Gateways. Part 22

Through the late afternoon haze he spotted Carl working three houses down. When he saw Jack he hurried toward him across the dry gra.s.s. A small garden spade protruded from his right sleeve.

"I heard about your daddy," he said, flas.h.i.+ng a yellow grin. "Real glad he's okay. That's pan-o-ramic!"

"Sorry?"

He shrugged. "I just like the word. Anyways, I'm glad he's back."

"Thanks, Carl. He's napping now."

"Good. Real good. Looks like the list don't get more pan-o-ramic."

Wis.h.i.+ng he'd never uttered that word, Jack said, "What list?"

"The list of Gateways folks who've gone before their time-not that 'before their time' means a whole h.e.l.luva lot round a place like this. Funeral home waiting rooms is what they is."

"I'm not following you."

"Had a bunch of strange deaths real recent like."

Jack felt a crawly sensation in his gut. "Like what? Hit and runs?"

"Nup. Nothin' like that. I mean strange. Like Mrs. Borger bein' attacked by about a dozen pelicans last year-right before Christmas, it was. Pecked her to death. I hear tell one of them bit into her neck and there was blood shootin' everwhere. Been in Florida all my life and I ain't never heard of no one bein' attacked by no pelicans. Then back in March there was Mr. Leo, all bitten up by a bunch of spiders. Brown recluses, they say." He shuddered. "If I was ever on Fear Factor Fear Factor, that's what would set me to runnin'. Anyways, Doc Harris said he's never heard of someone gettin' bit more'n once, but there you go. Poor old guy died in the hospital."

"Jeez."

"Then just last June, Mr. Neusner trips and falls into a whole nest of coral snakes. He was DOA like the others. Come to think of it, your daddy was the only accident that made it to the hospital alive. I guess that's a good sign."

"Let's hope so."

"Funny thing about Mr. Neusner and the coral snakes. We got a sayin' down here: 'red touch yellow-kill a fellow.'"

"What's that mean?"

"Well, there's coral snakes, which got red, yellow, and black stripes, and they's poisonous as all get out. And then there's the scarlet snake and the scarlet king snake which got similar stripes but they're harmless. The way you tell 'em apart is by the order of their stripes."

"You mean people hang around long enough to check out the stripe order?"

"Sure. If it's got a red stripe next to a yellow stripe, it's a coral snake. If it don't, then you're okay. You may get bit, but you won't get poisoned." He p.r.o.nounced it "pie-zund."

Jack said, "I'm a city boy. I see any snake, striped or plaid, I'm gone."

He much preferred dealing with human snakes than the legless kind.

"But the thing is," Carl added, "I seen one of them snakes, the one Mr. Neusner stomped on before he keeled over. Don't know bout the other ones that bit him, but this one didn't have no red touchin' yellow. It shouldn't have been poisonous, but it was." He shook his head. "Kinda scary when somethin' you always depended on turns out not to be true anymore."

Tell me about it, Jack thought. He'd seen the pins kicked from under more than one Cherished Truth lately.

"You said there was a nest of them? Right here at Gateways? How? The place looks so...manicured."

"I can't figure that one neither. I run the mower over that spot every week and I ain't never seen no snake nest. I think a buncha them just coiled theirselfs all together durin' the night and was still there when Mr. Neusner come by like he did every mornin'." Carl looked away, toward the Everglades. "Almost like..."

"Almost like what?"

"Like they was waitin' for him."

Jack's gut crawled again. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

A shrug. "Just a thought."

"I'm having a thought too," Jack said as the crawling sensation increased. "December, March, June...every three months someone buys it. And three months from June is-"

"September," Carl said. "You're thinkin' of your daddy, right? But the others was done in right here at Gateways by things like birds and spiders and snakes-all natural like. Your daddy had a car accident and he wasn't here at Gateways like the others."

But the regularity of the fatal mishaps to Gateways residents, the steady three-month intervals between them, bothered Jack. Especially since his father had almost bought it at the end of another three-month cycle.

Something might be going on, but it sure as h.e.l.l wasn't the Everglades seeking revenge.

Jack feared something less substantial but far more real might be behind it.

9.

Tom awoke from his nap and looked around. Where was Jack? Or had he only dreamed he was here? That might mean that the whole coma thing was a dream too.

Then Jack walked in the front door and he felt a strange mix of emotions: up that his prodigal son had come home, even if only for a few days, and down because it meant the accident and coma were all real.

"Oh," Jack said. "You're awake. Short nap."

"The short ones are the best. They don't leave you groggy."

Jack headed toward the kitchen. "I'm going to have another beer. Want one?"

"No, thanks. But you go ahead."

