Norman Partridge - Dark Harvest

The Chrysler passes the market. There’s one last streetlight on the corner ahead. Then another turn, and the October Boy’s into the neighborhoods, where the streets are darker and oak branches climb high over the road, cutting off the moon and the stars.

No porch lights shine from the doorsteps of those houses. Not the electric kind, anyway. But light spills across some of those yards nonetheless — a bumper crop of carved pumpkins sit on those porches, their rough-hewn eyes trained on the streets as if watching the night’s action — somebody’s idea of a joke.

A lot of those Jack o’ Lanterns are mashed. Hey, you remember that. It’s a tradition — pass a house, bash a pumpkin. Get your blood pumping while you think about splattering the real deal. So it’s easy to understand why many of the homes are already cloaked in darkness — Jack o’ Lanterns splattered, candles out.

As he drives, the October Boy thinks about the people who live in those houses — the ones who’ve turned their children onto the streets. And he thinks about the houses themselves, and the quiet little rooms where nothing much ever happens, and the things that do happen that are never spoken of. But in the end it’s not the houses themselves that matter. It’s the people inside who count. So his thoughts return to those people, sitting boxed-up in their little rooms, and he thinks about the things they say and the things they keep locked up inside, and he wonders if you can still feel those people when their voices fall silent and their shadows disappear.

When those rooms are empty.

When those people are gone.

He clocks one block, and then another. A scream cuts through the night as he makes another turn. Just ahead there’s a clot of silhouette on someone’s front lawn, and a figure on the ground. There’s another scream from the prone figure — gotta be it’s a girl — and then one of those silhouettes rears back and kicks her, and laughter eclipses the sound of her pain.

The October Boy almost hits the brakes. Almost. Because girls don’t make the Run… and if one of them is on the street tonight, God knows what will happen to her.

But the Boy ignores the impulse. He doesn’t have time to be anyone’s hero. That’s not his role tonight.

So he forgets about the brakes.

He hits the gas instead.

Pete’s running down the street, following the sound of the girl’s screams when that same busted-up Chrysler speeds toward him, its front end cleaving the black ocean of night like the prow of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus in that Disney movie.

This time Pete barely gives the car a second thought. Once he jukes to the sidewalk and gets out of its way, that is. His attention is focused elsewhere — on that scream, on the yard that it’s coming from, on two guys looming over a lone girl who’s flat-backed on a neatly manicured front lawn.

There’s not much light on that subject. Three carved pumpkins sit on a small porch that skirts the front of the house, their wild yellow leers rippling across clipped grass. It’s not exactly a spotlight, but it’s revealing enough for Pete to recognize Marty Weston and Riley Blake. They’re football players, beer-gut lineman, and they’ve both got brakeman’s clubs because their fathers are railroad men. Between them, they’ve also got about three hundred and fifty pounds on the busted-up redhead at their feet.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Riley asks. “No backtalk this time?”

The redhead barely manages a groan.

“Sounds like this skinny little hunk of nothing finally learned her lesson, Marty. Could be she’s finally ready to shut up and get her ass indoors, where she belongs.”

Weston nods in agreement. “The little bitch can scream some. I’ll give her that. She wails like a Siamese cat tossed in a deep fryer.”

“Uh-huh. It’s damn sure better than listening to her talk, though. At least I understand what she means when she screams.”

“You don’t understand anything, idiot.” The girl’s voice is shaky, but there’s some steel in it, too. “If you were smart, you wouldn’t even be on the streets tonight. You’d be safe out back of your little Hicksville homes, yanking your peckers in the outhouse.”

“Jesus… listen to that.”

“See what I mean? Happens every time she talks. That’s why I’d rather hear her scream.”

Riley hauls back with a booted foot. Pete watches it happen in slow motion. And then he’s all done watching. Without a word, he crosses the lawn, moving in on Riley fast, cracking the pistol butt against the bigger kid’s skull just as Riley’s foot digs into the girl’s ribs.

Riley drops his brakeman’s club and Pete whacks him again, and the football player nearly goes flat on his ass as he trips over the girl. But all those tire drills on the practice field have been good for something, and Riley catches his balance at the last second. He rips around, facing Pete now, shaking his big head like it’s a four-slice toaster some moron jammed with a fork.

“McCormick?” Riley says, because even in the dark he recognizes the guy who clubbed him. “Pete McCormick? Oh, you just picked one hell of a time to grow some guts, you little shit. I’m gonna bust you up but good.”

“Uh-uh.” Pete chambers a round and raises the.45. “I don’t think you’re gonna do that, Riley.”

Riley stumbles back a step. “Hey! This asshole’s got a gun!”

“Yeah,” Weston says. “I can see that.”

Weston’s standing off to the side, and his brakeman’s club is already in motion as the words exit his mouth. It’s whistling towards Pete’s head, and Weston’s stepping in behind it, following the club’s arc with his weight. As Pete ducks under it he sees Weston shifting his stance, already setting his feet and cocking the club for another swing while his idiot buddy’s standing there slack-jawed like he’s watching the whole thing on television, and Pete whirls to the side and points the gun at Weston just as the big lineman lets loose his second swing —

— and the brakeman’s club nails Weston hard, cracking the football player’s kneecap like a china plate. It’s not the club Weston’s holding, of course. It’s the club Riley dropped. The redhead has it now, and Weston screams as she cracks him a second time, and he drops his club and goes down so hard and so fast that it seems someone should have yelled timber.

The girl’s on her feet, at Pete’s side in a second, the brakeman’s club still in her grasp.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Thanks yourself. I owed you one.”

And Riley Blake’s still standing there with his mouth hanging open, all two hundred and thirty pounds of him. The skinny little chick has his club. His buddy’s on the ground, howling over a busted kneecap. Worse than that, a sawed-off misfit who never lets him copy the answers off algebra exams is staring straight at him with a fucking.45 in his hand, a gun he already used to dig a couple of divots in Riley’s oversize skull, and Riley has the clear impression that the little bastard is picturing a bull’s-eye right there on his oversize shirt.

“I don’t believe this shit,” Riley says, doubly stunned. “There ain’t supposed to be any girls on the Run. And I never heard of anybody hitting the streets with a gun — ”

“You’re talking like there are rules to this game,” Pete says, cutting him off. “There aren’t any rules, Riley. Tonight there are only winners and losers, and you can figure out which one you are.”

“But it’s not right . She’s a girl . And that’s a gun .”

“And this is a club.” The girl steps in and cracks Riley Blake upside the head, and he topples like beef on the hoof whacked with a slaughterhouse hammer.