Black Light by Stephen Hunter
“You’re okay, Mr. Vincent,” said Russ. “Really, it’s fine, you’ve forgotten.”
But Sam’s eyes flashed between them, wide with horror.
“It’s okay,” said Bob. “It’s okay.”
14
Earl eased into the cornfield road. The dirt felt soft, and he progressed slowly. Around him, illuminated in the shafts of his headlights, the stalks of corn towered, eight feet tall and quivering ever so gently in the breeze.
Off the shoulder of the road, in the field, the earth looked loose and he was afraid if he got off into it, he could get stuck. Wouldn’t that be a goddamn mess!
The road curved a little to the left, until eventually it paralleled what, from the darker texture of the night, had to be the rise of Ferguson’s ridge. He’d taken a deer on the ridge, though several miles away. That same day, some sharecropper woman had given Sam a tongue-lashing for shooting so close to her children. Served him right, though to hear him tell it, Sam’d never made a mistake in his life.
When he was about a hundred yards in, that is, so far in he couldn’t see the U.S. 71 for the thickness of the corn, he halted the car and tried to think. He wanted to be able to put the light on Jimmy and Bub. That meant he had to turn the car. He got out, looked around, kicked at the shoulder and the dirt off the shoulder to tell if it would support the weight of the Ford. It appeared that it would. He climbed back in and painstakingly ground the wheel toward the left, cranking the car in a tight turn until the front wheels were just about off; then he spun the wheel in the opposite direction, backing slowly. This put him on the left side of the road, pointed outward. He turned off the engine, then leaned out the window and tried his spotlight. It threw a harsh circle of white light down the road that collected in a vivid oval a hundred feet out. With one hand he pivoted it, tracked it up and down like an antiaircraft searchlight, then turned it off.
He looked at the radium dial of his Bulova. Nine-fifty. Ten minutes to go.
Why am I so nervous? he wondered.
He’d been nervous in the war, or at least on the night before an amphibious operation.
Reason to get nervous. Amphibious operations were tricky and dangerous. At Tarawa, the Traks had run aground on coral a thousand yards out. It was a long walk in through the surf laden with equipment, with the Japs shooting the whole way. You get through that, you could get through anything.
But just some little goddamn nervous thing was flicking at him. He felt cursed. He’d made a big mistake today. He hadn’t meant to but he’d sure as hell wanted to and so he did it and now what? So he’d clean it up tomorrow. He’d clean up the mess he’d made, he’d be a man. These things could be handled and to hell with everything else. He knew he’d do it. He just didn’t know what it was to do.
It was all running together on him, the whole goddamned, messed-up day. Shirelle Parker Jed Posey Pop Dwyer Jimmy Pye Lem Tolliver Bub Pye Miss Connie Longacre Sam Vincent Buddy Till Edie White Pye Edie Edie Edie his son Bob Lee Shirelle dead missing her underpants her eyes eternally open the barking dog Mollie “He’s got it, she’s here.”
Forget about it, he told himself. Concentrate on the job.
He got out of the car when he could feel his limbs begin to tingle with lack of circulation. He stood, breathing in the country air. It was so incredibly quiet. But no, it wasn’t: just as a man in war learns the darkness isn’t really darkness, but a texture of different shades that can be learned and read, so quiet wasn’t really quiet. He heard the snapping of the cornstalks as they rustled in the hiss of the breeze. He heard crickets off on some spring by the ridge, and bullfrogs too, low and mournful. He thought he heard a man cough far away. No, couldn’t be. Nobody out here. Some goddamn frog thing or something, or maybe some freak of nature carrying a real cough miles and miles. It happened all the time.
Up above stars, not like the Pacific, but still towers and piles of stars, almost a smoke of stars. Constellations that he had showed his son, trying to remember the stories that went with them and feeling he wasn’t doing a very good job. There were no city lights out here to bleach them out; the closest town was Boles, a good five miles back, and in Boles they closed up for the night around nine.
“What’s that one, Daddy?” someone asked.
No, no one asked. It was his son’s voice, but it was only in his mind; he remembered the question from a hunting trip last fall.
