A gout of flame leapt in the parking lot. Sparks marched across the concrete. I shouted, “Get down!” and twisted around to push Cheryl back behind the shelter of the counter.
“What the hell—” Dennis said.
He didn’t finish. There was the metallic thumping of bullets hitting the gas pumps and the cars. I knew if that gas blew we were all dead. My truck shuddered with the impact of slugs, and I saw the whole thing explode as I ducked behind the counter. Then the windows blew inward with a god-awful crash, and the diner was full of flying glass, swirling wind, and sheets of rain. I heard Lindy scream, and both the kids were crying, and I think I was shouting something myself.
The lights had gone out, and the only illumination was the reflection of red neon off the concrete and the glow of the fluorescents over the gas pumps. Bullets whacked into the wall, and crockery shattered as if it had been hit with a hammer. Napkins and sugar packets were flying everywhere.
Cheryl was holding on to me as if her fingers were nails sunk to my bones. Her eyes were wide and dazed, and she kept trying to speak. Her mouth was working, but nothing came out.
There was another explosion as one of the other cars blew. The whole place shook, and I almost puked with fear.
Another hail of bullets hit the wall. They were tracers, and they jumped and ricocheted like white-hot cigarette butts. One of them sang off the edge of a shelf and fell to the floor about three feet away from me. The glowing slug began to fade, like the beer can and the mirage steak. I put my hand out to find it, but all I felt was splinters of glass and crockery. A phantom bullet, I thought. Real enough to cause damage and death—and then gone.
You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper, Price had warned. Not with the body count I’ve got in my head.
The firing stopped. I got free of Cheryl and said, “You stay right here.” Then I looked up over the counter and saw my truck and the station wagon on fire, the flames being whipped by the wind. Rain slapped me across the face as it swept in where the window glass used to be. I saw Price lying still huddled on the floor, with pieces of glass all around him. His hands were clawing the air, and in the flickering red neon his face was contorted, his eyes still closed. The pool of ketchup around his head made him look like his skull had been split open. He was peering into hell, and I averted my eyes before I lost my own mind.
Ray and Lindy and the two children had huddled under the table of their booth. The woman was sobbing brokenly. I looked at Dennis, lying a few feet from Price: he was sprawled on his face, and there were four holes punched through his back. It was not ketchup that ran in rivulets around Dennis’ body. His right arm was outflung, and the fingers twitched around the gun he gripped.
Another flare sailed up from the woods like a Fourth of July sparkler.
When the light brightened, I saw them: at least five figures, maybe more. They were crouched over, coming across the parking lot—but slowly, the speed of nightmares. Their clothes flapped and hung around them, and the flare’s light glanced off their helmets. They were carrying weapons—rifles, I guessed. I couldn’t see their faces, and that was for the best.
On the floor, Price moaned. I heard him say “light…in the light…”
The flare hung right over the diner. And then I knew what was going on. We were in the light. We were all caught in Price’s nightmare, and the Nightcrawlers that Price had left in the mud were fighting the battle again—the same way it had been fought at the Pines Haven Motor Inn. The Nightcrawlers had come back to life, powered by Price’s guilt and whatever that Howdy Doody shit had done to him.
And we were in the light, where Charlie had been out in that rice paddy.
There was a noise like castanets clicking. Dots of fire arced through the broken windows and thudded into the counter. The stools squealed as they were hit and spun. The cash register rang and the drawer popped open, and then the entire register blew apart and bills and coins scattered. I ducked my head, but a wasp of fire—I don’t, know what, a bit of metal or glass maybe—sliced my left cheek open from ear to upper lip. I fell to the floor behind the counter with blood running down my face.
A blast shook the rest of the cups, saucers, plates, and glasses off the shelves. The whole roof buckled inward, throwing loose ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and pieces of metal framework.
We were all going to die. I knew it, right then. Those things were going to destroy us. But I thought of the pistol in Dennis’ hand, and of Price lying near the door. If we were caught in Price’s nightmare and the blow from the ketchup bottle had broken something in his skull, then the only way to stop his dream was to kill him.
