Norman Partridge - Dark Harvest

The thing that used to be Jim Shepard doesn’t see any of that. He doesn’t even look in the rearview mirror. He stares dead ahead, into the night. There are other fires waiting to be lit. And there are matches in the pocket, each one of them the seed of an inferno. But the October Boy isn’t thinking of fire as he hangs the corner and leaves the burning house behind. In his mind, fire is only a means to an end. His thoughts remain fixed on the church.

Seen in the cold yellow consciousness crackling within his hollow head, that building is already empty. Those who gathered around it on this blackest of nights have already turned their backs on it. That’s how solidly the Boy believes in fire, and his strategy. But that strategy is flawed. For there is at least one person who won’t be drawn away from the heart of the town tonight. The heat of a thousand fires wouldn’t move that man from his final sanctuary, though Jim Shepard doesn’t realize that yet.

No. Jim doesn’t know about the man who sits in the front pew, alone in the darkness. For the powers that be — those trusted few who make up the town’s Harvester’s Guild — that man is an insurance policy, a last line of defense. But for the October Boy, that man is a destination — however unanticipated — as well as an individual.

He’s the place where a single line connects into a circle.

Dan Shepard sits alone in the front pew, a riot gun cradled in his arms.

Jim’s father stares at the cross hanging dead center on the wall ahead, but that piece of hardware has never been more than window dressing in this town. It doesn’t mean much of anything to Dan, so he looks at his hands instead.

Cupped palms fill with moonlight filtered through a stained glass window. When he was just a teenager, Dan had those palms read at a carnival that passed through town. The fortune-teller told him that his lifeline was strong and his heartline was deep. But looking at his hands now, Dan doesn’t remember which line was which, so he has no idea if the intervening years have changed that schematic.

He only knows that his hands hurt something awful. Been a while since he worked with a hammer, like he did earlier tonight. And he sure never did a job with a butcher knife like the one he did out in that cornfield. Carving a face for the thing that used to be his son really put the ache in him. If he had some aspirins, he’d chew them up good right now and dry swallow every bitter grain.

Not that aspirin could mask the real ache, the one that lives down deeper than the grooves scoring his calluses. No. The real pain hides beneath his heartline and his lifeline and whatever those other lines are called. It lives in his joints; it lives between his bones. And Dan knows why that ache feels at home there, though he can’t quite remember how long it’s been that way. All he knows is, it’s a sure-enough fact that he put his hands through the mill in the years since that dark-eyed fortune-teller closed her fingers around his.

Dan always worked them hard in the fields — he did that for twenty years and then some — but he worked them harder tonight. Carving a face for his twice-born child at twilight. Then turning his back on the thing that used to be Jim and driving back to town. The way Dan sees it, that was plenty enough backbust for one evening, but it turned out it was only the beginning. Toss in a phone call from some bigwig in the Harvester’s Guild a couple hours ago if you want to notch things up, add the bastard telling him he had to meet Jerry Ricks face to face if he was prepared to blow things off the dial.

Ricks. The bastard who put a bullet in his son’s brain a year ago tonight. By the time Dan made it to the cop’s house, the eager monster was already out on the streets — that’s how impatient he was about getting his licks in tonight. So they had to meet here, at the church. That little dance was a whole different kind of torture, one Dan can’t forget:

“If it was up to me, you wouldn’t even be here,” Ricks says, dragging on a cigarette. “I don’t like the way you cringe, Shepard. I think you’re the kind of man who cries in his beer.”

“But you need me anyway, don’t you? Because I’m the only man who can stop him if he gets this far. I’m the only one he’ll listen to. You can’t talk to him. If you tried to explain things to him, he’d carve out your guts with that butcher knife before you could say two words.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t really matter if the Boy could slice off a hunk of me. I couldn’t take him down even if I wanted to. We both know it has to be a kid brings down the October Boy. That’s the only way it works. And as far as sitting that freak down and explaining the facts of life to him — well, that’s sure as hell not my job.”

“Yeah. I almost forgot. You’re the town executioner, aren’t you, Jerry?”

“Shit on that. This year I’m the goddamn exterminator. The Run’s gone nuts. I had to gun down a bunch of kids over at the market. The little bastards were trying to break in. They killed Ralph Jarrett in cold blood — ”

“Weeding out the strong ones, huh?”

“Just doing what needs done, asshole. I expect you to do the same. Your kid makes it through that door before twelve, you have a come-to-Jesus meeting with him. You show him he can’t win this thing. You explain exactly why he has to lose. And if he doesn’t get the message, you jam that shotgun barrel against his belly and you tell him to get his ass back out there on the streets where he belongs. Because if he’s not dead by midnight, this whole damn town is going straight to hell.”

“You’re a little late, Jer. We made that trip a long time ago.”

“Keep it up, smart guy. Go ahead and act like you’ve got a backbone, if it’ll make you feel better. You just take care of that freak if he comes walking into this place tonight. He’s your responsibility. After all, you’re the guy who squirted him out of the end of your dick.”

Ricks smiles when he says that last part. Just a little bit. Just enough. And the words and the smile burn in Dan’s brain and set his guilt on the sizzle. He nearly bites his tongue, nearly doesn’t say a word. Because he’s already lost one son, and he’s got another one at home, and he knows exactly what Ricks and his buddies in the Guild are capable of. He knows shutting up would be the smart thing to do, but his mouth is working before his brain can dam up his words, and those words are measured and bitter when they come.

“You can’t imagine what it takes. Just to sit here and talk to you. Just to do that much.”

“Oh, I can imagine. One look at you, and I get a real clear picture.”

“You don’t see shit.”

“Yeah I do. I see plenty.”

“No you don’t. You can’t see anything, and for one simple reason.”

“What’s that, genius?”

Dan takes a deep breath, staring at the clueless bastard.

“You don’t have any kids of your own, do you, Jerry?”

“Hell, no. You’d have to be nuts to have kids in a town like this.”

Again, Ricks smiles, the way he smiles when he works that heavy bag in his backyard. It’s as if the lawman nailed Shepard with a jab, dodged a counterpunch that had some potential hurt in it, then came back with a hammer of a right hand that shook his opponent to the core. And now he’s standing there, just waiting for Dan to forget the Marquess of Queensberry and go to fucking work.

In another town, it’d happen just that way. Dan would raise that riot gun, and Ricks would draw his pistol, and in a second one (or maybe both) of them would surely hit the floor bleeding. But that won’t happen here. In this town it’s different. Here, Dan Shepard can’t take that risk, not with a wife and kid at home. So Dan swallows those words… and though they’re not a pleasant meal, they’re nothing he hasn’t tasted before.