Tom watched him twist off the top of an Ybor Gold and thought how much he looked like his mother. He had Jane's brown hair and brown eyes. And he moved with her grace, her economy of motion.

Tom hadn't seen his younger son in over a year, not since that father-son tennis match he'd roped him into last summer. He'd changed in that time. He didn't look older, but his eyes held a different look. He couldn't call it a hunted look. Maybe haunted? Haunted by Kate's death? Or was it something else? Guilt, maybe. Well, he should should feel guilty about missing Kate's funeral. d.a.m.n guilty. feel guilty about missing Kate's funeral. d.a.m.n guilty.

He didn't know what to make of his younger son. He'd thought they'd been close. He'd made a special effort to spend time with Jack while he was growing up. An unplanned baby. He and Jane had their boy and their girl and were content with that. But Jack showed up eight years after Kate, and neither Tom nor Jane had quite the energy they'd had with the first two. But Tom hadn't wanted to shortchange the little guy, thus the special effort.

But then Jane was killed; and less than a year later Jack disappeared. He'd called home once to say he was okay and not to worry, but wouldn't say any more. In the s.p.a.ce of less than a year Tom lost his wife and one of his sons. He'd never imagined he could hurt so much. He thought his world had come apart.

He blamed himself at first-what had he done, where had he gone wrong? But then he came to realize that disappearing was in keeping with Jack's character as he'd come to know it.

He'd realized early on how bright Jack was, brighter than either Tommy or Kate, but he was also something of a loner. Okay, more than something of a loner. He did well enough gradewise, but all his teachers said he'd do better if he applied himself. That and "Does not play well with others" were constants during his early schooling.

Although a natural athlete, he never seemed to care for sports. At least not team sports. It was his father's urging rather than any desire to compete that drove him to sign up for a couple of the high school teams. He joined the track team, but as a cross-country runner where he was competing with the terrain and himself as much as the opposing school's team. He also spent two years on the swim team. Both loner sports.

Even his first summer job-cutting lawns in the neighborhood-was a solitary enterprise. He borrowed the family lawnmower and went into business for himself. As a college student he needed more cash so he went to work for one of the local landscapers.

But what he really seemed to enjoy most was reading far-out fiction-if it had a monster or a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p on the cover he bought it-and watching old sci-fi and monster movies.

He'd worried about Jack, urging him into more social activities. It's a beautiful Sat.u.r.day. Go down to the park and get into one of the ball games! It's a beautiful Sat.u.r.day. Go down to the park and get into one of the ball games! Jack would reluctantly get on his bike and pedal off. Later, as Tom was riding through town, he'd spot Jack's bike chained to a standpipe outside the local theater that was showing a Sat.u.r.day afternoon monster double feature. Jack would reluctantly get on his bike and pedal off. Later, as Tom was riding through town, he'd spot Jack's bike chained to a standpipe outside the local theater that was showing a Sat.u.r.day afternoon monster double feature.

He'd worried then, he worried now. Jack earned his living, at least as far as Tom could tell, as an appliance repairman. In the few times during the past fifteen years that he'd seen his son-times he could number on the fingers of one hand-and had a chance to ask him about it, he'd always seemed evasive. Maybe because he sensed his father's disappointment. Nothing wrong in being a repairman in and of itself; the world needed people who could fix the mechanical and electronic conveniences of modern life. Fine. But he wanted more for his son. Jack had three and a half years of college behind him that he wasn't using. What was he going to do when his eyes got bad and his fingers got arthritic? Did he think he was going to get by on that Ponzi scheme called Social Security? Tom hoped not.

But what bothered him more was that Jack seemed rootless, disconnected, adrift. Not exactly a ne'er-do-well, but...

But what? Why was he so secretive about his life? Tom was a believer in everyone's right to privacy, but really...it was almost as if Jack were hiding something.

Earlier this year Tom had gathered the courage to ask if he was gay. Jack had denied it, and his easy laugh as he'd a.s.sured him that he was attracted only to women had convinced him he was telling the truth. Tom wouldn't deny that that had been a relief. But if Jack had said yes, well, Tom would have tried to find a way to accept it. He was glad that wouldn't be necessary.

So if it wasn't that, what? Was he using drugs? Or worse, dealing them? He prayed not. And for some reason, thought not.

He supposed Jack's unused education rankled him the most. Education wasn't something Tom took lightly. He'd fought and killed to get his.

He slid back along the lines of his life to his childhood. He'd been born during the Great Depression, the son of a truck farmer outside Camden who'd been sc.r.a.ping by before the economy crashed, and continued to sc.r.a.pe by after. At least they always had food on the table, even if it was only vegetables they picked or pulled from the ground themselves.