I’m no hero. I was about to piss in my pants, but I knew I was the only one who could move. I jumped up and scrambled over the counter, falling beside Dennis and wrenching at that pistol. Even in death, Dennis had a strong grip. Another blast came, along the wall to my right. The heat of it scorched me, and the shock wave skidded me across the floor through glass and rain and blood.
But I had that pistol in my hand.
I heard Ray shout, “Look out!”
In the doorway, silhouetted by flames, was a skeletal thing wearing muddy green rags. It wore a dented-in helmet and carried a corroded, slime-covered rifle. Its face was gaunt and shadowy, the features hidden behind a scum of rice-paddy muck. It began to lift the rifle to fire at me—slowly, slowly…
I got the safety off the pistol and fired twice, without aiming. A spark leapt off the helmet as one of the bullets was deflected, but the figure staggered backward and into the conflagration of the station wagon, where it seemed to melt into ooze before it vanished.
More tracers were coming in. Cheryl’s Volkswagen shuddered, the tires blowing out almost in unison. The state-trooper car was already bullet-riddled and sitting on flats.
Another Nightcrawler, this one without a helmet and with slime covering the skull where the hair had been, rose up beyond the window and fired its rifle. I heard the bullet whine past my ear, and as I took aim I saw its bony finger tightening on the trigger again.
A skillet flew over my head and hit the thing’s shoulder, spoiling its aim. For an instant the skillet stuck in the Nightcrawler’s body, as if the figure itself was made out of mud. I fired once…twice…and saw pieces of matter fly from the thing’s chest. What might’ve been a mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the thing slithered out of sight.
I looked around. Cheryl was standing behind the counter, weaving on her feet, her face white with shock. “Get down!” I shouted, and she ducked for cover.
I crawled to Price, shook him hard. His eyes would not open. “Wake up!” I begged him. “Wake up, damn you!” And then I pressed the barrel of the pistol against Price’s head. Dear God, I didn’t want to kill anybody, but I knew I was going to have to blow the Nightcrawlers right out of his brain. I hesitated—too long.
Something smashed into my left collarbone. I heard the bone snap like a broomstick being broken. The force of the shot slid me back against the counter and jammed me between two bullet-pocked stools. I lost the gun, and there was a roaring in my head that deafened me.
I don’t know how long I was out. My left arm felt like dead meat. All the cars in the lot were burning, and there was a hole in the diner’s roof that a tractor-trailer truck could’ve dropped through. Rain was sweeping into my face, and when I wiped my eyes clear I saw them, standing over Price.
There were eight of them. The two I thought I’d killed were back. They trailed weeds, and their boots and ragged clothes were covered with mud. They stood in silence, staring down at their living comrade.
I was too tired to scream. I couldn’t even whimper. I just watched.
Price’s hands lifted into the air. He reached for the Nightcrawlers, and then his eyes opened. His pupils were dead white, surrounded by scarlet.
“End it,” he whispered. “End it…”
One of the Nightcrawlers aimed its rifle and fired. Price jerked. Another Nightcrawler fired, and t
hen they were all firing point-blank into Price’s body. Price thrashed and clutched at his head, but there was no blood; the phantom bullets weren’t hitting him.
The Nightcrawlers began to ripple and fade. I saw the flames of the burning cars through their bodies. The figures became transparent, floating in vague outlines. Price had awakened too fast at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, I realized; if he had remained asleep, the creatures of his nightmares would’ve ended it there, at that Florida motel. They were killing him in front of me—or he was allowing them to end it, and I think that’s what he must’ve wanted for a long, long time.
He shuddered, his mouth releasing a half-moan, half-sigh.
It sounded almost like relief.
The Nightcrawlers vanished. Price didn’t move anymore.
I saw his face. His eyes were closed, and I think he must’ve found peace at last.
5
A TRUCKER HAULING LUMBER from Mobile to Birmingham saw the burning cars. I don’t even remember what he looked like.
Ray was cut up by glass, but his wife and the kids were okay. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I couldn’t say.
Cheryl went into the hospital for a while. I got a postcard from her with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front. She promised she’d write and let me know how she was doing, but I doubt if I’ll ever hear from her. She was the best waitress I ever had, and I wish her luck.
