Эд Горман - Moonchasers and Other Stories

He went six foot easy and if his gut was a little loose now and there was a little fleshy pad beneath the line of chin and jaw, he was still an impressive man, always dressed nattily in one of the many suits Bruce Harcourt over at Harcourt’s Men Shop gave him a discount on, and always cracking his chewing gum with a certain malicious delight. He had black black eyes that shone with a very strange light.

The summer previous Barney and I had broken into the deserted high school out near the highway. Assistant Police Chief (which generally meant the man who was in charge at night) Stephen B. Cushing happened to be cruising by at the very same time we were crawling in one of the windows.

And parked his car. And came in after us.

There are a lot of stories going around about what happened that night, some of them pretty juicy of course, but our version, and after all we were there, is pretty simple: he came in after us and we ran away. He called for us to stop but, given what we knew about Cushing we were afraid to stop, and so we climbed out of the building again and took off running.

Cushing hadn’t been so lucky. He’d crawled out the window after us but instead of hitting the ground running, he’d simply hit the ground, falling one story to hard hard pavement and breaking his arm in the process.

I don’t need to tell you how bad it looks for a cop to chase two punk teenagers and have those punk teenagers get away. But for a tough marine and former football hero to break his arm in the process—

My father, the respectable haberdasher, was not happy that his son had gotten into trouble with the law. I was grounded for two weeks, shorn of allowance, and ordered to leave the living room every time something good came on TV (I even had to miss the Maverick show where they made fun of Gunsmoke).

But even given his embarrassment about his son having to appear in juvenile court, my father at dinner one night broke into a grin and said, “You should see Cushing these days, dear. He won’t look any of us merchants in the eye, and he’s cut out his swaggering entirely. I’m not saying I think what Tom here did was right but maybe this was the only way to cut Cushing down a peg or two.” Cushing used to come in all the stores and let it be known in various ways that as assistant police chief, he expected favors and discounts from the men he was sworn to protect. The merchants didn’t like it but you didn’t say anything against Cushing in this town. Not without Cushing getting even, anyway.

So now here we stood one year later and Cushing was still referring to us as “girls,” which he did loudly whenever he saw us on the street. He couldn’t get real mean with us, the way he got mean with that Negro who ended up in the hospital a few years back — I mean, haberdasher may not sound like much to you but in a town the size of Somerton, a haberdasher has some influence and Cushing had to be careful — but he could and did harass us whenever he got the chance.

Cushing watched us with his strange black eyes as Meeks said,

“These boys were asking for Sergeant McCorkindale.”

“They were?” Cushing grinned. “You girls come in to confess to something?”

Meeks looked uncomfortable when Cushing called us girls. He kind of wriggled and waggled around in his desk chair.

“They were real polite,” he said. “I mean, they weren’t causing any trouble or anything.”

“That’s the nice thing about little girls,” Cushing said. “They’re usually well-behaved.”

He took out a pack of Cavaliers and tamped one down on the pack and then put it to his mouth and took out this really nice silver Zippo.

“So how can I help you two?” He apparently had other things to do. Now he sounded as if he just wanted to rush us out of here.

Barney’s gaze strayed over to mine. We had the same thought. We couldn’t tell Cushing about Roy Danton because if Danton didn’t kill himself, Cushing would be glad to do it for him.

“He said he’d help us with this term paper we’re gonna write next year,” I said.

“Yeah, about the police.”

Cushing grinned. He couldn’t let an opportunity like this go by. “So you nice little girls are also A students, huh?”

A students? God, Barney and I together barely got passing grades. If they’d given courses in Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert Mitchum, we would have been hailed as geniuses. But unfortunately our school board was hopelessly square.

Cushing lit his cigarette. He was still looking us over. You got the impression that he’d have liked to start beating on us right then and there.

But all he said was, “Why don’t you girls go on home? We’re busy.”

And with that, he turned around and went back to his office.

Meeks said, kind of sheepish, “He just gets in a bad mood sometimes.”

And right then I liked the hell out of Meeks because he was the same kind of geek we were, fist fodder for all the Cushings in the world.

“Thanks, Meeks,” I said.

“Yeah,” Barney said. “Thanks.”

When we were outside in the steaming night again, Barney said, “You know, if God gave me permission to kill three people you know who I’d name?”

“Cushing and who else?”

“Cushing, Cushing and Cushing.”

I laughed. “Me, too.”

Barney nodded to Hamblin’s Pharmacy down the block. “We’d better hurry up if we’re going to get Danton that stuff.”

“I was thinking,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I’ll bet if Danton didn’t have that bullet in him, he could kick the living shit right out of Cushing.”

“With one hand tied behind his back.”

“And blindfolded.”

“Let’s go,” Barney said, “and get that stuff.”

“Yeah,” I laughed. “Like good little girls.”

Hamblin’s was where I first read Ray Bradbury and Theodore Sturgeon and Robert Bloch and John D. MacDonald and Mickey Spillane so even given the fact that Mr. Hamblin, the shriveled-up little guy who owns it is something of a grouch, I’ll always like the place. There’s a soda fountain with twelve stools where one day Patty Lake accidentally leaned against my arm with one of her breasts and I fell in love with her for the whole school year; and the magazine stand where Popular Photography once had a nude shot of a very pretty young woman, and she wasn’t even African; and the sacred wire paperback rack that kind of creaks when you turn it around; and the sandwich board where Ina makes the most incredible tuna salad sandwiches I’ve ever had, no offense Mom.

I was hoping Becky Martin would be working, Becky being not only the tallest girl in junior class but the most beautiful, too, reminding me a lot of Dana Wynter in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, who even two years later I still had a sort of crush on.

But Becky wasn’t working, Hamblin himself was.

He was up on a stepladder putting boxes of storage away. I guess it was a sign of our growing maturity that neither Barney nor I smirked or poked each other when we saw it was boxes of Kotex he was putting away.

“Help you, boys?”

“Need some things, Mr. Hamblin,” I said.

“Be right down.”

A few minutes later he was behind the counter, this rabbity bald little guy who always reminded me of Andy Clyde who was Hopalong Cassidy’s sidekick in the movies, and he got the first two items, bandages and gauze, and set them up but then he stopped all of a sudden, wiping his hands on his clean white apron and said, “Boric acid?”

“Yes, Mr. Hamblin.”

“This for your folks?”

“Huh?” Barney said.

“Your folks. Is this stuff for your folks?”

“Yeah,” I lied. “Yeah. My dad fell down and—”