Tom's father had been just old enough to see a little action in the First World War, and just a little bit too old to fight in the Second, although that hadn't stopped him from trying to enlist after hearing news of what the j.a.ps did to Pearl Harbor. Tom remembered being afraid that they'd soon see hordes of yellow men running wild through the streets of America. He'd read numerous scenarios describing just that during the late thirties in the pages of the Operator 5 Operator 5 magazines he borrowed from a kid in school. magazines he borrowed from a kid in school.

But his father was rejected and the j.a.ps never set foot one on North America. So much for that worry.

But when Tom hit eighteen there was no money for college. He'd done well in high school but not well enough for a scholars.h.i.+p. So he enlisted in the Army. It was peacetime so it seemed a safe place to be: earn a little money, save what he could, and maybe see some of the world in the bargain. But most importantly, it offered a chance to get off that farm.

A year after he enlisted he was seeing the world, all right. s.h.i.+pped to j.a.pan and then to South Korea to fight in a UN "police action." Even now, he ground his teeth every time he heard that phrase. It had been a full-blown war. He'd fought from sunny Seoul to the frozen hills of North Korea where he witnessed firsthand the Red Chinese human-wave a.s.saults. For years after, he awoke sweating and shaking with the memory. At least he was alive to have nightmares, unlike too many in his unit who came back in boxes.

When he returned to the States he found a day job and used the GI Bill to put himself through night school. He graduated with an accounting degree and soon qualified as a CPA. He joined Price Waterhouse and spent the rest of his working life with the firm. He was able to provide his wife and children with all the things his own father had been unable to give him. To Tom, the most important of those was a higher education. Tom Jr. had made good use of it, so had dear Kate. The result was a lawyer and a doctor in the family.

And then there was Jack...

The man in question dropped into a chair opposite Tom.

"Can I ask you something, Dad?"

"Sure."

"What were you doing out on those back roads at that hour?"

Tom almost told him it was none of his business but bit it back. He had to put this anger behind him, forget what happened before and be glad for the now.

Could he do that? He had to try.

"Just driving. I have trouble sleeping lately. I lie there in bed and I close my eyes but it won't come. They tell you not to stay in bed if you can't get to sleep, so I go out for a drive."

"And do what?"

"Not much. Lots of times I stop the car and sit on the hood and watch the sky. Jack, you wouldn't believe it. You can cruise those back roads at night and not see another soul. You stop the car and turn off the headlights and get out and above you are stars like you've never seen, stars like I haven't seen since I was a kid in the Jersey sticks, when the air was still clean enough to see the Milky Way smeared across the top of the sky. It's breathtaking."

"You always drive the same route?"

"Pretty much. There aren't many roads to choose from out there."

"So you have a pretty set pattern?"

"I guess so. Why are you asking?"

Jack took a sip from his bottle. "Just trying to put some pieces together. Since there's no one out there, do you bother to stop at stop signs?"

"Well, yes. Of course I do. It may not make sense but...I guess it's just habit. And it's not as if I'm going anywhere, or in a hurry to get there."

"The cops think you might have blown through a stop sign and got tagged by something speeding along South Road. Something big."

Tom shook his head. "I wish I could remember."

It disturbed him no end that a piece of his life was missing-an important piece, one that had put him in a coma for days. It scared him a little...no, it scared him a lot not knowing any of the details. That was why he couldn't stay in the hospital. If he had to be in the dark as to what had happened to him, he'd rather be in the dark here, in familiar surroundings...where he felt he was in control. Or felt he had at least some modic.u.m of control, even if illusory.

"Do you remember a woman attacked by pelicans last year?"

"Sure. Adele Borger. Terrible thing. I heard she was walking with two other women whom the pelicans ignored. They attacked just her. They say she was a terrible mess."

"And the guy bitten by the snakes?"

"Ed Neusner. Where'd you hear about him and Adele?"

"From Carl."

Tom had to smile. "Telephone, telegraph, tell Carl. He's the Gateways gossipmonger. Not the brightest bulb in the box, but a good man. Hard worker. He's got some wild ideas, though. Has he told you his theory about the angry Everglades yet?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah. Maybe it's not so far-out. What about the guy killed by spiders?"

"Joe Leo? What about him?"

"Hasn't anyone noticed a pattern to these deaths-like every three months?"

"No." Was he right? Every three months? "No one's ever mentioned it. But why would they? It can't be anything other than coincidence."

"Do you realize your accident falls right into the pattern?"

Good Lord, Jack was right. The muscles along the back of his neck tightened, but only for a second. Coincidence. That was all it was, all it could be.

Tom forced a smile. "Is this what you do in your spare time-invent conspiracies?"