When Graveyards Yawn - G. Wells Taylor (robert munsch read aloud .TXT) 📗
- Author: G. Wells Taylor
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Book online «When Graveyards Yawn - G. Wells Taylor (robert munsch read aloud .TXT) 📗». Author G. Wells Taylor
I was up. My gun! Elmo read my thoughts. He shrugged two bony shoulders and handed me his .357 magnum. “I took it off the church steps last n-night,” he said. I passed it back to him with a ‘sh’ sound on my lips and remembered the car.
“Fatso, did you empty the trunk?” He shook his head as I thought of the Monkey twins’ guns: a couple of .9mm automatics and an auto-shotgun. Perfect.
“B-but, Boss?” Elmo shook his head. “I, we should wait for the Father. He’s got food and you is—are sick.”
“No time to explain, Elmo. Come on.” I pushed past him and he followed, case in hand. We ran down the hallway, and out onto the steps before the church. The sky was gray and cloudy; a few damp spots remained on the concrete. I scanned the area.
“Come on!” I scrambled ahead of Elmo. He followed as quickly as he could. His legs moved jerkily. “Come on!” I shouted again. The car was sitting at the curb like a badly landed airplane. Bullet holes pocked its length. A great dark stain seeped from beneath it.
I ran to the trunk, and then waited an impatient second for Elmo to hobble up to me. He jangled the keys in the lock, and the trunk popped open. I snatched an automatic, checked the clip for bullets and slid it into my pink skipping rope belt.
“Come on, Elmo. Drive.” I jumped into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. I suppose I was so used to seeing a clown anytime I looked in a mirror that for once I noticed my reflection in the shattered rear view on my side. I looked determined—and then I was floating over Tommy’s head. He was huddled over, covering his face with his arms.
“No! No!” He cried shrilly. “Oh, it’s him. It’s him!” Two great sobs were dragged out of him with chains. He balled up his fists and then smashed his face repeatedly.
Elmo sat beside him in wide-eyed terror. Boss was crazy again. This time, Elmo seemed to make the connection. He quickly opened the case and pushed the tin of white face at Tommy.
“Here it is, Boss. H-here it is!”
Tommy frantically rubbed the makeup into his cheeks. It resisted application where tears soaked the skin. I heard a door shut. I looked away from the beleaguered clown toward the sound. In front of the Chrysler was a long black sedan. Its doors were open. Two Authority Enforcers clomped toward us in steel and rubber boots. Auto-shotguns twitched nervously in their hands.
“Boss, Boss!” Elmo became frantic. He stabbed at the ignition with the keys, dropped them, then desperately struggled under the wheel to retrieve them. Tommy didn’t even look up. He was busily rubbing makeup into his cheeks. I noticed he was ready to trace on his lips. He repeated over and over. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t a’ dropped him. I’m sorry!” The clown struck his forehead against his knees.
The Enforcers spread out. They leveled their guns at Tommy and Elmo and approached the car from opposite sides. I made a desperate attempt to enter Tommy. He was closed to me. The last time I had tried to remove the makeup, I’d been shut out for two days.
One Enforcer, crouching, reached quickly into the car and snatched the gun from Tommy’s belt with one deft motion. He thrust it through his own, then stood there for some moments either puzzled or amused. He signaled to his partner, who complied by lowering his gun; then the Enforcer did something I’d never seen an Enforcer do. He removed his helmet and facemask. Simple as that. My emotional roller coaster took another savage turn, when I saw the face beneath the helmet to be Douglas Willieboy’s.
What did Socrates say? Real wisdom is the property of god. Well, I had to agree with him. I liked to think that I had a fairly quick mind; in fact, I tried to make a living by it. But throughout this case or cases I had astounded myself with my lack of foresight. In my defense, I did have the handicap of being a person who couldn’t remember his past, and therefore could hardly draw from it. But that’s just an excuse, my weak justification. Even my system of ‘believe in everything, expect it all,’ didn’t help.
Douglas Willieboy had long since slipped out of his armor. His partner waited outside. Elmo sat beside Tommy on a heavy brown vinyl couch. Willieboy paced, frustrated.
After removing his helmet on the street in front of the Mother of God Cathedral he had tried to talk to Tommy, but the clown was then as he was now, locked in an autistic trance. Willieboy was in a rush because after a quick signal to his partner, he climbed into the Chrysler, bulldozing Tommy into the middle. His partner ran ahead to the sedan, turned it around and headed downtown and on toward the docks.
Willieboy had gestured with Tommy’s gun for Elmo to follow the sedan. Elmo did. Willieboy hissed at him to hurry—his eyes flashing side to side like wayward comets. Elmo hurried. I floated overhead, bemused. I had at this point abandoned trying to make sense of this mess. I made a couple of half-hearted attempts to possess Tommy. His mind was closed to me, so I gave up, and slipped into an empty somnolence—no, correction I sulked. Maybe not thinking would help. Maybe nothing would help. Maybe I didn’t care if anything would help? Willieboy didn’t care. He was silent for the remainder of the trip tapping his teeth with a fingertip.
