Джеффри Дивер - Nothing Good Happens After Midnight - A Suspense Magazine Anthology

“No shit, Bob. I’m George,” George says, shaking his head to Townie Pete to indicate his opinion that co-worker Bob is daft.

“So, you, George, you’re a friggin’ kick. You pop in here, all big guy chest out, blustering about how on the cold side of the mountain, come 2:00 a.m. the night a’fore, a pack of coyotes comes up and surrounds your snowcat. Yipping and barking at you mad. And they’re threatening and jumping up and snipping away at the door and all, so you’re holding it tight.” Bob stands from his green booth and reenacts George’s first reenactment. Bob is pulling and pulling on air as if holding closed the door to a snowcat. “So, then, you say. Then, you notice that the alpha was standing directly in front of the point part of your plow blade, and under a full moon, which was blurry white, what with the snow. I remember you gave that detail, George. You’re good, a good storyteller, yeah. Anyway, that alpha bitch coyote stared at you as if a snorting bull, getting ready to charge one of them there marionettes with the red cape.”

“Oh my fucking hell, it’s a matador, you idiot. Not a marionette,” George says.

The bar laughs. But Bob is not derailed. He laughs himself and continues. “So anyway, Madam Coyote Bitch is about to charge and have her pack charge when a bark from behind her made her turn her head. Up steps Blessed Martha’s hound Cope, you said. Her very dog who ran off to the woods when she was stabbed by a robot, oh my Lord in Heaven, that’s what you claim. You hadn’t seen Cope in years, until that night with the coyotes. Seeing Cope, you near passed out. You got out of your cab, threw Cope an eggs-n-bacon, because you say you always carry a “pocket snack” from the bar, and Cope, well Cope she damn well took it! Cope growled at the coyotes, who hurried up behind her and waited. Cope was always a smart hound. And then, snap, the pack fled, along with Cope. You said your Martha was looking out for you is what. Oh what wild bullshit, George. A hound and coyotes living together. What extraordinary bullshit, you blubbering romantic.”

The entire bar is roaring now. Except for Kyle, who continues glaring on at the television, or at Pete or at George. Can’t be Kemper this time; Kemper’s shuttled to a somewhat hidden corner with the fireplace to add another log.

“Oh my God, George. Oh my God. And then, then, you say, up on a crest under the blurry moonlight, Old Cope, that magnificent hound, howls at the moon.” Bob pauses to howl at a fake moon in the bar, “Awhoooo.” He sits back down in his green booth, knuckles his table, and says, “Shit, George, it’s amazing you survived. Good thing you can communicate with animals. Sure as fuck can’t talk to a human woman no more. Amiright, y’all?”

“Hell right. How long you been crushin’ on Karen, George,” Kemper asks.

“Bite me,” George says.

A log rolls in the fire and embers sizzle; the flames jump at the fresh air and lick high against the brick back of the fireplace.

George takes a moment to look around at the crowd as they break off in diminishing laughter. He notes Kyle still staring at him, or Pete or overhead to the TV. Not laughing along.

“There was that other time,” Townie Pete says, twisting around in his bar stool to face the crowd, which causes all interior noise, except the crackling fire and the TV voices, to cease. Pete continues, “It was come this last here spring, what was it? This spring, I think. When the rivers were bloated and freezing ass cold. George comes in and says how he passed a bare-naked-ass man, bathing in the river, right off the main road. Great straight out in the open. Had himself a towel wrapped ’round his head like a lady out of the shower, was that it, George? And a body brush and all, scrubbing his pits. His dangler was free out in the freezing cool air.”

Bob, the daft co-worker, rises again from his green booth, thrusts his groin forward, and wiggles his fingers over his crotch, pantomiming along to Pete’s rendition of the story.

Pete chuckles at Bob and his finger dangler and continues his roast. “Everybody knows a fool would freeze his literal balls off in such arctic water. George gives us all these crazy details about how the dangler guy looked like a snowman, with a round bald head on a round neck on a round torso with round arms, round legs. ‘He was a person made out of snowballs,’ George here told us. Can’t be true,” Pete says. “Ain’t nobody else report such an insane sighting.”

“To Tall Tale George,” Sue yells.

And the entire bar, except for Kyle, raises their beers and rums and cokes and coffees to George. “To Tall Tale George,” they yell.

Except for Kyle. Kyle glares on in the same direction he’s been glaring since he sat.

“Gruesome remains of Middle Tech college student, Christine Heilan, found this morning by Tyson’s fishing hole. Her body had been, like others, split up the middle, her spine removed, and a fishing hook left in her lip,” the news says.

“Why the fuck they give us these details?” Bob yells, flinging his arm in accusation at the television.

“Because it’s after fucking midnight is why,” Kemper says. “They give more after the babies are in bed. I’m putting the Pats back on.”

And to this, the crowd cheers.

Kyle stands, throws cash on the least-favorite table, and walks out.

George waits several minutes for Kyle to leave and tilts his face to Kemper with a bemused look. “So the new guy’s a bit of a... what would you call it?” George says.

“He’s a stalka, that one, alright. I’d watch that one,” says Sue, answering for Kemper. Sue’s the Richard’s Village townie who reads tarot cards for tourists. “He’s not right in the noggin’,” she adds, tapping her temple. Sue’s a New Englander through and through, several generations deep of Yankee blood, so thick, seven heirs more and living in Texas would still carry her accent of dropped r’s and long a’s. And like any soul stitched out of old Vermont sticks and true Vermont stones, Sue knows a thing or two or ten about witchcraft and judging who’s worth your time and who can disappear down a running river. In fact, when Sue voices her opinion on anyone it’s rare, but always right. And to her pronouncement about Kyle, several men in the bar say, “Ayup.”

George considers Sue’s words and nods a couple solemn beats at her. Her throat and chin are uplit in a tint of green from her sequined top, like she might, indeed, be a true witch.

He ticks his tongue as a way of saying he agrees with her.

“Alrighty then, I’m off. Big blizzard night. Gotta get em’ powder perfect for the morning rush,” George says, standing and extracting his Duck Hunters’ Guild wallet. He throws a twenty to cover his $12.00 worth of finished food and coffee and a takeaway breakfast sandwich, which Kemper, without having to be asked, tosses to George. George pushes his thermos for filling, and Kemper obliges. George tells Kemper to keep the change.

Everyone quiets and stares at the screen when an alert sounds the “Breaking News” alarm — which must be fucking huge if the station would go so far as to interrupt this famous Pats’ game. The newscaster narrates along to a sketch now being shown. “Just in. A woman who claims to have escaped a man who kidnapped her and her friend, and who she watched slice her friend on the bank of Poison River, in the manner we’ve previously reported on other victims, has provided this sketch.”

“Oh my gawd,” Sue says in a hush.

“What the fuck?” Bob says.

Kemper, who tends to be the most sane and most sober, and therefore generally regarded as the genius of the bar, looks to George and says, “Hold up, George,” stopping George, who’s standing now and about to push in his stool. “That your man? Your snowball man, bathing in the ice river?”