Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

“Sure. I wasn’t thinking. That wouldn’t be smart, would it?”

“You didn’t tell your parents where you were, did you?”

“Course not,” she said. “Joey’s dad found out he was out, like he always does, and Joey got a beating. Both his eyes are blacked. I saw him mowing his yard. He hardly looked at me. He was limping some.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Wow…You know what, Harry? I came to see you for another reason. Not just to talk about the ghost.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re moving.”

Harry felt as if he had just been hit between the eyes with a mallet.

“Oh. When?”

“Coming weekend.”

“Yeah.”

She nodded. “I just found out.”

“Your dad got another job?”

“No. Mom and I, we’re moving.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. They had some trouble.”

“You don’t have to talk about it.”

“We’ve talked about it before.”

“He has a temper.”

“So does Mama. But this…It’s different. Dad…He was seeing someone else. It’s probably best, him staying here. He’s not a cop anymore. Gonna open a garage. He likes mechanic work. Mom, she’s got a job in Tyler, at a dress shop.”

“I’m so sorry, Kayla.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s how it is, as Mom says. We’re leaving pretty soon. Mom has a house rented.”

“Oh.”

“That’s all you can say? Oh?”

“I don’t know what to say…except I don’t want you to go. I want you to stay here, go to school here. We could go to college together. This is a nice town.”

“It’s all right. But I can go to college in Tyler, maybe come back here and get with the cops, like Daddy was.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“Me either. You think maybe people are meant for each other? You know, the stars and all that?”

“I don’t know about the stars. But maybe some people are. Maybe you get lucky now and then and things are just right. Puzzle pieces fit.”

“And now they have to unfit.”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn’t have to be forever.”

“Absolutely not.”

Kayla took his hand. She pulled it next to her and he could feel the back of his knuckles touching the side of her bare leg, just below her khaki shorts. Her perfume was strong. Harry felt warm all over. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Not like when he had seen the ghost, but in a good way.

They sat silently, their fingers entwined.

“I guess you have to go?” he said.

“Harry?”

“Yeah,” And when he said it, he turned his face toward her. She leaned toward him and kissed him lightly on the lips. It wasn’t much, just a touch, but he felt a kind of feeling he had never felt before. Not just movement in his tighty whities, but something else. Something strange.

“I got to go,” she said. “I’ve already been here too long. Told Mama I would help pack.”

“Sure.”

“See you around, maybe?”

“Sure. Of course you will. We’re puzzle parts that fit. Remember?”

“I’m gonna miss you.”

“You too. Lots.”

She got up then and started walking away. When she got to the road she started running, and Harry noted that she could run very fast, and not the way most girls ran, but like an Olympian carrying the torch.

She ran faster yet, and pretty soon he saw her turn the corner and go out of sight around a neighbor’s house. He got up and walked quickly along the long porch, followed it around to the other side of the house. Stood on the porch where the sunlight was bright. He squinted, put a hand over his eyes, like the Great Scout surveying the horizon.

He could see her again. She was running where the road had curved, and as she ran she was blocked out by more houses. He watched as she darted between them. It was just a glimpse, but he was glad he saw her. Her long legs leaping out and her blond hair flying.

The road turned away and a house blocked the road and he couldn’t see Kayla anymore.

8

Six months later, sitting on the floor in front of the TV, trying to find something to watch, cruising the television airwaves with his trusty channel changer, Harry came upon something unexpected.

A realization.

There really was nothing on.

Nothing he wanted to see.

Nada.

The goose egg.

The family didn’t have wide cable access. That was part of it. But they did get a lot of stations with the basic cable. But there wasn’t shit on.

He flipped and got the news, but it was all bad and about war and people dying or killing or yelling or fighting. He caught a couple of movies, but the violence was so intense, he sort of lost sight of the stories.

He just sat there flipping through the channels, thinking about Kayla. He had tried to go see her the next day, the day after the kiss, but no one was home, and when he went back the next afternoon, they were gone. The house was as empty as a politician’s promise.

But he could still remember the kiss as if it were yesterday, the way she had held his hand, the way her flesh felt when she touched him. That biting smell of perfume in his nostrils.

Puzzle pieces separated. The pattern broken. The puzzle screwed.

“Well, I’ll be goddamn,” his father said. “Will you look at this?”

Harry turned to look as his mother came in from the kitchen, a towel in her hands. She said, “Don’t cuss.”

“Look here,” Dad said, and slapped a finger against a newspaper on the dining table. “What’s this say?”

Harry knew his dad had been able to pick out a few words, but couldn’t read well enough to get the whole of the story, all that missed school, something about reversing letters when he tried to read, which was why he had called in Mom.

She read a bit of it from the paper. Harry got up from the floor, strolled over, slid in between them.

It was the front page of the local paper. It had a large headline.

KILLER OF BAR OWNER CONFESSES

There was an article, and Harry’s eyes just hit the high spots. Ex-husband admits to killing his wife, the owner of Rosy’s Roadhouse. Had a key. Waited until the place was empty and she was closing. He was upset about their split-up. He wasn’t happy she was seeing another man .

“That’s the place down the hill,” Harry said.

“That’s right,” Mom said.

Mom turned the page, went to where the story was continued. There were two photos.

One of the victim.

One of the murderer.

Harry knew them both. Or rather, he had seen them both. Down there in Rosy’s. The night he slipped out with Joey and Kayla. The night he fainted.

He leaned over and looked closer at the picture of the man in the newspaper. It was him, all right. The man with the black hair, the scars, and the sharp, curved knife, the guy that cut the woman’s throat, knocking her against the jukebox. He could remember the light and the warmth, the record playing. That feeling of tightness. It all came back to him. Just for a moment.

He looked at the woman’s photograph. She looked better than when he had seen her, frightened, cut, then dead. But it was her.

His eyes bounced along the paragraphs in the article as his mother read them aloud to his father.

Slit throat .

Up against the jukebox .

Blood on the wall .

Murdered with a knife .

Harry stepped back, and he was no longer remembering the warmth and the light. It was as if his very being were falling backward, down a long cold tunnel. It was a terrible feeling, and it made his stomach churn.

“I saw him do it,” Harry said.

“What?” his mom said. “What did you say?”

“I saw him,” Harry said.

“You saw this guy?” his dad asked, thumping his finger on the photograph.