report it. If you want to start walking towards the pike, go to it. I'll pick you up. But don't you tell me to turn around and drive seventy miles to Grand Island like we had nothing in the trunk but a bag of garbage. He happens to be some mother's son, and I'm going to report it before whoever killed him gets over the hills and far away.'

'You bastard,' she said, crying. 'What am I doing with you?'

'I don't know,' he said. 'I don't know any more. But the situation can be remedied, Vicky.'

He pulled away from the curb. The dog lifted its head at the brief squeal of the tyres and then lowered it to its paws again.

They drove the remaining block to the square. At the corner of Main and Pleasant, Main Street split in two. There actually was a town square, a grassy park with a bandstand in the middle. On the other end, where Main Street became one again, there were two official-looking buildings. Burt could make out the lettering on one: GATLIN

MUNICIPAL CENTER.

'That's it,' he said. Vicky said nothing.

Halfway up the square, Burt pulled over again. They were beside a lunch room, the Gatlin Bar and Grill.

'Where are you going?' Vicky asked with alarm as he opened his door.

'To find out where everyone is. Sign in the window there says "Open".'

'You're not going to leave me here alone.'

'So come. Who's stopping you?'

She unlocked her door and stepped out as he crossed in front of the car. He saw how pale her face was and felt an instant of pity. Hopeless pity.

'Do you hear it?' she asked as he joined her.

'Hear what?'

'The nothing. No cars. No people. No tractors. Nothing.' And then, from a block over, they heard the high and joyous laughter of children.

'I hear kids,' he said. 'Don't you?'

She looked at him, troubled.

He opened the lunchroom door and stepped into dry, antiseptic heat. The floor was dusty. The sheen on the chrome was dull. The wooden blades of the ceiling fans stood still. Empty tables. Empty counter stools. But the mirror behind the counter had been shattered and there was something else. . . in a moment he had it. All the beer taps had been broken off. They lay along the counter like bizarre party favours.