999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [121]
“It’s been that way forever,” he told me one day when he was taking a break from it, sitting on the hood of his wrecked old truck. “But one night a few winters ago I stepped out there and wasn’t facing the house; and I was standing on one of your mom’s long-ago rosebushes. The flowers were open, like they thought it was day, and the leaves were warm. Time doesn’t pass, in mirages, everybody knows that—so I hopped right in the truck and bought two cases of Bud-weiser out of the cooler at Top Cat, and stashed ‘em there right by the rosebush. The next morning it was the two-for-one-step mirage again, but whenever it slacks off, I know where there’s a lot of cold beer.”
I nodded a number of times, and so did he, and it was right after this conversation with him that I started keeping all our old toys back there.
Yesterday my sister came rocking up the dirt driveway in a shiny green Edsel, and when she braked it in a cloud of dust and clanked the door open I could see that she’d been crying at some point on the drive up. It’s a long drive, and it takes a lot out of her.
My voice is gone because of the explosion having scorched my throat, so I stepped closer to her to be heard. “Come in the house and have … some water,” I rasped—awkwardly, because she’d doing all this for my sake. We don’t have any glasses, but she could drink it out of the faucet. “Or crackers,” I added.
“I can’t stand to see the inside of the house,” she said crossly. “We had good times in this house, when we were all living in it.” She squinted out past the dogwood tree at the infinity of brown hillocks that is the backyard. “Let’s talk out there.”
“You’re testy,” I noted as I followed her up the dirt driveway, past the house. She was wearing a blue sundress that clung to her sweaty back.
“Why do you suppose that is, Gunther?”
I glanced around quickly, but there wasn’t even a bird in the empty blue sky. “Doug,” I reminded her huskily, trying to project my frail voice. The name had been suggested by the phone call I’d got on the day before the explosion, and certainly Doug Olney himself would never hear about the deception, wherever he might be. “Always, you promised.”
We were walking out past the end of the driveway among the burr-weeds now, and I saw her shoulders shrug wearily. “Why do you suppose that is—Mr. Olney?” she called back to me.
I lengthened my stride to step up beside her. The soles of my feet must be tough, because the burrs never stick in my skin. “I bet it’s expensive to rent a classic Edsel,” I hazarded.
“Yes, it is.” Her voice was flat and harsh. “Especially in the summer, with all the Mexican weddings. It’s a ‘57, but it must have a new engine or something in it—I could hardly see the signs on the old Route 66 today. Just Foothill Boulevard all the way. I may not be able to come out here again, get through to you, not even your own twin, who lived here, with you! Not even in a car from those days. And Hakim needs me too.” She turned to face me and stamped her foot. “He could figure some way to get out of that airport if he really wanted to! And look at you! Damn it—Doug—how long do you think a comatose body can live, even in a hospital like Western Medical, with its soul off hiding incognito somewhere?”
“Well, soul …”
“This is certainly unsanctified ground. Is it a crossroads? Have you got rue growing out here with the weeds?” She was crying again. “Propane leak. Why were you found out in the yard, out by the duck?