We had followed the sedan along the river for some time until it quickly veered off onto a side street. Willieboy told Elmo to go straight on toward the harbor. We turned away at the docks, and roared along thin streets between great brick warehouses until we came to the Pangton Fisheries building. It was an enormous pile of bricks that ran on and on, away from us. In front of the Chrysler, a faded mural stretched across the wide loading bay doors. It depicted a smiling man in hip waders pulling mightily on a fishing rod that was bent like a question mark. A huge salmon with crazy eyes leapt from the water. I noticed that some conscientious graffiti artist had added body parts for anatomical correctness. It was obvious, in neon orange and blue, that both were well-endowed boys. I had studied the mural as a minute ticked by. Willieboy grunted impatiently, flashing his eyes at Tommy. Suddenly, the happy fisherman’s stream parted like the Red Sea, the doors squealing on rusty tracks. Elmo drove through without prompting, and came to a halt beneath a vaulted archway of corroded girders. Willieboy signaled to his partner who was cranking the door shut. The other Enforcer had nodded back as Willieboy half-carried Tommy out of the car and up a creaking wooden stairway to an office.
Now over an hour had passed. Willieboy paced the room, ranting wildly. “God damn you, Wildclown. What the fuck is wrong with you? Is it Greaseasy, or what? Syncrak?” He looked desperately at Elmo, back to the clown. “I know you’re pissed, you smell like a fucking whiskey barrel, but I can’t believe anyone can get that fucked up on booze!”
Tommy mumbled something. It was almost a whine. He had drawn his knees up. A string of spittle connected his head to his belly button.
“Fucking loser!” Willieboy punched his fist into his palm. “Fuck!” He kicked a chair. It slid across the floor then dropped like a newborn lamb.
All this time Elmo sat fidgeting in his chair. He had smoked the last of his cigarettes long ago, as he silently endured his own interrogation, remaining the proper captured flyer throughout. Name, rank, and serial number—nothing more. It was soon obvious that Elmo awaited orders.
“What the fuck is wrong with your boss?” It was the umpteenth time the question had been asked. This time, it connected with Elmo. He was growing impatient too.
“He gets like that sometimes. All like his mind’s gone or somethin’. I think it’s how he does his detecting ‘cause he comes out of it all kind of action. But he takes his own time.” He scratched his head, dubious for a moment. “Course I do remember him comin’ round once, I mean comin’ out’a it a lot quicker-like!”
“How?” Willieboy was open to suggestions.
“Well, it’s kind’a embarrassin’. But, I s-suppose…” Elmo rubbed his thin forearm. “I was waitin’ for him to come ‘round once, and so I w-was just kind’a readin’. Well, it was one of them magazines with the naked people, doin’ it…I guess.” Elmo would have blushed if he were alive. “The phone rang and I sat the magazine down in front of him with this woman’s big old, well ‘you-know-what’ stretched over the two pages. I talked on the phone about two s-seconds, and then the Boss just took it from my hand and started talking. Came right out of his c-condition, he did.”
I remembered the time he was talking about. The picture had been of a large blonde woman straddling a camera lens. I had meant to tell Elmo to use that technique if I ever lapsed again. Another bit of quirky memory.
Willieboy smiled broadly then slapped his knee. “Of course! It makes sense with this sick clusterfuck!” He left the office. I listened to his boots on the stairs. Elmo did what he sometimes did when his boss was in a bad way. He reached out and laid his cold hand on Tommy’s. “Wake up, Boss. Wake up now,” he whispered it in a gentle voice like a mother waking her child for school. “I think we’re in trouble.”
Then Willieboy was back. He had a magazine under his arm. He dropped it on the table in front of Tommy. The cover bore a picture of a gorgeous young woman sucking on her index finger. The skin on the finger had been tattooed to resemble serpent’s scales. Butt Violence was the title that ran across the top. Willieboy quickly tore the magazine open to a centerfold of two women wearing the kind of underwear that doesn’t cover anything. They were both bent over in living color. The girls appeared to be blithe and uncaring as they played an impromptu game of hide the weasel.
The inevitably silly caption read:
Natalie knew that they were playing for keeps and called her pretty opponent’s bluff. But Cindy was ready to meet the challenge and made the move to sweeten the pot.
I could see Tommy’s almost immediate arousal flickering beneath the surface of his skull. He had a thing about animals. I began to broadcast old images of Lassie, the uncut version, and in a second was in the driver’s seat. I looked up at Willieboy, then winced. I had stiffened up during the intervening hours of inactivity. I grimaced. “Makeup.” My voice was dead and dry. I shrugged my shoulder as I waited, felt the ghost of a drill bit in the bone and shivered involuntarily.
Elmo had brought the case along. Relieved, he quickly snapped it open and handed it to me. There was a compact mirror at the bottom. Tommy had managed to apply a ghostlike foundation of white before slipping into his coma. I finished drawing on the eyes.
“Shit, you’re about the weirdest Goddamned son-of-a-bitch I ever met, Wildclown. I should’a known Butt Violence would get you going.” He shook his head and set his
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