“That’s the North Star, Bob Lee. Always find your way home with that one. Secret to night navigation.”
“What’s night ’gation?”
Damn kid had so many questions!
Concentrate on the job, he told himself.
He checked his watch. It was ten o’clock. Nothing.
THE MONKEY TOOK
ONE LOOK AT JIM
AND THREW THE PEANUTS
BACK AT HIM
BURMA SHAVE
Bub drove. He couldn’t hardly see nothing. Just corn on both sides of the road, and now and then a rhyming set of Burma Shave signs or on a barn a MAIL POUCH or a COPENHAGEN or even a JESUS SAVES. He felt lost. It was so dark. He was very scared and also very tired. He was hungry. Hadn’t eaten since the burger.
Jimmy looked out of the car, peering intently.
“There it is,” he said. “Right up there, on the left, you see it?”
“Yes sir,” said Bub. He saw a gap in the corn and what looked to be a road leading back. Far off was a ridge.
“You ain’t forgot what you’re going to say?” he asked. It was very important that Jimmy tell him again. It stopped him from getting so scared.
“No sir, I give you my word,” said Jimmy. “This one was my deal the whole way. It was all my fault. Old Bub had nothing to do with it. We’ll git you back to your mama in no time. You might even get to go home tonight.”
“Do you think? do you think? I miss my mama.”
An image of his mama came before Bub. She was an immense woman, usually harried, sometimes quite mean, but he loved her just the same. He remembered a time when he and some other boys had set fire to a cat after dousing it with kerosene and it had run just a little bit, screaming horribly, before it collapsed into a smoking heap, and he had felt so bad, and his mama had pulled him into her arms and rocked and rocked him and in her abiding warmth and under the ministrations of her calm heart, he had fallen asleep. That was his favorite memory.
“You just do what Mr. Earl tells you,” said Jimmy. “It’s going to be all right.”
Bub turned onto the dirt road. He paused, feeling the car slip a little into the soil.
“Go on,” said Jimmy. “Just a bit farther. I’m afraid old Earl missed it, goddammit.”
They edged ahead until they were swallowed by corn, the corn seemed to lean in from each side, like it was attacking them, and Bub had a brief spasm of fear.
“Jimmy?” he asked plaintively, feeling his voice rise just a bit.
“There, there,” said Jimmy.
The headlights prowled ahead on the dirt road, and in time they came to the state police cruiser resting on the side of the road.
“Here we are,” said Jimmy.
Earl watched as the car came slowly into view, swung around the curve, then pulled off to the side of the road fifty or so feet away. Whoever was driving switched off the engine. A little gray dust still floated in the air. The car, cooling, ticked and creaked a bit but neither of the two men inside moved.
For maybe thirty long seconds it was quiet. Then Earl switched on his spotlight, throwing a circle of illumination in the front seat of the automobile. He recognized Jimmy Pye, raising a hand to block out the harsh glare. Jimmy was blazing in the beam, his natural colors turned flame-white, his thick locks of hair golden.
“That’s bright, Earl,” he called.
Jimmy! Earl thought. Goddamn you, Jimmy, why’d you go and do this goddamned thing?
“All right now, Jimmy,” Earl called out. “You move real easy.”
“Yes sir,” said Jimmy. “Can Bub call
“We’ll take care of that in a little bit. Now I want you to come out first, Jimmy, I want to see the gun held by the barrel in your left hand and I want to watch it tossed until it lands in the dirt. Then I want you, Bub, I want to see hands, I want to see the gun held in the left one by the barrel, I want to see it in the dirt. You got that? This is going to happen nice and easy.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Earl,” called Bub.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
“Hey, Earl, you sound like Joe Friday. This ain’t Dragnet. Hell, Earl, it’s only Jimmy Pye and his little cousin,” said Jimmy. He unlatched his door, then, showing his hands, kneed the door open and stepped out. His hands were high and empty.
“I’m going to get the gun now, Earl,” he called, and reached down with his left hand and removed a pistol from his belt. He threw it forward, where it landed in the dust, kicking up a little puff.
“Okay, Bub, you slide over, and out you come, the same way.”