The police asked me a thousand questions, and I told the story the same way every time. I found out later that no bullets or shrapnel were ever dug out of the walls or the cars or Dennis’ body—just like in the case of that motel massacre. There was no bullet in me, though my collarbone was snapped clean in two.
Price had died of a massive brain hemorrhage. It looked, the police told me, as if it had exploded in his skull.
I closed the diner. Farm life is fine. Alma understands, and we don’t talk about it.
But I never showed the police what I found, and I don’t know exactly why not.
I picked up Price’s wallet in the mess. Behind a picture of a smiling young woman holding a baby there was a folded piece of paper. On that paper were the names of four men.
Beside one name, Price had written “Dangerous.”
I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing, Price had said.
I sit up at night a lot, thinking about that and looking at those names. Those men had gotten a dose of that Howdy Doody shit in a foreign place they hadn’t wanted to be, fighting a war that turned out to be one of those crossroads of nightmare and reality. I’ve changed my mind about ’Nam because I understand now that the worst of the fighting is still going on, in the battlefields of memory.
A Yankee who called himself Tompkins came to my house one May morning and flashed me an ID that said he worked for a veterans’ association. He was very soft-spoken and polite, but he had deep-set eyes that were almost black, and he never blinked. He asked me all about Price, seemed real interested in picking my brain of every detail. I told him the police had the story, and I couldn’t add any more to it. Then I turned the tables and asked him about Howdy Doody. He smiled in a puzzled kind of way and said he’d never heard of any chemical defoliant called that. No such thing, he said. Like I say, he was very polite.
But I know the shape of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Tompkins was wearing one under his seersucker coat. I never could find any veterans’ association that knew anything about him, either.
Maybe I should give that list of names to the police. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll try to find those four men myself, and try to make some sense out of what’s being hidden.
I don’t think Price was evil. No. He was just scared, and who can blame a man for running from his own nightmares? I like to believe that, in the end, Price had the courage to face the Nightcrawlers, and in committing suicide he saved our lives.
The newspapers, of course, never got the real story. They called Price a ’Nam vet who’d gone crazy, killed six people in a Florida motel, and then killed a state trooper in a shoot-out at Big Bob’s diner and gas stop.
But I know where Price is buried. They sell little American flags at the five-and-dime in Mobile. I’m alive, and I can spare the change.
And then I’ve got to find out how much courage I have.
Pin
I’M GOING TO DO it.
Yes. I am.
I hold the pin in my hand, and tonight I’m going to peer into the inner sun.
Then, when I’m filled up with all that glare and heat and my brain is on fire like a four-alarm blaze, I’m going to take my Winchester rifle down to the McDonald’s on the corner and we’ll see who says what to who when.
There you go, talking to yourself. Well, there’s nobody else around, is there, so who am I supposed to talk to? No, no; my friend’s here. Right here, in my hand. You know. Pin.
I have a small sharp friend. Oh, look at that little point gleam. It hypnotizes you, Pin does. It says look at me look long and hard and in me you will see your future. It is a very sharp future, and there is pain in it. Pin is better than God, because I can hold Pin. God frets and moans in silence, somewhere…up there, somewhere. Way above the ceiling. Damn, I didn’t know that crack was there. No wonder this bitching place leaks.
Now, Johnny’s an okay guy. I mean, I wouldn’t shoot him. He’s okay. The others at the stop—bam bam bam, dead in two seconds flat. I don’t like the way they clam up when I walk past, like they’ve got secrets I’m not supposed to know anything about. Like you have secrets when you work on cars all day and fix tires and brake shoes and get that gunk under your fingernails that won’t ever wash out? Some secrets. Now, Pin… Pin does have secrets. Tonight I’m going to learn them, and I’m going to share my knowledge with those people down on the corner eating their hamburgers in the safe safe world. I’ll bet that damn roof doesn’t leak I’ll make it leak I’ll put a bullet right through it, so there.
I’m sweating. Hot in here. Summer night, so what else is new?
Pin, you’re so pretty you make me want to cry.
The trick, I think, is not to blink. I’ve heard about people who did this before. They saw the inner sun, and they went out radiant. It’s always dark in here. It’s always dark in this town. I think they need a little sunlight, don’t you?