Bub scooted forward along the seat and pulled himself out. Where Jimmy’s posture had been nonchalant, even arrogant, Bub was tight with tension. Absurdly, his arms flew straight up like a grade school boy aping an angel’s flight. Earl could see his knees shaking.
“The gun, Bub. Did you forget the gun, Bub?”
“Oh-unh,” came a little choke of despair and terror from the big boy, “it’s still in the car. You want me to get it?”
“Turn around, so’s I can see you’re unarmed,” said Earl.
Obligingly, the big youngster pivoted and Earl saw his belt was empty.
“Okay, Bub, you turn back around and set them hands against the roof of the car, next to Jimmy.”
“Y-yes sir,” came the plaintive cry, as Bub turned and leaned.
“Now, y’all stay like that real steady. I’m coming across, I don’t want any sudden moves.”
“Hurry up, Earl, the damn skeeters is eating me alive,” called Jimmy.
The spotlight locked on the two boys, Earl reached down and unsnapped the flap over his Colt Trooper. Then he reached back and removed the pair of handcuffs from his belt case and another that he’d stuck into the belt.
He started to walk across.
“Damn!” said Jimmy, slapping suddenly at his neck where he’d just been stung. “Goddamn bugs!”
It happened so slowly yet so fast at the same time; Earl’s eyes followed as Jimmy’s hand seemed to go back to the car but at the same time, in a maneuver that made no sense at all, Jimmy was curling, pivoting, turning and he felt himself say “Jim—” when he saw the gun and he couldn’t figure it out because the gun was on the ground, he’d seen it hit, and he saw the—
FLASH
—before he heard any noise and he felt the—
WHACK
before he heard the noise too, and then he heard the noise and saw the flash again and
WHACK
from so close, so very close, and the next thing he knew he was on his knees and somebody was running at him and he heard the noise again and it was Bub.
Bub ran at him and seemed to stop as a red spider crawled across his T-shirt front and his face was drawn and terribly tense with fear. But still he came crazily at Earl, like some kind of monster, his arms outstretched, his mouth working, his eyes wide like big white eggs, coming on as if to crush the life from Earl.
Earl fired. He couldn’t even remember drawing.
Bub went to his knees.
FLASH.
Earl turned as Jimmy fired again, then again, both misses as he slipped back into the corn. Earl imagined a sly grin on Jimmy’s face and more than anything to wipe that terrible grin away, he squeezed the trigger four more times, four booming blasts, the gun bucked in his hand, the four shots as fast as any that ever came out of his tommy gun, until the gun clicked dry.
What the hell is happening? Earl thought, not in words so much as in bright flashes, spangles, fragments of light and hot metal that danced through his mind.
Then he saw he was still in the light, still on the ground, and around him the cars towered and beyond the cars the corn towered. He slithered backwards, out of the light, waiting to be shot, but no shot came. He heard steps, the rush of corn being shoved roughly aside, the sigh of the breeze, no other sound.
He got behind the cover of his cruiser. Bub lay on his back, covered in blood.
“Mama!” Bub screamed. “Oh, Mama, hep me, please, oh Jesus, Lord, I don’t want to die.”
There was no sign of Jimmy.
Reload, he told himself, putting out the gun before him and reaching over with his off hand to unlatch the cylinder and reach for ammunition.
But he had no off hand. Or at least it didn’t work.
He looked and saw he was covered with blood. An angry black pucker oozed black fluid just below his elbow, the blood coursing down to his fingers where it dripped off. He couldn’t move the fingers. The arm was dead broken. His left side was covered in blood too, his uniform and trousers soaked in it.
Am I going to die? he wondered.
Well, if I am, goddammit, I better reload just the same.
With his good thumb, he managed to pull back the cylinder latch and shake the cylinder out. Turning the gun upward, he shook and shook until one at a time all six shells fell out. He wedged the gun between his knees and, again one by one, picked shells out of his cartridge loops and threaded them into the cylinder. Big .357 soft points. With a snap of the wrist, he flicked the cylinder shut.
The pain started. It howled in his arm. His side was numb and wet. He wanted to sleep or scream. He didn’t want to go after Jimmy in the corn.
Gun loaded in his hand, he slipped the Colt into the holster and crawled into the car and picked the mike up.
He was way out in the country with no relay stations close by but the radio was a powerful low-band AM. Could he get through? He should be able to.
“Any cars, any cars, trooper down, ten-thirty-three, repeat, ten-thirty-three, any cars, please respond.”
Dead air answered him.
Shit.
A sparkle caught his eye; he looked up to a blur of fractured glass in the windshield, where one of Jimmy’s shots had flown and then beyond that his aerial, snapped in two by a bullet.
Goddamn.
Lucky little prick. That would cut the range way down. No backup.
He slid back out of the car, took a look around. Bub was still, though Earl could see he still breathed. Nothing could be done now. Earl certainly wasn’t going out there in the light.
He figured Jimmy was somewhere close by, maybe circling, just getting closer. For one thing was dead clear: Jimmy was trying to kill him. That’s what this goddamn thing was all about.
Jimmy was so hopped up he could hardly hold still. He knew he’d got him. He got him good, Earl was probably dead. He’d seen him fall, seen the blood all over him, and when Earl, normally a dead shot with any kind of gun, had fired at him, he’d missed by plenty.
Jimmy crouched in the corn, still as a sleeping cat, though he was breathing hard. From his low angle he couldn’t see much through the stalks, which even now wavered and clicked in the low breeze. Somewhere far ahead was a blaze of light that told the location of the two cars. He was going to wait to catch his breath and then begin the slow crawl back. He knew he had to make sure. Then he was out, he was gone, he was done, a whole new world lay before him. He had done it!
Rocking round the clock till the broad daylight!
But abruptly the light vanished.
He contemplated the meaning in this. Had the light gone out on its own? Had Earl turned it out? Had people come and turned it out? No, it couldn’t be people. There’d be cars, dogs, airplanes, maybe them helicopters, the whole goddamn shooting match.
It was goddamned Earl. Earl hunting him. Earl turning out the light so there wouldn’t be any backlight to throw up a silhouette.
He knew he should just be quiet another few minutes. Earl had seen hi
He’ll make noise, he thought.
He didn’t doubt that Earl would try such a thing; the man was a bulldog of guts. But he was old, he was wounded, he probably lost a lot of blood.
Just stay still, Jimmy told himself.
So of course he yelled, “Earl! Earl, you coming for me? Goddamn Earl, I’m sorry. I thought you was fixing to kill me and be a big hero!”
There was no response.
Then he heard a yell.
“Goddammit, Jimmy, you are a fool and you done shot me good. I am a dying man. You come on and surrender now because ain’t no way you’re getting out. Help is on the way.”
“Nobody’s gettin’ way the hell out here in time for this,” Jimmy yelled, laughing, for he knew it was true, just as he knew Earl wasn’t that bad hurt but was lying to set him up. Earl could be a tricky devil.
But that didn’t really scare Jimmy. In fact, nothing scared Jimmy. His mind was ablaze with ideas of glory and fame, with adolescent notions of toughness and reputation, and he wanted to assert himself over the man who had loomed above him half his life like a dark cloud. He loved Earl. He also hated him. He wanted to save him. He wanted to kill him. Most of all he wanted to impress him.
He had just reloaded his clip from the pocketful of bullets and slammed it back into the .38 Super. His trick had worked. He threw a wrench and Earl thought it was a gun. Ha, Earl, fooled you!
He started to crawl toward Earl. He knew the man would be there soon and he’d get the jump and the first shot and he’d say, Hey, Earl, ain’t I the newest thing, ain’t I cool? and kill him.
Now the pain. The pain so bad it went up and down his arm looking for new places to hurt. The hand was numb. He was still bleeding. He’d seen somebody literally shredded by a shell blast on one of the islands—couldn’t remember which one now—literally turned into a confetti of flesh and blood, and that’s what his worthless arm looked like now.
Next, fatigue. So utterly tired. Why was he so tired? He wanted to sleep. Was he bleeding to death? Possibly. There just came an urge to lie down and sleep it off.