Who’re you talking to, anyway? Me myself and I. Pin makes four. Hell, I could play bridge if I wanted to. Lucas liked to play bridge, liked to cheat and call you names and what else did you have to do in that place anyway? Oh, those white white walls. I think white is Satan’s color, because it has no face. I saw that Baptist preacher on TV and he had on a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up. He said come down the aisle come on come on while you can and I’ll show you the door to heaven.
It’s a big white door, he said. And he smiled when he said it, and the way he smiled, oh, I knew I just knew he was really saying you’re watching me aren’t you, Joey? He was really saying, Joey you know all about big white doors, don’t you, and how when they swing shut you hear the latch fall and the key rattle and that big white door won’t open again until somebody comes and opens it. There was always a long time between the closing and the opening.
I’ve always wanted to be a star. Like on TV or movies, somebody important with a lot of people nodding around you and saying you make a lot of sense. People like that always look like they know where they’re going and they’re always in a hurry to get there. Well, I know where I’m going now. Right down to the corner, where the golden arches are. Look out my window, I can see it. There goes a car turning in. Going to be full up on a Saturday night. Full up. My Winchester has a seven-shot magazine. Checkered American walnut. Satin finish. Rubber butt plate. It weighs seven pounds, a good weight. I have more bullets, too. Full up on a Saturday night. Date night, oh yes, I hope she’s there that girl you know the one she drives a blue Camaro and she has long blond hair and eyes like diamonds. Diamonds are hard, but you hit one with a bullet and it’s not so hard anymore.
Pin, we won’t think about her, will we? Nope! If she’s there it’s fate. Maybe I won’t shoot her, and she’ll see I’m a nice guy.
Hold Pin close. Closer. Closer still. Up against the right eye. I’ve thought a long time about this. It was a tough decision. Left or right? I’m right-handed, so it makes sense to use my right eye. I can already see the sun sparkle on the end of Pin, like a promise.
Oh, what I could do with a machine gun. Eliot Ness, Untouchables, tommy-gun-type thing. I sure could send a lot of people behind that big white door, couldn’t I? See, the funny thing I mean really funny thing is that everybody wants to go to heaven but everybody’s scared to die. That’s what I’m going to say when the lights come on and that news guy sticks a microphone in my face. I need to shave first. I need to wear a tie. No, they won’t know me with a tie on. I need to wear my gray uniform—gray, now there’s a man’s color. Pick you up good on TV in gray.
Speak to me, Pin. Say it won’t hurt.
Oh, you lying little bitch.
It has to be in the center. In that black part. It has to go in deep. Real deep, and you have to keep pushing it in until you see the inner sun. You know, I’ll bet that part’s dead anyway. I’ll bet you can’t even feel any pain in the black part. Just push it in and keep pushing, and you’ll see that sunburst and then you can go down and have a hamburger when it’s all said and done.
Sweating. Hot night. That fan’s not worth a damn, it just makes a racket.
Are you ready?
Closer, Pin. Closer. I never knew the point could look so big. Closer. Almost touching. Don’t blink! Cowards blink, nobody can ever say Joey Shatterly’s a coward no sir!
Wait. Wait. I think I need a mirror for this.
I smell under my arms. Ban roll-on. You don’t want to smell when they turn the lights on you what if it’s not the guy but the girl who does the late news the one with big boobs and a smile like frostbite?
No, I don’t need to shave I look fine. Oh hell I’m out of Ban. Old Spice that’ll do. My dad used to use Old Spice everybody’s dad did. Now, that was a good day, when we saw the Reds play the Pirates and he bought me a bag of peanuts and said he was proud of me. That was a good day. Well, he was a fruitcake though a real Marine oh sure. I remember that Iwo Jima crap when he got crazy and drank all the time Iwo Jima Iwo Jima all the time I mean he lived it in his mind a million times. You got sick of hearing who all died at Iwo Jima and how come you ought to be proud to be an American and how things weren’t how they used to be. Nothing is, is it? Except Old Spice. They still sell it, and the bottle’s still the same. Iwo Jima Iwo Jima. And then he went and did it, put the rope up in the garage and stepped off the ladder and me coming in to get my bike and that grin on his face that said Iwo Jima.